Thousands upon thousands of students marched in Montreal yesterday to protest tuition hikes in Quebec universities. How many thousands, exactly? My pal, crack journalist and part-time abacus Justin Giovannetti, does the math.
Will collectors spend real money on digital art?
The curators behind klausgallery.net claim that it’s the first commercial gallery of its kind: one focused entirely on selling internet-based art. Will collectors take the bait?
I wrote all about it for the Toronto Standard.
Above: a still from “Puparazzi,” a YouTube video by Petra Cortright that is currently going for $2,109.75.
Jon Rafman is Just Waiting to be Trolled
Last October, I interviewed Montreal/WWW artist Jon Rafman about authenticity, 4chan and why he “doesn’t feel like he needs to apologize.” Read our conversation at Cluster Mag.
Carolee Schneeman serves dip and stale crackers
EMERGENCY SAUCE SCENERIOS FOR UNEXPECTED FRIENDS AND LOVERS
by Carolee Schneeman
No matter how paltry or terrible your provisions, they can be vitalized, if you have the following available for a sauce: Japanese soy sauce, fresh oil, yogurt, garlic powder, curry powder, cinnamon, honey or maple syrup.
vegetable sauce
Friends arrive unexpectedly; in the fridge you find a withered head of broccoli (or lettuce, carrots, sprouts, half a zucchini, etc.). Quickly refresh the old vegetables in cold water while you mix: 1 tablespoon yogurt, 1 teaspoon soya sauce, 1/2 teaspoon curry powder, 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder. Mix well, put in a small, appealing cup or ashtray. Set ashtray in center of large plate, surround with the revived vegetables.
fruit sauce
Friends arrive unexpectedly; in the fridge you find a grapefruit, half-eaten apple, handful of grapes… Peel and separate grapefruit slices, slice apple, cut grapes in half…. Mix 1 tablespoon of yogurt, 1 teaspoon honey or maple syrup, sprinkle cinnamon. Place in decorative ashtray in center of large plate, surround with circle of fruit.
crackers sauce
Friends arrive…there is nothing in the fridge… On a shelf you find half a package of crackers (if they are limp, spread them on a baking dish or frying pan, place in oven for 10 minutes at 350 degrees.) Prepare either of the above sauces… place in ashtray or cup, in center of plate, surround with…crackers…
(Text submitted by artist Carolee Schneeman—erratic punctuation and all—to the Starving Artist’s Cookbook, published by Paul Lamarre and Melissa P. Wolf in 1991. From the winter 2012 issue of Diner Journal.)
The internet, for girls
“In the end it’s easier to accuse these sites en masse of Not Doing Feminism Right instead of actually trying to address some of their inherent complexities.”
On ladyblogs and the way we discuss feminism on the internet
A smart response to n+1’s much discussed piece about blogs 4 girls (and their myriad failings), “So Many Feelings,” on Maisonneuve’s blog.
How to write like Gay Talese
Robert S. Boynton: And what is your routine for actually writing?
Gay Talese: I start with a yellow lined pad and a pencil. The first thing I do is try to print a sentence. Note that I say try to print a sentence, and print, not write. I use big, block letters. Then I look it over, change it, rewrite, and try to do another. It sometimes takes me a couple of days before I have five to six sentences in large block letters. This is the beginning of my piece.
When I have about four to five pages of block-lettered sentences I type them up, triple-space, on an electric typewriter. Then I edit and rewrite those sentences again and again, until I have a single typed page I’m happy with.
I then take the typed page and pin it to the wall with dressmaker pins. I have panels of styrofoam on the wall that hold the pages. Then I go through the whole process again and write another page, and pin it to the wall next to the first one. It’s like laundry on a clothesline. I have four to five feet of styrofoam, so I can pin up as many as thirty-five pages in three rows.
RSB: Why pin them to the wall?
GT: It helps me get a different perspective: I can see how the scenes move, how the language works, how the sentences flow. I get lost when I rewrite and I want to have another look at it. I want to look at it fresh, as if somebody else wrote it. I used to pin the pages up on the wall and then sit on a chair across the room looking at them through binoculars. But the office I have now is too narrow for that.
RSB: So what do you now do to achieve that different perspective?
GT: I came up with another system. Instead of using binoculars, I create two bound copies of the book-in-progress. The first binder is regular size. The second binder has the identical numbered pages as the first, but I reduce each of them in Xerox machine by 67 percent. Same binders, same numbered pages, but one is small enough to make each page look very different. It creates the same distorting effect as looking at pages through binoculars.
(From Robert S. Boynton’s The New New Journalism: Conversations with America’s Best Nonfiction Writers on Their Craft, 2005. Highly recommended.)
How Brooklyn has looked for pretty much all of January: heavenly.
(Photo by Brian Ferry.)
