Non-Specific Terror and Dancin'

I went last night to see Animals of Distinctions' "Smash Up" with Justin Evans at the Monument National.
It was very strange to sit in a theater with other people to watch this. I realized that nearly all of my experience of dance, save a few grinning-10-year-olds-performing-ballet recitals of my sister's, was from video. Like the one above. Where camera angles and editing really dictate duration, and narrative. Much like seeing a painting in person instead of in photograph, or actually being stuck on a Survivor-type desert island, this performance was so heavy and sweaty and disorienting.
I was terrified all through the first piece. Not for the performers or because it was scary, but non specific terror. Not horror, mind you, but terror. I couldn't tell what was happening or what was going to happen. Hell. I wasn't even sure what I was seeing.
Painting so often feels like maintaining some very delicate balance between all kinds of things you want to balance like composition, colour, texture, form along with all kinds of things that you might not, like cliches, the medium's history, trends, and your own temporary desires to not be making what you are, or to not continue. It is such a delicate, razor's edge final balance that I want to squeeze my eyes tight and hold still while I find the extremes on either side. Watching the performance last night was like watching that balance be maintained in front of me. How harrowing.
I'm a little bashful about being so wide-eyed, but holy shit Dana Gingras is one of my favourite artists. She totally wrecked my cool, leaving me yammering on about how I felt. Yikes.
This is leaving out the computer-animation stuff by James Paterson and Amit Pitaru that knocked my head off, and music direction by Roger Tellier-Craig.

Artpop Series 3: Terry Jacks

I Guess That's Called A Good Thing Lost, 2005
The Poppy Family - A Good Thing Lost
Incidentally, this painting is a favourite of Roger Tellier-Craig from Pas Chic Chic.



Too Busy In The Backroom Writing Love Songs To You, 2004
Terry Jacks - Rock 'n' Roll (I Gave You All The Best Years)

Pas Chic Chic: I claim thee as "colleague".

I rarely find other people making art or music that I would pick as colleagues. In fact I shy from it, as it seems like some other persons job. Historians. Critics.
This week I was given the demo for Pas Chic Chic, a band made up of some of the most engaging people I know in Montreal. I was overwhelmed to find some very nice commonalities between their music and my work. I have had an ongoing conversation with Roger about art since my arrival in Montreal, and Marie-Douce is a collector of my work and DJ at my show last spring...they are two of my favourite people to have visit the studio.
Their music steps well beyond the drudgery of identity-based work, where the form is simply an armature to be fleshed out with the colour an material of influences. They have found the nuanced ornate and not thrown too many babies out with bathwater. Of course we're all marked with our grandfather's hands. I feel commonality many places, starting with the question: but what do you do after years of making something?
Listen to them here:
Pas Chic Chic: Sur Les Ecrans Statiques