C'était un rendez-vous: Space, Speed, Mapping

HistoryPin: Giving Google Street View a Human Soul and Sense of Humour?

Arcade Fire's Nostalgia: The Past Packaged as New Age Fun with a Vintage Feel

Last month Chris Milk launched an 'interactive' video for the Arcade Fire's song "We Used To Wait."

While it has all the qualities to be the coolest thing on the planet - an interactive personalized trip into your childhood via multi-popup narratives (cool), google street view (super cool) and 2,335 likes on facebook (super cool and cutting-edge) - it's pretty much the visual version of the clunky nostalgia of the band's lyrics. 

If the polarized versions of the past and easy grabbing feelings of loss in their lyrics ("i don't want to work in a building downtown," "but in your dreams we're still screamin' and runnin' through the yard" or "all of the houses they build in the seventies finally fall") are tolerable because of the beautiful harmonies, in Milk's video it feels like a packaged rebellion (against what? time? change? suburbia?).

The plot is simple: in the pop ups trees growing through the (bad) cities our parents have built, and a runner (you) desperately tries to find his/her childhood by running away from his/her present (adulthood).

But the generic adolescent fear of change doesn't end there, the observer/main character can even send a digital message (a digital drawing/postcard from which root-like lines grow) to his/her past self (which is actually their tour).

Overall the whole thing is totally tacky. It's suppose to feel amazing;y cool and cutting edge, but it turns out ot be a bland version of what personal memories are suppose to be. Let memories run off on their own. Like Google trying to archive all knowledge, let at least memories alone (especially when google street view never gets an address perfectly enough for the thing to work).

To make your own arcade fire memories: http://www.thewildernessdowntown.com/

Curating: Within Which All Things Exist and Move

I curated an exhibit opening at Art45. Although it opens saturday, the closing party is where things will be at: October 3rd with Pop Montreal, the artists and the catalog launch. Here's the press release:

Curated by Chloé Roubert, this exhibition juxtaposes images from Jon Rafman's Google Street View series with photographic urban shots from the 1950s onwards by Gabor Szilasi. By comparing these artistic approaches to past and current public space, the exhibit touches upon ideas of urban visuality, privacy and authorship.

Rafman will be in the forthcoming exhibit Free at the New Museum in NYC, and Szilasi is a recipient of the Governor General award whose retrospective was held at the National Gallery of Canada in 2009.

The Closing Party with catalogue launch and artists present is organized in collaboration with Art Pop of Pop Montreal, on Sunday October 3rd from 3pm to 5pm.

Art45 is open Fridays and Saturdays from noon to 5pm, or on weekdays by appointment.

Art45 - Edifice Belgo Building
372 St Catherine W. #220
Montreal, Québec
art@art45.ca