Greek easter

My host, Stavros Kariyanni, took me to his mother's place in the village for a traditional Greek easter dinner or, rather, the pre-easter dinner the day before, which involved, among other things, salads, breads, and a boiled lamb's head. That's Stavros's mother above, cleaning vine leaves she has just picked from the trestles above her front porch. The family dynamics and conversation had me transfixed as I took photos at the easter dinner table and compiled them into this QT movie.

Buyuk Khan, Lefkosa

Walked over to the "other side" as Greek Cypriots say, the TRNC portion of Nicosia, called Lefkosa. It means showing passports and getting chits stamped and such, then walking through what is officially called the 'green line' but unofficially referred to as the "dead zone" with -- a stretch of road housing derelict buildings, many with bullet holes tearing up the facade. This zone was created as a buffer by the UN in 1973, but a wider buffer was created by the public imagination as there was fear of staying too close to the green line -- so businesses and housing near the zone was often abandoned. It now is the area where migrants often live and congregate.

Across on the Turkish side, some photos of the streets, replete with soldiers walking through the market. The bicycles, antique things, were leaning on a wall at Buyuk Khan, the general market that has been upscaled for tourists. The bikes are probably propped there for daily use, though they look like they could have been there for decades. A great deal of ornate design, particularly in metal and stone work around the city, quite a treat for the eye and the touch. And, of course, signs of nationalism everywhere...

Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, trip to Kyrenia

First couple of days in Cyprus, eventful and full. The gist of my visit is to investigate possibilities for a symposium, sponsored by CICAC, organized around the notions of Performance and Borders -- inclusive of identity critiques around sexuality and racialization and the problematics of nation states -- in Cyprus in 2007. To that end, my friend and colleague, Stavros Kariyanni, is chauffering me around to explore the island-nation and think through a variety of possibilities. I had originally conceived of Cyprus as a site for this exploration, not to focus on the national politics of this place exclusively, but to situate a theoretical/performance debate in an already-contested political space in global politics. Of course, this would not be hard to do or find in numerous places around the world, but because I have colleagues in the Carribean, Australia, Germany, Canada, and the U.S., I thought finding a site outside our specificities might be a challenge worth taking. To that end, Stavros invited a number of his colleagues from Cyprus College and from the University of Cyprus to his home the other night to meet and play with these ideas. After that evening, it became clear that there are tremendous possibilities here and I hope to bring this symposium idea to fruition. Indeed, my co-worker David Bateman, a performance theorist, will be arriving here the day I leave to continue these discussions.

Yesterday, we drove to the Turkish Republic of Cyprus, a state unrecognized by the U.N., indeed, by any other country outside of Turkey since it was occupied by that country's army in 1974. But for the past two years, the so-called Green Line has been opened such that Greek-Cypriots and Turkish-Cypriots can pass over to the "other side," perhaps not with impugnity — you need to show passports and have appropriate car insurance to make the crossing — but they can pass over nonetheless. The forms of nationalism (Greek and Turkish) expressed on both sides is rampant and unconcealed, very curious as they both hark to nation-states that are "not-cyprus" in so many ways. As a Canadian travelling here, it feels like a type of officially-hyphenated-multiculturalism run wild — more on this later perhaps.

The photos below reflect the crossing and the longing -- that's the border guard checking our papers; the border crossing and its flavour of turkish nationalism; stavros standing on the seawallat Kyrenia, looking out over the med toward turkey; and also at Kyrenia (on the northern coast of the island) a children's festival where nationalisms still live large. The 'longing' is one that is hard for an outsider to recognize, the notion that this is one country divided and that there will be an eventual and necessary reunification, but on uncertain terms. The longing is based on geography and other sites and symbols of Cypriot identity, and it is both confusing and intriguing to hear about how this affects the national psyche. Today, off to Lefkosa, through the gates of Nicosia and a walkabout where only two years ago it would have been near impossible to tread. Borders, crossings, and nations.

meta-heathrow

Before arriving in Cyprus, had a few hours delay at heathrow as we waited for some hydraulic malfunction to rectify in the jet taking us across. Found myself standing before a 'wireless station' in the midst of the shopping hub that is/was heathrow international. Took this photograph of a metablog event, my powerbook sitting there at the station reflecting the contents of the blog that i am now/was then writing... the other photo is of the passage of passengers at the airport.

Nations, States, Divided

Sitting on the tarmac & YYZ, the A340 widebody getting set for the transatlantic to heathrow. A 3-hr transfer then across to another terminal, then bound in for Larnaca in Cyprus. My first visit there, I've always been intrigued by that (and any) state divided, the very notion of borders within borders. Now, for the past couple of years, cypriots and others are allowed to go from G-cyprus to T-cyprus and back again, but still, this veritable checkpoint-charley reality... On this flight, i plan/hope to finish my introduction to the IntraNation anthology that westcoastline is producing, hoping to launch it at banff as a gesture back to that place which hosted the residency in 2003.

Doors closed, backing off from the gate... Next stop, London and the seat of empire.
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Big Talk, Diverse City & other updates

A week of organizational strategies, planning the next few weeks, so little to blog about of interest. Am ready now, though, to blurt out all the plans! Looking forward to the summer where I'll be participating in Babel, Babble, Rabble: On Language and Art residency from May 15 to June 30.

Immediately preceding that, on May 9, I'll have my Multiculturalism Research SSHRC project team meeting up in Vancouver, along with my research assistants from that and my Research/Creation SSHRC project, A Little Distillery in Nowgong

And immediately preceding that, May 1-6, I'll have the artists participating in Interior Investigations (i2i) coming to Kamloops for a week-long thinktank and project development process.

Just before that, I'll be sharing some of the Multiculturalism Issues research at an event called The Big Talk at the Ontario College of Art and Design, April 27 at 2 pm. Open to the public for those torontonians who happen across this entry. Session details below, but the preceding link will take you to the whole event:

2 to 4 pm, April 27: Diverse City: Cultural Diversity and Equity in the University (Room 327, OCAD, Toronto)
Moderator: Richard Fung
Panellists: Ashok Matur, Johanna Householder (two more panellists to be confirmed)
This panel will address a number of issues in relation to cultural diversity in art & design education in the classroom and beyond. How do we support cultural differences and equity throughout the University and ensure our practices – from the recruitment and retention of faculty and students, to the curriculum we deliver – are not exclusionary? How does cultural diversity impact upon the ways in which we construct and assess knowledge? And how can the University nurture cultural competence in students to ensure their ability to engage in art & design with informed historical and cultural frameworks, when they exit as graduate


We'll see what sort of shape I'm in for that, since the day before that, I will be returning from a research trip to Cyprus, April 19-25, where I'm hoping to set the stage for a symposium in 2007 on Performance, Borders, and Sexual/Racial Identities.

So there's the update, from the future to the present...

unleaving las vegas

QuickTime movie



On the strip in las vegas, touts of all types offer grandcanyon tours by bus, by plane, by helicopter. Our six-seater helicopter took us rapidly out over the sprawling suburbs of backyard pools and luxury houses to the hoover dam, the desert, and the grand canyon (see the video clip below). But most spectacular, in a grotesque kind of way, was the unleaving of las vegas, the flyback return to the builtup strip, emerging as it does from the flat and barren horizon.

david in the desert & the grand canyon

Into red rock canyon, from our northern mojave connection taking flight to the south...

QuickTime movie


Part of our investigations took us high in the sky, out of las vegas and into the grand canyon via helicopter...



QuickTime movie

red rock, vegas, and interior investigations

A few days off-blog during a whirlwind tour of southern nevada. Included highlights, to be duly noted shortly, an afternoon helicopter trip into the grand canyon, an elton john concert replete with problematic but pricey 70mm filmwork, visitations with university folks at unlv, and a drive out to red rock canyon with two of the 'interior investigators.' The image above from that site of red rock, a wondrous element of the mojave desert and a climber's mecca. At the base of one of the viewpoints, a creek runs quietly, and beside it, this found object. Red food colouring. A tiny bottle of red dye, the plastic twisted and warped by the sun. There, in the middle of the desert, the sand and soil the colour of sunset from iron deposits, there, a tiny bottle of food colouring, as if someone had painted the entire desert and forgot to pack out the trash. Moments of intrigue, colour, desert, intrusion, investigation.