We find today everywhere examples of mass produced luxury. Sitting in a coffee house atop dark wood chairs, next to a floor to ceiling fireplace adorned with an exotic artwork, I am both everywhere and nowhere. Starbucks, or Second-Cup, even the new-look Macdonalds embrace an architecture of bare wood, rock and leather wingback chairs alongside glass panel windows, bare metal, intricate lighting and world music. “Comfort” “Nostalgia”, “Modern”, “Chic” are the values put forth in such a decor – these are “3rd spaces”, like homes (who of us have these anymore in a world of rental housing, difficult roommates, distant parents) without the intimacy. We revel in them, we feel at home in the intimacy of anonymity. Critiquing this modern form of intimacy is a study unto itself, but not the one I pursue here. Rather, I wish to concentrate on the materiality of these places – the role materials play, the way they show up, and the way they might be emblematic of a relationship to matter that is dominant in the present.

The first thing to say about the materials in coffee shop architecture is that they are cheap. The brick and grout in the fireplace have a superficial look – the grout doesn’t sit nicely between the bricks, and though I’ve seen worse bricklaying than this, it feels very much like it’s been built to have a certain appearance (old, nostalgic), rather than with any kind of function or service length in mind. The wood around the the hearth is more explicitly cheap – a place where the finish is flaked off reveals particle board beneath. Of the screws attaching the board to the brick, 3 fit flush, but the fourth sticks out – a telling sign of a job carelessly done.

The seats on first inspection look better – a dark mahogany, and surprisingly solid for coffee shop chairs. But a well used seat betrays the dark finish – it is of course a cheaper, lighter toned wood (possibly Alder), stained to appear like rich, dark mahogany. I could go on and give the same analysis of the drapes, the tables, the lighting, the floor, etc… but it serves no further purpose – the point is already made.

But what is the point? So the materials are cheap, the workmanship a bit shoddy – but isn’t this what we should expect from something like an infinitely reproduced coffee shop? Of course we should – it is not my intention to criticize the coffee shop for not being something I would like it to be. It can be criticized only because it is not something it feigns to be, because its materials show up as one thing immediately, and then quite another upon reflection. The reason I bring this issue to the forefront is I wish to claim this is becoming a basic characteristic of our relationship with materials in capitalism more generally.

It is a cliche now to say capitalism is characterized by turning everything into a commodity – this is to say something infinitely reproducible and exchangeable. This inclines us to think of matter as the raw resources which are tapped, processed and formed into these commodities On this account, matter has no positive characteristics – the only things we “see”, we buy, we come into contact with, are forms – objects, their quality having to do with how they are put together rather than anything inherent about the matter. However, in situations like the fireplace, the “dark” wood chairs, we encounter commodities in their material aspect as false appearances. Traditionally speaking matter can never “appear” – anything that shows up must show up as an image, as something formed, usually something built by a machine that put an order into some disorderly matter. However, what we “see” in the mahogany chair is the false appearance of a matter which isn’t there – we see the mahogany (in a certain sense), and we also see the absence of the mahogany (when we recognize that it is only a cheap finish). W see the absencing of the appearance, the becoming-mere of the mere-appearence of the mahogany. Or with respect to the fireplace, we first see the fireplace “as” old, worldworn – and then immediately that is revealed as mere appearance, we recall we are in a new Second Cup in the JCC at Bloor and Spadina, and that this piece of exotic african art is nothing but a piece of Second Cup, second rate mass produced kitch?

But why is it interesting that we see the matter in this particular way in coffee shops? Is this not a hipster’s hubris to believe coffee shops will reveal the nature of contemporary reality? Perhaps, but this architectural aesthetic, or better this interior design modality, is not limited to coffee shops. We see the same fake rock, false mahogany and photocopied exotic art at restaurants like the Keg, the Olive Garden, the current generation of fake brewpubs, and other examples. What is common to all these locations is a rejection of the old plastic-fantastic Macdonalds model of interior design, and a look to the Whistler post and beam style, and the modern European coffee shop for inspiration. But the problem with simply replicating any of those styles is simply that they are inherently against mass production because they employ local, high quality materials, and sight-specific interior design to create spaces appropriate for the place the space takes in the community. In order to mass produce these styles it could not have been otherwise than to empty the materials of their quality, to use cheap alternatives with thin varnish surfaces. The result of this is a chic-ness characterized by cheapness, an aesthetic of mere appearance, of materials that devalue themselves in front of your eyes, of spaces which appear comforting but then spit you out. Perhaps we should not be surprised that a commodification, a reproduction and replication of particularity, turned out to produce its own reversal.

My housemates and I, who make up the Toad Lane Vegan Cooperative, will host a conference on March 20th, 2010 entitled “Free Food! Interrogating Perception, Choice and Progress in the Liberation of our Food Supply”. What we hope to achieve by this is a kind of cultural mixing between the vegan and academic community, to bring up food ethics issues in academia, and to bring more rigorous argument to the vegan community. Everyone is welcome to submit abstracts or presentation proposals (approx 20 min in length) – and since we are hosting it at home, you can feel free to make use of a real kitchen in your presentation. The due date for proposals is January 15th, and you can send them to toad.lane.vegan.cooperative@gmail.com, or directly to me at tristan.laing@gmail.com

I’ve started a blog specifically dedicated to the conference here, where you can view the call for papers in its entirety, including suggested topics.

On Remembrance Day we are expected to honour soldiers. Soldiers who made individual sacrifices, for the sake of us – so that we can partake in the value(s) they defended. This is what is asked of us “in return” for their “gift”.

But is this demand without political, contemporary interest? Are we expected to value the soldier’s sacrifice for the soldier’s sake – or is there another purpose, another goal in step with this demand to honour individual sacrifice?

First, what is it exactly that we valourize in a soldier’s sacrifice? We honour the following of orders, the putting-oneself-in-harms-way which is demanded by officers, generals – who do not (or only contingently) put themselves in harms way. This is certainly something expected of soldiers – but is something being hidden, something essential about soldiering covered over by this kind of honour?

We expect soldiers to use their personal private reason to evaluate the moral status of their actions. This is the consequence of the Nuremberg decision – in order to prosecute Nazi’s for participating in war crimes, they must be held responsible for their actions – one’s responsibility cannot be eluded by the argument that one was simply “following orders”.

We could valourize soldiers for this personal decision – for the ability of soldiers in the Second World War to see the rightness of their cause, and the potential soldiers in the Vietnam war to see the wrongness of it. If we honoured soldiers for their personal decision, we would respect draft dodgers as much as war heroes – because they gave up their rights (their right to citizenship – ironically the same right deprived of Jews in the 3rd Reich and which contributed to the rightness of the war against that empire), Remembrance day could not be used as a ceremony that glorifies war, the army, and the inherent rightness of whatever cause our State endorses.

Last year on Remembrance day I saw the military parade marching along Bloor street. In the front, the Canadian Scottish honour guard, complete with kilts and pipes. They marched in perfect harmony. Behind, the “real army” – adult troops, battle hardened. Marching in unison, but not the perfect unison of the honour guard – more a pragmatic, useful unison. Behind them – the cadets. Behind the other regiments both in age and discipline, their not-having-been-to-basic-training was apparent – they could not approximate the order – either perfect or pragmatic – of the first two regiments. What was the symbolic order of this march? On one level at least: the perfection of the symbolic army (honour guard) brings along, justifies, glorifies, the real army (destruction, murder, blood), and inspires the future army (children, the Hitler Youth, etc…) The amazing thing about this march is how literal the representation allowed itself to be: you could actually see the lives to be given up, straggling on behind, while they are dragged along by the iconic perfection of the kilts and pipes.

It is interesting that the only value the soldier’s are thanked for fighting for is “freedom”. Freedom, one could argue, means something quite different now as it meant during the 2nd war – freedom now means not so much freedom to choose your political affiliation, or your way of life, so much as your freedom to choose between the products capitalism gives you to select. There are other values people flight for, such as self-determination. Self-determination is an interesting value since it is key to Woodrow Wilson’s rhetorical intervention in conclusion to the first Great war, and it continuous to be selectively applied to American foreign policy as a justification when convenient, and ignored when inconvenient (such as America’s consistent voting record against U.N. general assembly resolutions in favour of self-determination for the Palestinian people).

I wonder how a society without hypocrisy would celebrate remembrance day? I believe Obama’s Remembrance day speech, in which he has (apparently) said that “If there is a God, he does not celebrate today” can be a clue for us here. Perhaps we, like Obama’s God, would not celebrate. What do I mean by this? Certainly not that we forget the veterans, that we not mourn their passing or thank them for their personal sacrifice for those who went to war, and their courage in the face of officers who would have them commit war crimes in the case of those who in their situation chose rightly not to. Rather that we would find no cause for celebration in this mourning, no way of turning this mourning, this thanks, into a celebration of the state or a glorification of the politics of their struggle. A society without hypocrisy would honour, but not glorify their courage, lest that glorification be used to justify needless conflicts, needless bloodshed, needless sacrifice.

Emilie Mover is a singer songwriter in Toronto, Ontario. I met her in 2004 when I first moved to Toronto, and was immediately enraptured by her sad, magical songs. I was at the Tranzac for the release of her first record, Good Shake Nice Gloves. Since then she’s released a new album – also entitled Good Shake Nice Gloves. She’s big and famous now – she even has one of her songs in a Sears Commercial! But the real proof that she’s hit the big time – when you search her name on youtube you get clips of young girls covering her songs!

Last night I was lucky enough to see Emilie play the Drake Hotel on Queen Street in Toronto. She played beautifully, but unfortunately it was only a short set. If you become a fan of her on facebook you will hear about her shows.

People in Toronto can catch her at the Tranzac tommorow at 8pm.

Walking through Old Montreal with my Mother, popping into galleries filled with 5000$ paintings (and people buying them!), we came across the strangest store. Called “Hyper-Stylish Books and Objects”, it was superficially a book store. But, unlike any book store I’d ever seen before – all of the books were wrapped in plastic. So, you purchase the books without even flipping through them! And then I looked at the pricetags – for a large collection of golf course photographs the cost was over ten thousand dollars. Books on the shelves looked not so different from the bookshelf at an art gallery bookstore, except again, all covered in plastic wrap.

The answer is of course, that it is not a book store but an object store. None of these books are for reading – they are for decorating rooms, for looking at, mostly at the spine.

Is this so strange, today? That books might be used as objects of style, of decoration, of “comfort”? No. In fact, the store fit in perfectly with the art galleries – perhaps art is being consumed in the same way – as decoration, as style, as prestige. Not as transgressive, evocative, form engendering. Or is this opposition now false? Is art’s fully authentic, magical act something sold by the yard? If so, would not this hyperstylish object store be the epidomy of such a commodification?

I am not averse to the ownership of fine things – what might be in some interpretation “hyperstylish” objects. Aside from a stack of library books, desk is cluttered with a piece of dinosaur egg, a stone sculpture, an orange solar lamp, an art-nouveau stainless steel french press, even a 1930’s copy of “The Floating Republic” – a historical chronicle of the British Naval mutinies of 1797. What is the purpose of these objects, these idols? These ideals? Is it not to comfort, to show off, to dwell alongside?

Is it perhaps that the quickly observable superficiality of the plastic-wrapped bookstore conceals a common essence to things and our relationship to them? All things of this sort gather us, reflect us, bring us home. Things are what we want to be, which in late modernism is always also how we want to be seen – but not only this! We really are how we desire to be seen – there is no “fooling”, there is only a re-inscription of reality in terms of pure appearance!

The question for ethics here, for “how ought one live” is whether there is any measure which allows us to judge one set of things from another – whether one persons idols are more soulful, more genuine than those of another? I do not see how, without positing a set purpose for such objects/things/idols, any such measure could be drawn.

But does this mean that we should pay no heed to what we surround ourselves with? Does this mean we should, because of this lack of a standard measure, stop judging others by the content of their house rather than the content of their character? Of course not (although I would caution against the latter). Rather, we should concentrate on being mindful of the purposes of our idols, our objects, our things, such that proper measures can be drawn given the uses, values, purposes, and directions that draw us to acquire and tend to things.

Today, two events occurred that together brought me to a clarifying thought about the ways we are in-time today. The first was a conversation with a retired professor, and the second was an entry on Milan’s excellent blog.

John was making the not too controversial point that the institution of texting, tweeting, being on the computer all the time, is an exercise of talking all the time without saying anything – because one is too busy talking. Too engaged in too many directions to take any particular one seriously. Or, a way for all your time to be taken up, for you to be effectively deported away from where you are. As these external demands on time become totalizing, it becomes a subversive, insane activity today to actually decide oneself what to do with one’s time. Decisions are made for us, or rather, we make decisions given extreme social/cultural pressures to participate in particular sets of values.

Milan’s post argues that voicemail and video are his two least favorite forms of communication because they can not be:

“easily skimmed to determine the degree to which they are relevant and interesting. They also cannot be searched for keywords, or automatically filtered on the basis of content.”

This is an interesting reversal of the standard critique of video. When I was younger, even in grade eleven, professors used to argue that the difficulty with pre-produced media as opposed to written text was that they were too fast, that they didn’t provide time for reflection and engagement. That instead of being engaged in a text, you were deported by a film – that it kept going when you naturally would have stopped to think. Here, the opposite point is being made – film requires too much engagement, they are too quick (they cannot be “skimmed”). Text on the other hand becomes what film used to be – the quick, easy, fast, convenient way to learn about something that is not very important to you, whereas film is now only good “when you are fully interested in the subject matter”.

What do these two thoughts have in common? Well for one, they both have to do with the speed at which we are expected to deal with knowledge, and the amount of engagement which can be reasonably expected at that speed. It seems to me that it is possible to become so reliant on the constant stream of information that is blogs, newspapers, facebook, (twitter for some), that actually deciding how to spend one’s time, rather than coping with the streams, might almost become a subversive activity. I’m not trying to make a strictly totalizing statement here – I don’t think everyone is “trapped” in this whirlwind, or that everyone participating in a thousand streams is actually trapped -there might be freeing ways of participating as well as entrapping ways. At the same time, however, I really do respect people like Kaitlyn, who is not Luddites by any stretch, but who chooses not to have a cell phone, or even to have internet at home – because of the costs constant connectivity can impose on one’s autonomy.

The deeper question, however, has to do with not with individual action, my choices on how to respond to the ways cultural society structures my existence, but rather – is this structuring of leisure time into coping with streams of shallow (twitter) or shallowly engaged with (skimmed emails) content any different from the ways society has always colonized the time of its members through labour, religion, etc… – is twitter “just” the new Zeus, the new textile mill? Or, is the way it’s bound up with “leisure” and “self expression” (self publishing!) make this way of having one’s time externally structured more devious, more dis-empowering than the others? Is this concealed by the fact it is so easy to parody, as “Let me Twitter that” – a new Andy Milonakis rap?  Is this concealed by the fact it is superficially easier to circumvent – the addict’s “I can stop anytime”? Is it even more deeply concealed by this it being actually easier to circumvent (maybe we are not addicts?) ? What is the status of the “ease” of stepping back and deciding to:

“Never replace face-to-face with technology. This is the big one. Human beings are social. We need facetime. We need touch. We rely on extremely subtle cues from tone of voice, body language, and posture to read people; those things can’t be replicated in text messages, no matter how much passion is infused with “r u awak?” People live far? Call ‘em on the phone. People live close? Go see ‘em.” (Hipsters are Boring, August 26 2009)

We could of course simply do it. And we do do it, those of us who are lucky enough to live in real communities, or who remember how to use a phone. But concentrating only on communication and not publishing or learning misses part of the picture. Here is a list of information Milan processes on a daily basis:

• At least ten email accounts, three highly active
• Two phone lines, with voicemail
• A complete issue of The Economist per week
• BBC, Slate, and Globe and Mail headlines daily
• Dozens of blogs, many of them highly active
• Discussions on my blog
• Instant messages
• Waves
• Google Alerts
• Text messages
• Comments on certain blogs I follow
• Mailing lists
• Etc.

The advantages of access to so much information on a constant basis are obvious. But we still have to ask questions about whether, in the midst of all this knowledge, there is still an “us” taking it in? Or, are we quietly becoming, in our free time, knowledge machines? Are “we” deciding anything when we read and interpret this vast amount of data continuously? Or are we simply sites for the data to analyze itself? Where is conscience? And where do the people go? We should in no way be surprised they are outcast to text messages and facebook! York University is actually in the planning stages of moving all of first year university into being strictly online (you wouldn’t actually attend University in person until second year – so the same amount of classrooms can accommodate a bigger student body).

It cannot be contested that the cyber is changing our bodies – socially, intellectually, and physically of course as well. The question about the effects, the desirability, how to cope,  and what are the possibilities for transgressive activity they might engender, these must all be held open.

The Museum of Fine Arts in Montreal is free. This means you don’t have to pay, (except for some temporary exhibitions). That and the collection is quite astonishing – including the likes of Monet, Picasso, Rembrandt, Van Gogh, etc… There is also a serious ancient Greece exhibit which, unlike the ROM’s, doesn’t pretend that Roman copies of Greek statues are Greek. There is an excellent exhibit on 20th century style and design. There is an expansive collection of European painting between the 15th and 19th centuries.

In other words, there is enough here that one can get a sense of the entire history of painting in a day. As such, welcome to Tristan’s comprehensive theory of European painting. Just kidding of course, but even a cursory look through does reveal some very interesting events. First off, Painting seems to have progressed quite slowly between the 15 and 19th centuries – many pieces from the early 19th century could be confused with things painted hundreds of years earlier. Basically, until Monet, the advances seem to be mostly technical – as far as style is concerned, there are 14th century landscapes and portraits that look like early 19th century works by lesser painters.

With Monet, however, the codes seem to break down. “Impressionism” means the self-consciously recognized product of painting is emotional. The symbolic codes become the object of play (Picasso), and dismissal (painting black squares). Rejection of symbolic codes for a time is revolutionary (dada), but is later co-opted by the same system it wishes not to reproduce (dada on Starbucks water bottles).

What is most amazing about this history is how, taking Monet as a fulcrum, we can see such a disparate rate of change of artistic style on either historical side – before, 300 years of relative calm – after, less than a hundred before the codes have completely broken down. Of course, they do not disappear – symbolic painting and representational painting persist, but persist as one code among many options.  The old code was not characterized by its properties, its attributes, but by it being the-code, the dominant – not one part of a plurality.
The reason the current age can be said to “have no style” is not that there are no trends in design, not that no one is doing anything new in sculpture or painting or furniture – but rather that no unified code develops amongst people ever inventing the new. Foundings ever repeat, but do not take hold. There are too many choices, freedoms, possibilities. The system embraces it’s own deconstruction. The post-modern self is the one products are marketed towards.

The Consumer Goods are a Winnipeg band that are not afraid to voice their opinions on political issues. Their Myspace page is littered with songs about the department of national defense, police violence, the Canadian occupation of Afghanistan, and the erosion of abortion rights in the U.S.

Their frontman, Tyler Shipley (one of my only friends with a wikipedia site) was active in the Cupe 3903 union during our 3 month strike last year. He’s a generally upright and decent guy – he even let me sing the song I wrote for the Pond Road picket at his band’s show at the Tranzac.

Perhaps their most popular song is entitled “Hockey Night in Afghanada” (music video here) is critical of Don Cherry for using Hockey as a way of justifying and supporting the Canadian operations in Afghanistan. The song is definitely worth a listen. I personally like the way the chorus differentiates legitimate views on hockey issues from support for the army:
“There’s nothing about Ron Maclean, the CBC, or hits from behind that says it’s alright to bomb a few foreigners from the sky”

I’ve been thinking about blogging about some of my favorite bands for a while now, and I think the most appropriate way to do it is in a series of posts, like the previous set concerned with the future. The bands I will feature here are all similar only in the fact that I think they are extremely excellent, and that I have thought so for a long time. (And that they are, at least for the most part, obscure).

The first and most obscure band I’d like people to consider looking into is “Old Phoebe“. It’s hard to describe Old Phoebe. No wait, that’s not right – it’s easy: Old Phoebe is like a happier, angrier, younger, and purer version of Teagen and Sarah – but with a bicycle instead of a drum set. They are from Nanimo, and though I suppose they may be older now, when I first discovered them at hoko’s kareoke sushi bar in Vancouver they were just out of High School. Because they are (were) so young, they can sing about the forces of social control in a way only the innocent can, as in the song “The Machine”. We can hear truth in their words, which we couldn’t have heard if we’d said them ourselves. “Rock and Roll on the Floor” is also a great song, and available on youtube.

Their best song in my opinion, however, is “Catchers” – a song based loosely on the novel “Catcher in the Rye”. Blessedly, it is avaiable on their myspace page. The song is about making mistakes, repeating mistakes, working with mistakes. To give you an idea, here is a segment of the song’s lyric:
“I make mistakes ok

I’m on the radio I’m singin a work of art somebody made

And you catch me in the rye (catch you in a lie)

…

My whole life, one focussed, my whole life’s a mistake

I’ll be on the radio singin’ a work of a mistake somebody made”

You might be wondering how a concept car could signal that the future has already arrived. Concept vehicles, we normally think, project futures that may or may not arrive. For instance, the minivan was first shown by Lancia in 1978 – but it didn’t “arrive” until Chrysler’s great success in the 1980s.

However, what we can see happening in BMW’s GINA project is a bit different. On one level, the project is promoting a new way to think about building cars. Traditionally cars have a body and a frame – the rigidity of the car comes from the frame, and the body gives the car its appearance, its shape. In order to make cars lighter, there has been a tendency to reduce the importance of the frame with “unibody” construction methods, in which the body is a stressed member of the chassis, bolted to a sub-frame. Making the body an integral part of a car’s rigidity allows it to be lighter and stiffer. This idea comes to a radical point with Jaguar’s aluminum exoskeleton construction – where the frame of the car is basically its skin. If the skin is made from carbon fiber, exoskeleton construction can produce even more extreme results.

Another tendency in car lightening, embodied perhaps most famously in the Corvette, is to put all the rigidity of a car in its frame or space-frame, and cover it with a light plastic or fiberglass body. Or, in the case of the Ariel Atom, not to cover it with no body at all.

On the surface, the GINA project is simply an Ariel Atom covered in cloth. However, Chris Bangle is up to something altogether more interesting – what we see happening here is the matter and the form of the car interacting in a wholly new way. Before project GINA the shape of a car is a compromise between an artistic ideal and material constraints. Car designers would like to do one thing, but safety legislation, the need for aerodynamics and economy constrain their creativity. Of course, the best automotive designers are those who can turn this opposition into a synergy. Ian Callum is probably the greatest car designer of this type.

The GINA project departs most radically from past car design in that the shape of the car is not drawn in advance in clay models and then instantiated in hard plastic or metal body panels. Rather, the shape itself is a product of the stretching of a cloth skin over metal hoops. The form of the car is literally engendered out of the matter. That on its own is nothing new, but BMW’s project is different because the flexibility of the skin doesn’t have utilitarian goals, but emotional ones instead. It isn’t form for the sake of function, or form following function, but function for the sake of form – or more specifically, for the sake of emotional affect. Usually we’d say the form of a thing is for the sake of affect (a car has a beautiful shape to provoke an emotional response). But in GINA, the matter itself has an emotional function.

In fact, “Form/matter” language breaks down trying to talk about this object – the form is not just a product of the matter, it is the matter. By this I mean that in the outward image of the vehicle, in what we see when we look, we literally “see” the matter – the stretchiness of the fabric. This is most pronounced in the video when the shape of the car changes – a spoiler raises up at the back of the car at high speed, the fabric in the doors creases as they open, the headlights open up. We even see the translucence of the material in the break lights, since the lights shine through the skin. If the car were here we could also touch it – and we would want to touch it far more than we desire to touch metal or plastic cars – and that desire is part of the emotional product the designers are aiming at.

Some of you might be familiar with Chris Bangles work on BMWs that have gone into production. In general it can be said he’s quite unpopular, and since he’s been dismissed BMW’s styling has returned somewhat to its conservative roots. However, it should be said that the role of a stylist is not merely to make beautiful objects, but to break new ground – produce new styling language – make it possible to say things in design which were impossible before. People familiar with architecture might not be terribly surprised to learn that Bangle considers Frank Gehry an important influence. Whether that means we can say Bangle was indirectly influenced by sculptor Richard Serra I’m not sure – could the controversial looks of the current BMW M5 somehow be traced to the controversy of Tilted Arc? Could the matter-form interplay in GINA have anything to do with Shift?

So, why does GINA signal the future having arrived? Simply because it shows that design can catch up with art, that emotion can become a product, and that form doesn’t need to either overshadow or proceed from function.