Just got an interesting announcement through the grapevine seeking audio describers for live theatre, music and dance. According to the audition call,
Audio Description (AD) has been around in the US since the early 1980’s. It is not sign interpreting. It is not a play-by-play analysis of an event. It is an art of creating a visual picture through words. It enables a blind patron the opportunity to see the show with everyone else and gives them the ability to come to their own conclusions about what is happening on stage along with everyone else.
Basically, it looks like two community groups, Creative Trust and Picasso Pro, have gotten funding from Sun Life Financial to "initiate a communications access program for Blind, Deaf, Low-Vision and Hard of Hearing audiences wishing to attend the performing arts on an ongoing basis."
Sounds like a nice cause... If you're interested in training to be an audio describer, deadline is January 25 to apply. See the full info after the jump.
Image of Moataz Nasr's 2001 Cairo Biennale piece An Ear of Mud, Another of Dough from Nasr's website
Picasso PRO in collaboration with Creative Trust
Audition Call for Trainees!
Would You Like to Become a Professional Audio Describer
for Live Theatre, Music and Dance?
What is Audio Description?
Audio Description (AD) has been around in the US since the early 1980’s. It is not sign interpreting. It is not a play-by-play analysis of an event. It is an art of creating a visual picture through words. It enables a blind patron the opportunity to see the show with everyone else and gives them the ability to come to their own conclusions about what is happening on stage along with everyone else. The Describer’s goal is to be unobtrusive and use vivid words to give the most direct description of the action of the performance, transmitted through a wireless headset worn by the listener. It is similar to a description of a person or place that you might read in a book in which you get a picture or image in your mind of how the object or scene looks. For live theatre and movies this description is fit into a quick time period between the lines of a play or film. It can also be used to describe concerts, dance performances any other live event or in conjunction with ‘touch tours’ of an art or history museum, zoo or aquarium.
Audition and Training Schedule
An Auditions Committee will select six to eight individuals to take Toronto’s inaugural training with audio describer and trainer Deborah Lewis, based on Auditions to be held between February 10 and 28, 2010. The three-day training will take place in late March 2010. Confirmed dates for Auditions and the Training will be announced by the end of January. Auditioners and Trainees will receive all pertinent materials and details prior to their scheduled sessions.
The Commitment
If selected for training you are expected to:
Complete the 3 day training with 100% attendance
Complete several hours of volunteer practicum with Picasso PRO
Participate in the pilot phase of the program as a paid describer by describing 1-3 professional productions by Creative Trust participating companies
Continue to meet with our AD Describers Circle for counsel, professional development and to help us evaluate and continue the program in Toronto
Offer your AD services professionally in an ongoing capacity
The Sun Life Financial Arts Access Program
Creating communications access to theatre, dance and other performance arts for Blind, Low Vision, Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing audiences
Who Are We?
Picasso PRO is a long-term project formed to facilitate genuine opportunity and inclusion for Deaf and disabled artists and audiences in the performing & media arts. Creative Trust provides financial and planning support to Toronto’s theatre, music and dance companies so they can flourish and better serve their art, audiences and community for years to come. Access is a key point of our collaboration. The Sun Life Arts Access Program is linked to Creative Trust’s larger two-year Engaging Audiences Initiative.
Who Are You?
An individual interested in and committed to learning a new professional skill and providing Audio Description services, under the auspices of Picasso PRO/Creative Trust’s 2-year Arts Access Program, made possible through the generous support of Sun Life Financial. Audio description is a professional skill and paid service in many cultural centres worldwide but is new to Toronto’s live performing arts.
Audio describers come from all quarters! You may be:
A writer, translator, wordsmith, literate language lover
An improviser, actor or other trained performer
Someone who knows, lives with and/or works with Blind/low vision individuals
A visual artist or individual with well-honed descriptive skills
A radio narrator, voice-over specialist, volunteer/professional reader for audio recorded materials
An avid theatre go-er, arts advocate, cultural worker, disability activist
An enquiring mind who wants to learn and acquire a new or second vocation
What We Need From You
1. Maximum three-page submission with basic information
Name and address with postal code
Phone number(s): home, work and/or cell
E-mail address:
Your occupation:
Your hobbies/interests/additional skills
2. Brief answers to the following questions
Why are you interested in Audio Description?
What types of events are you interested in describing?
Do you have any description experience?
Are you available to attend the Audio Description training on an afternoon, evening and weekend? Please indicate all that apply
Additional comments
3. Please send your submission as an attachment and include a brief bio note or resume
Submissions should be e-mailed to Rose Jacobson by January 25, 2010:
E-mail: jacobsonr@sympatico.ca Tel: 416-536-7522
Websites: www.picassopro.org www.creativetrust.ca
Picasso PRO/CT is generously funded through the Ontario Trillium Foundation’s Province-wide Program
Monday, January 11, 2010
Open Call: Want to be an Audio Describer for Art?
Looking Forward To: Radiant Dark at Commerce Court
One event I'm looking forward to this month is Radiant Dark, a themed show of contemporary design objects that runs from January 21 to 24. The show, which I think is in its third incarnation this year, is organized by the super CanCon design store MADE.
One thing that will make this edition of Radiant Dark particularly interesting is its move from a trendy Queen West location to the suit-and-tie-land of Commerce Court, located in Toronto's financial district. Appropriately, MADE has themed the show this year on "Assets & Values."
Besides the promise of great objects, I'm really curious to see how the show curators will manage the exhibition design in this difficult space. I'm also excited that the location of this show will bring a promising art and design show to audiences who don't usually seek it out. You can go here to RSVP for the opening night reception on January 20 and find out more about the program, which includes designer talks on January 24.
Image of one of Laura McKibbon's ceramic pieces from her website, Cul de Sac. McKibbon is one of the artists/designers included in Radiant Dark.
Rolly's Garage to become Psych-Art Outpost?
Located on the ever-more-contentious Ossington Avenue strip in Toronto--you know, where city hall ixnayed any new nightclub licences--Rolly's Garage has played host to concerts, art shows and other events over the past few years.
Now, it may be finding a new incarnation. Yesterday, Meta Gallery--which focuses on largely on outsidery psychedelic art--released an announcement that they will be moving into the Rolly's Garage space in April. This makes it the third gallery to exeunt the Distillery in the last little while.
More details are available in a helpful report at BlogTO, which notes Meta owner Jody Polishchuk's complaints about high rents at the Distillery. Granted, given the kind of niche Meta is operating in, it could well be a challenge for them to make it anywhere in the post-conceptually focused Toronto scene. (I also wonder if those who hoped for more community/event oriented solutions for the Rolly's space could be disappointed by the news.) I'll be waiting and seeing on this one.... including whether any new galleries dare move into the Distillery.
Image of Mars-1's artwork from Jonathan Levine Gallery. If Rolly's gets up to code, Mars-1 is supposed to be the first show in Meta's space there.
Thursday, January 7, 2010
Imaginus Redux? Q&A on JW Waterhouse
I'm dating myself a bit with this one, but during my first early-90s stint in university it was a yearly rite of passage to visit the Imaginus poster sale at the campus centre. (Or maybe I'm not dating myself... it seems Imaginus still turns up a few hits on the Interwebs.) In any case, one of the posters I remember selling well there was The Lady of Shallot by JW Waterhouse and related romantick images for the ladies.
In the last few years, a group of curators has tried to revamp Waterhouse's pop-slummin' image, creating an exhibition for the Royal Academy of Arts in London that travelled to the Groninger Museum in the Netherlands and is currently on at the Museum of Fine Arts in Montreal. Recently, I got to chat on the phone with one of the show curators, New York's Peter Trippi, about the aim of the exhibition. And today the interview was published in the National Post with some of those poster-sale-classic images. Here's an excerpt:
Q When this exhibition was showing in England last year, critics complained that all of Waterhouse's women look the same, and simply blur the line between art and erotica. What's your response?
A Well, I thought these critics were reading the work through the eyes of 2009, which is not fair. What a picture means to you today tells you little about what it meant in the past. And we argue in this exhibition that Waterhouse was very aware of women's power in many forms -- artistic, sexual and intellectual.
Also, this idea of Waterhouse's women looking too much the same is ludicrous when you look at other Victorian artists. Look at Rossetti, who is undisputed as a master by these same critics. He was always painting the same type of women. Granted, they're different in some ways from Waterhouse's models. But Waterhouse's women coincide greatly with our current ideal of feminine beauty. If we look at Kate Moss or others marching down the runways, Waterhouse pops up in a way that Rossetti doesn't. He was modern, and we see that reflected in fashion magazines and television today.
Q This exhibition includes a film by rock star Melissa Auf Der Maur, who carried a picture of Lady of Shalott during years of touring as a good luck charm. What circles do you think Waterhouse would move in if he was around today?
A I think Waterhouse today would run in filmmaking circles, and possibly musical ones. We see the presence of music in a lot of his pictures, and it's interesting that musicians like Rod Stewart and Andrew Lloyd Webber have bought Waterhouses.
To me each Waterhouse picture is a movie still of sorts -- some, with their dynamic angles, could easily feature George Clooney or Russell Crowe. And it's no coincidence that these types of paintings died as movies became popular. One of Waterhouse's favourite galleries was actually converted into a movie theatre when that happened.
I also think Waterhouse today, as back then, would be interested in beauty with a capital B. We see a lot of ugliness in Hollywood today --and in Chelsea galleries, for that matter. But Waterhouse was interested in people, in this other world of beauty. And I think that's still part of what draws people to him now.
Image of the Lady of Shallot from Art Blog
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
Enjoyed: Real Life and More at the Glenbow Museum
Over the holidays, I visited family in Calgary. While there, I had a chance to see the show Real Life at the Glenbow Museum. Now, it's been a long, looooooong time since I went to the Glenbow; typically when in town I've tried to hit up the commercial galleries and artist-run centres. The Glenbow just has more a reputation for historical and anthropological stuff than art stuff, a reputation further consolidated by its well-publicized and abrupt parting with contemporary-art proponent Jeffrey Spalding last year. In any case, since smaller galleries seemed to be on holiday break--and the Glenbow was hosting Real Life, comprised of some massive works by Ron Mueck, as well as work by Guy Ben-Ner, that I've never seen before--I decided to give it a whirl.
Real Life is a touring show organized by the National Gallery of Canada, so a lot of folks from coast to coast have likely seen it already. Still, I'll put my two cents in and say that I enjoyed it. This was one of those shows where supplementary material was really engaging--though the Mueck component only showed three sculptures, a vitrine of studies and (in particular) a video of Mueck at work seemed to really captivate visitors. The Ben-Ner stuff was also enjoyable, though it felt a bit too cute at times. I do envy the dude's ability to integrate his family time into his work--a nice device, that! A couple of the videos on view also have Youtube teasers:
There were a few other contemporary-art things going on at the Glenbow as well. More notes on that after the jump.
I looked at the show on Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas and thought the large manga-pictures installation looked really good. As usual, I had seen reproductions of this, but the wall-long scale worked really well in person. In terms of genre, I was reminded of one of the first big shows I ever went to see, Charlotte Salomon: Life? or Theatre? at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, another attempt (albeit waaaaaay huger) to tell a story in pages and pictures, with the result then getting splayed big on the white wall. This memory likely applies to any book-turned-to-wall-work show, but nonetheless popped up here.
Though time was tight, I also scrambled to take a look at contemporary interventions by Paul Wong and Jeff Thomas in the Glenbow's historical exhibition spaces. The historical show in question, Mavericks, is actually something I wish I had had more time to take in. For one, it really hooked me with the fact that it now plays home to Calgary's once-iconic neon Telstar Drug sign. I remember driving by this drugstore repeatedly in my teens and twenties, so it's that slightly uncanny time of life when one starts seeing things from one's youth presented as history. Ah, well. I'm glad the sign, abandoned just a couple of years ago when the drugstore closed, now has a permanent home. I have to say I also really enjoyed similarly immersive installations as a Winnipeg kid visiting the Manitoba Museum of Man and Nature--Mavericks takes a similar tack to prairie history with reconstructed storefronts, diners, signage, train cars and the like. Some might call it cheesy, but I know for a damn fact it's engaging to a lot of people.
Of course, exhibitions like Mavericks leave out a lot of historical complexity, which is why it's wise to integrate interventions from the likes of Wong and Thomas.
Wong's work, in a room adjacent to the Telstar sign, focused on Alberta's gay rodeo circuit, and juxtaposed photographs of same with rodeo bronzes from the Glenbow's collection. Though Wong's aesthetic was a bit over the top, with lots of rodeo double-entendre text scrolling across the screen, I really appreciated the artist making space for this often overlooked group, who challenge stereotypes both of Albertans and of queer culture.
As for Thomas, I've long admired his photographic projects documenting and juxtaposing representations of First Nations culture in the North American landscape. It's good to see a few of those works integrated into various locations throughout Mavericks, because First Nations history is a fraught topic, largely because of ye olde maverick-style colonization. However, I wish there had been more space to show Thomas' work on its own as well--maybe that's just because that's how I first saw Thomas' work, or maybe it's because it's work that really speaks for itself.
In any case, I hope the Glenbow welcomes more interventions of this kind--these so-called grand narratives certainly need it!
Finally, I have to make note of the Glenbow's weird internal layout, particularly the brassy, gold-tinged 70s/80s staircase, the centrepiece of which is a multi-story glass chandelier. I think this element is getting to the point of shifting potentially from "dated" to "retro", though it is far from white-cube asceticism. It actually makes me think of an hipster-glam nightclub opportunity waiting to happen, something the Glenbow could in future think about capitalizing on, perhaps, for rentals or fundraisers. After all, if we can't capitalize on weirdness, what kind of (art) mavericks are we, really?
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
More Retro Action: Delving into the CanArt Archives
With Stephen Harper proroguing our government to a standstill--over the phone, no less--it's an extra-depressing time to be in the present. Why not leap back to the past? That's something I've enjoyed doing for the past few years when it's come time to dig up some "Retro Reads" for the Canadian Art website's holiday break. I really enjoy looking through old art magazines for interesting photos and time-warp perspectives. This season, I posted three articles from the mid-1980s: an interview with Eric Fischl, a critique of the opening show at the Power Plant, and a museum policy op-ed by a guy who went on to become one of Montreal's (and Canada's) most prominent dealers. Enjoy.
Image of Robert Enright's 1985 interview with Eric Fischl from Canadian Art
Monday, January 4, 2010
Flashback to the Future: First post of 2010
How many people are teary/crabby/unpleasant/disbelieving today because vacation is over? Me too and three. But I must recall that typing is a way of burning off all the ol' nog calories that I've accumulated over the past couple of weeks. To that end, here's a couple of items by me that went up over the break:
Top 10 of 2009 at Sally McKay & Lorna Mills's blog
posted December 26
I'm so glad to be a part of this annual top 10 project. Reading everyone's picks for the year, even if they're just snarky satires, is really great fun, a reminder of all good things seen and missed.
Reviews of Michael Snow and Nothing to Declare at the Power Plant and Hinterlands at Harbourfront Centre
from January 2 National Post
An excerpt: From the return of Tut at the Art Gallery of Ontario to the remount of General Idea at the Art Gallery of York University, there was a lot of retro action in Toronto-area galleries this fall. Unusual among these was the opening of Can-Art icon Michael Snow's solo exhibition at the Power Plant. Focusing solely on works from the past 10 years, Recent Snow seems to suggest that focusing on the present can be an effective means of honoring past achievement -- no tired retreads required. More concretely, the show provides newer art viewers with a taste of why the 81-year-old Snow might be relevant decades after Walking Woman and Wavelength made their debut. There are seven works here to make the case, all involving video, and all showing off Snow's playfully uncompromising sensibility. The best-- SSHTOORRTY, That/Cela/Dat and Piano Sculpture -- show Snow in top form, slicing and dicing plot, language and sound down to their essential elements only to build them back up again. The worst -- Serve, Deserve and The Corner of Braque and Picasso Streets -- seem a bit more like MFA fodder than masterpiece material. Nevertheless, one leaves the show admiring not only Snow's longevity but also his sense of quickness, wonder and vibrancy -- qualities jaded twentysomethings could stand to learn from.
Image of the Ontario Finest Meat 2010 Calendar from oimp.ca
