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October 30, 2007 >> Is this the end for our hero??

Hi Clemensonline.com! I, Clemens, am currently thinking that I am through with you. I am wondering why I just paid $100 so that you could squat, useless, on a faraway server for yet another year. I remember that I had big plans for you, once upon a time, but things have changed since.

I am contemplating turning you into a robot-teen-disco sex fetish site.

Posted by Chris at 04:24 PM >> Commentations (0) | Permalink

October 24, 2007 >> Conferencing!

The day before I leave, the sun finally shines on Vancouver. It's saying goodbye, fuck off, remember the endless rains? They're going back to Toronto with you, packed snugly in your suitcase beside wrinkled underwear and five hundred peanut butter bar snack samples.

I also have another conference bag to add to the collection. Every conference packs up this heap of shit that they give you when you register. Usually it's a totebag full of pamphlets and information about the host city, a conference schedule and some other neat, yet ultimately useless, knick-knacks. The Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education gave me a waterproof poncho, for example. AoIR kept it simple and gave me a wallet-slash-nametag-slash-change purse. It is well understood by all parties involved that these things will never be used beyond the confines of the conference in question, but dammit we paid $250 for something. It's akin to the mentality behind buying computer software and feeling vindicated because it comes wrapped in ten billion manuals and layers of plastic wrap: you feel happy that there's something tangible there, even if it's just garbage. Bang for the buck.

The conference itself was worthwhile, I don't mind saying. Henry Jenkins. danah boyd. Ian Bogost. These are the big, sexy, academic names that I didn't talk to. I did, however, drink ten billion cups of coffee (bang for the buck!) and jitter though presentation after presentation on World of Warcraft and Second Life, two places I don't think I ever want to visit. Interesting people milled and chatted and said deep things, and I don't think I've ever thought so much about Facebook, blogs and Web 2.0. Well not from a critical perspective, anyway. My brain literally ached at the end of each day, rattled about inside my skull with a nonstop barrage of theoretical bullets and "Yes that's interesting, but what if..."s. I met scholars whose names I forget but whose articles I've read before, somewhere, off in a library or a grad lounge. They came from Sweden and MIT and South Korea, linked worldwide by this crazy little Internet thing. They gave me buttons and business cards, and I gave them pieces of lint from my jacket pocket and refilled their coffees for them.

The Internet is a wonky-ass place, full of bizarre idiosyncrasies and there are plenty of people nerdy enough to study them. I am one of those people. There is a lot of mind-time wasted on topics which really don't deserve much thought. Conclusions are reached through multi-million dollar studies which any half-sane person could've deduced from five minutes of simple observation. Things are picked apart down to their barest bones before someone wisely (and inevitably) suggests that a "holistic, multi-disciplinary approach to further study is needed." But there are also a lot of people who are out there talking to users, to industry, to critics. They're poking and prodding at problems which genuinely have some bearing on our lives and culture. The real challenge seems to be figuring out which is which; what's drek and what's advancement in thought.

Someone should Wikipedia that.

Posted by Chris at 02:05 AM >> Commentations (2) | Permalink

October 14, 2007 >> Wunderwall... bar

This is the only picture I have from Waterloo's wunderbar Oktoberfest. Sometimes it's cool to be different.

We went to a hall nobody had ever heard of, because everywhere else was sold out. We watched cougars slink and prowl through the path of (annoyed) security staff, and learned surprising secrets about who's jerked off a horse and who hasn't. And we rode a crowded bus full of ready-to-puke saucepots back to the apartment, where teenaged nerdowells were waiting behind the ice rink for a snowball fight. Oh we gave 'em one, and saved the spirit of Oktober for yet another year.

And that's that.

Hans.

Posted by Chris at 05:58 PM >> Commentations (3) | Permalink

October 13, 2007 >> White Night (Weeks Ago)

So Nuit Blanche was not very good. If you look at the official website the correct name of the event is "Scotiabank Nuit Blanche Toronto", the lameness of which I'm sure doesn't need further elaboration. But I will do it anyway, because I haven't written anything in like two weeks and my rotting fingers might become candidates for yet another wonky exhibit at next year's Nuit Blanche if I don't watch out.

If you are a rather rich corporation trying to ride the nebulous, unpredictable wave of vapid indie culture, you would do best to minimize your involvement. Sure you might think that tacking your name to Nuit Blanche at every opportunity is a rad way to get 'in' with hipsters, but mostly they will sneer and say cynical things like, "TD has a better investment portfolio." It is nice to support the arts, but the credibility of the arts lies in critical detachment from the base, material things in society (yes, the baseness which funds them). Some people might say that it's best to be up-front about corporate sponsorship, but I think ignorant bliss is way better. That way you can fool yourself into thinking that you're being all counter-culture.

Anyway Scotiabank was everywhere, but I bank with TD so I was all like WHATEVER. I had just watched two hours of hardcore lesbian pornography and art films with girls pleasuring themselves with torn up pieces of pig heart, so at least I began with the correct Patron of the Arts mentality. That seemed to be the dominant mindset of the night - twentysomething couples strolling the streets with rolled-up copies of Now magazine, culturally smug. Of course nobody seemed to be thinking about any of the stuff they saw. They just went, saw, said "Huh," and proceeded onwards. It was like Pokemon: collect them all, see every exhibit, get some good watercooler conversation for Monday.

I met up with Jen outside the United Church on Bloor, roughly half an hour after I was supposed to be there. Luckily she is just as terrible a person as I am and was also half an hour late. I lost track of time having a beer with a burlesque troupe, she was being held captive by a gigantic locust in the middle of a football field. Shit happens, but I would've really liked to see that locust.

So we went into the church and I guess it's a little bit risque to have an avant-garde fashion show in a church? That seemed to be the deal, at least, and a line of people filed docilely past the fashion models while a DJ thumped out beats from the pulpit. Wooo!

Jen's friends had a subversive mission to film a certain number of exhibits for a school assignment, so in a way we were no better than those yuppies with their Nuit Blanche catch-em-all agenda. In another way we were much sweeter, because we roared around in a giant SUV and didn't have to cram onto the streetcars like the rest of the Patrons of the Arts. Over at Trinity Bellwoods the crowds milled around the centerpiece exhibits (as dictated by Now magazine, and Eye, and the National Post). There was a stag made out of chocolate. There was also this dome which was supposed to represent the "unilateral qualities of democracy", where equality liiiiiiiiiives and reconstructing a children's playground out of neon lights is apparently a mighty advancement in human expressionism.

The bathroom at Trinity Bellwoods was locked, so I peed on the door.

On a tennis court, a tent was set up and divided in half. Upon entry every punter was told that, "Life is about choices. Make a choice." - which was another way of saying that you can either go through the door on the left or the door on the right. The left door led to a brightly lit tribal bounce-fest while the right door led to a bunch of alarm clocks on a counter and a couple of bored-looking guys taking apart a turntable. The whole exhibit was about dream versus reality. Now I don't know if this was intended, but if the party side was 'dream' then the 'reality' side looked a whole lot like what happens in a club after all the party people go home to sleep. I kind of think the effect was a mistake due to technical difficulties, that reality was supposed to perhaps be a different kind of party, but oh well. This exhibit was the only one that remotely approached genuine insight. So what did we learn? Waking up sucks.

Onwards marched the documentarians, passing some godawful karaoke and a couple of dudes working an anvil on the back of a truck. Minus one documentarian who had to go dump her girlfriend and hook up with a new girlfriend (wheee lesbians!), I was now the key grip on the project. I carried the camera past stoners, stoners playing hackeysack, stoners looking bored, stoners recharging and stoners smoking illegal drugs. I was also charged with the solemn duty of watching for rapists and, if possible, prevention of rapes.

Walking walking walking... and soft? The lane was carpeted which was nice on the feet. Unfortunately a rather inane posted explanation for why the lane was carpeted made us laugh and ruined the magic. The creators gave us some carpet of our own. I ate mine.

These people weren't really an exhibit, but they functioned very well as one. Near-naked and crucified, three young activists must've asked What Would Jesus Do? His response, they decided, would be to make a spectacle of himself while protesting nuclear energy in Canada. So that's what they did. A crowd of angry drunken libertarians gathered around them and peppered them with drunken abuse - both informed and ill-informed. "Get off the cross!" "Wind power is too expensive to be implemented on a wide scale!" That sort of thing. The lone male crucifee fought back with the weary strength of a half-dead bull calf while his associate, So Very Green Girl, sang chants of the Maori tribe to herself consolingly. The third activist was very hot and so her role was to garner the sympathy / horny male vote with her exposed midriff.

Finally we came to the Fish in the Store. This was the big ticket exhibit in most publications, so predictably folk were milling and swarming about: "Ooooh, look, fish! Omigod, there's fish in there!" Indeed there were 'fish in there', and a lobster too. Silhouettes of gigantic fish swimming past silhouettes of floating chairs. Would've been a cool sight if I had just walked down the street and happened across it, but the hype and the welling crush of humanity eager to consume art was a bit of a buzzkill.

So everywhere I hear stuff about how Nuit Blanche wasn't as good as last year, but I'm pretty sure last year was just better because it was cold and raining and hardly anybody went. The problem, my friends, is people. The solution is rat poison in the coffeemaker. Another problem is art and how you, too, can be an artist if you can make some shit and then say some pretentious shit about your shit. It's a metaphor for democracy! For homophobia! An emblematic signifier of the struggles everybody has with their dualistic nature! Blah blah blah... anyway I sound like I hated it but in fact it was entertaining to be such a critical asshole, as always.

"Why can't we just say that 'pulling a Jen' means something good? Like 'having a whole lot of fun'?"

Posted by Chris at 01:35 PM >> Commentations (3) | Permalink