canvasing

Mom, Elbow and I saw some Andre Petterson works at the Bau-Xi Gallery on South Granville yesterday. What I loves is, 1) literary themes, 2) mixed media, 3) that I recognized Petterson's work because he donated a painting to Margaret Atwood's save wild birds campaign last November (if only I had won the raffle!)

in descending order: "Summit," "Upspill" (my fav), "Peal" & "Tome Release"

workshopping creative work on Second Life...

breakthrough: I've signed up for a UBC creative writing course... on Second Life... 

Image from Zizart (via)

Beautiful Inside My Head Forever

In Ottawa, M and I and her lovely parents visited the Pop Life exhibit at the National Gallery.

Recommendation! If you are near the capital, go. It's a collection curated by the Tate Modern, and all our postmodern friends-- Warhol, Jeff Koons, Damien Hirst, Murakami, etc-- are in attendance. Notable absence: Roy Lichtenstein. Not sure why they chose to overlook him...

I am all in amaze. Some crazy, mind-bending works are: Hirst's formaldehyded-unicorn (which is a real pony, sunk forever in this aquarium of chemicals) and his twins (which are a pair of real twins! ...though not sunk forever in chemicals... they were reading Twilight and listening to their ipods). Also Koons's silver balloon animal rabbit, and his provocative/pornographic life-as-art/highly constructed working out of his artisitic/love/sex life in massive, sexually explicit photographs, (don't miss "Glass Dildo," kids) and Murakami's video of Kirstin Dunst singing "I'm Turning Japanese." In fact, there is just so much. You'll just have to go.

As we were leaving, M's mom said something truly fitting; she said, "I appreciate all these works, and I've really enjoyed seeing it all-- a lot of it was shocking and interesting-- but I don't actually like it. I don't find that kind of art beautiful." And I thought, yes.

This kind of art asks us not to appreciate beauty but to think about and connect concepts. In 1979, French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu was already claiming "A work of art has meaning and interest only for someone who possesses the cultural competence, that is, the code, into which it is encoded" (from Distinction) and in 1996, Marc Redfield, in The Politics of Aesthetics, writes that when there is a "generalization of aesthetic experience [there] is also an evacuation of affect, a waning of aura, an experience of shock" (4).

When I saw Klimt's "The Kiss" in Vienna a few years ago, I cried. That is a painting with a strength of aura and an affective intensity that floored me. None of the art at Pop Life had a similar effect. But I still love postmodern art because (since I have gone to school long enough), I possess Bourdieu's code for (perhaps not totally) understanding the meanings these artists wish to covey. Recognition is sometimes mistaken for attraction. I recognize these works. They are visual representations of and responses to a lot of the theory I've read. However much I love them, though, I agree with M's mom: I don't really like them.

Work bullying linked to mental health problems

ACADEMICS at Sheffield University have uncovered new evidence of a strong link between workplace bullying and the subsequent psychological ill-health of employees.

The study, which will be presented for the first time at the Institute of Work Psychology's conference in Sheffield today, found that bullying from colleagues significantly influenced levels of stress reported seven months later. Researchers found 39 per cent of respondents reported frequent – weekly or daily – bullying from workmates in the previous six months.

Christine Sprigg, a psychology lecturer at Sheffield University, who led the research, said: "The evidence of the relationship between employee ill-health and workplace bullying is clearly shown by our data but, more importantly, we find that there might be workplace interventions – for example working to boost employee self-esteem – that can help to lessen the impact of other people's bad behaviour at work."

The research team collaborated with nine organisations and more than 5,600 employees in carrying out the study.

Dr Luise Vassie, from the Institution of Occupational Safety and Health which funded the study, said: "We're pleased this research not only adds to the existing body of knowledge on this subject, but also provides us with ideas on how the detrimental impact of bullying on worker health can be reduced."

From: http://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk

I Don't Have Time to Read Fucking Heidegger

I realize that this is a re-post but it is so EXACTLY HOW I FEEL TODAY:

University of Toronto dissolves Comparative Literature Department to create bastard department of “Languages and Literature”

The University of Toronto plans to dissolve its Comparative Literature Department (along with East Asia studies, Italian, German and more…) to create an amalgamated department of “Languages and Literature”

Early this week PhD candidates in the Comparative Lit Dept at UToronto were shocked to receive notice advising them that their department would soon no longer exist. A committee of departmental representatives (of which Comp Lit was not, obviously, represented) has decided to amalgamate a substantial number of departments into a new school, to be christened the department of “Languages and Literature.”

I have heard it again and again: “Comp Lit is a dying institution.” Not long ago, UBC stopped accepting new candidates into its Comp Lit programme, leaving only two active Comp Lit departments in the country. Comp Lit has no purpose, the sentiment goes, now that English departments have so aggressively adopted literary theory. There was a time not to long ago when Comp Lit was the place for working with European theory, but now that every English undergrad is required to take a theory survey course, now that we all read Derrida and feel compelled to include theory in our papers, what place is there now for Comparativists? What does Comp Lit offer to the institution other than another superfluous administrative apparatus? Why not downsize and cut costs? Let the English and French departments pick up the slack, because, well, the English department at least pays for itself with its huge undergraduate enrollment. Why not kill Comp Lit?

Because Comp Lit fosters the kind of academic work that is needed in a globalized world. Comp Lit is one of the most responsive and elastic forms of academic enquiry—more so I would argue than the often historicist (especially at UToronto) English Lit Dept—Comp Lit functions in an interdisciplinary academic arena. Comparativists work in multiple languages at a high level; they work with original texts from overlooked and underrepresented literary traditions; they do research that would not and cannot fit under the supervision of any other department, be it History, Philosophy or any of the languages.


Comp Lit is not defunct! In 2010, Yulia Pushkarevskaya-Naughton at the University College Dublin writes, "[O]ne of the great attractions of Comp. Lit. ... is the way in which it repairs the damaging effects of political conflict and opens people out to multiple narratives."

And if you really need some sort of economic indicator of their importance, since 1979, the department has held the Northrop Frye Professorship in Literary Theory, a massive private endowment. Added to that, comparativists at UToronto hold a multitude of prestigious awards, including SSHRCs, a prestigious Vanier Scholarship, a Jackman Fellowship, and in 2010 a Governor Generals award for best dissertation. The government of Canada continues to support Comp Lit research even as universities continue to deny their graduate students a place in which to do such work.                                                                                                       Never thought I'd write that.


The larger issue here, is that way in which Canadian universities are orienting themselves towards business and vocational degrees. The underlying message in a new amalgamated department of "Languages and Literature" seems to be first, that UToronto does not understand that interdisciplinarity requires autonomous disciplines in order to "interdiscipline" with one another and second, that UToronto treats these areas of study as useful only insofar as they add content to a practical degree. Learning another language, learning about another country's literature is "helpful". Well, be that as it may, true scholarship is meant to go beyond the surface and ask questions of our world that destabilize and trouble the status quo.


What can we do?
1. Mobilize the media. Write on your blogs, people! Write editorials! Let's get coverage.
2. Look to other examples: see the University of Iowa.
3. Join this FB group.
4. Even if you are far from Toronto, comment and actively participate in the debate!
5. Hyperlinks: here's one to Jonathan Allan's Northrop Frye blog.
6. More Ideas! Post them as comments!

1. 

Why is Comp Lit important, and what kind of research does it foster?

Not surprisingly, Comp Lit scholars do comparative work. Their department started as a place for those interested in theoretical perspectives from outside North America to pursue research incorporating Continental European theory and literatures from both English and non-English traditions. Comparativists tend to work in more than one language. They illuminate connections across both national borders and academic disciplines.

Comp Lit is important because it provides a space for the study of literatures that are overlooked and underrepresented; Comp Lit is important because it brings together scholars who can both translate and critique, who have the skills to work in the original text and also to make those texts accessible to scholars who cannot speak, for example, Estonian or even German and French. Comp Lit is a department rich with interdisciplinary projects, new insights, and great potential in a world where discourse is increasingly cross-cultural and engaged with critical theory from multiple traditions.           
                                                                                                                                       image via fffound