My deepest love for Polaroid - a very very long post

5:17 pm -

I was about to pay the owner of the camera shop for one Polaroid 600 instant film pack.

"That will be $45.15," he told me.

"What the? How is it so expensive?" I asked him.

"You didn't hear? Polaroid stopped making instant film a while ago. The company went bankrupt. If it makes you a bit happy, a portion of what you pay for this pack goes to the distributors," he said with a grin.

I thought to myself, what distributors?! F---!

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February 8th 2008 may be the day that this blog was first started by Enzo of Montreal, but - amazingly enough - it was also THE day that the Polaroid Corporation announced the discontinuation of all instant film products completely.

We have came into the next millennium with almost all cameras digitalized. We deleted bad photos to save up KBs for new ones. Afterwards we put the photos online or fix a thing or two with Photoshop and all those confusing applications.

We're living the easy way now. But not the true way.

As a kid, my father bought me the classic OneStep out of the blue. It was difficult at first, but as the years passed by, I grew more attached to the camera than anything else - other than my art supplies, of course. And the photos; those are moments, direct and true. One of my favorites I took is of my dog, surprised by the huge flash of my OneStep. My dog passed away a year later and all I have left is that Polaroid photo.

Along with my typewriter, my Polaroid camera are a great and nostalgic tool I enjoy when used for art or document. A press of the shutter button can create the truest moment captured on a photo, like a press of a letter on a typewriter until it develops into a definite truth.

Can't blame everyone who think Polaroid was "sooooo 1948" (the year Polaroid cameras reached its market) because everyone has their latest models of digital cameras - not forgetting cameras on cell phones, iPhones, iShits, and all those sophisticated digitalized crap as well. But we have no choice but to live up for the future with these tools, and so we use them to get the pictures as pixel-sharp as we like to.

Yes, I'm using a digital camera for everything, especially for this blog. Most pictures can be deleted, lost or disappear into cyberspace. Pictures come and goes.

For Polaroid, a photo in your hands is indeed a simple reminder of that certain moment in time.

And I never intent to lose it.

* * * * *

Polaroid Corp. - official site

David Hockney – Polaroid composites

Save Polaroid

The Impossible Project – The Re-invention of Instant Film

- Willy the Bum

Nuit Blanche à Montréal - more selected exhibitions

Here are two more to check out on Nuit Blanche à Montréal:
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Somnium - A Voyage to the Moon
A free book... that is what artist Bettina Forget is giving out to visitors as they come by to her exhibition. But what is she giving out are abridged copies of the first-ever science-fiction novel, by the astronomer Johannes Kepler. Her exhibition is of a series of incredible prints and collages based on the novel, and on the empty pages of the book you could illustrate drawings on your own or uses stamps made by the artists (the great part is that some stamps are in the presented gallery while the others are in different venues so that you can wander to them to receive more stamps.)

Free admission
on Nuit Blanche - February 28th
8pm - 3am

Galerie d’art contemporain Visual Voice
Belgo - Espace 421
372 rue Sainte-Catherine ouest
downtown, Montréal

Info:
montrealenlumiere.com/somnium
visualvoicegallery.com/somnium
www.bettinaforget.com

* * * * *

Si par une nuit d’hiver
Photographer Josée Pellerin captures beautiful images relating to the inspiration of author Italo Calvino (he was one of Enzo's reading inspirations when I heard of him.) Pellerin will also read to the audience excerpts from one of Calvino's novels while enjoying a cocktail or two.

Free admission
on Nuit Blanche - February 28th
8pm - 2am

Galerie Orange
81 rue Saint-Paul est
Vieux-Port, Montréal
514 396-6670

Info:
montrealenlumiere.com/nuit_dhiver
galerieorange.com/josee_pellerin
www.joseepellerin.com

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For more information on Montréal's 6th Edition of Nuit Blanche: http://www.montrealenlumiere.com/volets/nuit_blanche/en_bref_en.aspx http://www.montrealenlumiere.com/volets/nuit_blanche/liste_eve_en.aspx

or the general site - Festival Montréal En Lumière (Montreal High Lights Festival): http://www.montrealenlumiere.com/accueil_en.aspx

Still more to come...

6th Edition of Nuit Blanche à Montréal - selected exhibitions

I can't pull an all-nighter... period. Even so, I wish this event should be on a Sunday night, if I have to work on a day job all weekend. Nevertheless, I browsed through the catalogue to check out the shows and visited a few galleries and places today. Here are two:

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Music, Pinecones & Peace
What a surprise! One of our blog contributors, artist Annie Briard, is having her performance show on this event. Artworks, live music and mini-gifts, with your proceeds goes to a good cause.

Free admission
on Nuit Blanche - February 28th
5 pm - 2am

Galerie Plum
360 rue Saint-François-Xavier, suite 201
Vieux-Port, Montréal
514 286-7586

Info:
montrealenlumiere.com/MP&P
www.galerieplum.com
www.anniebriard.com

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En Masse
Twenty-five local-based artists show off their skills on every wallspace in the gallery for the whole month until the big finale on Nuit Blanche. I stopped by today to see many works in progress, and shoke hands with artist Alex Produkt while he's doing his thing with the boat up in the sky all in ink drips (see it when you'll stop by yourself).

Free admission
February 3rd - 27th (progress visits); 10am - 6pm
February 28th (Nuit Blanche - big finale); 6pm - 4am

Galerie Pangée
40 rue Saint-Paul West
Vieux-Port, Montréal
514 845-3368

Info:
montrealenlumiere.com/en_masse
galeriepangee.com/en_masse

* * * * *

For more information on Montréal's 6th Edition of Nuit Blanche:
http://www.montrealenlumiere.com/volets/nuit_blanche/en_bref_en.aspx
http://www.montrealenlumiere.com/volets/nuit_blanche/liste_eve_en.aspx

or the general site - Festival Montréal En Lumière (Montreal High Lights Festival):
http://www.montrealenlumiere.com/accueil_en.aspx

More to come....

Girl Gang Thank You Card - performance show

My performance piece will be Mortification of the Flesh:

The concept of the shade black has been shrouded in dichotomized intertextualities. Recognized as purification as well as divergently distinguished as evil, black can create a void while concurrently representing a realm of neutrality and as the sublime. Within such a realm, nothing and everything subsist together, consequentially resulting in an abstracted continuance.

Juxtaposing issues such as death/mortality, radical treatment of the flesh and identity are fundamental discursive concerns that impregnate "Mortification of the Flesh".

- Summer Geraghty

Girl Gang Thank You Card
special performance night - part of Radical Queer Week '09
Sunday, March 8, 2009 at 8:30pm - 2:00am
$8 donation

at

Chat des Artistes
2205 rue Parthenais, Montreal (metro Frontenac)

Info at: sites.google.com/site/radicalqueersemaine

* Summer's performance will starts at 8:30pm sharp! Come early!

Borges' Ars Poetica

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Ars Poetica (click here for audio)

To gaze at the river made of time and water
And recall that time itself is another river,
To know we cease to be, just like the river,
And that our faces pass away, just like the water.

To feel that waking is another sleep
That dreams it does not sleep and that death,
Which our flesh dreads, is that very death
Of every night, which we call sleep.

To see in the day or in the year a symbol
of mankind’s days and of his years,
To transform the outrage of the years
Into a music, a rumor and a symbol,

To see in death a sleep, and in the sunset
A sad gold, of such is Poetry
Immortal and a pauper. For Poetry
Returns like the dawn and the sunset.

At times in the afternoon a face
Looks at us from the depths of a mirror;
Art must be like that mirror
That reveals to us this face of ours.

They tell how Ulysses, glutted with wonders,
Wept with love to descry his Ithaca
Humble and green. Art is that Ithaca
Of green eternity, not of wonders.

It is also like an endless river
That passes and remains, a mirror for one same
Inconstant Heraclitus, who is the same
And another, like an endless river.

- Jorge Luis Borges (from Dreamtigers, 1964. Tr. by Harold Morland.)

My heart goes to my instructor and friend Ashe for introducing me this Spanish writer as a reading inspiration...

- Willy the Bum

Artists To Look II

This month, I went in the Belgo building on Ste-Catherine to check out what's in stores from artist-run galleries. There were many that impressed me, but out of all one artist somewhat caught my eyes:

Tammy Salzl
The Edmonton-born artist has made quite a living here, that she is referring herself now as a Montrealer. Fascinating study of human life as subject matter in her beautiful realist paintings; every piece is painted to create a sense or a moment of existence. Her show Inherent Truths is now displaying at Les Territoires (372 Ste-Catherine O. suite 323) until February 24th, so don't miss out.

Also check out her website:
www.tammysalzl.com

- Willy the Bum