There's simply not enough time left for anyone to capitalize on it, but if anyone's in Vancouver between now and 8 September, stop by the Vancouver Art Gallery for the last days of the "Krazy! The Delirious World of Anime + Comics + Video Games + Art" exhibit.
Were this a traditional review, there'd be some sort of ironic title like "Museums Have Grown Up and Accept Comics" or "Otaku Kids: On to the Opera!" or something like that, but this will be mostly anecdotal. If you want lots of details, get hold of the exhibit book. (I'll order it in a day or two when I send off for Anathem.)
Krazy! takes over the first two floors of the Art Gallery. I'd never been there before - so I can't compare to previous installations - but I made a point of getting to this show twice this summer. The general direction for the show seemed to be counterclockwise on the first floor, taking you from comics to graphic novels to manga to anime to cartoons. The second floor, clockwise in orientation (unless you tend to visit the gift shop in the middle of your tour), went from video games to the theatre to pop art to CGI art to conceptual art (to the gift shop).
Each section featured about eight artists, with several pages or images apiece. Presentation was spare and simple - lots of white walls, plain wood, and extra 3D elements added to the mix like maquettes and cardboard models of settings - though some sections had more to offer than others. For example, the comics and graphic novels were entirely English language, while the manga did not feature translations, but anime, thank goodness, had subtitles.
The most disappointing section was probably video games. It's not that the selections were bad - it's hard to argue with most of the selections that had been released - but that some of the choices were odd. Most notable was the choice to include Spore. Part of this may have been that Will Wright, the creator of Spore, The Sims, and most anything else with Sim in the title, was the curator for the video games section - which, admittedly, didn`t keep Seth or Spiegelman from including their own works in the comic and graphic novel sections - but the main source of annoyance is that the game isn`t even out yet and it`s already featured in the show. The other issue with this section was the layout - screenshots and video were shown on televisions set on short stands in the middle of the floor - while the walls had some game boxes, consoles, and a wall of screenshots. When compared to the anime section, which featured angled projections on white walls and LCDs playing key clips from a series of films - a thoroughly effective and hypnotic section - the video games were quite disappointing. (And you couldn't buy them in the gift shop, though you couldn't buy the anime, either.)
There were many notable sections and sequences for the exhibition. I was deeply taken by Kevin Huizenga's "Jeepers Jacobs" in the comics, and Lynda Barry's One Hundred Demons was quite impressive, too. I'll need to get hold of several anime films now, such as Paprika, Patlabor 2, and The Place Promised in Our Early Days. (Oh, and Akira again. It always comes back Akira, doesn't it?) I'd like to try some of the manga that was featured, though it's tough to figure what to make of some. Afro Samurai didn't look too bad, but I'm not sure what to make of the super-kawaii (but hyper-sexualized) Pure Trance. And it would be neat to see all of Cosplayers, with its striking mix of supermodern Chinese urbanity and people running around in full fandom costumes.
Two pieces particularly stand out in my memory, though. One was a massive statue by Mr. (seriously, Mr.) called Strawberry Voice. The statue was a cartoon girl's head, roughly 3 to 4 metres tall, with a face of sunny details and vague distance and a cave entered from the nape of the skull filled with decades of girls' toys, shiny objects, and a ceiling of country-style quilting. This sounds much simpler than it is. The effect, I suppose, was akin to seeing the monumental Lawren Harris at the McMichael a few years ago: you encounter something iconic and realize that there's something to the icon, rather than just a shorthand. Strawberry Voice was as similar an experience as monumental theosophist art compared to pop-culture suffused statuary can be. I realize that's an awfully mixed metaphor, but it's art - if I could nail it down and quantify it with joyless, pinpoint precision, I'd likely be shilling for some major brand.
The other - my favourite, for reasons I still can't coalesce - was No Ghost Just a Shell by Angela Bulloch and Imke Wagener. It was a multimedia sort of an art piece, and I'll have to read more on it later. [Having breezed through some of the link above, I'm kinda right and kinda wrong.] Essentially, it is a presentation of a metaphysical, self-aware computer generator character... I think. A small theatre offered a spooling presentation of a four minute clip, possibly from a larger piece, where this figure discussed something either philosophical or pretentious (or both) with an internal monologue conducted at a rapid, hypersaturatedliterate clip. The only sounds "made" by this figure were clicks and gasps which made it seem less and less human, made the viewer face the uncanny valley of computer representation rather than be taken by the figure and accept it as a humane figure. I still can't quite say what it's about. I can't even quite say if it was successful. I can say that it was compelling, though, and that it enthralled me.
I'm sure that this show may have annoyed some - there were far more bad words and bits of nudity than the slightest mention of superheroes, and the detailed examination of Over the Hedge, particularly as the example of the state-of-the-art for cartooning, was odd - but the overall effect was very strong. I wish I could see it again.
Saturday, August 30, 2008
All the Blog Entries I Meant to Write, Part One
I'd intended to end the whole research gig with a trip to the library. Not quite the first library for my postsecondary schooling - that was in Camrose, AB. The old stacks at Augustana were classically college: lots of titles, lots of old titles that hadn't been read to pieces but hadn't been deaccessioned, lots of old carpet with old stains, lots of odd corners, and lots of old wooden tables. It was great fun for the papers I was doing in first year, but I'm sure I'd be harder on myself than my profs were on me. (Well, one was critical of one paper that rested too heavily on one source... that took a bit of adjustment.) Still, it had a pine outside the front windows that caught the snow, and I loved it. When compared to the library at DeVry - which I looked at my postsecondary tour in grade 12, and discounted when I realized that there were probably only 1/20 of the titles that my high school library had featured - Augustana had been heavenly.
And it's not like the library I was going to could even claim to be the site I'd spent the most time in study, since Weldon at UWO easily outstrips the competition for time spent in research and/or study. Granted, I did have a study there, and close to a good friend who was going through the same comps process, and a tonne of books to read... but the sheer volume (noise, not titles) in that library, especially on the first few floors, was simply stupifying. And I simply don't have the funds to make a ritualistic flight to London; at least, not at this juncture.
No, the return - one final return, in all that cliched effect - would be to the Koerner library at UBC. Koerner was one of the first buildings I heard critiqued in a scholarly fashion - something about part Seawall, part False Creek condo, part postmodern cathedral, and only partly complete (which is still the case, if I recall properly) - and I got to spend a lot of time there, though mostly in the basement. It had a lot of great features - a spiral slide for a book return, a big concrete courtyard suitable for APEC protester road hockey games in the fall of 1997 (which I didn't participate in), and nice big carrels where I could immerse myself in periodicals, monographs, readings, or comic books (I distinctly remember reading the end of the "Onslaught" special there). And its elevators still have that oiled machinery odor of high school shop class.
But it's not even true to say that this was the official ending. After all, there was an even more convenient option for book returns - UBC Okanagan's library, just down the valley in Kelowna. And I had gone there to return books... and came back with one. It's hard to go cold turkey, I suppose, and something about Barbara Ehrenreich's Long March, Short Spring called out for further reading. So 27 books were returned in one fell swoop, and one remained. The plan was simple - read that book, and return it to Koerner when I visited Vancouver at the end of the month.
Ah, but then there's distractions from reading the book, other thoughts to work with, other things to read... and so I was scrambling to read it the night before I returned it.
It's not a bad book - not as scholarly as I'd hoped, entirely focused on 1968, but still interesting on the whole. Some of the German and Italian bits were decent, though the real revelation was in the midst of the chapter on Columbia. While describing the occupation of the Dean's office - with the Dean kept as a virtual hostage, if memory serves - Ehrenreich notes that a group of students spent their time playing "Diplomacy" around the clock.
It's one of those startling bits that just leap off the page and insist that you turn to the source material and see who these game-minded activists were. Again, nothing much there other than a note on sources. What really struck me was the range of possibilities for this little fact: for the first time in ages, I thought "This could be an excellent short story... or play!"
So the book didn't get returned. The official research is done and over, regardless, but the possibilities for that historical detail remain... and I'd like to play a little.
And it's not like the library I was going to could even claim to be the site I'd spent the most time in study, since Weldon at UWO easily outstrips the competition for time spent in research and/or study. Granted, I did have a study there, and close to a good friend who was going through the same comps process, and a tonne of books to read... but the sheer volume (noise, not titles) in that library, especially on the first few floors, was simply stupifying. And I simply don't have the funds to make a ritualistic flight to London; at least, not at this juncture.
No, the return - one final return, in all that cliched effect - would be to the Koerner library at UBC. Koerner was one of the first buildings I heard critiqued in a scholarly fashion - something about part Seawall, part False Creek condo, part postmodern cathedral, and only partly complete (which is still the case, if I recall properly) - and I got to spend a lot of time there, though mostly in the basement. It had a lot of great features - a spiral slide for a book return, a big concrete courtyard suitable for APEC protester road hockey games in the fall of 1997 (which I didn't participate in), and nice big carrels where I could immerse myself in periodicals, monographs, readings, or comic books (I distinctly remember reading the end of the "Onslaught" special there). And its elevators still have that oiled machinery odor of high school shop class.
But it's not even true to say that this was the official ending. After all, there was an even more convenient option for book returns - UBC Okanagan's library, just down the valley in Kelowna. And I had gone there to return books... and came back with one. It's hard to go cold turkey, I suppose, and something about Barbara Ehrenreich's Long March, Short Spring called out for further reading. So 27 books were returned in one fell swoop, and one remained. The plan was simple - read that book, and return it to Koerner when I visited Vancouver at the end of the month.
Ah, but then there's distractions from reading the book, other thoughts to work with, other things to read... and so I was scrambling to read it the night before I returned it.
It's not a bad book - not as scholarly as I'd hoped, entirely focused on 1968, but still interesting on the whole. Some of the German and Italian bits were decent, though the real revelation was in the midst of the chapter on Columbia. While describing the occupation of the Dean's office - with the Dean kept as a virtual hostage, if memory serves - Ehrenreich notes that a group of students spent their time playing "Diplomacy" around the clock.
It's one of those startling bits that just leap off the page and insist that you turn to the source material and see who these game-minded activists were. Again, nothing much there other than a note on sources. What really struck me was the range of possibilities for this little fact: for the first time in ages, I thought "This could be an excellent short story... or play!"
So the book didn't get returned. The official research is done and over, regardless, but the possibilities for that historical detail remain... and I'd like to play a little.
Thursday, August 21, 2008
End of an Era, Start of an Epic
So here's a few words on the termination of studies for the PhD -
One, it's tough to find the right word for what this process is. Termination is really harsh. Cessation is much softer - and what was used in my emails to my supervisor and grad chair - but it's still not right. The closest approximation is "I have decided to not continue this course of study." "Quit" and "dropped" aren't even apt, at least in my mind. I remember reading the classic Matt Groening "School is Hell" way back when, and it had a cartoon for the grad school dropout. (If memory serves, they're supposed to be the saddest people on earth. There was also a note with it that said something like, "If it's not making sense, just read another book!") I don't feel that I'm dropping out; I feel that I achieved the metaphorical "ABD" (since there's no program or lambskin for that) and that this was probably what I came for.
"Brand" is another word, one that I used way back when as a Social Science rep for a preliminary session for discussion of either a new Dean for grad studies or a change in the program (I really can't remember which one). Simply put, there've been more and more reports about the dilution of PhD brand as more and more are produced, and that there's less and less positions for us to fill. Yeah, I know that scaremongering is easy, lazy reporting. But I also sat in on a lot of job hire functions (go for the juice and cookies, stay for the insight into the process) and came away with more and more questions. How was it that there were this many applicants for such specialized positions? How is it that we came up with these names out of so many in the stack? How is it that so many... underwhelming applicants (all unhired) made it onto the shortlist? Are the rest of the names in the long list this underwhelming, possessors of C.V. poison, or simply really, really unlucky? I've discussed them with lots of people since, and a lot of those questions remained for me. I can live with questions... but there's other words that influence things here.
"Expectations" is another word, to be perfectly mercenary and perfectly personal. I'm really not interested in trying for the big university life of academe. I like to teach, preferably at a high level. But I'm not interested in living anywhere other than near my family, and they're all in BC. BC does have more universities on the way - in a manner of speaking, depending on how all of them shape up - but it's not sure how the colleges are going to go. And, quite simply, such considerations are quite a few years away, even if I stayed the course. There's several more years of uncertainty to have to endure, and I've been unsettled for a few years. Heck, the trip to grad school was done because of uncertainty. I'd spent four years as a substitute teacher, and governance changes for BC's schools made it pretty unlikely that something would come up soon. Four years of subbing would burn most anyone out, and I was torched. Thankfully, the MA program was an excellent reboot, and the community of grad students that I was in was a fun and welcoming one. So... roll it over and give it a try.
"Try" is another word. The PhD program was, at times, challenging, tiring, exhausting, and reflective. I saw it, in a way, as the first stage in a career (albeit a pretty low-paying stage). Did anyone see Oronte Churm's blog post on archaeology back in July? The first stage (Days 1-2,190) sort of captures the feel. Instead of the whole "week's probation for a dishwashing gig," this was sort of like a decade's probation for an academic's gig. (Really, lecturer/seminar instructor would be the parts I'd be looking to do, but you have to take the whole gig on if you want to get anywhere with it.) And I've seen other people further along this process than I am. Some have done fabulously with it, and some... seem to have not. I suppose that's life, but it seems that there's fewer in the first position. (And to make it in the first position you've got to have a knack for grants, it seems - never one of my strong points.)
"Me," ultimately, is the final word to consider here. I just didn't see me in PhD anymore. (It probably doesn't help that the lyrics to the Beastie Boys' "Dr. Lee, PhD" are pretty garbled. How could you fail me like this now, pop culture?) I simply didn't want to be defined by what I did anymore - or, rather, what I was aspiring to do. I suppose there's many things I'll still be defined by, but that's neither here nor there, and having one less major definer will provide me with a better focus for my life as I live it. And it's fairly unlikely that I'd manage to purge the verbal tendencies that I've acquired over these past few years, so my students will likely continue to have to ask me to re-word questions that are phrased over their heads. (I remain unapologetic about that, except when my phrasing is tortured and incomplete. Except for in this post - some of these issues and words can only be approached poetically, even if it's bad poetry. As long as it's not as purple as the patriotic doggerel that J.V. introduced in seminar...)
So what can readers of this take? Well, take whatever you want. Even though most of the readers will be linked from my Facebook page - a pretty diverse crowd - I'm really only assuming that colleagues will have read this. For my colleagues, I don't think of this decision as the end of our collegiality (though I'd really rather just say that it's friendship). There's no way to excise the history, let alone historiography, from my thought patterns, and it's not as though I'm renouncing anyone here. We'll likely not run into each other at conferences now, though, but you're always welcome to come and visit, just as I hope to still be able to visit people in Ontario. (I'm sure that wine tourists will be the most likely visitors, naturally.) Your friendship, advice, help, and conviviality has been dearly appreciated over the years. I hope that the students I help at the high school level will be better prepared for the university courses in which you'll encounter them, or at least to act like decent, thoughtful citizens who don't take umbrage at the traditional list of "OMG the things these professors study on taxpayer money" titles at Congress time in June.
I nearly wrote earlier today that "It is with regret that I announce" this decision, but I quickly deleted that. I don't regret this decision, but it was not an easy decision to come to. It took a lot of thought and reflection for me to arrive at this point, but here it is. I remember a discussion with a friend in the teacher program at UBC about our future education options, and he argued that the key thing is to aim to be an intellectual rather than an academic if you're going on with further studies. That one always stayed with me. I'd like to think that I've started on that path, but I know that it's a lifetime of study. It might seem odd to some that this self-defined lifetime path is the better one than a five-to-seven year course of study, but it makes perfect sense to me.
One, it's tough to find the right word for what this process is. Termination is really harsh. Cessation is much softer - and what was used in my emails to my supervisor and grad chair - but it's still not right. The closest approximation is "I have decided to not continue this course of study." "Quit" and "dropped" aren't even apt, at least in my mind. I remember reading the classic Matt Groening "School is Hell" way back when, and it had a cartoon for the grad school dropout. (If memory serves, they're supposed to be the saddest people on earth. There was also a note with it that said something like, "If it's not making sense, just read another book!") I don't feel that I'm dropping out; I feel that I achieved the metaphorical "ABD" (since there's no program or lambskin for that) and that this was probably what I came for.
"Brand" is another word, one that I used way back when as a Social Science rep for a preliminary session for discussion of either a new Dean for grad studies or a change in the program (I really can't remember which one). Simply put, there've been more and more reports about the dilution of PhD brand as more and more are produced, and that there's less and less positions for us to fill. Yeah, I know that scaremongering is easy, lazy reporting. But I also sat in on a lot of job hire functions (go for the juice and cookies, stay for the insight into the process) and came away with more and more questions. How was it that there were this many applicants for such specialized positions? How is it that we came up with these names out of so many in the stack? How is it that so many... underwhelming applicants (all unhired) made it onto the shortlist? Are the rest of the names in the long list this underwhelming, possessors of C.V. poison, or simply really, really unlucky? I've discussed them with lots of people since, and a lot of those questions remained for me. I can live with questions... but there's other words that influence things here.
"Expectations" is another word, to be perfectly mercenary and perfectly personal. I'm really not interested in trying for the big university life of academe. I like to teach, preferably at a high level. But I'm not interested in living anywhere other than near my family, and they're all in BC. BC does have more universities on the way - in a manner of speaking, depending on how all of them shape up - but it's not sure how the colleges are going to go. And, quite simply, such considerations are quite a few years away, even if I stayed the course. There's several more years of uncertainty to have to endure, and I've been unsettled for a few years. Heck, the trip to grad school was done because of uncertainty. I'd spent four years as a substitute teacher, and governance changes for BC's schools made it pretty unlikely that something would come up soon. Four years of subbing would burn most anyone out, and I was torched. Thankfully, the MA program was an excellent reboot, and the community of grad students that I was in was a fun and welcoming one. So... roll it over and give it a try.
"Try" is another word. The PhD program was, at times, challenging, tiring, exhausting, and reflective. I saw it, in a way, as the first stage in a career (albeit a pretty low-paying stage). Did anyone see Oronte Churm's blog post on archaeology back in July? The first stage (Days 1-2,190) sort of captures the feel. Instead of the whole "week's probation for a dishwashing gig," this was sort of like a decade's probation for an academic's gig. (Really, lecturer/seminar instructor would be the parts I'd be looking to do, but you have to take the whole gig on if you want to get anywhere with it.) And I've seen other people further along this process than I am. Some have done fabulously with it, and some... seem to have not. I suppose that's life, but it seems that there's fewer in the first position. (And to make it in the first position you've got to have a knack for grants, it seems - never one of my strong points.)
"Me," ultimately, is the final word to consider here. I just didn't see me in PhD anymore. (It probably doesn't help that the lyrics to the Beastie Boys' "Dr. Lee, PhD" are pretty garbled. How could you fail me like this now, pop culture?) I simply didn't want to be defined by what I did anymore - or, rather, what I was aspiring to do. I suppose there's many things I'll still be defined by, but that's neither here nor there, and having one less major definer will provide me with a better focus for my life as I live it. And it's fairly unlikely that I'd manage to purge the verbal tendencies that I've acquired over these past few years, so my students will likely continue to have to ask me to re-word questions that are phrased over their heads. (I remain unapologetic about that, except when my phrasing is tortured and incomplete. Except for in this post - some of these issues and words can only be approached poetically, even if it's bad poetry. As long as it's not as purple as the patriotic doggerel that J.V. introduced in seminar...)
So what can readers of this take? Well, take whatever you want. Even though most of the readers will be linked from my Facebook page - a pretty diverse crowd - I'm really only assuming that colleagues will have read this. For my colleagues, I don't think of this decision as the end of our collegiality (though I'd really rather just say that it's friendship). There's no way to excise the history, let alone historiography, from my thought patterns, and it's not as though I'm renouncing anyone here. We'll likely not run into each other at conferences now, though, but you're always welcome to come and visit, just as I hope to still be able to visit people in Ontario. (I'm sure that wine tourists will be the most likely visitors, naturally.) Your friendship, advice, help, and conviviality has been dearly appreciated over the years. I hope that the students I help at the high school level will be better prepared for the university courses in which you'll encounter them, or at least to act like decent, thoughtful citizens who don't take umbrage at the traditional list of "OMG the things these professors study on taxpayer money" titles at Congress time in June.
I nearly wrote earlier today that "It is with regret that I announce" this decision, but I quickly deleted that. I don't regret this decision, but it was not an easy decision to come to. It took a lot of thought and reflection for me to arrive at this point, but here it is. I remember a discussion with a friend in the teacher program at UBC about our future education options, and he argued that the key thing is to aim to be an intellectual rather than an academic if you're going on with further studies. That one always stayed with me. I'd like to think that I've started on that path, but I know that it's a lifetime of study. It might seem odd to some that this self-defined lifetime path is the better one than a five-to-seven year course of study, but it makes perfect sense to me.
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