The Mac

I took the bus into the city to attend Ross’s auction, where I successfully bid on two tables. I had downloaded a few This American Life podcasts onto my phone and I started listening to one of them on the bus into town--all proud of myself for being that organised. TAL was, as usual, amazing, giving a blow by blow account of how Jeff Flake navigated the Kavanaugh hearings, during which he was, for a brief period, a hero for Dems. The woman interviewing him said he isn’t particularly good at responding to, understanding, or expressing emotions. Not a great quality in a leader, if you ask me. But it makes his decision making process interesting.

In the evening I went back on the bus to town to attend the preview of an art show at The Mac. Whereas the RUA show is very traditional, the Mac features more modern work. I enjoyed it more than I expected. The artist who won the annual prize, an Austrian called Nickolaus Gansterer, drew this amazing web of symbols and arcs on a giant blackboard. He was conceiving a parallel, whimsical universe. If I had a camera with me, I would have captured the legend he provided for his symbols, which I loved. Even though I’m not artistic at all and am not at all refined or informed in my artistic tastes, I still enjoy going to shows like this because some of the things I see blow my mind. I think it’s because I'm highly linear and very literal. I don’t have the capacity to think outside the box and imagine entire new worlds the way some artists do. If the work is too abstract, it is lost on me, but if I can relate to it in some way, I often enjoy it. I guess that is why beauty is in the eye of the observer.

I don’t usually enjoy video installations but there were two I liked tonight. One was of a group of Croatian women dressed as they would have been in the early 1900s--long black skirts and shawls. Apparently many Croatian men went to South America around this time in the face of hunger and violence. The video was of the women walking back and forth on a beach, waiting for their men to return. It was very moving. (From the exhibit notes: “Using migrant and refugee stories, the work points to the human condition as fragile and susceptible to political, economic and social changes and to the sea as a space of both political and emotional significance.") The other video was of two black men in Paris. Their time was split between forlorn open spaces within high density housing complexes--probably the infamous banlieues--and the inside of an incredibly ornate palace. I found it interesting to note my thoughts as I saw them moving through these two extreme environments. From the exhibit notes: “The protagonists in Invernomuto’s films are portrayed as trapped in a loop where self-representation has been substituted by a perpetual pose for an absent audience, with a now deserted Europe acting as stage and backdrop.” What the notes make clear is that these two men are musicians and that the backdrops are treated as “bling” in a music video. I thought more about how the men felt as they walked through these different spaces--alienated? Angry? Mischievous?

Getting back to Jeff Flake--I respond to the world mostly through an emotional lens, while emotions aren’t his primary language. People are just like artists--interpreting the world in different ways, reaching different conclusions.
Nov 8