Hashemi drew inspiration for her exhibition from the historical and political situation surrounding the volatile period between the 1953 coup d’état and the 1979 revolution in her native Iran. After voicing her dissident political opinions, Hashemi was expelled from the College of Fine Arts of the University of Iran and compelled to leave the country in 1984.
Hashemi advocates and writes about the power of mass activism in movements across the globe, having immersed herself in a group of political activists opposed to the Pahlavi monarchy as a young adult in Iran. As an activist, observer, and victim during these decades of political upheaval, Hashemi created critically retrospective pieces in “The Idea of Freedom.” They look back at a past that is littered with the deception and corruption of state authorities – the American and British Governments, the Iranian Shah, and the (then) new leader of the Islamic Revolution, Ruhollah Khomeini. Since a lot of the pieces actually involve writing, “The Idea of Freedom” represents the literal process of rewriting an otherwise filtered history, while also exposing the near impossibility of doing so.

Can we unearth the truth behind a history that has been strained clean? Can we rectify its lies, expose its secrets, and ultimately bring justice to the deserving citizens of Iran? These are the questions that run through the entire exhibition like an invisible string, tying each work to the next. Hashemi insists that these questions – knotted with lies and secrets – must be picked at and unravelled.

As you walk inside the exhibition space, Ephemeral Monument immediately commands your attention. The performance video installation shows Hashemi wearing black, writing archival texts of poetry and politics in Farsi on a massive black chalkboard – only to erase and rewrite, repeating the process over and over again. As she is swallowed up in a sea of black, the viewer is left to wonder, what is she mourning for?

The caption of the work includes a quote by the founder of one of Iran’s earliest guerilla movements, Amir Parviz Pouyan, who claims, “How can one who is absolutely powerless face absolute power and think about freedom?”

Considering the inclusion of Pouyan’s quote to describe Ephemeral Monument, the woman in black may very well be mourning for the power and freedom to express herself, a loss that Hashemi is all too familiar with herself. The performance video manifests this loss through the ritualistic act of erasing the chalk writings on the board. Ultimately, what can be seen as the revolutionary or dissident aspect of the work is the impossibility of complete erasure. Try as she may, the woman is incapable of fully erasing the previous markings on the board. History is never a tabula rasa but is tainted with the stains of its forgotten victims’ blood and sweat. Next to the video projection stands the actual board that Hashemi used for her performance.

Pathology of an Ouster is a mural installation in which several large canvases contain rewritings, only recently rediscovered, of a report originally recorded by CIA agent Donald Wilber during the 1953 coup d’état. Wilber’s involvement is significant since he helped draft the plans for the coup. The dozen or so mural canvases are striking, making the texts seem like they have been scratched off of their pastel surfaces and alluding to the notion of digging out a long-buried text.

The multi-disciplinary collection of works that comprises “The Idea of Freedom” channels the anger and cynicism of those such as Hashemi who have been deceived by their nation’s political authorities. This anger and cynicism, however, is only effectively conveyed by Ephemeral Monument, whereas the other works convey Hashemi’s original motto more passively. Nonetheless, the exhibition is worth visiting for the simple reason that, through art, she addresses a history that remains rich, complex, perplexing, and constantly evolving.

“The Idea of Freedom” will be running until December 14 at MAI (Montréal, arts interculturels), (3680 Jeanne-Mance).

The post Political poetry appeared first on The McGill Daily.

India’s largest – but not its only – film industry churns out the largest number (read, hundreds) of films annually for the whole country. Films are mostly in Hindi, with increasingly common infusions of English dialogue, reflecting the official status of both these languages.

From the start, Bollywood cinema has been characterized by its housing of sub-genres within an overarching dominant genre: the musical. In other words, thrillers, rom-coms, melodramas, and others are mostly, if not all, subjected to the song-and-dance convention of the musical. The tropes of this genre are so deeply ingrained into the fabric of Bollywood cinema that the term ‘musical’ is hardly ever used to denote a distinct category. Accordingly, India’s music industry is closely tied to its main film industry, and a singer or composer’s shot at fame and odds of success are determined by their involvement in film; the bigger the budget of the film, the better.

In spite of the abundance of presumably distinct sub-genres, Bollywood films often follow a familiar structure. Hence, the oft-heard dismissal of Bollywood films as formulaic and cliché by those who might lay claim to more refined or experimental tastes. There may be truth to the claim that the industry’s formulaic melodramatic acting and cheesy dance sequences border on the ridiculous. A typical Bollywood plot more-or-less sticks to an over-the-top structure such as the following: orphan-turned-vagabond avenges a murdered loved one and rediscovers a long lost parent or sibling. To add to this winning formula, it is quasi-sacramental that Bollywood plots be infused with a romantic twist. In fact, characterizing a Bollywood film as a romance is just as redundant as calling it a musical – it is just another pillar of the genre.

In spite of their widespread popularity, Bollywood films can be hard to digest academically, with their commonly repeated plot formulas and lack of experimentation in form and structure. Given this seeming lack of substance, the industry is hardly given credit as an artistic medium by film critics. What scholarly minds may fail to notice, however, is the seemingly contradictory function of the industry. While they can serve as mouthpieces for traditional, conservative values, Bollywood films also have the capacity to challenge taboos. Kuch Kuch Hota Hai (1998) and Anari (1959) follow characters who undergo a revelation of their true selves – be it a obnoxious tomboy turned sari-clad potential wife such as in Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, or the acquittal of an honest man falsely accused of murder in Anari. Beneath the fantastical, escapist entertainment surface of the Bollywood ‘genre’ where actors often sing and dance outside the diegesis of the film, lies cinema’s pivotal role as a regulator of society’s values. Bollywood films often appear cheesy and melodramatic to the western eye, but the cheese and the melodrama function to produce the lulling effect that cinema as a whole has always been accused of. To its native viewers, the Indian film industry is much loved and prided for valid reasons. Amidst a history of political turmoil, widespread poverty and civil wars, emerges an artistic realm that reminds its society of the value of life. It projects this value on big screens across the nation, to impress, dazzle, and ultimately melt away the stress of everyday survival. While you may not be enlightened by the moralistic ending of a Bollywood film or provoked into analyzing its not so out of the ordinary cinematic techniques, there is no question that you won’t be veritably amused by it.

In other words, Bollywood cinema reflects and reinstates the importance of traditional culture while simultaneously exposing its cracks and fissures. This subtle critique of Indian society is an inherent philosophy within Bollywood, and the films included in the Cinema du Parc retrospective exemplify this, telling the stories of people who dare to deviate from the status quo.

The post Bollywood 1, film critics 0 appeared first on The McGill Daily.

The entire exhibition is unique in that it is architecturally structured to resemble a labyrinth of multi-media artworks, ranging from 17th century European paintings to 20th century photographs and more recent video installations. As I was directed to the second floor of the museum, where I was told Grasso’s exhibition would be displayed, I hopelessly searched the entire floor for a couple of rooms with Grasso’s works on neat display. As one of the security guards led me past a few of these conventional display rooms (albeit, featuring other artists’ works), he halted at the sinister, poorly-lit entrance of my destination, and with a smirk, informed me that finding the exhibition and navigating through it wasn’t easy.

Reflecting back, I find it telling that the security guard behaved almost like a gate-keeper, a common trope in old legends, because Grasso’s exhibition captures the very essence of delving into a myth, where our sense of spatial and temporal orientation dissolves into irrelevance. This is emphasized by the ostensibly deliberate omission of information cards that are usually placed next to museum artworks to inform the viewer of the title, date, and medium of the work they are observing. Take the video installations as an example. On Air featured footage, mainly in extremely wide shots, of a near-deserted location in an unspecified desert occupied by vast dunes of rubble and dirt. The tiny bodies of vehicles and people that move amidst the space are mere specks – it is the dunes that command our attention.

The Silent Movie is a video installation that explores a large military surveillance dome in the middle of the sea. As it directs us through the cracks and crevices of the dome and glides through the smooth metal walls that shield it, the camera curiously lingers on a wide shot of the moving sea, or on a colony of spiders populating a corner of the dome, to remind us, as the rest of Grasso’s exhibition does, of the sublime and daunting presence of nature. One installation quite literally spells it out, where large, neon-lighted letters that read “Visibility is a Trap” are lined against a wall.

A theme explicitly (and successfully, in my humble opinion) explored in Grasso’s work is that there is always more than meets the naked eye, and humankind has been guilty of claiming authority over what it sees. This is addressed in the windows of displayed artworks, where each piece – be it footage, painting or sculpture – is stationed behind a concrete wall, one that segregates and dictates an appropriate distance between observer and artwork. With neat square windows cut out to allow us to observe them, Grasso appears to be invoking the notion of how controlled visibility has infiltrated various institutions, including the realm of art. In other words, if these artworks are truly oeuvres in possession of admirable qualities, the concrete wall and cut-out windows prevent us from appreciating these qualities. Instead, we are forced to view them from a controlled distance.

The most memorable piece was, to me, the most banal-looking. It consisted of neon-lit shapes of stars on the wall, forming what I was later told was the constellation of Orion, modelled on a preserved sketch of the constellation by Galileo. Beside it stood a small TV screening the televised footage of Pope John Paul II issuing a public apology on behalf of the Catholic Church for having condemned Galileo to heresy, 400 years after the fact. As I stood utterly perplexed in what was the smallest room in this labyrinth of an exhibition, one of the security guards crept up behind me and quoted a critic (unbeknownst to me) who claimed that it took the Church a lot longer to recognize its misstep than it does for the light of a star to travel to our eyes.

Laurent Grasso’s Uraniborg runs until April 28 at the The Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal at 185 Ste. Catherine. 

The post Disorientation in neon and concrete appeared first on The McGill Daily.

As this music festival nears its seventh birthday, it seems that the name ‘Osheaga’ has permanently entered Montreal’s music vocabulary and is now walking the fine line to becoming a summertime cliché. With the promise of offering a “world-class European-style” event, the Osheaga music and arts festival stands as the largest festival of its kind in Canada. It will be taking place amongst the stunning greenery of Montreal’s Parc Jean-Drapeau on Île Sainte-Hélène.

This year’s headlining artists span a spectrum of musical genres. From indie rock to hip hop, the 2013 lineup brings together numerous favourites from around the globe, making it surely impossible to see it all. Headliners include The Cure, Phoenix, Mumford and Sons, Beach House, New Order, Vampire Weekend, and Kendrick Lamar, with many more such as Florence and the Machine and The Weeknd likely to be announced in the coming weeks.

Fresh and local bands not to be missed include electronic music group A Tribe Called Red, who blend instrumental hip hop, reggae, and dubstep-influenced dance music with elements of traditional First Nations music, particularly vocal drumming and chanting. From the international music scene, Osheaga has plucked artists such as American rapper and lyricist Azealia Banks, England’s folk punk singer-songwriter Frank Turner, and Ireland’s indietronica group Nightbox. The festival also caters to those sporting a twin fetish, featuring the indie rock sister act Tegan and Sara as well as the electro-house EC Twins.

With three-day festival passes starting at $235, and a range of corporate sponsors that reads like a brand-recognition eye exam (H&M, Bacardi, Coca Cola), this crown jewel of Canada’s mainstream-for-the-cool-kids music scene better deliver. Osheaga will run from August 2 to 4.

Piknic Electronik

Enjoy jamming to electronic beats? If so, keep your eyes (and ears of course) open for this year’s tenth edition of Piknic Electronik at Parc Jean-Drapeau. An electronic music fest that runs every summer from May to September, Piknic invites you to check out a host of DJs, both international and local, who play an eclectic array of beats every Sunday evening. Think of it as the warm-weather alternative to Igloofest, where you get to bask in the long-awaited heat of summer and admire a snow-free Montreal. And seeing as it’s a family-oriented event where all ages are welcome, kids, parents, and grandparents are all invited to jam along (granted, just how much fun they would be having is questionable). Whether you’re done with school for the year, done for life, or have the misfortune of taking summer classes, why not kick start the impending warm season with a visit to Piknic?

Piknic Electronik will run from May 19 to September 22. Tickets are $12.

MUTEK

On its website, MUTEK describes itself as an “international festival of digital creativity and electronic music.” The MUTEK festival will showcase “sound, music, and audio-visual art.” MUTEK aims to be at the forefront of innovation, supporting emerging voices and presenting festival-goers with unique audio and visual experiences. For its 14th edition, MUTEK will feature both local and international artists, from electronic stars to budding newcomers. The ‘mu’ in MUTEK derives from the word ‘mutation’, reflecting this festival’s effort to embrace and stimulate creativity. From house to IDM to instrumental hip hop, MUTEK spans a wide range of electronic styles.

Artists performing at MUTEK range from the straight-dance-based DJs of yesteryear to more pop, funk, and minimal artists. Matthew Herbert, a British electronic musician, will be performing at MUTEK for the first time since 2005. Herbert, as he’s commonly known, was a legendary figure on the 1990s house music circuit, and his set will likely reflect that. Jamie Lidell, whose output spans electronic dance and more traditional, vocal-based pop music, promises to be more conventionally accessible for those festival-goers who aren’t as used to club settings. Andy Stott from the UK and Moritz von Oswald from Germany will round out the bill with their moody, minimal techno. With shows performed in larger venues such as Metropolis and SAT, MUTEK promises to facilitate the mood with immersive visuals and enthusiastic crowds.

Passes for the entire five days of the festival are $200, with weekend passes running at $120. This year’s individual ticket prices have not been announced, but will probably range from completely free to $40. Individual tickets will go on sale April 9. MUTEK will run from May 29 to June 2.

Fringe Festival

Populism and the arts had a baby, and they called it the Fringe Festival. Created in 1947 by artists who, feeling they were being excluded from the Edinburgh International Festival, decided they were going to have their own party and none of you jerks are invited so there, this intercontinental phenomenon is now in its 21st year in Montreal. Artists from the worlds of music, comedy, dance, and theatre are selected by lottery (albeit a lottery slightly tweaked to favour Quebec artists), and given censorship-free run of venues in the Plateau Mont-Royal, Mile End, and downtown areas. This year Fringe will feature such colourfully-named acts as Fuck You! You fucking Perv! (a performance piece by artist Leslie Baker, involving confrontational tap dancing and off-colour humour), How to be a terrorist (a solo show by Jimmy Grzelak, which is about the Boy Scouts of America), and FASTER Presents: The Elephant in the Room (a “modern day musical fairytale”).

Prices will vary for individual events, but a three-day pass is available for $30. The Fringe Festival will run from June 4 to 24.

Festival International Nuits d’Afrique

Since 1987, the Festival International Nuits d’Afrique has brought together the best of old and new musical traditions from across Africa, the Caribbean, and Latin America. This year, the festival will be taking place in venues dotted across Montreal. With a strong commitment to showcasing top artistic talent, the festival has brought together many of the world’s greatest and most passionate performers, enabling it to remain at the forefront of artistic creativity. This year, the festival is offering a record number of 91 shows and workshops produced and given by more than 500 artists from 32 countries. Nuits d’Afrique is an affordable way to experience the music, culture, and personality of dozens of countries around the globe without the airports and jet lag.

The festival lets you pick and choose which events to attend, with packages of three shows on sale for $70 and five shows for $100. For those travelers on a tighter budget, the festival will also be offering a selection of free concerts between July 19 and 21.

Festival TransAmériques 

The Festival TransAmériques (FTA) describes itself as “multilingual, hybrid, [and] festive.” Combining dance, performance art, and theatre, often in a single  performance, FTA evidences the collaborative potential of the contemporary art world. The FTA’s mission for community outreach means meetings with the festival’s featured artists, workshops, and free parties are also included in its programming.

FTA’s programming is not only entertaining, but often includes relevant social and political critique. Take “Dachshund UN,” a performance installation by Australian artist Bennett Miller, featuring volunteer dachshunds sitting at a model United Nations. Quirky, yes. But, according to Miller, also a representation of the interaction, unpredictability, and racial diversity of the actual UN. Or Johannesburg-based choreographer Robyn Orlin’s piece “Beauty remained for just a moment then returned gently to her starting position…” which offers a critique of South African society. Besides its inclusion of international artists, the FTA also showcases local talent such as Montreal performance artist Dana Michel, who will be presenting “Yellow Towel,” an exploration of stereotypes of black culture.

FTA events are mostly spread out across the Plateau Mont-Royal and downtown area in venues including Monument National, Centre Phi, and the outdoor Place des Festivals. Some of the shows can be pricey, with tickets up to $60, though festival-goers can purchase packages at discounted rates. FTA runs from May 22 to June 8.

Suoni Per Il Popolo

Does your music collection tend toward the obscure? Do the sounds of strange instruments – or normal instruments used in innovative ways – make you wide-eyed with awe? If the answer is yes, head out to music festival Suoni Per Il Popolo. Self-described as showcasing “avant garde” and “experimental”sounds, Suoni Per Il Popolo promises to deliver all of the strange and the obscure without any of the pretension.

Suoni Per Il Popolo will take place from June 5 to 22 throughout some of the city’s best small music venues, including Sala Rossa, Casa del Popolo, and Il Motore. The festival’s website organizes its artists by genre, ranging from “hip hop” to “contemporary classical” to “noise.” With many shows in the $10-20 range, it’s the ideal opportunity to catch a glimpse of something unique without shelling out too much hard-earned cash. If money is no object, there is also the $200 festival pass, providing unlimited access to experimental soundscapes for the entire eighteen days of Suoni.

For those who dig anything folksy, be sure to check out The Black Twig Pickers for a thorough dose of Appalachian-inspired harmonica and banjo. If dark, apocalyptic droning is more of your thing, San Francisco’s The Soft Moon will leave you equally impressed and unsettled. Nouveau jazz libre du Québec, formed in the 1960s, provides a not-so-quiet reaction to the Quiet Revolution.

If you’re not here during the summer, check out one of Suoni’s off-season shows. On April 30, He’s My Brother She’s My Sister will be playing at Casa del Popolo. This show should be perfect for anyone searching for a interesting mix: the band’s song “Clackin’ Heels” contains guitar, cello, multiple vocals, and the sound of one of the members tap dancing.

Elektra

If you want to spend the first week of May floating around a digital soundscape, check out Elektra, a Montreal festival of the digital arts happening from May 1-5. Two elements – “electronic music” and “visual creations” – fuse to form the basis of the festival. In its fourteenth year, the festival attracts acts from all over the world, but also strives to include local Montreal artists.

The festival’s goal is to explore the new opportunities that technological advances bring to digital art. This year’s theme, “ANTI/MATTER,” asks the visitor to dive into a profound philosophical pool of sound, graphics, and light. It is not merely a spectator event, as evidenced by one of the festival’s key components – the International Marketplace for Digital Arts. The IMDA is an opportunity for collaboration and inspiration, giving budding electronic musicians with a penchant for design a chance find like-minded artists.

One of this year’s headliners is ATOM, the mastermind also known as Uwe Schmidt. The German musician and composer, praised by Wikipedia as the “father of electrolatino, electrogospel and aciton (acid-reggaeton),” will perform his newest album, HD, accompanied with wild visuals. Schmidt describes his creation as “spiritual, musical and scientific” all at the same time. If you seek satisfaction for the mind, soul, and ears, make your way to ATOM on Friday, May 3.

The post Island in the sun appeared first on The McGill Daily.

In The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology, Žižek proposes that ideology is slyly inserted into the cultural products we consume, namely, movies. In this comical and insightful documentary, he states that he and Fiennes aim “to use cinema, especially Hollywood, as the place where we can get your everyday ideology, ideology which really forms our ecology, our daily ideological experience where you get the tendencies at its purest, as it were, in distilled pure form.” This reveals Žižek’s skepticism that cinema’s primary function is as an entertainment medium. Instead, he insists that cinema is a tool that not only contains ideology, but also creates it for viewers to subconsciously digest and incorporate into their daily lives. In a 2012 staged interview for the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) that debuted the film, Žižek spoke about his recent analysis of the latest in the Batman franchise, The Dark Knight Rises. He interprets the premise of the film as being a liberal re-appropriation of Occupy Wall Street, using Gotham city to stage “the dictatorship of the proletariat,” in his words. He also insists that The King’s Speech and Black Swan, both nominees for the 2011 Oscars, contain “brutal ideology…[with] the most direct re-assertion of patriarchal authority.” The King’s Speech follows the story of an intelligent man trained to be stupid enough to play the role of king; Black Swan reinstates the sexist double standard that a woman who fanatically pursues a career by default sacrifices her domestic role, and is thus destined for failure. In the documentary, Žižek references a slew of popular films including Jaws, Taxi Driver, and A Clockwork Orange, which he argues are coded with ideological lessons.

Make no mistake, following Žižek’s thought process is no walk in the park. You’ll often find yourself wishing you could rewind a few seconds to catch up to his philosophical twists and turns. But his dense and confusing lines of argumentation are made up for through clever editing, where Žižek addresses us in the spatial context of the movies he discusses, standing in for various characters and swapping the original dialogue with his own. What results is a documentary that is as entertaining and amusing as it is insightful. With a tagline like “We are responsible for our dreams,” Žižek ultimately insists on our moral responsibility as viewers. We need to be roused from our roles as passive consumers and begin to recognize the ideological consequences of the content that we, as a society, are being force-fed.

The post The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology appeared first on The McGill Daily.