lapsus linguae

Words the Dog Knows – Reading at The Yellow Door

This has been the most indoor summer ever, but boy has it been productive. I’ve written a novel. I’m as surprised as you are! It’s called, Words the Dog Knows. It’s not really about the dog. It’s because of the dog. Because of the dog the characters come to see their neighbourhood – and each other – in a whole new way.

It’s almost, almost, almost, but not quite finished, but I’ll be reading excerpts from it anyway at The Yellow Door later this week. Once the book is actually printed, there will launches in Montreal, New York and Toronto. Information about those events will be posted soon. Meantime, here’s the Yellow Door info:

The Yellow Door
POETRY AND PROSE READING
http://www.yellowdoor.org
3625 Aylmer, Montreal (between Pine & Prince Arthur) Tel: 514-398-6243

Thursday, August 28, 2008
Doors open 7:00 pm Reading 7:30 pm At the door $5

J.R. Carpenter is a two-time winner of CBC/QWF Quebec Short Story Competition. Her novel, Words the Dog Knows, is forthcoming from Conundrum Press, fall 2008.

Hugh Hazelton is a poet and translator. His third book of poems, Antimatter, was published with CD by Broken Jaw Press in 2003.

Liam Durcan is a Montreal writer whose novel, Garcia’s Heart, was published in 2007 by McClelland & Stewart.

Rita Donovan Author of six novels & one non-fiction. Her novels have won several awards, among them: CAA/Chapters Award for Fiction, Landed.

Saleema Nawaz’s fiction has been published in Prairie Fire, Grain, & PRISM. Mother Superior (Freehand Books, 2008) is her first short story collection.

Ken Kalman is a poet, playwright, and novelist. Among his publications are a novel, Jesus Loves Me, a play, Defenceless, and Poetry of the Jews.

Laura Golden is author of a poetry book, Laura’s Garden, 1978-2007. Artist, Reiki master, art therapist. From Now On, and Loneliness (Baico Publishing).

Tony Robinson-Smith is author of Back in 6 Years (Goose Lane Editions, 2008): In his first book, adventurer Tony circles the planet by land and sea.

Milton Dawes was one of the seven drummers who started the Tam-Tam drumming on the mountain.

. . . . .

birthday flowers

Half the year has whizzed by already. I’ve never been so busy in all my life. For a while there I was officially doing a few too many big things at once. Now I’m only doing one big thing at once. What a relief! Well, relatively speaking. My summer writing schedule is insane. I handed in a manuscript draft on July 15th. The editor’s comments are due back July 21st. That leaves six days in between for dental procedures, doctor’s appointments, grant applications and various other overdue paperwork, banking, random socializing and oh I don’t know maybe a bit of summer vacation.

Our friend Adriana has been visiting Montreal from Mexico for four months now and we have barely seen her. She has to leave soon. We made plans to get together. We would have loved to have taken her out of the city to see a bit of countryside but alas we had no time or money or car. But surely there was something somewhere in the city that she hadn’t done yet? She said what she really wanted to do was to go see Buckminster Fuller’s geodesic dome, but she thought I’d probably done that a hundred times already. Nope, I’d never done that in all the 18 years I’ve lived in Montreal!

Pre-excursion research indicated that Buckminster Fuller was born on July 12th 1895. I was not surprised at all to hear that he was kicked out of Harvard twice. We summer birthday folks have a hard time with conventional thinking. Adriana and I went to see the geodesic dome he built for Epxo 67 on July 17th 2008, 113 years and five days after his birthday. My birthday is July 18th. Adriana is leaving town on July 22nd. It all worked out very well, mathematically speaking.

I’ve seen the dome from a distance of course, but never up close and personal. We got so inside the thing as to be able to see how the joints are made. Now we know how to make a geodesic dome of our own. Why I waited 18 years to do this I don’t know. Not only is Bucky’s dome amazing, but it’s also on an island. This means that when you go see it you are magically transported to another world. Parc Jean-Drapeau is quiet and cool. A secret garden, a real marvel, replete with waterfalls and lily ponds traversed with curved footbridges a la Monet and everything. I took dozens of pictures. If Monet had had a digital camera everything would have turned out differently.

Adriana was a marvellous companion. We picnicked under the dome and took whichever footbridges came our way and spent ages peering into the murky shallows of one lily pond after another, admiring the fish and ferns and spiders and red winged blackbirds each with equal wonder. There’s a gigantic Alexander Calder sculpture in Parc Jean-Drapeau. Who knew? There are tree-lined paths along the river that – in the hot and humid haze of summer – look like works of the impressionist pointillist painter Seurat.

It’s great to get out of the city. Even for a few hours. From across the mighty Saint Laurence River Montreal looks far far away. For the price of a metro ticket you can hear the river lapping on the shore and hear the birds in the trees and feel free as one of them. And then, for the price of another metro ticket you can scoot back into town again and go to an art opening. We went to see Reverse Engineering – a first ever exhibition of works on paper by installation and intermedia artist, jake moore. Our Buckminster Fuller research perfectly prepared us for jake’s work.

Tree branches have been central objects in her practice for several years where they stand in for antennae and antlers representing both communication devices of the natural world and a metaphor for a kind of hierarchical learning strategy, “arboreal” referred to negatively by Deleuze and Guattari. Here, the same branches used in earlier installations have been measured, mapped and charted using the tools available in Hexagram Concordia’s rapid prototyping lab. In a somewhat perverse twist, the tools were not used to develop a new 3 dimensional iteration as they are intended but instead the wireframe models have been printed as the final works. They are indexical measures, or a cartography of the skin of these trees. Quite imperfect, as it is impossible to measure every surface of the tree – Shockingly complex, as the delicate linear quality of trees is revealed as a fractal and crystalline surface. They are abstractions made with rational means. jake moore

Even if you don’t have time to go see the geodesic dome first, check out jake more, Reverse Engineering at the fofa gallery at Concordia: http://fofagallery.concordia.ca/

I slept late the next morning, after all that fresh air. I woke up and thought I heard the doorbell downstairs ringing. Then a few minutes later I heard our doorbell, and figured out that the first doorbell had actually been our doorbell only I was asleep and just dreaming that I was a wake. It was Adrian at the door, bringing me birthday flowers. One was shaped exactly like a geodesic dome.

I usually agonize over what to do for my birthday for months in advance and then no matter what I plan it never works out because everyone is always out of town. This year I thought I had that problem solved. Some friends from New York were going to come up and visit us for my birthday but then their travel plans got high jacked by their work schedules. They’re still coming, but not till next weekend. This weekend I had no plans. A few evolved organically. Basically, friends came over for drinks. The 2boys were in town for my birthday for the first time ever! jake moore arrived in a polka dot dress bringing me yet more flowers and an artist’s book as a present. Alexis O’Hara also arrived in a polka dot dress and brought me an art book present. I attribute this coincidence to the full moon, the biggest polka dot of them all.

I’ve known jake moore for at least fifteen years now and have only just discovered that she knows the names of all the flowers. How delightful. How very clever. One of the flowers she brought for my birthday now arches elegantly over a statuette of Michelangelo’s David perched on a stack of books on the shelf above my desk. It truly is a gift to have something so lovely to look at. Even after these flowers fade I’ll have their after-image. Which will come in handy. Any day now the latest manuscript revisions will make their way back to me. I’ll spend the rest of the summer sitting right here staring at this spot.
. . . . .

in absentia launch party under the Van Horne Viaduct

When Dare-Dare first accepted in absentia for their 2008 season, I was hoping it would launch sometime very late in the season. I had already committed to launching Tributaries & Text-Fed Streams in the spring and Words the Dog Knows in the fall so already 2008 was looking like a crazy year. But, as fate would have it, just as Dare-Dare was sending out notification that they’d accepted my project on gentrification in the Mile End, they received notification of their own eviction from the parc sans nom that has been their home in Mile End for the past few years. They had to be out by July 1st so it made sense to launch my project at the end of June as a farewell to the neighbourhood. When Dare-Dare proposed launching “in absentia” on June 24th, Saint-Jean Baptiste Day, I thought: What the hell – the national holiday thing will distract everyone if the work isn’t quite done.

Stéphane came home from work on Saturday and said: Hey, there are posters with your name on them all over the neighbourhood. Posters, I said. What a good idea. I had proofed a draft of a poster, but it hadn’t quite occurred to me that someone would then post the posters and that people would see them. Dare-Dare has been great to work with. By tacit mutual agreement, we don’t pester each other with details. They do their part and I do my part and somehow it all gets done. Stéphane said: Your event is being billed as the neighbourhood Saint-Jean Baptiste Day party. That’s a big deal, he assured me. One poster was in the exact location of one of the stories in absentia. Many dear friends of mine have lived in the building directly across the street over the years, and all have been evicted now.

Monday afternoon I took the long metro ride east to Pix IV for an interview on CIBL’s 4á6 show. CIBL is also a big deal, according to Stéphane – the last word in community radio in this town. Not only had I never heard of it, somehow I’d managed to live in Montréal for nearly 18 years without ever doing a live radio interview in French. How embarrassing. How terrifying. How did it go? Well, fine I think… but then how would I know? It was fun, at least. And there was a Village des Valeurs next door. After the interview went shopping for an outfit to wear to the launch party and with thrilled to find this four-dollar skirt.

Tuesday’s forecast called for 40% chance of showers. There were showers for 40% of the day. As I was leaving the apartment for tech set up at 2PM I said: It had better rain now and get it over with. It started to rain within seconds. After about twenty minutes it was over with and we had clear skies for the rest of the night.

Arriving at the sans nom the first thing I noticed was that a porto-pottie had been set up next to the Dare-Dare trailer. I was glad that they’d thought of it, I certainly hadn’t. I’ve never had a launch event large enough to require the procurement of a porto-pottie before. This career high was mediated somewhat by the realization that in absentia would be displayed throughout the launch event on two antique iMac computers. “They’re are already in the museum of 20th century design,” Dare-Dare director Jean-Pierre assured me as we set them up on a picnic table outside the Dare-Dare trailer. We had to run network cables out to them, because they were built before wireless networks existed. But the piece ran amazingly well on them, and really, what better computers to withstand nearly 12 hours outdoors in sun, wind, blowing grit and hundreds of beery users?

Hundreds did indeed show up. They came in waves, so at first I didn’t notice how the scale of the thing kept changing. I just drifted from one conversation to the next. The NT2 polka dot crew represented and team OBORO came out in force. “in absentia” guest authors Daniel Canty and Alexis O’Hara were present as were many other dear friends. Over all I only knew a fraction of the people there. The crowd was mixed: kids, dogs, punks, artists, friends, locals and a few friendly local mentally insane folks. I took their presence as a huge complement. If the local mentally insane know that your party is THE Saint-Jean Baptiste Day party to be at you have really made it in this town. Many people were unaware of what the party was for or about other than that it was about having a party, which was certainly one of the things this party was about. Other people were acutely aware of what the work that prompted the party was all about. Stories of evictions from Mile End abounded. Someone on the Dare-Dare selection committee told me that Dare-Dare hadn’t yet been evicted from the parc sans nom when they accepted “in absentia” but he and a number of the other Dare-Dare members had already been forced to move. One guy came up and told me he’d been at home packing when he’d heard about the project and the party on the radio and decided to come check it out. Wow.

The police came three times on account of noise complaints, which totally eclipsed the on-site porto-potties as my new career high. The bicycle cops have the shapeliest legs. The programming director of Dare-Dare gave “in absentia” postcards and I merrily introduced myself to each and every officer as “the artist” which confused the heck out of them. It’s pretty hard to argue with a Saint-Jean block party, especially considering it would be Dare-Dare’s last party every in the parc sans nom. I mean, what were the police going to do, evict us? Everybody remained peaceful, the police left us in peace and people went on dancing until 2AM.

The official cocktail of the evening was the mojito, which was also the official cocktail of my wedding. This was pure coincidence as I had so little to do with the party planning I didn’t even know there would be an official cocktail. All the bartenders were volunteers, as were all the dj’s: Julie d, Tommy T, Rustic, Backdoor, Dirty Boots, papa dans maman, catherine lovecity, alakranx, cristal 45 et FSK1138 & jason j gillingham. FSK1138 & jason j gillingham did some kind of crazy live set using sounds extracted from the blue and red values of photo data taken from images of in absentia. The sound data was extracted using ‘BeepMap‘ a flstudio image synth. A few days later FSK1138 dropped off a CD of these sounds in my mailbox. A few days later FSK1138 popped a CD of these sounds in my mailbox. Thank you guys, so much.

I’m blown away by the generosity of all these volunteers and mightily impressed by the hard work and dedication of the Dare-Dare community. All night the programming director of Dare-Dare worked crowd control with a super grounded zen like calm, negotiating with the police and the locals and the drunks and the crazies and me the artist and picking up empties and taking photos and restocking the bar with beer. At some point I said to someone, “Man, can you imagine being the guy in charge of all this?”

At some other point in the evening I was sitting with a group of friends watching the masses dancing, casting wild elongated shadows on the underside of the Van Horne Viaduct when it hit me that there were more people at this party than there had been in my entire elementary school. I tried to explain how overwhelming this was. Someone said: “What did you go to a Montessori school or something?” No, I just grew up in a place where there were that few people! When I was a kind in rural Nova Scotia most folks scoffed when I said I was going off the big city to study fine arts in university. When I started making art on the Internet most folks scoffed and said: “The Internet’s just a fad, it will never catch on.” So I found it beautiful that a web-based fiction project could bring so many real people together in a physical space.

At some very late point in the evening I was standing on the steps of the Dare-Dare trailer taking night photos each on more surreal than then next yet not quite able to capture the scene when artistic director Jean-Pierre passed by and asked me if I was enjoying my party. My party? “It’s bigger than all of us,” I said. One of the stated aims of in absentia is so “haunt” the neighbourhood with the stories of its former tenants (fictional or otherwise) who have been forced out by gentrification. If my night photos are any indication than yes, I think my plan is working.

in absentia is now online: http://luckysoap.com/inabsentia. I will continue to add new stories over the course of the summer until November 2008. It will take at least that long for all of the ramifications of this project to sink in. If you have stories of gentrification and its erasures in the Mile End feel free to add them as comments to this post or summit them via the comment box within the piece.
. . . . .

in absentia – a new web project by J. R. Carpenter

in absentia is a new web-based writing project by J. R. Carpenter that addresses gentrification and its erasures in the Mile End neighbourhood of Montreal. In this work J. R. Carpenter uses HTML, javascript and the Google Maps API to create an interactive non-linear narrative of interconnected “postcard” stories written from the point of view of former tenants of Mile End forced out by gentrification. This project features new fiction by J. R. Carpenter with guest authors: Lance Blomgren, Andy Brown, Daniel Canty and Colette Tougas. New stories will continue to be be added throughout the summer and into the all of 2008. http://luckysoap.com/inabsentia

in absentia is a Latin phrase meaning “in absence.” I’m drawn to the contradiction inherent in being in absence. In recent years many long-time low-income neighbours being forced out of Mile End by economically motivated decisions made their absence. So far fiction is the best way I’ve found to give voice these disappeared neighbours, and the web is the best place I’ve found to situate their stories. Our stories. My building is for sale; my family may be next. Faced with imminent eviction I’ve begun to write about the Mile End as if I’m no longer here, and to write about a Mile End that is no longer here. By manipulating the Google Maps API, I am able to populate “real” satellite images of my neighbourhood with “fictional” characters and events. I aim to both literally and figuratively map the sudden disappearances of characters, fictional or otherwise, from the places, real or imagined, where they once lived; to document traces people leave behind when they leave a place, and the stories that spring from their absence. in absentia is a web “site” haunted by the stories of former residents of Mile End, a slightly fantastical world that is already lost but at the same time is still fully known by its inhabitants: a shared memory of the neighbourhood as it never really was but could have been.

Themes of place and displacement pervade my fiction and electronic literature, yet place long remained an abstract, elusive notion for me. Perhaps because for many years I wrote about long ago places attempting to inhabit pasts that could never be mine. Mapping the minutia of my most immediate surroundings has made my notion of place less abstract and more socially engaged. Writing about my neighbours has made me aware that I write from amongst them, thus engendering a “we” point of view. Increasingly, my work is collaborative. In in absentia (June 2008) I join a cast of writers from my neighbourhood to pen “postcards” to and from former tenants, fictional or otherwise, displaced by gentrification and it’s erasures.

in absentia also marks the end of DARE-DARE’s Dis/location: projet d’articulation urbaine in the Mile End’s parc sans nom. The mobile office will leave the vacant lot that was its home for two years and move towards Montréal’s dowtown, in Cabot Square, corner Sainte-Catherine and Atwater. http://dare-dare.org

J. R. Carpenter is a two-time winner of the CBC Quebec Short Story Competition and a Web Art Finalist in the Drunken Boat PanLiterary Awards 2006. Her novel Words the Dog Knows is forthcoming from Conundrum in the fall of 2008. Her short fiction and electronic literature have been published and exhibited internationally and can be found on http://luckysoap.com.

in absentia projet web de J.R. Carpenter inauguré le 24 juin au parc sans nom
DARE-DARE avec nouvelles oeuvres de fiction signées J. R. Carpenter, avec auteurs invités: Lance Blomgren, Andy Brown, Daniel Canty, Alexis O’Hara et Colette Tougas La réalisation du projet se poursuivra jusqu’au 30 novembre 2008. http://luckysoap.com/inabsentia

in absentia est un projet d’écriture sur le Web qui traite de la gentrification dans le quartier Mile-End de Montréal et des disparitions qu’elle entraîne. J.R. Carpenter utilise le HTML, le JavaScript et les cartes API-Google pour créer une narration interactive non linéaire constituée d’histoires « cartes postales » écrites selon le point de vue d’anciens locataires du Mile-End forcés de quitter leur logement à cause de la gentrification. Le projet débutera le 24 juin et se poursuivra au cours de l’été et de l’automne 2008.

« L’expression latine in absentia signifie “en l’absence de”. Au cours des dernières années, plusieurs de mes voisins à faible revenu qui habitaient le Mile-End depuis longtemps ont été forcés de quitter le quartier en raison de décisions d’ordre économique prises en leur absence. À ce jour, la fiction s’avère le meilleur moyen pour raconter l’histoire de mes voisins disparus et le Web, le meilleur endroit où afficher leur histoire. Notre histoire. L’immeuble que j’habite est à vendre; ma famille et moi subirons peut-être le même sort prochainement. Menacée d’expulsion, j’ai commencé à écrire sur le Mile-End comme si je n’y étais plus et à écrire sur le Mile-End qui n’est plus. En manipulant les cartes API-Google, il m’est possible de peupler de personnages fictifs les “vraies” images satellites de mon quartier et d’inventer des situations. Je cartographie – au sens propre et figuré – la disparition soudaine de personnages fictifs ou non, des endroits où ils ont habité véritablement ou dans l’imaginaire. Je documente les traces que les gens laissent derrière eux lorsqu’ils quittent un endroit ainsi que l’histoire qui émerge de leur absence. in abstentia est un “site” Web hanté par les histoires d’anciens résidants du Mile- End, un univers quasi-fantastique déjà disparu, mais pourtant bien connu de ses habitants: la mémoire commune d’un quartier tel qu’il n’a jamais vraiment été, mais qui aurait pu être. »

« Mes oeuvres de fiction et de littérature électronique baignent dans les thèmes du lieu et du déplacement et pourtant, le lieu est longtemps demeuré un concept abstrait et imprécis à mes yeux. Peut-être parce que j’ai longtemps écrit au sujet de lieux qui n’existaient plus, tentant de m’inscrire dans des passés qui ne pouvaient pas être les miens. »

« Cartographier les menus détails de mon univers immédiat a fait en sorte que je conçois la notion de lieu de façon moins abstraite et avec un plus grand engagement social. En écrivant sur mes voisins, je me suis rendu compte que je me situais parmi eux pour écrire et que, par conséquent, j’adoptais une écriture au “nous”. Je travaille de plus en plus en collaboration. Pour in absentia, je me joins à une équipe d’auteurs de mon quartier pour écrire des “cartes postales” destinées à ou provenant d’anciens locataires, qu’ils soient fictifs ou non, déplacés par la gentrification et les disparitions qu’elle entraîne. »

in absentia marque également la fin du présent volet de Dis/location: projet d’articulation urbaine – ainsi que de la présence de DARE-DARE dans le parc sans nom du Mile-End. La roulotte quittera le site inoccupé où elle était établie depuis deux ans, en route pour le square Cabot au centre-ville de Montréal, à l’angle de Ste-Catherine et Atwater. http://dare-dare.org

J. R. Carpenter est deux fois lauréate du Concours de nouvelles de CBC Quebec et finaliste au volet Web Art pour le prix Drunken Boat PanLiterary 2006. Son roman Words the Dog Knows paraîtra à l’automne 2008 aux éditions Conundrum. Ses oeuvres de fiction et de littérature électronique ont été publiées et présentées ici et à l’étranger et sont disponibles en ligne au http://luckysoap.com.
. . . . .

in absentia launch party June 24th

Join us for the launch of in absentia – a new web writing project by J.R. Carpenter with guest authors: Lance Blomgren, Andy Brown, Daniel Canty and Colette Tougas. in absentia is presented by DARE-DARE Centre de diffusion dart multidisciplinaire de Montral.

DARE-DARE will host an in absentia launch party on Saint-Jean Baptiste Day, June 24th from 5 – 11PM in the parc sans nom (St. Laurent @ Van Horn). The event is free and open to everyone. There will be DJs and a cash bar and possibly a laser light show, if I have time!

The launch of in absentia marks the end of DARE-DARE’s Dis/location: projet d’articulation urbaine. On July 1st, DARE-DARE’s blue trailer will leave the vacant lot that was its home for two years and move towards Montréal’s downtown, in Cabot Square, corner Sainte-Catherine and Atwater. The launch of in absentia will be the last event held in the Mile End’s parc sans nom, so please come and make it a great one.

in absentia is a web-based writing project that addresses issues of gentrification and its erasures in the Mile End neighbourhood of Montreal. In recent years many long-time low-income neighbours being forced out of Mile End by gentrification. So far fiction is the best way I’ve found to give voice these disappeared neighbours, and the web is the best place I’ve found to situate their stories. Our stories. My building is for sale; my family may be next. Faced with imminent eviction I’ve begun to write as if I’m no longer here, about a Mile End that is no longer here. By manipulating the Google Maps API, I am able to populate “real” satellite images of my neighbourhood with “fictional” characters and events. in absentia is a web “site” haunted by the stories of former residents of Mile End, a slightly fantastical world, a shared memory of the neighbourhood as it never really was but as it could have been. The project will launch in Montreal and on-line on June 24, and new stories will continue to be added until November 30, 2008.

DARE-DARE Centre de diffusion d’art multidisciplinaire de Montréal est situé dans un parc sans nom entre Saint-Laurent et Clark, entre Arcade et Rosemont/Van Horne, Montréal. For more information please visit: dare-dare.og
. . . . .

WOMEN’S ART: TAKING OVER THE WEB

Studio XX launches MATRICULES: Canada’s largest public online archive of digital artwork by women and one of the world’s largest online archives of women’s digital art. Created with invaluable support from Heritage Canada’s Canadian Culture Online Program and hosted by Studio XX, Mobile Media Lab and the Department of Communication Studies at Concordia University, Matricules will launch on Tuesday, May 13th, 2008 from 5:30 PM to 7:30 PM at Hexagram Concordia, 1515 Ste-Catherine West (corner Guy) on the 11th floor.

Matricules is an electronic documentary herstory spanning eleven years of research, creation and exploration at Canada’s one-of-a kind Studio XX. Mingle with some of Montreal’s most celebrated new media artists on a spectacular terrace overlooking Montreal and enjoy a performative reading by J.R. Carpenter, two-time winner of CBC’s Quebec Short Story Competition. Prominent interdisciplinary artists Caroline Martel and jake moore will offer their take on the website’s creation process and Matricules Project Director Stephanie Lagueux will give audiences a private tour of this remarkable new digital archive.

The xxxboîte, a limited edition artifact comprised of original texts and a DVD produced in celebration of Studio XX’s first decade will also be presented and available for purchase as an important addition to any contemporary art collection.

Founded in 1996 with the goal of ensuring a defining presence for women in cyberspace and in the development of the digital arts, Studio XX is Canada’s foremost feminist digital art centre for technological exploration, creation and critique. Committed to establishing women’s access to technology, with a strong focus on Open-Source software, Studio XX offers artist residencies, monthly performance salons, an electronic magazine, a weekly radio show and HTMlles: an international biennial cyberarts festival.

“Matricules is a privileged gateway to dazzling integral digital artworks” comments Paulina Abarca-Cantin, Studio XX’s Director General. “This electronic treasure box offers the public live works by greats like Shawna Dempsey, Chantal DuPont, Deborah VanSlet, Women with Kitchen Appliances, Suzanne Kozel, Isabelle Choinière and AGF to name but a very, very few of the best of the best.”

Matricules was made possible through generous support from The Canada Council for the Arts, The Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, the Conseil des arts de Montréal, Mobile Media Lab and the Koumbit network. Studio XX wishes to thank its members, volunteers and visionary funding partners including Canadian Heritage’s Canadian Culture Online initiative.

http://www.studioxx.org
. . . . .

The Pilot Reading Series May Edition

If you’re still in town and still standing after five days at the Blue Metropolis, come on down to Blizzarts Sunday night for the Pilot Reading Series. I’ll be reading from Words the Dog Knows, a novel forthcoming from Conundrum Press (Fall 2008) and Chandra Mayor will be launching her new collection, All the Pretty Girls (Conundrum Press, Spring 2008):

Sunday, May 4, 2008 at 9:00pm at Blizzarts 3956A St. Laurent.

Matrix Magazine, the QWF, and Pop Montreal present
The Pilot Reading Series May Edition

featuring:

Chandra Mayor
JR Carpenter
Gil Filar
JpKing

hosted by Mike Spry
music by a very special guest DJ

doors @ 9pm
readings @ 9.30
FREE

. . . . .

in absentia – DARE-DARE says farewell to Mile End

Back in September DARE-DARE – an artists-run centre founded in Montreal in 1985 – put out a call for submissions: Dis/location: projet d’articulation urbaine 2008. A fitting theme as DARE-DARE abandoned the white cube gallery ages ago. For the past few years they’ve been operating out of a sky-blue trailer parked in a Mile End park with no name under an overpass about three blocks from my apartment. In keeping with these circumstances their stated mandate is to support interdisciplinary projects that engage the social and physical realms of the city, its public spaces, its commercial, industrial and residential areas.

I submitted a proposal for project called “in absentia” – a web-based electronic literature project about gentrification and its erasure in the Mile End. I write dozens of proposals a year, but this one was different. First of all, I totally identified with the theme. Our apartment building went up for sale over the summer and we were feeling dislocated indeed. Secondly, I’d never encountered an application process quite like the one DARE-DARE proposes. In the first round you tell them who you are, what you do, what you want to do and why you want to do it with them. If they like where you’re coming from then they invite you to elaborate on where you’re going. This makes a lot of sense for projects that don’t exist yet. My project made it through to the second round. I found it a lot easier to write a more detailed proposal knowing that they were already interested.

In the end, DARE-DARE accepted “in absentia” for their 2008 season. It turns out they have a special affinity for the topic of gentrification – they’re being evicted from their Mile End parking spot July 1st. “in absentia” will launch late in June – DARE-DARE’s farewell to the neighbourhood. Now all I have to do is make the thing. More about that later.

More on DARE-DARE: http://www.dare-dare.org/
. . . . .

Night & Day: Two Views of Montreal

I started off the evening in clogs and super skinny jeans, a hotter look than you might think, at least according to the catcalling population of Little Burgundy. I was propositioned three times between the Metro and the Canal.

I was on my way to a 5 à 7 at the new loft of an old friend from back in the days when I worked in the corporate world. The party had a class reunion feel, aided and abetted by the retro look of the place. I wouldn’t have thought that an almost empty loft could look so eighties, but this one really did. That’s why my friend bought it. She’s going to renovate. And then she’s going to flip it, or so she says. The second story bedroom has cathedral ceilings and a 280-degree wrap-around deck. I might have a hard time selling such a stellar view.

The 5 à 7 turned into a 6 à 9. The blue sky turned grey, the wind came up and it started raining as I made my way up from the Canal to the Metro again. Clogs are really comfortable but super skinny jeans are only good for standing up in. I spent three hours on my feet talking to people I’d only just met or that I hadn’t seen in years, and occasionally confusing the two. By the time got home I was beat. But home was just a pit stop. I had to come up with a whole new outfit for my friend Sherwin’s birthday and head out again.

The outfit pressure was considerable. Dress up, Sherwin said. Wear something you wouldn’t normally wear. What wouldn’t I wear to a transvestite’s birthday party? I settled on motorcycle boots and a silver tube dress. On the 55 Bus back downtown there were a bunch of huge guys making a lot of noise. When I got up to get off one of them said: I wish this were our stop. It sounds dumb now but at the time I thought it was kind of sweet, a demure send off into the Saint-Laurent at Sainte-Catherine sleaze.

The only thing Sherwin’s birthday party had in common with the loft warming party was the eighties feel. Quite a few people took the dress-up theme down a sequined beaded fluorescent route. Not Sherwin though, he wisely stuck to a svelte little spaghetti-strapped black dress. I love it when the birthday boy has more cleavage than I do.

Oh, and it’s possible that both parties had glass coffee tables in the living room. At Sherwin’s, every now and then you’d hear the loud glass-on-glass smack of a very drunk person misjudging just where the glass might be and putting their beer bottle down way too hard, like a bird flying into a plate glass window.

There was a crazy view out the rear window. I’ve never seen those buildings out anyone’s window before, I said to a woman I’d just met. Oh they look all right from here, she replied. But up close? Whoa. Mexico City.

Waiting for the bathroom I met a girl who’d only been in Montreal for two weeks. She and her friends had just been walking down the street and someone invited them up. That keeps happening, she said. She looked all of 15 years old but somehow fit right into the eighties dance floor scene. I’ve been in Montreal for 17 years now and I sure am glad to have friends in high and low places. I’m not always sure which is which. Both have such great views.
. . . . .

Expozine 2006

Expozine – Montreal’s annual small press, comic and zine fair – is now in it’s fifth year! This year’s edition will take place on Saturday November 25, 2006 from 11 am to 6 pm, at 5035 St-Dominique, between St-Joseph and Laurier.

This incredible event brings together over 200 creators of all kinds of printed matter in both English and French. In the past five years, Expozine has grown to become one of North America’s largest small press fairs, attracting thousands of visitors as well as exhibitors from as far afield as Chicago, Toronto, Ottawa, and Quebec City! This year’s edition promises to be the biggest yet!

To reserve a table at Expozine, fill out the online registration form before November 1, 2006: http://www.expozine.ca. You may also register by phone by calling 514-278-4879, or in person at Monastiraki, 5478 St-Laurent corner St-Viateur, from Wednesday to Sunday from 11-5 p.m.

Expozine is also looking for sponsors. For information on becoming a sponsor: expozine [at] archivemontreal.org or call 514-282-0146.
. . . . .