Set in 1960s Hong Kong, the plot is propelled by the socio-economic conditions of the newly middle class. The city is experiencing rapid urbanization and immigration resulting in cramped accommodation where families share private space. This creates a forced intimacy between the tenants in the same apartment building, such as the protagonists. The two couples – the Chans and the Chows – move into adjacent apartments on the same day. The fate of the couple is foreshadowed early in the film when their belongings keep ending up in the wrong apartment. The incident also establishes the central role commodities will play later in the film.

Hong Kong’s mercantile culture is heavily responsible for creating an organic association for the two protagonists. Over the course of the movie, Mo-wan (Leung) and Su (Cheung) unceremoniously run into each other borrowing books, taking out food from the noodle shop or requesting the other to order a rice cooker from Japan. Their interactions are limited to the functionality of these objects, until one day, when Mo-wan notices Su’s handbag. They realize that this handbag and Mo-wan’s tie were gifts from their spouses but were also owned by the other’s spouse. This prompts Mo-wan to take Su out to a diner where they discover that their spouses are cheating on them with the other’s spouse. Again, the importance of commodities in Hong Kong’s social life is signified with how these props determine the fate of the narrative.

As the movie progresses, we witness the two protagonists falling in love with each other. “We won’t be like them,” Mo-wan keeps reminding Su. The courtship barely has any dialogue. Instead, Wong Kar-wai delivers to us a brutal meditation on melodrama; the film is melodramatic because of its emotionally powerful content and brutal because of the script’s failure to recognize the heavy emotion of the affair. Wong Kar-wai documents this conflict with a combination of slow waltz music and intricate set designs. The repetition of the signature theme song and use of bold colours embody the rapture at hand for a love affair bred out of another love affair. The characters’ lack of visible emotions is substituted with sensuous shots taken mid-height or focusing on a singular body part such as the hand.  It makes one think of only one thing: the film is purposely repressive in form and in content. The audience observes Mo-wan and Su through mirrors, windows, and door frames; sometimes separated by walls, sometimes separated by the curve at the end of a staircase. We never even get to see the face of the spouses. The film’s form is just as fragmented as the nature of the affair. While the characters experience emotional constraints, spectators feel this through narrative and visual constraints.

The latter part of the affair between Chow Mo-wan and Su Li-zhen becomes rather gendered. Su must sneak around to avoid gossip. Her landlord advises her against frequently staying out of the house until late. The situation escalates when Mo-wan and Su start meeting at a hotel room to collaborate on a martial arts serial and they realize their desires for the other. Even this confrontation is explored through Su breaking into tears while Chow maintains an emotionally indifferent stance on the affair. Finally, when Chow confronts the affair, he does so by offering to run away from gossip. Su declines, citing her moral obligations as a family maker. At the end, we observe Su still holding onto her unrequited love for Mo-wan and yet unable to change her situation. She remains in her relationship with her cheating husband and has a son with him as well. This twist in the affair focuses on the predicament of women in taking agency of her own fate.

The complexity with which Wong Kar-wai weaves conflict and history makes In the Mood for Love a remarkable study of style and form even seventeen years after its release. It captures the human condition in an extraordinarily limited interior space. Rarely does one come across a movie title that says so much about the experience of film watching. In this film, the director is straightforward in his mission to  give viewers a mood instead of a plot – and that is what makes it so memorable.  

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Park Slope is a socialist cooperative supermarket operating in Brooklyn, New York. Only members can shop from the supermarket, and to earn membership one must work two hours and 45 minutes every month. The initiative began in 1973 amidst anti-Vietnam War protests and as a response to contemporary monopoly-capitalism where a small number of businesses generate high profits by exploiting resources. The original founders of the coop started with a simple goal of serving high quality local produce to the Brooklyn community at the most affordable price. The founders developed the membership working hour model to help achieve the low price. Members who contribute their labour to the coop also become owners of the coop, which aligns the interests of both the customer and the coop. During its conception, the co-founders underestimated the cost-cutting impact of eliminating wages from expenses. The resulting effect allowed the coop to maintain a mark-up of only 20% on their products, in order to cover overhead costs. They could still under-price their products relative to other supermarkets such as Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s. Members enjoy $30,000 in annual savings by shopping from Park Slope compared to other supermarkets. Moreover, 80% of the produce are locally sourced from organic farms in upstate New York or Pennsylvania.

Boothe’s documentary looks at some of the issues that occur in a food cooperative of this size. Sometimes member-owners are reluctant to take orders from paid staff who are hired to manage member shifts. Occasionally, member committees such as the environment committee disagree with the management’s policy on plastic bags. Inter-member conflicts can also arise when members skip shifts. The coop maintains a democratic approach to solving these disputes: both parties get to present their case in a trial and randomly selected members decide on an outcome. The coop relies on members’ responsibility and accountability for smooth operation.

Other issues arise from the status of the food coop itself. The co-founders interviewed in the documentary expressed no interest in expanding their project or opening other branches in other boroughs of New York. This begs the question whether the cooperative truly is serving the ones who need it the most. New York’s poorer neighbourhoods sometimes do not even have mainstream supermarkets, let alone a cooperative, in their area. Residents are forced to shop packaged food items and junk food from convenience stores. Due to the gentrification of the area in which Park Slope currently exists, many members have to travel hours on public transit to shop here. The documentary also fails to address how this cooperative may affect ethnic grocery stores run by immigrant families in Queens and the Bronx, which may fail to compete if a new cooperative of this scale chooses to open in those places.

Despite its struggles, the coop seems to be a sustainable social initiative. Apart from fresh, organic, and cheap produce, they benefit from educational programs, lectures, screenings, and other social activities. Many interviewees found meaningful friends and partners through the cooperative. Park Slope is now one of the few racially and economically diverse community-led initiatives that remains active in a highly gentrified neighbourhood in New York City.

The documentary is a key educational resource for food coops operating in Montreal, some of which include Epicerie Coop Montreal, Le Frigo Vert, the Concordia Food Coalition, and Coop les Jardins de la Résistance. The model provided by Park Slope can perhaps even be improved in its replication.

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A popular setting for Dutch genre paintings were domestic spaces wherein women were depicted as devoted to household chores or engaging with traditionally ‘feminine’ hobbies. Many paintings also emphasized the expansive space of domestic homes and its obsession with cleanliness. These domestic scenes often exude a mood of tranquility, like in Johannes Vermeer’s Lacemaker, which features a woman making bobbin lace. In her lecture “Peaceful Home, Peaceful Society,” Betsy Wieseman – a curator of Dutch and Flemish Painting at the National Gallery in London – problematizes this idea of harmony in genre paintings. Wieseman observes that genre paintings do not depict the scenes of grotesque labour common at the time, such as tanning animal hides or cleaning windows. Less picturesque household chores are excluded in fear of unsettling the image of the ‘ideal home.’

The three paintings mentioned demonstrate a contradictory tension between peace and the taxing conditions of the capitalist society in which they were produced

The home was also a space of political engagement in the Dutch Republic. The Netherlands had recently shifted from monarchical to republican power and was also home to several Christian Reformation ideologies. The Church and the Republic both encouraged a secular idea of moral behaviour. If every household behaved morally, then the entire society was better off as a whole. Wieseman suggests that within this cultural and political context, a threat to civil peace in the microcosm of the home could be considered a threat to greater peace in the macrocosm of society.

Another popular painting style during this time were Italianate landscapes by Dutch and Flemish artists. Coutré’s talk “Picturing Peace: Collecting Italianate Landscape Paintings in 17th Century Amsterdam” presented data from the seventeenth-century that showed a high demand for landscapes among rising middle income earners such as inn-keepers and lawyers. Coutré suggests that this demand denotes the mercantile fascination with pastoral settings. Traditionally, pastoral landscapes depict idealized visual forms of rural scenes. Paintings like Jan Both’s Southern Landscape with Travellers illustrate inviting greenery and detailed tree leaves. At a time when unharvested land was considered worthless and people’s relationship with land was transforming from social to economic, pastoral landscapes framed a utilitarian aspect of nature.

Critically investigating this period of Dutch art makes us realize that capitalist societies are no different from their seventeenth-century counterparts.

Coutré interprets the Dutch demand for Italianate landscapes as a restless expression of an early capitalist society. Italianate landscapes served as an antidote to the unpleasant and stinky sights of court life, functioning as psychological and emotional respites for Dutch city dwellers. Compelling illustrations of fake realism, as seen in Both’s landscape for example, provided avenues for psychological and economic peace amid the exploitation and hardship of city life.

The three paintings mentioned demonstrate a contradictory tension between peace and the taxing conditions of the capitalist society in which they were produced. All three paintings are also embodiments Dutch realism. Realist art depicts objects as close to life as possible, suggesting a sense of unmediated portrayal. However, as Weiseman and Coutré explain, realism can be misleading. Dutch realism lends itself to a set of truth-claims that contradicts historical evidence.

Dutch still life paintings exemplify the contradiction that exists between the peace and prosperity expressed in a work of art and its social, historical, and cultural contexts. The viewer is suspended in a moment in time and pushes them to contemplate on the painting’s lifelikeness. Dutch still life paintings have a peaceful radiance signifying broader theme of prosperity, in their depiction of ripe fruits, luxurious banquets, expensive cheese, and antique dishware. The objects are commonly painted in balanced, pyramidal compositions. Yet, as Julie Hochstrasser, an art history professor at Iowa University investigates in her talk, “Peace over Conflict,” still life paintings present a sense of restlessness for overseas goods plaguing the Dutch Republic.

Grim realities of labour outsourcing, warfare, and climate change are presented through the media of glossy fashion magazines, war movies, and viral advertising campaigns.

The chaotic abundance of consumer culture is epitomized in paintings such as Frans Synder’s Still Life with Game Suspended on Hooks, a Lobster on a Porcelain Plate and a Basket of Grapes, Apples, Plums and Other Fruit on a Partly Draped Table with Two Monkeys. In the painting, the table is adorned with a basket of grapes, apples, and plums, but its peace is disrupted by the gory doe carcass right next to it. Banquet pieces like Snyder’s still life eclipse the reality of economic hardship and starvation. As Hochstrasser notes, the social cost of a feast is barely represented in a still life. The maid servant’s hours washing clothes, the butcher’s labour, or the drowned fishermen remain unregistered in the clean lace table mat, precise meat cuts, and fresh lobster. Colonial occupation and extraction of resources involved in accumulating Chinese porcelain, or importing nutmeg and sugar are ignored with smooth brush strokes and pristine compositions. Still lifes detailing luxury ignore how Dutch power and prosperity was made possible by the exploitation of overseas colonies.

The most important take-away from Hochstrasser’s lecture was the relevance of these seventeenth-century paintings for modern society. Much like Dutch Art, visual culture of a milieu often supplies contradictions. Grim realities of labour outsourcing, warfare, and climate change are presented through the media of glossy fashion magazines, war movies, and viral advertising campaigns. The “Art of Peace” symposium urged individuals to consider the social function and implications of the art and media that they consume. The global impact of mercantile society is hidden with pleasures of consumption. Critically investigating this period of Dutch art makes us realize that capitalist societies are no different from their seventeenth-century counterparts.

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The ground floor displayed Sandra Brewster’s “Assemblage,” which consists of several photomontages exploring the anonymity and generalization imposed on black individuality. The collages consisted of silhouettes called “Smiths” made out of cutouts from a phone directory listing “Mohammeds.” Often, the silhouettes were coated with white paint, and sometimes with black paint, obscuring the content. Untitled Smith (White Out) and Untitled Smith (Black Out) were positioned against adjacent walls in such a way that the viewer had to walk over to see each piece in isolation, even as the titles referred to each other. Brewster’s exhibition demands serious contemplation from its viewer on the stereotypical notion of monolithic Black communities, humouring the idea that all Smiths or Mohammeds are related.

In the small theatre next to the main gallery, a short film by Akosua Adoma Owusu played on loop. The black and white film Reluctantly Queer showed a young diasporic Ghanaian individual going about a restless day while a letter to their mother is narrated in the background. The letter exposes a conflict between being queer and being with family in Ghana, where homosexuality is politically controversial. The film resonates strong and conflicting emotions of displacement and identity. Similarly, artist Mikael Owunna’s “Limit(less)” depicted the lives of African immigrants in documentary-style photography, navigating aesthetically the space between being diasporic and being queer. Josué Azor’s “Erotes: Love, Sex, Magic” took a spin on this angle, exploring the LGBTQ culture in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Owunna and Azor’s pieces, exhibited across each other in the same room, conveyed a sense of intimacy in the way the photographers portrayed their models.

Owunna and Azor’s pieces were in contrast to Kali Spitzer’s “An Exploration of Resilience,” which blurred the lines between intimacy and detachment. Spitzer’s exhibit took up most of the upper gallery with portraits of Indigenous and mixed heritage people from the artist’s own community, celebrating their expressions of resilience. Using traditional stylistic techniques of portraiture, Spitzer challenged the voyeurism associated with representations of Indigenous communities in mainstream media. Each portrait exhibited the personality of the subject, incorporating props, poses, tattoos, among other elements. While each portrait carried a strong sense of self, thereby addressing the viewer intimately, it was the same element that also detached the viewer from the artwork. The viewer was not the agent in comprehending these portraits because each subject’s understanding of themselves was secure enough to resist any exterior interpretation. In this way, the artist subverts the gaze on these portraits and the communities from which the portrayed individuals come from in a collective act of resilience.

Mikael Owunna’s “Limit(less)” depicted the lives of African immigrants in documentary-style photography, navigating aesthetically the space between being diasporic and being queer

The night concludes with Dries Depoorter’s “Jaywalking” in a small room of the upper gallery. The digital art installation combining private data of the artist and other strangers walking across a street light. The installation contains a red buzzer which the viewer can press in order to report a jaywalker to the police. The artwork confronts the viewer with the violent nature of surveillance and policing in contemporary society. In the backdrop of Black History Month, this artwork takes up new meaning, antagonizing issues of surveillance disparity subjected to Black and Indigenous communities.

Finally, we must recognize and celebrate the contributions of curator Andy Williams, who was able to depict the multifold layers of being Black and/or Indigenous. Independent projects like Never Apart’s exhibitions highlight the need to create spaces for marginalized groups to tell their stories in their own way. As opposed to larger commercial galleries and museums in Montreal where the majority of curators are white men, Williams’ exploration of Black and Indigenous identities through young and contemporary artists is refreshing and vital.

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Rabkin began his talk by explaining the relationship between Zionism, anti-Zionism, and anti-Semitism. In his book, he traces the birth of Zionism, which emerged at the end of the 19th century as a reaction to several instances of anti-Jewish violence in Europe and the onset of writings by German intellectuals such as Theodor Herzl.

He discussed the exile and massive migration of Jews from Central and Eastern Europe due to religious and political discrimination that led to a forced settlement in Palestine.

“There is a very important transition that happened with the concept of anti-Semitism,” explained Rabkin. “A hundred years ago, if you thought Jews belonged to a different state, you were an anti-Semite, but now if you deny it, then you are an anti-Semite.”

He said he believes it is important to distinguish between racial and religious anti-Semitism in order to better understand the frameworks in which Israeli sentiment function.

“Religious anti-Semitism offers a way out by means of conversion,” he explained, “however, racial anti-Semitism offers no escape as such.”
This distinction ultimately postulates the existence of a Jewish race and a nation-state propagated within a colonial setting , according to Rabkin.

In his book, Rabkin also discusses the role of Soviet Jews in constituting the Jewish nationality.

“The Soviet Jews [when they settled in Palestine] took with them not only Russian songs and Russian culture, but they took with them the concept that the world hates us,” he said.

He went on to shed light on the influence of Jerusalem-based think tanks that have been working for several decades to make Israel central to Jewish identity.

“This agenda has succeeded for a large majority of secular Jews through programs like birthright,” he said. “Israel has become a residual identity for Jews even if they have never been to Israel or don’t speak a word of Hebrew.”

He concluded his talk by analyzing why organizations like IJV disturb Zionist voices.

“People who equate Zionism to Judaism become very sensitive to criticism since religion is supposed to be private,” Rabkin explained. “The concept of anti-Semitism has become a tool by which any sort of Zionist criticism is silenced, but criticism of Israel does not necessarily have to be anti-Semitic.”

The talk was followed by a question and answer period where several students, professors, and members of the Montreal community shared their experiences of going to Jewish day school, practicing Judaism, and what Zionism means in the context of Judaism as a religion.

In an interview with The Daily, the AUS Equity Commissioner who attended the event, spoke about the importance of solidarity with pro-Palestine Jewish voices on campus.

“I came here because solidarity is important to me, and I know that there are wonderful, wonderful Jewish people on campus that are pro-Palestine,” he said. “So I’m just here to show my support and solidarity and because IJV is new to McGill, so I want to be part of that.”

A co-founder of IJV McGill, Anna, spoke to The Daily about her hope of establishing a community of diverse Jewish voices on campus through their group.

“Events like this […] speak to Jewish voices that otherwise don’t have a place to go or to feel like their story is being validated,” she said. “There is clearly an empty seat in the Jewish auditorium that is now being filled.”

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