Curationism
Now that we 'curate' even lunch, what happens to the role of the connoisseur in contemporary culture?
‘Curate’ is now a buzzword, applied to everything from music festivals to artisanal cheese. Inside the art world, the curator reigns supreme, acting as the face of high-profile group shows and biennials in a way that can eclipse and assimilate t …
The Trouble with Brunch
One of The Globe and Mail's Globe 100: Best Books of 2014
Every weekend, in cities around the world, bleary-eyed diners wait in line to be served overpriced, increasingly outré food by hungover waitstaff. For some, the ritual we call brunch is a beloved pastime; for others, a bedeviling waste of time. But what does its popularity say about shifting …
Indexical Elegies
Jon Paul Fiorentino's new collection is a whip-smart poetic investigation of anxiety in all its many manifestations. Anxiety caused by geography, anxieties of influence and looming worries about loss inform the poems as they weave narrative threads that highlight both the treachery of language and its necessity in shaping human experience.
The poems …
Neighbour Procedure
Rachel Zolf’s powerful follow-up to the Trillium Award-winning Human Resources is a virtuoso polyvocal correspondence with the daily news, ancient scripture and contemporary theory that puts the ongoing conï¬?ict in Israel/Palestine ï¬�*rmly in the crosshairs. Plucked from a mineï¬�*eld of competing knowledges, media and public texts, N …
The Hayflick Limit
Shortlisted for the 2010 Trillium Book Award for Poetry
To be human is to cope with knowing. In the early sixties, Leonard Hayflick determined that healthy cells can divide only a finite number of times. Known as the Hayflick Limit, the law sets an unsurpassable lifespan for our species at just over 120 years.
The Hayflick Limit concerns itself with …
Reel Asian
Founded in 1997 by producer Anita Lee and journalist Andrew Sun, the Toronto Reel Asian International Film Festival is a unique showcase of contemporary Asian cinema and work from the Asian diaspora. The festival fosters the exchange of cultural and artistic ideals between East and West, provides a public forum for homegrown Asian media artists and …
Exploring Contemporary Craft
The craft of craft, the art of craft - here in Canada we're just starting to really talk about these things. In March 1999, Jean Johnson, who runs Toronto's Craft Studio at Harbourfront Centre, organized a wildly successful symposium on the state of craft in Canada. Curators, writers, critics, academics and craftspeople spoke about all aspects of …