Culture
Culture
Protect me from what I have
Text artist Jenny Holzer explores language pushed to its limits at DHC
After immersing herself in themes of brutality, oppression, and violence for almost 40 years, conceptual artist Jenny Holzer decided to stop writing. Research into various gruesome stories had come to disgust her. Now her work is comprised solely of the...
Beggar's Banquet
Banquets on the grass
Exploring the picnic potential of Montreal’s public spaces
My friend and I mounted our bicycles one sunny summer morning, bought a baguette ($2.50, Premiere Moisson, 860 Mont-Royal), half a chicken ($7.50, Romados, 115 Rachel E.), an avocado, cherry tomatoes, and three cans of Santa Cruz Ginger Ale ($5.05,...
Culture
Having your kale and eating it too
Community garden invites local restaurants for a cookout cook-off
Urban agriculture is becoming ever more popular as people realize how easy it actually is. To raise student awareness of the possibilities of gardening in the city, Santropol Roulant – a community-based and volunteer-run organization which uses the power of...
Culture
Montreal Pride 2010
The Pride Parade in pictures
The annual Pride Parade, which made its way down René Lévesque toward the Gay Village on August 15, 2010.
Culture
Osheaga: Pretty Fucking Good After All
A good portion of Osheaga meant getting a sunburn while standing in the middle of this immense dusty lot, eating some free corporate snack. “You are a true homie,” I said to one guy as he gave my friend Erin...
Culture
Festival International de Jazz de Montréal
The Jazz Festival in pictures
A slideshow of the annual Jazz Festival which took place June 25 to July 6, 2010.
Culture
Little shop of wonders
Mile End gallery space defies easy categorization
Few dare venture outside its confining grasp. With sustenance and classes so close, the tempting allure of campus subdues the lazy student. But something beckons from the stretches of Mile End, a cause for exploration and intrigue. Unknown to the...
Culture
Looking back at a year in McGill theatre
Players’ and TNC execs reminisce and talk about the future
Your first memories of student theatre might involve hand-crafted costumes and some dated, grainy home videos you’d rather not share. At McGill, though, you can be thankful you’ve got student theatre at a more advanced production level. Though there may...
Culture
The myth of the movie red man
Cree filmmaker Neil Diamond’s Reel Injun takes an incisive look at 100 years of misrepresentation
“I am an Injun, a Cree filmmaker who grew up in one of the most isolated native communities on earth.” These are the opening words from the Reel Injun, Neil Diamond’s documentary film about the portrayal of native peoples in...
Culture
An ear to the past
“Text in Textile” weaves a holistic portrait of the immigrant experience
You probably have a lonely VHS cassette dwelling in your dresser drawer, abandoned along with other artifacts of the past. Once the mightiest transmitter of entertainment, the cassette tape now seems all but obsolete. But in her most recent exhibition,...
Culture
We’re losing our lit mags
Recent changes to Canadian Heritage funding threaten the future of our nation’s literature
It’s hard to think of a Canadian writer who didn’t get his or her start in a small literary magazine. Up-and-coming writers from P.K. Page to Yann Martel found a venue for their early works in lit mags alongside established...
Culture
Entering life’s doldrums
Richard Greene’s latest collection finds the established Canadian poet coming to terms with mid-life.
From Matthew Arnold’s “Dover Beach” to Virginia Woolf’s The Waves, 20th-century British literature has been rich with comparisons between life and the changing rhythms of the sea. These metaphors – which present life as a force that undulates unexpectedly between...
Culture
Kurelek’s Canadiana
Looking back to a Manitoban master for a vision of national identity
Anything I could ever hope to say about Canada, my native and newly beloved country, is expressed a thousand times better by William Kurelek’s paintings. I don’t know of any Canadian painter who has created as intelligent and nuanced a...
Culture
The Internet eats itself
“The Betweeners” locates the hidden links of online networking
Correction appended Artist and self-proclaimed “cultural hacker” Ian Wojtowicz approaches digital art from the perspective of art history, creating works that go from gallery space to cyberspace. His projects have included “Nation.1” – a conceptual, online-only country governed by children...
Culture
The last word in Canadian stereotypes
The closing ceremonies did a disservice to our cultural identity
If it hadn’t been for the closing ceremonies of the 2010 Vancouver Olympics, I’d probably be somewhere between St. Henri and McGill right now yelling “CANADA” with the lungs of a Viking on fire. Let me back up and...