http://www.blogto.com/arts/2010/05/what_happens_when_a_streetcar_becomes_an_art_gallery/

derek flack put together a fine recap of the conversation he and i had while riding the streetcar last thursday.  he explores one of the key observations about the installation: no one is looking.  he muses that

Somehow I doubt that this is merely the result of apathy. On the contrary, I’d speculate that this refusal is demonstrative of a disillusionment with the standard fare of images and ads, a prevailing disinterest in the predictable corporate offerings.

many of us are fluent in deconstructing how advertising defines our cultural myths.  sometimes, advertising does it for us: the introduction of heavy handed irony into marketing has allowed us to create the idea of “the system”, an implicitly threatening yet nebulous entity that is eminently powerful but impossible to confront.  the corresponding search for cultural authenticity (i.e. the hipster movement) has stemmed out of the way that we’ve accepted this nihilistic irony.   but having changed the topic with an ironic shrug for so long, corporations no longer have the credibility to say anything to us honestly.  “open happiness”, “joy it forward”, “love what you do”, “i’m lovin’ it”: these ideas can’t fit with how we have come to see big business and how we’ve been taught to view advertising.  we’re left confused, and maybe even a bit hurt by the way we see ourselves reflected through corporate eyes; it is only natural that we turn away.

the key outcome of the 2008 financial crisis and the failure of the copenhagen meetings has been the first genuine exploration of whether a society can be driven by the profit motive alone.  big business, which has spent so much time and money mining the collective unconscious to discover “consumer trends”, can’t find a way to engage itself in the conversation without an existential questioning of its own purposes.   its voice is stuck in a quickly receding past: with nowhere to develop, it is dead, left behind, collectively useless.  a new message must rush into that vacuum that more accurately reflects who we are now.

if we are to discuss the true questions of our culture -  how can we react to our changing influence on the world?  have our choices brought about a better world?  how do we orient ourselves towards one another, especially as viewed through technology?  how do we prepare ourselves for a future of exponential resource degradation? – we must develop a language predicated on principles of sharing, truth, justice, and love.  i don’t know if my installation is the masterpiece of this new message, but i do believe it is a harbinger of changing times.  i think that’s something worth thinking about when riding the streetcar.

can’t wait to see you today!  lahore tikka house, 1365 gerrard st east, 2-5.  i’ll be there and so will the streetcar.

the plans have changed slightly: i won’t ride the car in the morning as previously mentioned.  instead, the car will make laps around the east end between 2 and 5.  more details are on the facebook event page.

i’ve been riding the streetcar nearly every day this week: it’s really something worth seeing.  i really hope you can make it.

This year’s Contact Festival connects modern trends in photography and technology with the 30th anniversary of Marshall McLuhan’s death.  The theme, “Pervasive Influence”, considers how the illusions of the photograph inform the myths of our culture and its individualistic and consumerist manifestations.  In my installation, “What does it mean to be a human being?”, I focus on India and Nepal, two nations that have been simplified through imagery as war-torn and poverty-stricken, or as tourist attractions to be checked off.  My photos portray a competing idea – a world of impoverished happiness and maybe even love – and attempt to posit a new type of connection to a billion people often treated as potential resource competitors, aid recipients, or terrorists in training.  These insidious simplifications pervade our society, justifying our pursuit of wars in Asia, our promotion of offshore resource degradation in order to create our consumer society, our reluctance to adjust our lifestyle to match environmental realities, and our tacit support of a wide net of charities and NGOs that intend to inculcate the Other into a Western way of life.

Inspired by McLuhan’s “the medium is the message”, I’ve taken the photos off of the gallery walls, exhibiting instead in the interior ad space of TTC Streetcar #4025, which will be operating on normal service for the month of May, rotating daily between the 11 downtown lines.  By doing so, I’m exploring the way that cultural myths and personal identities are continually refined by the many thousand messages city commuters consume daily.

My exhibit was chosen by the Toronto Star as one of 10 exhibits worth viewing in a Contact Preview article (http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/whatson/article/801893–contact-festival-plenty-of-eye-candy-in-the-brothel-without-walls).  I also received an extensive profile on the cover of the Entertainment section of the Sunday Star (http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/article/806573–brush-with-death-made-jordan-bower-get-serious-about-photos ).