Bring the world with you

I’m djing the Acta Victoriana launch on friday, which is the Victoria College literary journal and supposedly the oldest literary journal in the country. I don’t dislike the event poster but I find the text really small and ironic in that it’s difficult to read. There’s a reading of the journal starting at 8pm and afterwards I’ll be playing music until 10:30pm.

Here’s my favourite episode of “Shot by Kern” w/ Richard Kern.

I can’t say I know very much about art, but sometimes people talk to me about it and I’m always interested. I heard about David Altmejd for the first time the other night, and how his amazing sculpture work got chosen to represent Canada in the Venice Biennial. When hearing about how it’s made up of werewolves and crystals, I was a little “whatever” but it’s really pretty nice. Apparently Matthew Barney describes it as “hopeful”.

I read a good interview with him here. Here’s an excerpt:

R: Werewolf heads appear again and again in your work. I’m not sure if this has a specific meaning for you or not.

D: I started using that three years ago. At the beginning it was just an alternative to the human body. I made a chopped-up werewolf. Body art is so familiar, in terms of experience. By making a monster leg, it has something of the familiar feeling but there is an added level of weirdness. Then I was very interested in the werewolf because of its complexity, its symbolic potential. It represents both good and evil, human and animal, Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde – extremes on both sides.

Every time I talk about my work I use the word “energy” a lot, not in a new age kind of way. The werewolf head with crystals on it is an energy-generating object. A man transforms into the werewolf, which is the most intense transformation, physically and mentally. The werewolf goes from one state, man, to a totally opposite state, animal, in the matter of minutes or even seconds. In movies it always happens in, like, thirty seconds. It even looks painful.

I ran for Editor-in-Chief of the Strand this week and lost, but that’s alright. After talking about it since their Halloween record release, there’s a Fucked Up feature in the paper this week, and amazing Mimi sent me some amazing photos of the band. This is the last issue of the year pretty much so I’m glad the section is ending on a good note.

Some other of Mimi’s photos were also featured in I-D this month, so it was really awesome that we were also able to use her work for the article.

A good working day wouldn’t be complete without a Vanilla snack pack and a Jughead digest on your desk. You’ll notice there’s also a flyer there for the Masters of the Universe charity art show happening at the end of the month. Lola has been busy co-organizing the show for awhile now and it looks like it’s going to be awesome.

The new issue of ANP Quarterly is out, I’m a loser and have a subscription. I got this off their blog, look at how fucking amazing this Damien Hirst is. Incredible.

This is an exerpt from Marshall McLuhan’s “Counter Blast” which I read in the Toronto Ref the other day and it pretty much blew my mind. On top of everything else, Marshall predicted that people were going to start embracing spicy food more and more in the future. I think he may have been right because I’ve definitely started to.

My Feature at the Strand this week is an interview with none-other than Colin Bergh of Wyrd Visions. Jimmy took the photos last summer, and the issue looks great. I owe so much to talented friends, and much thanks to More Proof for making this blog happen.