Archive for the 'Web Exclusive' Category

Sad Mag: Who is Jeff Downer? What do you do?

Jeff Downer: I can’t remem­ber the last time I was bored. My favorite thing to do is to go where I have never been before. I am a pho­tog­ra­pher. But when I think of a pho­tog­ra­pher, I think of one who shoots man­i­cured fin­ger­nails on a bed of dia­monds, a freshly-washed, well groomed poo­dle, or a struc­turally accu­rate ren­der­ing of a build­ing that looms large overhead.

I use the medium of pho­tog­ra­phy to present to oth­ers what I find around me when I am haunt­ing the streets that may oth­er­wise go unno­ticed. I think if I wasn’t pho­tograph­ing, I would like to own a nick-nack shack on the side of the road, sell­ing strange odd­i­ties, hor­ri­ble cof­fee, mediocre food, smok­ing cig­a­rettes, some­where lost in the deserts of New Mexico.

SM: Why did you trans­plant to Vancouver?

JD: I moved to Van­cou­ver because the stag­nant pres­sure of the sub­urbs was too intense. In high school I spent my time doing home­work at the bus stop, scrawl­ing math­e­mat­ics — a sub­ject I dis­re­garded — using the metal pole as a sur­face to write, or read­ing Franny and Zooey for Eng­lish on the long bus ride into the city. This is also where I met some close friends, oth­ers who were just as estranged by the sub­urbs as myself who put up with the long bus ride down the high­way, through count­less strip malls, sub­ur­ban lawns, tak­ing us to the then old, defunct Wood­wards on Hast­ings. How­ever, like most Van­cou­verites I know, give me one year and I will be think­ing about leav­ing and mov­ing elsewhere.

SM: What did you shoot for Issue 9?

JD: Photographs I took when I was hitch­hik­ing across North Amer­ica, shortly after I real­ized how much a 9-to-5 was the least con­gru­ent thing I could do to myself. It was like wear­ing one of those radi­a­tion pro­tec­tive jack­ets they stick on you at the den­tists when mak­ing x-rays of your teeth; it was that heavy. The other was of a ter­rific restroom in an Elvis themed cafe, lost in the mid­dle of the high­way some­where near Hells Gate, BC, that had the kook­i­est owner ever. Imag­ine an Elvis para­pher­na­lia hoarder with two shih tzu’s that prob­a­bly hadn’t talked to a sin­gle indi­vid­ual for the bet­ter half of the morning.

SM: What do you love about photography?

JD: I want to describe the world around me, and attempt to do this through the medium of pho­tog­ra­phy. I pho­to­graph what is around me, things that are just there, things that I am inter­ested in. I like the process of tak­ing pic­tures, won­der­ing around find­ing things that catch my eye. The pho­to­graph is sec­ondary to this act of mov­ing through the world, and is sort of a doc­u­ment of this process.

SM: Do you have a favourite photo?

JD: Yes I have one, but no one will ever see it.

SM: Favourite local photographer?

JD: Besides Bryan Adams (kid­ding), has to be Tim Bar­ber, even though, he lives between Van­cou­ver and New York. His “unti­tled pho­tographs” are so allur­ing and are refresh­ing moments that loaded within the moment. Beautiful.

SM: Where can peo­ple see more of your work?

JD: If any­one is going to be in Boston, I am part of a group show open­ing Fri­day the 13th at the Pres­i­dents Gallery. I have two pub­li­ca­tions out, one called “Gol Nu Get Mote” but the first press­ing is cur­rently sold out, and a new book com­ing in May “[ver-seylz]”. I have a web­site too.

Catch Jeff’s pho­tographs in Issue 9, on stands every­where at the end of April!

Now you’ll be crav­ing strange snack foods all day. That’s okay, it prob­a­bly goes with your hang­over. For more comics, visit Monique’s web­site!

Read Part I (an inter­view with RC Wes­lowski) here.

The sec­ond annual BC Youth Poetry Slam cham­pi­onship, Hullabaloo, is com­ing to Van­cou­ver April 10–14!

The cre­ation of RC Wes­lowski and Chris Gilpin of Van­cou­ver Poetry House, Hul­la­baloo brings young slam poets from across the province together to com­pete on stage. Not a fan of reg­u­lar poetry read­ings? Don’t worry– slam poetry was actu­ally con­ceived as the answer to the bor­ing poetry recital.

As we cov­ered in the last post, there are few rules to slam poems (no props, no music, noth­ing over three min­utes) and win­ners are selected by randomly-chosen audi­ence mem­bers. That ensures each event will be unpre­dictable, excit­ing and noth­ing like the last. Don’t miss it!

The Teams:

15 teams from around the province will be com­pet­ing– one of which will be formed April 9th in the Last Chance Slam Cafe Deux Soleils, as youth ages 14–19 who are not yet reg­is­tered for Hul­la­baloo will com­pete for a spot on the Wild Card Team.

Details on the Last Chance Slam.

Pre­lim­i­nar­ies:

April 11th and 12th
The Van­cou­ver Art Gallery (750 Hornby)
4:30PM-9:30PM
Free (Details)

Finals — Individual

April 13th

The Rio (1660 E Broadway)

7:00PM-11:00PM

Details

Finals — Team

April 14

Granville Island Stage (1585 Johnston)

7:30PM-9:30PM

Details

Visit Hul­la­baloo to get your tick­ets now!

Sad Mag: Who are you?

Tim Rolls: Hi! I’m Tim Rolls, a pas­sion­ate designer, instruc­tor at Van­cou­ver Film School, and founder of Art Not Ads. We’re a col­lec­tive that works to make pub­lic space beau­ti­ful through instal­la­tions and com­mu­nity projects.

SM: What is Cap­tures about?

TR: Cap­tures is about giv­ing Mount Pleas­ant res­i­dents a chance to tell sto­ries about their com­mu­nity through pho­tographs. Each par­tic­i­pant becomes a thread in a visual tapes­try that shows the diver­sity of the neigh­bour­hood. The exhibit allows vis­i­tors to cre­ate their own sto­ries as they con­nect with the pho­tos, and we hope it helps paint a bet­ter pic­ture of what the com­mu­nity is about.

TR: After hear­ing about the Neigh­bour­hood Small Grants pro­gram, I started research­ing com­mu­ni­ties, how they’re defined, and what really makes one. It seemed every­one had their own response, so it became the per­fect sub­ject to explore for the project. I went to col­lege with Celia, and we’ve worked on one major project called Sol­stice, for the Illu­mi­nate Yale­town fes­ti­val in 2011. I had worked with Matt in a stu­dio capac­ity before, and when I told him about the project, he was eager to help in any way he could. All three of us had our own strengths that con­tributed to mak­ing this hap­pen, and it was great to see it unfold that way.

TR: Our ini­tial grant was through the Van­cou­ver Foundation’s Neigh­bour­hood small grants pro­gram. As the project evolved and grew, we got a print spon­sor to help with the grow­ing final pro­duc­tion costs. They fell through at the last minute, so we turned to crowd fund­ing through Indiegogo to make the project hap­pen. The response was phe­nom­e­nal, every­one was very sup­port­ive, we even had local blogs and pub­li­ca­tions help­ing to get the word out. We raised over $2100 in about 2 weeks, sur­pass­ing our goal.

TR: We wanted to give par­tic­i­pants a start­ing point, to get them think­ing about the things that make their com­mu­nity great. Even for myself if worked well, because the list would stick in my sub­con­scious, and I’d see some­thing while walk­ing around and think “OH, that’s per­fect!” I think that’s the fun part, like urban trea­sure hunting.

TR: We tried not to fil­ter the images, these are other people’s ideas, and it was impor­tant not to cen­sor them. There were a cou­ple that we had to take out, due to being really low qual­ity and hard to make out. I was def­i­nitely sur­prised by the num­ber of bicy­cle pho­tos… this com­mu­nity really loves their bikes!

TR: My secret spot, the climb­ing tree. It’s this enor­mous, beau­ti­ful old conifer on top of a hill. It looks nor­mal from far away, but you can pull the branches apart and inside is a clear­ing where the branches are all worn smooth from years of climb­ing. About halfway up is a net installed like a ham­mock, where you can lay and see all of down­town and the whole north shore. It’s pretty magical.

TR: Cap­tures grew so much from our ini­tial con­cept, which was based around dis­trib­ut­ing dis­pos­able cam­eras to a small group of res­i­dents. It would be great to take it even fur­ther, maybe fea­tur­ing entire cities. With the inter­net and dig­i­tal pho­tog­ra­phy being so ubiq­ui­tous, I’d love to see where we can go with it.

TR: I really love the work Alex Beim and his crew at Tan­gi­ble Inter­ac­tion are doing. They’re great guys, too. They did a tem­po­rary instal­la­tion dur­ing the Olympics called “Seed of Truce” that allowed par­tic­i­pants to write their thoughts on a “seed” that con­tained an LED light. The seeds were shot up into the air and flut­tered down into a net, where they col­lected and grew as more peo­ple con­tributed. Like a mod­ern wish­ing well of good intentions.

SM: Do you think Van­cou­ver is No Fun City or is it a good home for cre­ative peo­ple and communities?

TR: I moved here from Edmon­ton about 3 years ago, and it was def­i­nitely the cre­ative com­mu­ni­ties and energy that drew me here. There is also a very money-driven, busi­ness ori­ented side to the city, but what­ever you’re into artis­ti­cally, there’s a com­mu­nity for it here if you look for it. Toss in the moun­tains and ocean for great energy and inspi­ra­tion, and you have an amaz­ing place for cre­ative peo­ple to live.

Check out Cap­tures, now exhibit­ing on the cor­ner of Kingsway and E Broad­way, across from Our Town!

To fol­low the work of Art Not Ads and get involved in their next project, find them on Twit­ter & Face­book

Vancouver’s favourite sto­ry­telling night returns on Thurs­day, March 29th, with an evening of sto­ries about bor­der cross­ing. With our upcom­ing Issue 9 themed around geo­graphic bor­ders and iden­tity bound­aries, well, we’re pretty excited to hear what they have to say.

Rain City Chron­i­cles has been enthralling audi­ences since Decem­ber 1st, 2009, when their first show was staged at Lit­tle Moun­tain Gallery. Fea­tur­ing speak­ers from all walks of life shar­ing five-minute sto­ries loosely orga­nized around the theme and punc­tu­ated by musi­cal per­for­mances, the nights are enter­tain­ing for their unpre­dictabil­ity, hon­esty and inti­macy. Rain City Chron­i­cles is the cre­ation of two ladies, Lizzy Karp and Karen Pinchin, who impres­sively orches­trate a flaw­less, uniquely enter­tain­ing event every two months, wran­gling new sto­ry­tellers and win­ning larger audi­ences each time.

This com­ing Thurs­day promises to be spec­tac­u­lar as usual, with musi­cal per­for­mances from The Ruf­fled Feath­ers and Christo­pher Smith. Sto­ry­tellers are yet to be announced, but the mys­tery is part of the fun. Bring your friends or come alone and make some new ones– but don’t miss it!

Rain City Chron­i­cles: Cross­ing Bor­ders
Thurs­day, March 29th, 2012
The West­ern Front (303 East 8 Avenue)
6:30 PM
Tick­ets

For more, visit Monique’s web­site!

There are a few sim­ple rules to slam poems, in case you were won­der­ing: no props, no cos­tumes, no musi­cal instru­ments, and noth­ing over three min­utes. Beyond that, any­thing goes. “Some­one could do a haiku, or a hip-hop piece, a rant, a lyri­cal love poem, or a mix of com­edy and poetry,” says RC Wes­lowski, founder of the Van­cou­ver Youth Slam and c0-creator of Hul­la­baloo. “By def­i­n­i­tion, there isn’t really a type of poem called a slam poem.”

So what dis­tin­guishes a slam poem from the gar­den vari­ety? Appar­ently, it’s not about the poet so much as the audi­ence. Wes­lowski is wary of lay­ing down any def­i­n­i­tions (“there’s a bit of an argu­ment between the poetry slam cir­cles”), but tells me, “What the poetry slam does is encour­age poets to engage with the audi­ence. At the Youth Slam we have poets get­ting up and talk­ing about the teach­ers’ strike– they are talk­ing about stuff that’s rel­e­vant to an audi­ence, and rel­e­vant to their audi­ence, the youth of today.  You’re not just dong it for your­self, you’re try­ing to avoid being self-indulgent and appeal­ing to your own tastes, you’re attempt­ing to make a con­nec­tion with the audience.”

A lit­tle his­tory of the slam poem.

The ori­gin of slam poetry dates back to the 1980s, when Amer­i­can poet Marc Smith realised how bad poetry read­ings could be. “He was going to read­ings and poets were just get­ting up and read­ing into their papers, and not pay­ing atten­tion to the audi­ence,” says Wes­lowski, “And they were bor­ing the peo­ple who were there.” He devised a dif­fer­ent method that would keep the audi­ence inter­ested and pro­vide a new chal­lenge for the poets.

A poetry slam rev­o­lu­tion­izes not only the poetry read­ing, but the uni­ver­sal com­pe­ti­tion met­ric of a scor­ing sys­tem. Instead of experts or trained indi­vid­u­als, the judges are five audi­ence mem­bers, picked at ran­dom. They get cards with scores from 0 to 10 (10 remains the high­est score) and vote for their favourites based on what­ever cri­te­ria they decide mat­ters, be it style or content.

“Every­body acknowl­edges that it is a gim­mick, and it’s entirely arbi­trary, because the next night there’s five dif­fer­ent judges and the poem that won the night before won’t win. That’s why we encour­age peo­ple to expe­ri­ence in style, in writ­ing and per­for­mance, and not to talk it too seri­ously. Only take seri­ously work­ing on your skills as a writer and per­former,” explains Weslowski.

Hul­la­baloo and the Van­cou­ver Youth Slam

Wes­lowski has been men­tor­ing young poets for years, includ­ing as the founder of the Youth Poetry Slam (A Van­cou­ver Poetry House project), now in its fifth year. The Poetry Slam con­venes every fourth Mon­day at Cafe Deux Soleil for a slam. He also works with Word­play, another Van­cou­ver Poetry House pro­gram, that sends poets into schools to do poetry work­shops with stu­dents and intro­duce them to slam poetry.

A few years ago, he and fel­low Van­cou­ver Poetry House mem­ber Chris Gilpin were watch­ing Chicago high school poetry-slam com­pe­ti­tion doc­u­men­tary Louder Than a Bomb and decided to emu­late it in Van­cou­ver. The result was Hul­la­baloo, a com­pe­ti­tion invit­ing teams from around BC to com­pete in Van­cou­ver and as a by-product build­ing a provin­cial com­mu­nity of young poets. Impres­sive for any new arts ven­ture, the first year was a suc­cess, which Wes­lowski attrib­utes partly to the “crit­i­cal mass of inter­est” gen­er­ated by the Van­cou­ver Youth Slam and Wordplay.

What does Wes­lowski hope the com­peti­tors, from Grades 9–12 around the province, will get out of the expe­ri­ence? “They’ll be encour­aged to con­tinue their writ­ing. To know they have lots of peers within the province who are into the same thing that they are. If you’re into poetry and writ­ing and books, you can often feel alone and iso­lated, like a big geek. And maybe you are a big geek, but then you come to this event and find out that there are other geeks just like you out there, and they’re totally into poetry as well.

“I hope they’ll keep on writ­ing and be inspired by the other poets, the fea­tured per­form­ers. And they’ll know that if they chose to, this is some­thing they could keep on doing. This is some­thing they could do with their lives.”

And what of the slam poetry neo­phyte who attends Hul­la­baloo– what can they hope to get out of it? “They’ll get to see that the kids of today are able to speak for them­selves. They’re smart and artic­u­late and they know what’s on their minds. They don’t need inter­preters to speak for them. The audi­ence can get inspired and feel a sense of pride about kids. It’s great. That’s kind of what we’re in it for—all the mushy reasons.”

Sounds pretty good to us!

Check back at the end of March for full details about Hul­la­baloo 2012, or for info and advance tick­ets to the semi-finals and finals now, visit their website!

Don’t worry, chil­dren! Nana is back with guid­ance for all your prob­lems and wor­ries. And if that doesn’t help, there’s always liquor.

On to the questions!

My boyfriend skipped Valentine’s Day alto­gether. He thinks it’s a made-up hol­i­day designed to sell peo­ple things, which might be true, but is it so wrong to expect him to show some sign of love on a hol­i­day ded­i­cated to show­ing signs of love? I feel resentful.

well dar­ling, first i must ask, does he show “signs of love” the rest of the year? is it choco­lates and flow­ers that makes you feel loved? i mean really, there are so many rea­sons to feel resent­ful  in this life, don’t let this one be one of them. now if he doesn’t give you the choco­lates and flow­ers that you love on your birth­day, then i would worry and look else­where for love!

if valen­tine day is that impor­tant to you and not to him, cover your­self  in choco­late and make­him eat it all off… pooff, no more resent­ment!
I am in a new rela­tion­ship with some­one who was ini­tially more into kink than I was. I am admit­tedly vanilla. As we’ve been try­ing more things (bondage, ropes, spank­ing etc) it’s becom­ing more obvi­ous that I am REALLY into kink—there are some­things I’d like to try, but I don’t think she’d be into. Advice?

mmmm, admit­tedly vanilla… really? already tried bondage, spanking, ropes.… i want to know what the “etc” were.

darling, though i would love to rad­i­cal­ize vanilla, you prob­a­bly never were, “vanilla.” i’d say you were at least neopoli­tan.  just enjoy all the kinky sex you are hav­ing in your new rela­tion­ship, and please dar­lings, be safe, it’s all fun and games until some­one loses some­thing some­where dan­ger­ous, or loses an eye. and by the way, you might be under­es­ti­mat­ing your new mate, why would they not want to do some other new things with you, to you? every­thing tells me you will be pleas­antly sur­prised! ENJOY!

I am one of those unfor­tu­nate peo­ple who moved across the coun­try for their sig­nif­i­cant other. Now that we’ve bro­ken up I feel like crap because all of our friends were mutual (as in his). Should I give up my job/flat etc and just move home?

oh sweet soul, shit hap­pens as they say in eng­lish… firstly i am sorry and hope that you do what is best for your emo­tional and
phys­i­cal health. how­ever, what we do in these sit­u­a­tions can go a long way in this life. we can either make lemon­ades out of lemons, or make everyone’s (espe­cially our own) lives as com­pli­cated and painful as possible.

so, how cru­cial is your job to your future and present? is your flat a rental? is the breakup is final? depend­ing on your answers, you might want to try a third place, not home, not across the coun­try, but a third place where you can make your own friends and break old pat­terns instead of hearts.

you will be happy again, choose wisely, this will change your life for­ever! good luck darling.

I just started dat­ing a girl who I really like. About a week ago I met some of her best friends for the first time, and one of them is a girl I had pre­vi­ously had really hot, no-strings-attached sex with . It was awk­ward because we pre­tended not to know each other, rather than explain our con­nec­tion. Now what? Do I admit that we do in fact know each other, and tell my girl­friend how? Or do I keep silent and hope the other girl does too?

that’s a good one. it is inter­est­ing that you both pre­tended not to know eachother… mmm… why  the mys­tery unless you are afraid of some­thing or someone’s reac­tion. fear is never a good thing in my book, unless it enhances your present sex life with your girlfriend. if your sex life and rela­tion­ship is respect­ful and real­is­tic, you will already know what tramps you’ve been in your pasts and move on!

i would say tell your girl­friend about the hot sex you had with one of her friends, before some­one else does… because one thing about women sweet­heart, WE TALK, and that can be more dan­ger­ous and com­pli­cat­ing then not telling. of course, then have the hottest, strings-and-ropes-attached sex with her… good luck!

Send your ques­tions to Nana at asknana@sadmag.ca!

Rye­berg Curated Video is a Toronto event fea­tur­ing writ­ers dis­cussing their favourite YouTube videos. In March, its first show ever is hap­pen­ing out­side of Toronto– right here in Vancouver!

The line-up is great, with fea­tured writ­ers and web cura­tors Char­lie Demers (author of Van­cou­ver Spe­cial); Miriam Towes (author of A Com­pli­cated Kind­ness); Michael Turner (author of Hard Core Logo); Stephen Osborne (pub­lisher of Geist Mag­a­zine)

Don’t miss it!

Rye­berg Live Van­cou­ver
The Wal­dorf (1489 E Hast­ings)
March 6th, 2012
Doors at 7PM, show at 8PM
$12 in advance, $10 at the door (includes a copy of Geist)
Full details at Ryeberg.com