Ryeberg Curated Video

Roger Scruton says you can find consolation closer to home, and from consolation, happiness. He also doesn’t mind providing an answer to one of the enduring questions.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbV66wO2D_o

VPROWinkel, “Roger Scruton” (Of Beauty & Consolation, 2000)

9) The Fun Machine Is Going Down, Follow It

Other sources of consolation and happiness are available. Here’s some on this sidewalk in Boston. Except really, you probably do not want that person back

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6EPwRdVg5Ug

Lake Street Dive, “I Want You Back” (2012) — thx M Rowe

10) Watch The End Of Fellini’s Film

Now it’s late at night and the people you love are asleep. You’re tired, the lamps are floating. You can’t tear yourself from the computer. Then, au hasard, you get to this, and it’s enough to bring a close to the day.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jA_Xc4Uz17I

Federico Fellini, “Nights Of Cabria” (1957)

Are you crying ‘cuz you’re happy? Or sad? Answer: Happy.

The post Ryeberg Playlist: Crying ‘Cuz I’m Happy appeared first on Ryeberg Curated Video.

Another Twenty Seconds!

Pasha Malla — Sat, 06 Apr 2013 19:27:47 +0000

Jerry L. Nelson (July 10, 1934 – August 23, 2012)

On August 23, 2012, “Sesame Street” puppeteer Jerry Nelson passed away of complications from respiratory disease. Nelson, a longtime contributor to the Children’s Television Workshop, might be best known as the creator, voice and operative hands of Count von Count, the numbers-obsessed, Lugosi-inspired Muppet who informed, delighted, infuriated and terrified millions of children through the 70s, 80s and 90s.

Clicking through old videos, I came across this one, which features the Count as a contestant on Guy Smiley’s game show, “Beat the Time.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_F6mglu9y0

Sesame Street, “Guy Smiley: Beat The Time With Count Von Count” (Ep. 1845, 1983)

Can we talk about how funny this is? How brilliantly it parodies all sorts of things? I love the way Guy Smiley thrashes around in the curtains, comes wheeling out in reverse, all his showbiz acumen compromised by a few seconds of hysteria. And I love even more the arrogant, sultry entry of the Count, blithely cackling to himself — what was he up to in the green room? — as he skulks centre-stage: “Yes, ha ha ha! Yes, ha ha ha!”

There’s something skeptical in Smiley’s “Hello!” — maybe that faint xenophobia I’m familiar with from having to slowly re-pronounce my name to rednecks. Or maybe it’s just fear. And why not? Let’s not forget the Count’s a vampire. Look at those fangs! It’s a miracle he didn’t tear out Gordon and Maria and Mr. Hooper’s throats as they slept…

For sheer hubris, it’s hard to think of a Muppet who compares to the grandstanding Smiley and the quixotic, self-obsessed Count. Certainly not Kermit, that froggy melancholic, nor the hysterically baffled Grover, nor Big Bird, nor Elmo — feathered and furred half-wits, respectively — nor Mr. Snuffleupagus’s post-pubescent Eeyore, nor even Ernie, who, though a raging solipsist, seems most invested in goading his Jewish roommate into bouts of uncontrollable rage.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cUusX1Js6R0

Sesame Street, “Bert And Ernie Fish Call” (Episode 1707, 1982)

But though the skit sets up a similar showdown, its dynamic — tight-wound neurotic v. laconic madman — assures that not only will this lavender-skinned lunatic beat the shit out of the time, he’s going to reveal “everybody’s favourite game show host” and his whole enterprise as a farce.

“I am the Count,” the Count intones — the undead always intone — less confirming Smiley’s introduction than negating it. “They call me the Count because I love to count… things.” Note how Jerry Nelson abandons the accent at the end of this line, emphasizing the sweeping ubiquity of “things.” And the Count’s use of “they” implies such infamy; it subsumes Smiley’s “everybody” into what JM Coetzee might call “some generic [they] so wide as to exclude no one.” They call him the Count, they shiver at his feet. “And now that vast, daunted they, Guy, includes even you.”

(Picture it: A bunch of hard-drinking everymen/women cozied up to some woody bar in the American Southwest. Amid a discussion of weather and crops and football and those greedy fat-cats in Washington, the conversation cycles, inevitably, to the Count. One guy turns to hork a wad of tobacco-muddied rheum into the corner spittoon — ping! — then turns back to the bar, takes a long haul from his Michelob and, shaking his head, with equal parts reverence and awe, concedes, “I’ll fuckin’ say it if no one else fuckin’ will: Goddamn if that motherfucker don’t love to count things.”)

Smiley’s rejoinder: “They call me Guy Smiley because I changed my name from Bernie Liederkranz.” Not only a clever callback, inverting a previous line and playing it for laughs, but also a sly nod to the icky de-Jewifying nomenclature of Hollywood, made doubly hilarious by the fact the audience cheers. (Liederkranz, incidentally, is a brand of cheap cheese.) Meanwhile, the Count is still chortling away at whatever private, maniacal monologue runs on loop through his numerically deranged brain — things counted past, maybe, or the infinitude of things yet to be enumerated in the glorious, teeming future.

What happens next calls to mind my favourite moments on TV: Some starched, officious suit having his authority usurped by a guest who won’t play along. It’s happened a few times on “The Price is Right,” but the most apt example might be Harmony Korine’s first visit to “Late Night;” Letterman seems to have no idea he’s the one who comes off a total chump.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubZ2Z55JjWo

David Letterman, “Interview With Harmony Korine” (Late Show, 1995)

Back to the skit: Next we get to the “Impossible Stunt,” which the Count predictably misinterprets and derails. While Guy Smiley’s worldview unravels (“What are you doing? You’ll never get anything this way!”), with each gleeful, ticking second the joke doubles back and gets funnier; the kicker, of course, is that the Count triumphs not just despite but because of his own ineptitude — classic comedy, from Cervantes through Looney Tunes. (Or might his arithromania be a front? Maybe he’s a sort of Candide-Nosferatu hybrid disinterred from the grave to expose all the cultural ironies to which we’re oblivious? To show us what really, um, counts?)

Then thunder and lightning, and Smiley quakes: “What! Was! That?!” “It always does that when I count,” he’s told (subtext: Smiley, you fucking idiot.) But the Count sounds sort of forlorn here, doesn’t he? There’s such pathos in how Nelson softens the line. When I was a kid the Count’s celebratory weather scared the piss out of me. (Same with Vincent Price’s opening to “Thriller;” I’d leave the room until the music started, every time.) But now the storm cloud lurking perpetually above seems kind of sad. Imagine whenever you did your favourite thing — made love, let’s say — there were great heavenly rumblings and flashes? The first few instances would be cool, sure. But every time? Wouldn’t your life start to feel cursed? Again the Count laughs, but this time with a hint of embarrassment, or discomfort, or loneliness. (Elsewhere he admits, “I don’t have any friends.”)

But let’s not get too maudlin. I want to talk about the skit’s most poignant satirical moment. “You can have anything you want in the entire world,” Smiley offers as a reward. “A trip to Florida, a new washer-dryer, a million dollars—what do you want?” That the Count wants another twenty seconds is a good joke, but it’s also fitting: what else might a person (or felted vampire) desire than that which makes him happiest? Isn’t it “wonderful, wonderful” that he’s discovered what best serves and articulates his soul? How many of us can say this? For Count von Count, counting isn’t just personally elemental, it actually conjures the elements, so intrinsically does it connect him with the web of all creation.

As the closing music plays, Guy Smiley echoes the Count’s “wonderful, wonderful,” suggesting he’s been won over. But the real genius of this skit is that we’re aligned fully with the Count; Smiley’s been revealed as a putz who can only chase behind. And his sign-off is note-perfect for how it captures TV-speak’s dumb aphasia: “That’s all the time we have on ‘Beat the Time,’ so until next time this is Guy Smiley saying, ‘Have a nice time.’” To some producer off-screen, he mutters, “I think we got away cheap this time.”

I don’t, if you haven’t noticed, have much of a point here, and I’m aware that explaining comedy is the best way to ruin it. But since you’ve made it this far, a question: Do you remember what made you laugh as a kid? Besides being tickled, I have no idea what I found funny. It’s not that I have no emotional memories of childhood: In kindergarten I was petrified of Jesus, who was allegedly everywhere, and in grade three I fell so hopelessly in love with Becky Brisco that I would barf in the shower and have to kick it down the drain. And that same year I peed my pants in class and entered a shame-spiral that has remained in a steady vertiginous swirl ever since.

Despite the fact that children are said to laugh about twenty times more a day than adults, my humour memories only begin in adolescence, when gut-wrenching hysterics consumed me over “The Naked Gun” and Adam Sandler‘s “At A Medium Pace” and an absurd sleepover conversation about gecko lizards, which mostly involved repeating the words, “I’m a gecko,” in a lizardy voice until the sun came up. Before that, I think I laughed more out of delight, though it’s hard to say. I do know it’s been a long, long time since I’ve laughed uncontrollably, at least without the aid of psilocybic mushrooms. And I’m sure I never found the Count’s triumph over Guy Smiley funny until a couple days ago.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMn9gvTgMFg

David Zucker, “The Naked Gun Funniest Moments: Part 1″ (1988)

I have nowhere to go with this, really. It’s just something that occurred to me while I was writing this down and I’m feeling sort of stunned. So, instead, let’s return to the last moments of “Beat the Time with the Count!” Everybody’s favourite game show host, all these moral and cultural lessons lost upon him (but not on us!), hustles off to shoot another episode in a neighbouring studio. Rush, rush, corporate drone — while Count von Count summons another maelstrom of delight.

- Pasha Malla

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Magic, Cupcakes & Infinity

Steven Galloway — Fri, 01 Mar 2013 16:20:57 +0000

Performed on stage by Steven Galloway at Ryeberg Live Vancouver 2013.

We live in a binary world. One and zero, on and off, right and wrong. We believe what we believe about which is which, and we decamp into groups where each side tries to convince the other side that they are the one. We can, as a society, look at the things that are destroying the world. Certainly there is no shortage, as ever it has been. We argue, and we debate, and we fight about what has been done, what is being done, and what will be done. Everyone believes themselves to be right. It holds as logic that somewhere, someone must be.

But are they? Is anyone ever completely right about anything? What is the point of absolute truths? Nothing, anywhere, is that simple.

Take basic math, for example. We take it as a given that zero plus one is one. And it’s true. If you have zero cupcakes, and I give you a cupcake, then you have one cupcakes. Likewise, if you have one cupcake and you give me one, then you have zero cupcakes. Easy stuff.

Except it’s not that easy. Because as the Greek philosopher Zeno of Elea pointed out in the dichotomy paradox, ironically in support of an idea that is the exact opposite of what I put forth to you tonight, it is impossible to give me a cupcake.

In order to hand that cupcake to me, you must first hand it halfway to me. And before you can hand it halfway to me, you must hand it a quarter of the way to me. And before you can hand it a quarter of the way to me, you must hand it an eighth of the way to me, and so on and so on. Always, before you hand it a portion of the way to me there you must first have handed it half that distance. This dance continues into infinity, as there is always a number that is half the previous number. The problem with as it relates to cupcakes this is time. Each of these tasks takes a unit of time, no matter how small. An infinite number of tasks that take any amount of time can thus never be completed, rendering it impossible for you to give me a cupcake.

So either infinity does not exist, or you cannot give me a cupcake. How, I ask, do we reconcile this? What do we do when choosing sides in the inevitable battle between theoretical physicists and people who have given and received baked goods, each of whom can in their own way prove they are right and the other is wrong?

Every second, the human mind receives 11 million bits of information, about the equivalent of 11 megabites of data, or the amount of space currently required to store “Eleanor Rigby” and a “Hard Day’s Night” on your iPod. That’s every second, assuming you have your eyes and ears and nose and whatever else you use engaged.

The thing is, your conscious mind is only capable of processing about 200 bits a second, 0.2% of your total sensory input. We are constantly engaged in a sort of field general approach to our sensory input, where we are ignoring the overwhelming majority of information available to us in favour of the small amount we deem important in the moment. Sometimes we consciously direct this attention. Right now, for example, you are choosing to listen to me instead of the background noise in the room. You are choosing to look at me instead of the person next to you.

Other times, that attention can be unconsciously influenced. You were not, for example, likely at all aware of the position of your tongue inside your mouth a moment ago. And now you are. (video played without sound)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKa0eaKsdA0

eChalkIllusion, “The Rotating Mask Illusion” (2012)

This is the hollow face illusion. It is one of the simplest illusions in magic and sensory perception, and one of the most illustrative. It is at once exactly as it appears to be and not at all what it appears to be.

There is no trick photography being employed here. What you are seeing is a concave mask, rotated counter-clockwise. But that’s not what you see, is it?

The processes that make the hollow face illusion work are not unique or unusual. Without them we’d be overwhelmed and unable to cope with our surroundings. But they’re imperfect: even though we know that this mask has a concave side and a convex side and does not possess some kind of magic that gives it a fully rounded human face on both sides, when we see it that is not what our mind attempts to tell us.

Every second of every day, our brains are taking information and contextualizing it in relation to logic, past experience, and current circumstances. It takes unprocessed information and infers structures and processes, and from that derives meaning. This results in much of what arrives in that small part of our minds that is our conscious brain space coming to us pre-packaged, already put into discernable units of sense by the larger machine.

Researchers have observed that individuals with certain mental disorders — un-medicated schizophrenics, for example — and people on LSD and other hallucinogenic drugs are rarely fooled by either the hollow face illusion or other similar optical illusions, likely because their mind’s ability to group, contextualize and categorize information has been compromised.

What’s interesting about this is that in this instance, the brain issue that is preventing what would normally be an effective parsing and presenting of raw information is in fact leading to a truthful conclusion. This is of significance to all of us, not just Timothy Leary and people in tin foil hats.

We assume there is no bias to sensory input, that when you see something with your own eyes it is incontrovertible, and that reason and logic is a path leading us to a quantitative truth.

But of course this isn’t true. And nobody understands that better than magicians.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=De2tyFK8WA0

Mark Wilson, “Dai Vernon Explains The Cup & Balls Trick” (Magic Circus, 1970s)

This is Dai Vernon, one of this century’s greatest slight of hand magicians. He was born in Ottawa in 1894, and was known as both “The Professor” and “The Man Who Fooled Houdini,” after an incident in which he performed a card trick that even the King of Magicians couldn’t dissemble after multiple viewings.

Here Vernon presented for us a fairly standard version of a classic bit, the Cup & Balls. We all saw it, and unless you are particularly observant, ill or stoned, you likely were unable to detect the moments in which you were deceived. To the observer, it appears as though the prestidigitations being presented were genuine.

There are four elements to this grand tug of war between substance and illusion. There is effect, there is method, there is misdirection, and finally, when it’s all over, there is reconstruction. A magician dances between these four elements, seeking to choreograph a way through the trick with these component parts. If he successfully does so, he will have presented magic.

Effect is the reason the trick exists. Without it there’s no point. It’s the rabbit coming out of the hat, the woman shown to be sawn in half, the ace of spades somehow inside your coat pocket. Often a good effect is kept secret up until the moment of its reveal. You don’t actually know what the trick is until it’s finished, and even then while logical and thrilling it’s not what was expected. Other times the effect is announced at the start, and you’re watching for it, waiting for it, but then when it happens you’re still amazed.

How the magician achieves the effect is called the method. The wires, the doubles, the mirrors, the trapdoors — magical methods vary from deceptively simple to diabolically clever. A good method is one where the element of chance is as neutralized as possible, where as little can go wrong as possible, and where all aspects necessary to create the effect are fully within the magician’s control.

The problem with this is that the audience is on the lookout for the method. Because inherent in the wondrousness of any effect is the implication that if we could do it too, if the method were to become available to us, then we would also be magicians. And who does not secretly want magic powers?

So the audience must never be able to detect the method. If they do the effect will be rendered meaningless. To keep this method secret, the magician employs misdirection. Misdirection can be a subtle as a gesture, as obvious as an explosion, as expected as a curtain, or as coy as smoke. Obviously the audience is on the lookout for this, and the magician must be cunning about his use of misdirection.

The final element, reconstruction, is the most complex. After the effect has been revealed, after the method has been executed and misdirection has prevented its detection, the audience will use their memory to attempt to reconstruct the trick. They will think back to what they saw, and they will try to figure out the method. If they succeed, even after the fact, then the effect is ruined. The misdirection and method must not be identifiable, even in hindsight. For this reason, the magician will insert elements into the trick that are there for the sole purpose of confounding the reconstruction of the trick.

The magician knows that what happened and what we will remember having happened can be two entirely different things. If he shows us A and C, we will believe we saw B, even if this progression violates the laws of physics and nature as we know them. We will swear that we saw the impossible with our own eyes. When we remember events it will be as we believe they happened, not as they actually did.

Let’s look again at The Professor’s cup and balls, just the end right before the main effect, from when he stands up and begins to “explain” his method. What did you see? There were three silver cups, and before he stood up he showed us that there was a ball under each cup. Then, as he explained how he did it, sort of, he pulled up each cup to reveal a large ball underneath. How, we wondered, did that happen? We were watching him the whole time. Look again.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xBmh3c6xgU

Mark Wilson, “Dai Vernon: 2nd Part Of Cup & Balls Trick” (Magic Circus, 1970s)

Did you see it? You did. There’s an old chestnut in magic, repeated often by magicians: The hand is quicker than the eye. This is perhaps the greatest piece of misdirection ever employed. The eye is in fact much, much quicker than the hand. If you don’t believe me, try the following later, when the light is better, because obviously in the dark the eye is not quick at all. Curl one hand so that it makes a tube, and place it up against your eye, like a telescope made of your hand. Then flick your finger past the opening as fast as you can. Unless your vision is compromised, you will always see your finger.

So the eye is in fact quicker than the hand. The problem with this, or, if you’re a magician, the beauty of this, is that your eye connects to your brain. When a magician combines misdirection and alters reconstruction in combination with a quick hand, we can be made to see things that weren’t there, and not see things that were. You can’t see what you weren’t looking at, and you can’t remember what you didn’t notice.

Let’s look at Mr. Vernon again. We have him with the three balls underneath the cups. (stop at ten seconds)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xBmh3c6xgU

Mark Wilson, “Dai Vernon: 2nd Part Of Cup & Balls Trick” (Magic Circus, 1970s)

He puts the ball in his back pocket. This is no big deal, and does not seem like misdirection, because he is telling us he’s putting the ball in his pocket. He isn’t, though, and he tells us in a moment that he isn’t. His explanation is misdirection. Let’s look again. (stop at 20 seconds)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xBmh3c6xgU

Mark Wilson, “Dai Vernon: 2nd Part Of Cup & Balls Trick” (Magic Circus, 1970s)

At this point, he has retrieved from his back pocket, which, when you think about what he’s wearing and the size of the small balls, an odd place to put them, one of the large red balls. He is currently loading it into the left cup. We are distracted, because we’re more interested in his promised explanation of the previous trick, and not suspicious about these movements because he’s made them part of a pattern we are now used to. We’ll watch this again — keep an eye on his hands. (stop at 43 seconds)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xBmh3c6xgU

Mark Wilson, “Dai Vernon: 2nd Part Of Cup & Balls Trick” (Magic Circus, 1970s)

While he was explaining to us what misdirection was, he loaded the right cup, and then when he was purporting to honestly put the small balls in his pocket he retrieved the ball for the middle cup, and loaded it when he showed the three small balls, which he’d earlier palmed instead of placing them in his pocket. We have, with beautiful simplicity, been misdirected by an admission of misdirection.

At this point, the three large balls are under the cups. We’re all set. We’re still waiting for the trick, but we’re not going to see anything. There’s only one bit of magic left, and that’s the fourth ball. See if you can spot the load and the switch. (from 43 seconds to end)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xBmh3c6xgU

Mark Wilson, “Dai Vernon: 2nd Part Of Cup & Balls Trick” (Magic Circus, 1970s)

Did you see it? It happened when he was revealing the white ball – there’s a reason that ball is white, and that’s to provide a momentary pattern disruption that removes focus from the fact that he’s reloading the cup. Let’s watch that whole sequence again, now that you know what he’s up to. (full video)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xBmh3c6xgU

Mark Wilson, “Dai Vernon: 2nd Part Of Cup & Balls Trick” (Magic Circus, 1970s)

The magician is not manipulating us so much as he is exploiting us. Misdirection takes advantage of the fact that we can only consciously process those 200 bites of information every second, and when he uses this misdirection to alter our reconstruction he limits our ability to decode the false connections our unconscious mind created.

We knew whole time that Dai Vernon was not an actual wizard. In a strange way it would be almost disappointing if he genuinely possessed magical powers that altered the known laws of the universe. A complete reordering of the laws of humankind and physics are not what I’m looking for in my entertainment.

But with a binary worldview, my choices are that either he is a wizard or he presented no magic. I propose that both of these things are true, and that neither of them are true, and that any attempt to pick one over the other diminishes both. It is simply not necessary for everything to boil down to right or wrong. It’s a dead end.

It’s a dead end when we apply this binary thinking beyond the metaphor of magic as well. No complex question has two sides. We are not with you or against you, and the world is not dividable into good and evil, right and wrong, or any other trite dichotomy. But neither will a rejection of the ideas of right and wrong or good and evil and the rest get us anywhere either.

It’s a complicated feeling, because the world is complicated. To me, it feels like this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4QylQ0dmX1M

Yann Frisch, “Mesmerising Sleight of Hand Trick” (2012)

If there is a world where wizards walk among us performing for our amusement, where magic isn’t real, where people on LSD are the only ones who aren’t being fooled, where no one can give me a cupcake and where the infinite is an illusion, well, I don’t want to be a part of it. I want to be a part of it.

- Steven Galloway

The post Magic, Cupcakes & Infinity appeared first on Ryeberg Curated Video.

Nostalgica

Maiko Bae Yamamoto — Tue, 19 Feb 2013 16:00:32 +0000

Performed on stage by Maiko Bae Yamamoto at Ryeberg Live Vancouver 2013.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_KCRIDbEXM

Isao Takahata, “Scenes from Grave Of The Fireflies” (1998)

In the opening scene of the 1988 animated Japanese film, “Grave of the Fireflies,” a boy huddles against a concrete pillar in a train station. He is dressed in rags, and so exhausted and hungry that he passes out. A station attendant checks on the collapsed boy and pulls a battered tin of candy from his hand. He shakes it and we can tell by the sound that there is only one candy left, maybe two. A small treasure during hard times. In that moment, when we hear the rattling of that tin, we feel the entirety of this boy’s loss. Somehow, we understand all that he has been through. We understand that before the war, he had people who loved him, and now those people are gone. The candy tin tells us so. And the dull rattling is somehow the sound of relief, the promise of an end to his suffering. We hear that sound, and we can taste the sweetness of that candy, of times past. Joy and sorrow intermingle to form an even bigger feeling. It is like a heavy stone on our chests. Rattle rattle — and the stone sinks even deeper.

These are a couple of the ways that Wikipedia defines nostalgia:

“A sentimental longing for the past, typically for a period or place with happy personal associations.”

“A general interest in past eras and their personalities and events, especially the “good old days,” such as a sudden image, or remembrance of something from one’s childhood.”

Nostalgia. From the Greek nostos, meaning “homecoming,” and algos, meaning “pain, ache, grief.” Or perhaps it can be better understood this way.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXPlzdTcA-I

Brad Bird, “Ratatouille” (2007)

In this clip from Pixar’s “Ratatouille,” the grumpy food critic Anton Ego experiences an involuntary pang of nostalgia, not unlike the narrator in Marcel Proust‘s “In Search of Lost Time,” who, when he bites into a madelaine, is suddenly filled with emotion. The taste of the madelaine, he realizes, recalls memories of morning tea with his Aunt Leonie when he was a child.

Here is Proust describing the power of taste and smell: “…when from a long-distant past nothing subsists, after the people are dead, after the things are broken and scattered, taste and smell alone, more fragile but more enduring, more unsubstantial, more persistent, more faithful, remain poised a long time, like souls, remembering, waiting, hoping, amid the ruins of all the rest; and bear unflinchingly, in the tiny and almost impalpable drop of their essence, the vast structure of recollection.”

This insight is not simply hidden away in the pages of Proust’s book. Advertisers have had a handle on it for a long time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uI33WlHqx-o

Enterprise Creative Selling, “Proud Fathers” (Tim Hortons, 2006)

Nostalgia sells. For someone like me, better than sex. I’m an easy target. Growing up in my family home, at 4206 Kitchener Street in North Burnaby, nostalgia was more than just an emotion, it was a way of life. My parents, who immigrated to Canada in the early 70s, created a home that was as exemplary of post-war Japanese culture as any home you would find in the motherland. And so regardless of how happy and ostensibly successful we felt in our lives here, there was always this bitter-sweetness to everything. Always this manifest longing for elsewhere. And for the past. It would come up during dinner conversations, the recounting of how hard things had been in Japan when my parents were kids: The diet of cabbage soup and luxury of butter and sugar sandwiches, shining the flashlight down the outhouse to see how many worms they could count that day. Somehow these times past were far more meaningful than the present. For me and my sisters, it almost felt like we were never allowed to be completely happy because we hadn’t suffered enough. Happiness had to immediately be offset by the shadowy reminder of how lucky we were. We were lucky that the sacrifices of those who came before meant that our suffering was much less. And that obliged us to love each other more.

This is where I grew up. In a weepy land called Nostalgica.

Now, as an adult, I see that this inclination towards the sentimental, towards the weightiness and importance of my familial obligations, this is something my parents passed on to me. It’s a powerful kind of love. I have a button, if you will. It’s the kind of button that makes me particularly susceptible to Tim Hortons commercials. And just as in Proust’s notion of involuntary memory, I never know when I’m going to bite into my next little cake and be reminded of home, of that life of my childhood on Kitchener Street, of our lives under that low-hanging cloud of melancholy.

Another definition, this time from the Association for Consumer Research (the business of ACR, I should mention, is to better understand consumer behaviour): “Beginning with the writings of Johannes Hofer (1688), nostalgia has been associated with a myriad of physiological and psychological symptoms. Nostalgia as an emotion contains both pleasant and unpleasant components. This “bittersweet” quality of the emotion is a distinguishing characteristic of the nostalgic condition. . . . Nostalgia may evoke memories of peaceful, pleasant times or of times of tension and turmoil.”

I identify all too viscerally with other people’s agonies and misfortunes, especially when they are shown to be overcome, and especially when they involve parents and children. And I guess I’m not alone. Otherwise, there wouldn’t be commercials like this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZMX6H6YY1M

thailifechannel, “Silence Of Love” (2011)

Ok, admittedly, that commercial snatches unabashedly at your heartstrings, and almost any one of us, in the right mood, might feel teary-eyed. But in my case, I have to admit that I actively seek out this act of feeling. I want the catharsis. I want to feel messed up — I want to cry — and even though it feels a little dirty, I indulge myself.

Why? Here I am, a mother of two beautiful boys who bring me great joy. I have a loving husband and a job that I enjoy. My parents are a huge part of my life — of my family’s life. Why do I continue to shed tears at almost anything that evokes this intermingling feeling of homecoming and grief?

I don’t think there’s an easy answer. I think the answer lies somewhere in “the vast structure of recollection” that Proust wrote about. I can tell you that I sometimes wonder why I do not feel more deeply when I hear about a young man opening fire on a class of 6-year olds, or I read about a 23 year old woman who is brutally gang raped on a moving bus while people do nothing to stop it. I understand intellectually what I am supposed to feel and think, and I react to these horrors in the appropriate ways. But am I overflowing with tears? Am I having that stone sinking into chest feeling? I’m not, and honestly, this makes me feel a little ashamed, especially when in the next minute I’m crying over a manipulative TV commercial for life insurance.

But I know that when read about these victims of tragedy, some splinter of their trauma is recorded in my brain somewhere. And when I find things that give me access to these big emotions — triggers that help me to let it out, I am emoting along with a whole lot of other people. I go in search of these triggers, to remember that I’m not alone, there are people out there even more sentimental than I am — a community of sufferers. How do I know? YouTube. YouTube is one of my dealers when I need a hit. Here’s an example.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZlXWp6vFdE

necessity4failure, “Derek Redmond Crosses Finish With His Father” (Barcelona, 1992)

Whoever put that vid together knew exactly what I was looking for: The Josh Groban, the editing, and most of all, a lovingly interdependent parent and child involved in a sort of primal homecoming. That’s a good hit.

Surrogate parents will do the trick for me just as well. Cue the Aerosmith, have a shot of this one.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zVNTdWbVBgc

johnluvbaebo, “Reunited With Christian The Lion” (1971)

The cheesiness and almost total lack of context doesn’t really matter for addicts like me. Somehow, we understand. We understand all that Derek Redmond, the runner who collapsed, and his father have been through. We understand the Grandfather and the hockey game and the coffee and the “deaf dumb dad.” We even understand the lion. We understand this: [Maiko rattles a candy tin].

We understand, we feel, and for a little while that feeling is everything.

- Maiko Bae Yamamoto

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Man Versus Camera

Kevin Chong — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 16:00:59 +0000

Performed on stage by Kevin Chong at Ryeberg Live Vancouver 2013.

Like many writers, I have also become a teacher. You’ve heard the saying those who can’t do, teach. How about those who can’t teach writing, starve? Or, those who can’t utter an original thought, recycle exhausted idioms?

For me, teaching has been a trial-by-error experience. At the university level, there are X number of class hours. It’s been getting better over the years, but I still have probably X minus Y hours of advice to deliver them. The rest is filled by in-class discussion, writing exercises, and participation.

I don’t envy the high-school English teacher who has even more class hours to munch over a ten-month term, so I don’t begrudge them the type of projects they use to engage their students and fill their blocks. One popular activity is the video adaptation of a work of literature, many of which have surfaced for public consumption on YouTube.

The video project takes two forms. The more straightforward one is the dramatization of the scene. Here is a video adaptation of Emma Donohogue’s “Room,” which is about the story of a young woman who’s been imprisoned in a back yard shed and repeatedly raped. The novel is narrated by the unnamed woman’s five-year-old son (born after another child she gave birth to died). The story’s power lies in the dramatic dissonance between the child’s carefully protected world view and the horror that he’s been kept hidden from. Here we get teenagers playing grown men, abducted women, and five-year-old children. In their hands, an emotionally wrenching story about enduring innocence becomes a prolonged exercise in suppressed giggling.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62HpUtXB_5w

GuitarMaster310, “Movie On Room By Emma Donoghue For English Class” (2012)

The second one is the movie trailer. The video I’ve chosen is an adaptation of “The Catcher in the Rye.” It’s been widely reported that Steven Spielberg once called J.D. Salinger’s literary agency to offer $5 million to adapt Salinger’s only novel. A movie buff, Salinger hated the one movie adaptation of his fiction and refused the offer without much irritation. This hasn’t stopped countless English students from giving us their unauthorized dramatizations, including this movie trailer.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8b1MN5yE2Fk

EccentricTV, “The Catcher In The Rye Trailer” (2010)

If you’ve never read “The Catcher in the Rye,” this trailer will not tell you what the story is about. The bits from the book are blanched and flavoured by the heavy-handed theme music into the outlines of the inspirational story of a boy in a deer hunter hat learning to—I don’t know—speak his heart… dance… fly? Incidentally, the music is lifted from “Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story.”

I can see why teachers would assign these video projects. They require students to work together, and to actually read the material and demonstrate their comprehension of it, but what do these videos teach students about literature? In most of these clips, it seems like students are really learning about how movie adaptations are made: how internal monologue is excised and replaced with dramatic action, how picareques plots can be given three-act structure, and so on.

They also learn the grammar of the movie trailers: the taglines and soaring music, the implicit guarantees of catharsis. Take for example this adaptation of Charlotte Bronte’s “Jane Eyre.” Even though it’s played for laughs, it has all the taglines, even the fashionable feminist rereading, in the right places. This time the music is even more familiar; you’ve heard it in trailers for sports events and video games and movies (“Babylon A.D.,” “I Am Legend,” and “Sunshine”…). It’s the “Lux Aerterna” score by Clint Mansell of the band Pop Will Eat Itself.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSnVS67JaK8

ColbyNigelAyesh, “Jane Eyre Trailer” (2010)

Are these students learning more about video editing and movie marketing than they are about reading and interpreting literature?

Looking at these videos, one needs to search vigorously for ones that exemplify an ability to absorb a book. Northrop Frye once wrote that the poet uses simile and metaphor “in the most uninhibited way, because his job is not to describe nature, but to show you a world completely absorbed and possessed by the human mind.” Visually demonstrating one’s appreciation of a work demands a reaction that doesn’t simply recreate a narrative but shows that absorption and possession.

The best videos therefore are the ones that don’t try to adapt a book or sell us on one, but respond to them, recreating the mood the book evokes. I think this adaptation of Haruki Murakami’s short story, “On Seeing the 100% Perfect Girl,” a story of a young man who passes by his ideal companion on the street and then imagines the perfect they life they might lead, does the trick.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IgkRsis3yGY

dandredger, “On Seeing The 100% Perfect Girl by H. Murakami” (2008)

The image of a the narrator, answering an offstage interviewer or therapist, then revisiting a projection of the image as though it were the Zapruder film are visual similes and metaphors that not only mirror the original story’s themes of obsession, romantic hyperbole, and personal inertia but darken them. Normally, it’s the movie of the book that whitewashes the darker elements of the source material; in this case, the filmmakers see how this romantic projection could suggest someone who takes his fixations too far.

In conclusion, my recipe for a 100% Perfect Video can be summed up this way: those who can read a book, find a way to feel and respond; those who can’t, act it out.

- Kevin Chong

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Re-Enthralling The Picture In Motion

Caroline Adderson — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 15:40:40 +0000

Presented on stage by Caroline Adderson at Ryeberg Live Vancouver 2013

The film you are about to watch had its first public screening in a small room on the Boulevard des Capucines in Paris on December 28th, 1895. The paying audience sat facing a white wall. At the back of the room, August and Louis Lumière readied a large machine of their own invention, a Cinématographe, that had been inspired by the technology of the sewing machine. A camera, developer and projector combined, the Cinématographe burned a series of still images onto a reel then ran these images in front of a light bulb. In other words, the Lumière brothers had found a way to make still pictures move.

Among the films the Cinématographe projected that evening was a continuous, real-time shot of a steam train pulling into a station; it’s called “The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat.” The reaction to the film is legendary. At the sight of a train heading straight towards them, several people in the audience screamed and ducked; others ran to the back of the room.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dgLEDdFddk

Lumière Brothers, “L’arrivée d’un train en gare de La Ciotat” (1895)

I notice you didn’t scream or run to the back of the room. This film doesn’t provoke an emotional response today; to us it’s a brief, visual document of a bygone time. We live one hundred and eighteen years in the future, a future where moving pictures surround us. That a two-dimensional image might start moving is a given.

December 28th, 1895 changed the way we experienced visual representations of the world. In the months that followed that first screening, Lumière projectionists travelled the globe, showing the film in Belgrade, Copenhagen, Montreal, Bombay, Buenos Aries, Mexico City, Havana, Osaka, and even Dakar. Audiences were transfixed by what they called “living photographs.”

Have we come too far to feel what those original, naive audiences felt? Surprise at the sight of the train in the distance actually coming down the tracks toward them, then amazement – how? How could a picture move like that? I imagine the surprise rapidly gave way to alarm — It’s coming right for us! It’s not going to stop!

In 1898, George Albert Smith of Brighton expanded on the Lumière brothers’ work. He attached a camera to the front of a train and for the first time audiences became the camera’s eye. It was like a magic trick. Here’s an example of this technique from 1907, filmed locally by American filmmaker William Harbeck.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzjRs3ARo0g

William Harbeck, “Vancouver Phantom Ride” (1907)

You are floating north along Granville Street from Georgia up to Hastings; you turn east onto Hastings, then north onto Carrall and west on Cordova, south on Cambie, and over to Robson Street. Imagine how thrilling this omniscient ride would have been for people who had never seen fixed images in motion. I can almost hear the audience calling out to the celluloid pedestrians — so many of them! — who blithely pass right in front of the street car, and to the horse carts, to those long-ago dogs, Get out of the way!

What I want to do with the next three videos is evoke some of that surprise and amazement (I’ll skip the alarm) that early cinema-goers experienced. Each of these videos has some connection to one of the four elements. The trains, powered by steam, represent Fire.

The next belongs to Earth.

The first image you’ll see in this video shows earth disturbed by an excavator, itself forged from metal from the earth, powered and lubricated by fossil fuels extracted from the earth, a dirty, masculine machine commonly operated by men. Then comes the surprise.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6evADypqFks

Anne Troake, “Pretty Big Dig” (2003)

This video delights me much the way drag queens do, because it breaks open our expectations of what “heavy,” “cumbersome” and “masculine” mean.

The filmmaker is Canadian dancer and choreographer Anne Troake, who directed the three male excavator operators by walkie-talkie. First she had to learn the names of the machine parts and how they worked to ensure she could properly direct her dancers, who, in turn, had to respond to rhythmic instructions — “down two-three, up two-three” — not the directives usually heard on a construction site.

But the operators did it. They made the excavators dance. These heavy machines became light. Therein lies our amazement. Who knew an excavator could arabesque?

Here is Water.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPh533ht5AU

Sue Austin, “Creating the Spectacle!: Finding Freedom” (2012)

We don’t expect heavy machinery to dance. Neither do we expect to see a wheelchair underwater. Sue Austin is a British performance artist who created this work for the Cultural Olympiad of the 2012 London Games. After the initial surprise of seeing a wheelchair out of its element, it was Austin’s flowing hair and the way it mimics the curves in the coral that drew me; divers don’t normally leave their hair free. I was impressed by her languorous, sweeping arm movements, too, where a person in a wheelchair is usually maneuvering the pushrims. Then I noticed the transparent fins close to Austin’s feet. These, together with the flowing arms and hair, reminded me of T.S. Eliot’s poem.

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown

I’m not a swimmer. I’m actually afraid of water. But I would love to be Sue Austin, to sit in a chair and just by swaying my arms float through those coral chambers among the curious fishes.

The main problem with being wheelchair-bound, of course, is not the chair, but the obstacles in its way, the curbs and stairs and concrete barricades that limit the disabled person to pre-defined access routes. In this video Austin has entered a stairless, curbless world. Underwater, she has earned her freedom and our envy. And we watch amazed.

Finally, Wind.

Theo Jansen is a Kinetic sculptor from Holland. He creates strandbeests, or “beach animals,” mainly out of yellow PVC piping which bleaches to the colour of bone in the sun. His beach animals seem to be freestanding bone scaffolds until, to our surprise, they move. Their dainty, complicated steps across the North Sea dunes make them seem uncannily alive. They hesitate, then change direction, almost as though making up their minds which way to go.

The language Jansen uses to talk about his work combines biology and religion. He refers to “genetic codes” and “brains.” His successful creatures are awarded “the privilege of reproduction.” But he also calls the computer model that determined the ideal length of the rods for walking “the 11 holy numbers.” In describing his process he says, “…you discover all the problems which the real creator must have had creating this world.”

“And the Lord God formed man of the dust on the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being,” goes the story. Jansen’s first name derives from the Greek word for God, theos. Using modern materials and technologies and the wind as his breath of life, he strives, like that ancient empowerer, to create new forms of life.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1RiXk2BfZE

Theo Jansen, “Strandbeests On The Beach” (2010)

And how do we know the strandbeests live? Because, amazingly, they move.

- Caroline Adderson

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Ryeberg Live Vancouver 2013

Ryeberg — Fri, 01 Feb 2013 16:59:20 +0000

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWdZJobpCTc

RyebergCuratedVideo, “Ryeberg Live Vancouver 2013: Trailer” (January, 2013))

It happened at Club PuSh, social hub of the PuSh International Performing Arts Festival and dream venue for Ryeberg Live. At the door, each attendee received a copy of Geist Magazine — Geist 87 to be exact (it’s a good one) — and Stephen Osborne, Geist publisher (demonstrating his customary wit and intelligence), kicked off the evening with a few words about PuSh, about Geist and about Ryeberg.com.

Erik Rutherford, Ryeberg editor, played the role of emcee. He reminded the audience what they were there to see and told stories of Rudolf Ryeberg, the man who gave his name to the website. Caroline Adderson was the first Ryeberg curator of the evening and she set herself the task of “re-enthralling” motion pictures via the four elements: For a short while, we all lingered in the chambers of the sea. Kevin Chong searched YouTube for the 100% perfect video adaptation of a work of literature by high school students. He asked: Can video teach high school students to read? Not a rhetorical question. After intermission, Steven Galloway showed that even the finest magician’s prestidigitations can be spotted, named and reconstructed. You may prefer not to draw back the curtain, but be thankful that magicians are not actual wizards with supernatural powers. Finally, Maiko Bae Yamamoto, self-proclaimed child of a weepy land called “Nostalgica,” had us wiping away our own tears with a series of shamelessly sentimental video clips. Here’s a tip: If you need a hit of homecoming and grief, YouTube is a reliable dealer.

The photos were taken by Tim Matheson.

Club PuSh, Performance Works, Granville Island, Vancouver

Norman Armour (centre), Push Festival Executive Producer

Stephen Osborne, Publisher Geist Magazine

Erik Rutherford, Ryeberg Editor

Caroline Adderson, “Re-Enthralling The Image In Motion”

Kevin Chong, “Man Versus Camera”

Erik Rutherford, Ryeberg Editor

Steven Galloway, “Magic, Cupcakes & Infinity”

Maiko Bae Yamamoto, “Nostalgica”

Warmest thanks to Stephen Osborne, Mary Schendlinger and everyone else at Geist for supporting both Ryeberg.com and Ryeberg Live. Warmest thanks to Norman Armour, Tim Carlson and Veda Hille for inviting Ryeberg to take part in their classy, cutting-edge festival. Warmest thanks to Minna Schendlinger, PuSh Festival Managing Director, David Kerr, Kara Gibbs, Dani Fecko, Cameron Mackenzie, Marijka Asbeek Brusse, Emma Lancaster, Robert Wilson, Lucas, the whole PuSh staff and all the volunteers who helped out. Cheers to Scout Magazine, The Globe and Mail, The Vancouver Courier, Sheryl MacKay at CBC’s NXNW and all the other media outlets for giving attention to Ryeberg. Big wide world, for imperial hospitality, get you to Vancouver. Until the next!

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Story Of The Land

Christine Fischer Guy — Tue, 15 Jan 2013 20:20:33 +0000

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJeB1hCK6sI

Paul2981, “Ice Flowing On Moose River” (Moosonee, Ontario, 2011)

This is a story of the land, as far north as rails will carry you over the muskeg.

This is a story of a water tower painted with Cree syllabics and a stylized goose in flight, of dirt roads, an LCBO and a Northern Store. This is a story of the hunt, of white fish and moose stew served to visitors on Styrofoam plates, and of the gift of a Tamarack goose.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOVBV8Z3VkI

APTN, “Goose Hunting With Clarence Trapper” (Fish Out Of Water, S2 Ep. 6, 2011)

This is a story of water taxis and pick-up trucks and an Elder’s lodge with sliding doors, of rez houses with satellite dishes and mouldy walls and broken windows, of band council meetings under fluorescent lighting on chairs from Staples. This is a story of high school kids smoking and lounging and laughing on the school lawn. This is a story about American Eagle and Nike and The Black Eyed Peas.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lw8L_K1_FBs

kapa12, “I’ve Got A Feeling: 2010 Graduating Class” (NLSS, Moosonee, ON, 2010)

This is a story told on wampum belts of alliances made in the early days of a confederation, of battles fought shoulder to shoulder, of mutual respect, of promises and treaties, of marriages between natives and settlers.

This is a story of settlement, of statute and status, of forced assimilation and confinement, of prohibitions against potlatches and Sun Dances. This is the story of mothers and fathers and daughters and sons dispossessed of their homes, of one another, of their native tongues.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L11ScfuRggc

Kevin Lee Burton, “Nikamowin: Song” (2007)

This is a story of victories and defeats, of frustrations and tensions and stalled negotiations. This is a story of ignorance and denial and fear and arrogance. This is a story of tolerance and respect and reciprocity and a desire to understand. This is a story of complacency and indifference and inaction.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLo_JxMrI20

Chelsea Vowel, “Nitêh: My Heart” (2010)

- Christine Fischer Guy

The post Story Of The Land appeared first on Ryeberg Curated Video.

The Hunger Of Theresa Spence

Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer — Fri, 04 Jan 2013 21:14:07 +0000

Theresa Spence on day one of her hunger strike (11 December, 2012)

On 11 December 2012, Theresa Spence, mother of five and Chief of the Attawapiskat First Nation of Canada, declared a hunger strike. This was partly in response to the Canadian government’s Bill C-45. It’s a new budget bill that includes changes to the Canadian Indian Act, changes that will weaken the ability of First Nations people to manage and protect their own Reserve lands. The bill also strikes thousands of lakes and streams from the list of federally protected bodies of water.

Theresa Spence’s hunger strike has brought attention to a whole range of other First Nations issues, and she’s quickly become a symbolic leader for the grassroots Idle No More Movement. Her principal demand is that Canadian Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, come to her teepee on Victoria Island — not far from the Parliament Buildings in Ottawa — and speak to her; she hopes this will bring about a “nation to nation” meeting between the Federal Government and the First Nations leadership, to foster a process where they can talk about sharing land and resources fairly. She says she is willing to die for her people.

In a long essay entitled “The Animal That Therefore I Am,” Jacques Derrida describes the moment he found himself standing naked one morning in his bathroom, and feeling ashamed when faced by his cat. He wonders about his shame before his cat’s gaze, and begins to probe the word and meaning of the word “Animal.” Derrida speaks of the word as a dangerous enclosure because it wants to hold all animals within it – because (as a general singular) it positions the staggering diversity of living creatures as one uniform category, and by doing this, it also positions man above animal. Derrida argues that man has enclosed animal inside a word, a global and non-particularizing one that seeks by that enclosure to subjugate, for man’s own use and abuse, animals. To say “animal” is a very violent gesture. Derrida makes a stunning parallel between species and human annihilation/genocide.

“It gets more complicated: the annihilation of certain species is indeed in process, but it is occurring through the organization and exploitation of an artificial, infernal, virtually interminable survival, in conditions that previous generations would have judged monstrous, outside of every presumed norm of life proper to animals that are thus exterminated by means of their continued existence or even their overpopulation. As if, for example, instead of throwing people into ovens and gas chambers (let’s say Nazi) doctors and geneticists had decided to organize the overproduction and overgeneration of Jews, gypsies, and homosexuals by means of artificial insemination, so that, being continually more numerous and better fed, they could be destined in always increasing numbers for the same hell, that of the imposition of genetic experimentation, or extermination by gas or fire. In the same abattoirs.”

He is speaking of factory/industrial farms and slaughterhouses, of course, but the extrapolation to the Nazi enclosures is remarkable. It’s interesting to know, too, that Hitler found his inspiration for concentration camps from reading about American Indian reservations in Karl May’s greatly popular Western novels.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=viDCPCH2FUg

Harald Reinl, “Last of the Renegades” (“Winnetou II: Teil,” 1964)

Reserves, too, are enclosures, a way to keep a people separate from another people – a very strange idea, if you think about it for even one second. And especially strange if you think that in Canada, because of the Indian Act, it is the colonial power that has enclosed, like a species of human, those people — the indigenous people — who are, or should have been seen as, and treated as, the HOST people of this land. Canada has done this in a sneaky way — it has given indigenous people the appearance of sovereignty without the substance of it. In other words, we have treated people, by our complicity, as if they were animals. We have enclosed them inside physical borders away from us and also inside an idea of what they are (not us!). It makes no difference whether the enclosed people agreed to reserves since the terms of the agreement were not honoured by the guests. As Russell Diabo, First Nations policy analyst, says in the following video interview, it is as if the guest locked the host out of the house.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECi_7G0QAgw

ThePerfectPlex, “Breaking Down The Indian Act: Russell Diabo” (2 January, 2013)

Prime Minister Harper, Diabo says, is carrying out a “First Nations termination plan” by practicing a results-based approach in negotiations with aboriginal peoples; his government is effectively forcing First Nations to give up pre-existing sovereign status through unilateral policies on land claims and self-government. These policies, he says, are difficult to fight since they require lengthy and expensive legal battles, something the people cannot afford and don’t necessarily always have the expertise to fight. Diabo believes these policies aim to assimilate First Nations territories into the existing federal and provincial orders, turning them into municipalities within the Canadian Confederation.

In other words, the Canadian government under Stephen Harper is dismantling original treaties and thereby dishonouring legal commitments, what Diabo calls “sacred agreements” — eternal commitments — ratified and memorialized using wampum belts.

Hudson Bay Belt (1700): Respect, responsibility, reverence for Mother Earth (held by William Commanda)

It occurred to me that Theresa Spence is Derrida’s cat in the sense that, in calling Stephen Harper’s bluff, she is asking for a return gaze, for Stephen Harper to recognize that she is not a general singular “Animal” but a particular singular “Person” who requires a face-to-face meeting. She is demanding more than a simple meeting. She is demanding recognition symbolically for all enclosed peoples –- she is asking Stephen Harper to see her and recognize her as a human being.

She is also, by extension, pointing out a deep abiding racism — a racism that is genocidal. She is saying that Stephen Harper (and by extrapolation, Canada) is killing Indigenous peoples by this system of enclosure (this experiment) and that she is willing to die as the one (particular) so that the many particulars (the many human beings who are both oppressed and historically oppressed) will have her as a meaningful token going forward.

She will become, and has already become, a martyr. And she has done this by pointing out to us that her hunger should be our hunger, that we haven’t enclosed everyone, that Theresa Spence is just one of many who has not been defeated by the experiment of reserves, Residential schools — of enclosure. The biggest problem in this strategy is that she is dealing with a Prime Minister who doesn’t feel shame. But many of us do, and we need to feel it more deeply. The more deeply we feel that naked shame in the face of Theresa Spence’s call to recognition, the more the enclosure ruptures and the more human we all become.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2UQ4vMoeD2s

Chris Rands, “Interview With Chief Spence” (18 December, 2012)

- Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer

The post The Hunger Of Theresa Spence appeared first on Ryeberg Curated Video.

Confessions Of A Techno User

Jowita Bydlowska — Sun, 30 Dec 2012 18:15:30 +0000

The two kinds of music that it’s okay to hate are country and techno. No one gets mad at a person who says, “I f*#$ing hate techno!” (an ex-boyfriend). Country is perhaps slightly more acceptable since even if you hate it, it may be listened to ironically. You can’t really listen to techno ironically and anyway techno knows you hate it and has no problem making fun of itself. If you do hate it, the music will sound like “someone banging garbage bin lids together” (my mother). But there’s more to techno than meets the ear, and in order to enjoy it, you have to go into it earnestly and just relax about what you think are its shortcomings—even though it is something so questionable musically, so like a bacteria of sound, one that multiplies into a disease and makes your heart race. Like this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96AgOqQO1Q4

DK8, “Murder Was The Bass” (2003)

Yes, this video is lacking in pictorial variety not to mention a narrative arc. These are the wrong things to expect from techno music. A track like Murder Was The Bass is really meant to be heard from large speakers in a dance venue as part of a long, continuous musical set that is blended by a skilled DJ who masterfully and intuitively guides the mood from his perch above the crowd. More than anything, techno is usually a communal experience.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mL6BG9rdIyU

Richie Hawtin, “Live at The Warehouse Project” (2009)

This video is a pretty good depiction of what happens during a techno show. There’s a skinny guy twisting knobs, twitching with purpose between computer screens, looking so focused it’s like he’s performing surgery instead of just twisting knobs. The music sounds as if the skinny guy’s computer has just broken and got stuck. All those people with their hands in the air, looking like they’re at a political rally, asking the skinny guy with the broken computer to tell them what to do with their racing hearts, with the rest of their evening, with the rest of their lives.

On top of it, there are the trippy images on screens and lights that suggest hallucinatory sensations, drugs. See that eye at 5:15? That’s your eye on Ecstasy. I mean, if you were dumb enough to take the dirty pill — that may or may not cause a heart attack — and then stick yourself into a mass of sweaty bodies, so dense you get lifted off your feet. If someone falls here she will die, you think breezily, as everyone jumps with their eyes fixed on the skinny guy twisting knobs. It’s dangerous and insane — or it just seems dangerous and insane.

This is why I like it. Because somewhere in there, in this terrifying fun hell of sensory stimulation, there’s a feeling of abandon and freedom, a feeling that death doesn’t really matter — because you feel so incredibly close to it. People love rollercoasters, and they pay money to strap themselves to metal cages so they can hang upside-down at 140km/hour; I imagine they do this for similar reasons.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SPL9sFFvEcY

Adam Beyer, “Awakenings Easter Anniversary” (Gashouder, Amsterdam, 2011)

Recently, Richie Hawtin and other DJs went on tour and gave lectures about electronic music in university halls. In the evenings, the DJs put on shows. I went to the one in Toronto and it was fantastic: Sweaty, scary, stupid. The coat room bursting with parkas, girls looking at their blown-up pupils in the bathroom mirrors, guys grabbing asses, people as old as Richie Hawtin himself (born 1970) dancing themselves senseless. It was a terrifyingly joyous experience.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVNgijQhtsA

Richie Hawtin, “CNTRL: Beyond EDM Tour” (2012)

I’m not all that interested in the music’s history or geography or even its DJs. I understand that Richie Hawtin is considered a techno God. He’s been on the scene since the mid-90s deejaying at small clubs and big raves, in Detroit in the early analog days, and more recently in Berlin. The lecture tour is a natural extension for the electronic music veteran that is Hawtin — a man who’s also been involved in impressive mainstream events: He produced music for the 20th Olympic Winter Games Opening Ceremony or got invited by the artist Anish Kapoor to “face off” against the sculpture Kapoor created for the nave of the Grand Palais.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06SsvdacfCk

Richie Hawtin, “Facing Off Against Anish Kapoor‘s Leviathan” (Paris, 2011)

As for me, aside from going to the occasional show, these days I use techno differently. I listen to it at home. It provides a background to my solitary activities such as writing. When I write I like some kind of musical monotony in my ears to block the world, something that doesn’t demand my attention the way talk radio does, or intrude upon my daydreams the way catchy pop lyrics do.

I would prefer to write by the ocean with waves crashing against the seashell I’m sitting inside of with my laptop, typing words in the sand. That’s the ideal. But I write in the city, and the city is already loud, already banging its own garbage bin lids together. With techno, I have the perfect antidote to the unpredictable clamour of the city — a clean, distilled noise to feed into my ears.

Sometimes though, techno sounds so good I get lost in it and it moves past enjoyment and shoots straight to anxiety because it highlights the fact I am alone in my office sitting at a computer. Then I need something softer to soothe my pounding heart, a calmer dose, like this (that’s Richie Hawtin sitting at the table).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCIAJRCxNGU

Richie Hawtin, “The Tunnel” (2005)

I wrote this essay while listening to a Richie Hawtin mix. This one below. Play it and do your work.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZkXqt3B-k8

Richie Hawtin, ” Live at Sonar” (Barcelona, 2012)

- Jowita Bydlowska

The post Confessions Of A Techno User appeared first on Ryeberg Curated Video.

Ryeberg Playlist: Happy Holidays

Ryeberg — Sun, 16 Dec 2012 14:30:18 +0000

1) No Need To Hang Your Stockings

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZqz94ODz18

TheYahsInitiative, “Miracle On 42nd Street” (December 2011)

Oh yeah! That’s Alex Karigan and Zac Hammer — members of the Amy Marshall Dance Company — giving the gift of dance, with a whole lot more exuberance and joy than we could possibly ask for.

2) Daddy, Thanks

A reminder then, that life doesn’t always follow your careful choreography, and that not all your heroic efforts will be suitably recognized.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPHEUb-Q-Aw

Louie CK, “Louie” (Ep 313, Season 3, 2012)

3) Warm Brand New Fleece, World Peace

There’s a lot of hype about Santa Claus this time of year, but as liberal as he is with the gifts, he can be a rude, unappreciative guest, even when visiting his biggest fans.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5Ek2iKl0Pc

Amy & Amy Show, “Christmas Cheer with Amy and Amy” (December, 2011)

4) That Anger Not Tear Us Apart

Chanukkah precedes Christmas this year. During a holiday concert back in 1988, Peter, Paul & Mary performed their wonderful song about the significance of lighting candles. Don’t let the light go out, let it shine through our love and our tears…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3yZ1zxtbOJE

Peter, Paul, & Mary, “Light One Candle” (Holiday Concert, 1988)

5) Light Your White Candles

Rudolf Ryberg‘s countrymen light a lot of candles around this time of the year. In fact, Swedes are well into the holiday spirit by December 13th — St. Lucia’s Day — when children dress up as angels and star boys and sing carols, most notably a beautiful old Neapolitan song. Of course, the Swedish lyrics are not about the beauty around Naples; they talk about candles in the house, about light taking the place of darkness, and about Saint Lucia, saint of light, clad in white (Saint Lucy, remember, is the pious young Sicilian who the Romans — under Emperor Diocletian — were unable to kill by burning, and so had to resort to the sword).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2-Q_ObdE-4

Lucia Tradition, “Sankta Lucia Sweden”

If you’re the lucky girl, you play Lucia and and wear the big crown made from Lingonberry branches and rounded with white candles. Then everyone drinks coffee and eats Pepparkakor (gingerbread cookies) and Lussekatter (saffron-flavored buns with raisins), provided there is butter available. Eventually the teenagers spill into the darkness in their virginal costumes to get drunk and find other, more potent pleasures.

6) Don’t Believe In Stars

Here’s a poem — a jul budskap — written by that brilliant Swedish writer, Stig Dagerman, in 1950. If there is freedom, it is in our brothers’ eyes.

Don’t believe in stars. Stars are distant things,
that don’t dispel the darkness over any Bethlehem.
They were not lit for us. They burn for themselves.
For people, eyes shine bright. Let us follow them.

Don’t believe in kings. They think themselves wise men.
They don’t journey through the desert to new life.
They live in a desert that separates us from them.
A sword is their gaze and their hand a sharp knife.

Don’t believe in angels. They will not soon descend.
They find space empty and cold. They find the road too long.
If it is song we seek, if light,
seek the light in our brother’s gaze and in our own throats the song.

Don’t believe in stars. Stars are burnt out things.
Long gone; dead grasses on the steppe of the universe.
Beacons beam and sparkle much closer to the earth.
Toward the eyes of others, people should steer their ships.

Don’t believe in kings. They themselves are filled with doubt.
What is life and death for us, is their idle play.
Believe only in shepherds, who know and tend to lambs.
To their belts, we attach our lives without fear.

Don’t believe in angels. They are merely prisoners,
dragging their wings as shackles of lead.
If there is freedom, it is in our brothers’ eyes.
If freedom sings, the song will be heard in our blood.

Ryeberg wishes you much happiness in the final moments of the year. Get yourself a big hug!

The post Ryeberg Playlist: Happy Holidays appeared first on Ryeberg Curated Video.

Wreck The Halls

Christopher Doda — Sat, 15 Dec 2012 22:00:14 +0000

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXQViqx6GMY

Mariah Carey, “All I Want For Christmas Is You” (1994)

Whenever December rolls around, the religious songs written to celebrate the transcendent occasion of the birth of Jesus Christ, like “Silent Night” or “Gloria In Excelsis Deo,” become part of the background noise in every single shopping plaza, strip mall and boutique across North America. They take their place in an endless looping rotation alongside secular Christmas tunes like “Jingle Bells,” “Deck the Halls,” “All I Want For Christmas Is You,” or the supremely odious “Twelve Days of Christmas.” The purpose of blaring so much Christmas-themed music into the halls of our consumerist temples is, of course, to help us ‘get into the spirit.’

I can tell you that this chattering soundtrack to the yearly retail feeding frenzy does not get me into the spirit. However, there are some gems in the vast and ever-expanding archive of Christmas songs that can get Mariah Carey out of my head, at least temporarily. Like this one, for example, which has always been my favourite Christmas song.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-oVPVsCqs4

The Kinks, “Father Christmas” (1977)

In the pre-Internet world, this was one of the few songs I would look forward to hearing every year come December. It is also one of the most wondrously erratic moments in the wondrously erratic career of ever-garrulous Kinks frontman, Ray Davies.

A prime characteristic of Christmas albums is that they are easy. Any pop act can slip into the studio, lazily record a group of pre-existing (and often copyright-free) songs, release the result sometime around Black Friday and generally count on moving thousands upon thousands of units. Not for Davies, and isn’t it like him to inject a catchy serum of British class consciousness into the syrupy mush of seasonal music? I don’t know of anyone else who has toured the misery of the holidays so well outside of John Prine in his comically dour “The Insane Clown Posse.”

I suspect that “Father Christmas” was written as a response to John Lennon’s “I Believe in Father Christmas.” Where John and Yoko’s idealistic (and effective) choral ditty is a call to an egalitarian utopia, Davies’ tonic tells us it will never happen. War may be over if we want it: we don’t. As Davies reminds us, the best we can do is help each other out once in a while.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9AbeALNVkk

Twisted Sister, “We’re Not Gonna Take It” (1984)

Twisted Sister were always a bit of a joke. I am of the opinion that a rock fan should be wary of any band with a cutesy rhyming name: see also Quiet Riot. That said I will freely admit that my thirteen-year-old self merrily bopped along to “We’re Not Gonna Take It” as much as they next guy. A one-hit wonder — two if you are generous — with a goofy cartoon image, Twisted Sister in 1984 were a gateway drug that lead to Iron Maiden and Motorhead. And like any crack addict, I quickly realized that a couple of beers and some glue-sniffing just weren’t going to cut it any longer.

I remind you of Twisted Sister because in 2006, the band attempted to revive their fortunes by releasing a Christmas album (see formula for success above), titled, of course, Twisted Christmas. The most curious and satisfying track on the record is their enthusiastic version of “O Come All Ye Faithful.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmEfFlbqbbY

Twisted Sister, “O Come All Ye Faithful” (“A Twisted Christmas,” 2006)

If effect, Twisted Sister create a mash-up of themselves. And if there are any doubts about the band’s intentions, they should be erased around the 3:40 mark when Eddie “Fingers” Ojeda interrupts his solo to play the refrain from “We’re Not Gonna Take It.”

The video finds the band in familiar territory: Harassing middle class ‘squares’ with their music and their presence. The scolding the woman delivers in the intro is a direct echo of Mark Metcalf‘s bellowing father in the original, leading to the conclusion that both diatribes are directed at the same hapless person. The boy of “We’re Not Gonna Take It” may have ‘wanted to rock’ when asked about his future plans but somewhere along the way, it all went terribly wrong. Early middle age finds him a neutered sad sack who mutely absorbs the haranguing of his more attractive girlfriend. Naturally(?), her ball-busting tirade unleashes Twisted Sister, twenty years later and heavier (not in the musical sense) and havoc ensues.

Twisted Sister are far too gentlemanly to go beating a woman all around her house, so her submission predictably comes in the form of erotic surrender. That the gift of a Twisted Sister CD could help a doughy loser unleash the erotic passion of his prim, discontented girlfriend on Christmas is rather unlikely but it’s a charitable thought, I suppose.

At first blush, Christmas music and heavy metal represent opposing musical forces: the former is sentimental, frothy and celebratory, the latter is gloomy, angry and deathly stern. Metal rarely celebrates. But metal and Christmas songs, especially the hymnals, do share certain characteristics.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4h63iohNl8

Halford Supergroup, “We Three Kings” (2010)

There’s a reason why heavy metal singers like Judas Priest’s Rob Halford do better with the religious Christmas songs rather than the secular ones. While Twisted Sister embraced the holiday season with tongue planted firmly in cheek, Halford is serious. When he tells you to ‘get into the spirit,’ it’s more like a threat than an invitation. Raise your spirit high. Or else.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5G0guGBUt9Y

HalfordMusic, “Get Into The Spirit” (“Halford III: Winter Songs,” 2010)

Halford has realized that metal is a perfect platform for the religiosity of the song. For all its anti-Christian posturing, metal has always sought to imitate the epic grandeur that the church, particularly the Catholic church, has always offered its followers; it ascends to the glory, power and majesty that the church commands. It’s no accident that the band who invented heavy metal were called Black Sabbath.

Think of the all the earnest ostentation of a metal concert: the overt hero worship, the hand signals, the chant-a-longs. It’s designed to emulate the transcendence of a religious experience. Many metal acts over the years, like Ozzy Osbourne and Ronnie James Dio, have toured with stage sets that resemble cathedrals. Slayer once toured with a setup that looked like a cross between the apse of St Peter’s and the stage at a Nuremberg rally.

When Twisted Sister performs “O Come All Ye Faithful” live in front of an audience, they really are calling the faithful, albeit a different kind of faithful. And the girlfriend’s submission in the Twisted Sister video isn’t as much a surrender as a conversion.

So I think Rob Halford’s ‘hallelujahs’ are genuine, even if what he is praising is unclear. This is ‘muscular Christianity,’ beefed up with power chords and massive amplification. In their differing ways, the same devotional fervor is what Twisted Sister, Halford, Type O Negative, King Diamond, the brilliantly overblown Trans-Siberian Orchestra, or some of the other suggestions you can find here, hope to achieve.

Believe me, metal does not provide the most incongruous experience of Christmas music possible. I am writing this in Barbados, where I’ve taken to escaping December’s shopping frenzy and I can assure you that it is both totally bizarre and infinitely pleasurable to spend Christmas morning on sun-drenched Dover Beach as Santa Claus (in shorts) floats ashore on a catamaran, pours out rum punch while a reggae version of “Let It Snow” rings out from a beach hut in the background. Really, you should max out your credit card and try it some time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Fi8r_XTYZA

RastaClaus85, “Christmas Chill: Let It Snow” (2007)

- Christopher Doda

The post Wreck The Halls appeared first on Ryeberg Curated Video.

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