Propaganda ends where dialogue begins

The environment as a processor of information is propaganda. Propaganda ends where dialogue begins.” — Marshall McLuhan, Quentin Fiore. The Medium is the Massage. (Toronto : Bantam Books, 1967), 142

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The Artist Researcher

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Friends of the Owens

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Acadian Island

It is very hard when you are standing out on les aboiteaux of the Tantramar marshes not to think about the original Acadian settlers who’s labour created the lush farmland that became Sackville. This slightly raised land is one of the three original Acadian settlements in the area. It was an island before the Tantramar [...]

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Erratum

This week in Sackville I am painting images of the town and of the surrounding countryside that were painted in the late 19th century by the artists John Hammond and Ethel Ogden. Ethel was quite an accomplished and innovative painter for her short life but the only recognition she received in her time was a [...]

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Tantramar Marshes

On Tuesday I also met a man who had moved to Sackville 40 years ago to work for Wildlife Services. He stopped and talked to me for a while about the land in the paintings I had made. We talked about the change in land use over the last hundred years away from agriculture and about the history of the different settler groups in the area. He told me that once you get out on the marshes there are big skies – you can see 360 degrees…

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Swan Pond

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Louisberg Pipelines

Rob McCosh and his crew from the Louisberg Pipelines have been tearing up and replacing the sidewalk on Bridge Street since I arrived. I see them each morning on my walk into town. They suggested that I write my phone number in the wet cement and that’s how we got talking. Rob is a story [...]

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Paintings in their ‘spare’ time

In the 18th and 19th century Canada, and in the United States, much of art was seen as ‘women’s work’ . Men it seems, were much too busy with business or making a mark on the new land to bother with culture… By the end of the 19th century cities in eastern North America enjoyed [...]

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On the St. John River

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Serf City

Opened up a dialogue with Saint John this evening on a community radio program called Serf City at CFMH 107.3 FM (free, public access to the airwaves for anyone who may be interested in being on the air). Thanks to the host Mark Leger and producer Mike Parker for asking me to share the airwaves [...]

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The myths that got us here

This fall, Pictorial Propaganda will retrace the history of the New Brunswick Museum and the Owens Art Gallery from Saint John to Sackville. As they both can claim to be the “oldest”  – the oldest continuing museum in the case of the former, and the oldest university art gallery for the latter, I am interested [...]

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Siège sociale internationale – Cirque du Soleil

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Material façades

The idea of merging culture with the economy isn’t new, but the recent discourse surrounding it is… Increase innovation and creativity, the argument goes and the profits will follow… Culture, as collapsed into the creative industries means ‘not the traditional fine arts, nor the modernist cultural industries like cinema and radio, but instead the newly [...]

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Cirque du Soleil

Felicity Tayler, artiste en arts visuels, utilise l’archétype du tableau de paysage pour créer des liens avec autrui. Elle s’intéresse également aux icônes nationales ainsi qu’aux systèmes économiques et de valeurs. Par ce fait, elle voit cette opportunité comme une redistribution des richesses au sein du milieu culturel contemporain… Felicity Tayler is a conceptual artist [...]

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Some details of craft-technique

…arts may have an allotted span of life and may be attached as forms of self-expression to particular regions and particular types of mankind, and that therefore the total history of an art may be merely an additive compilation of separate developments, of special arts, with no bond of union save the name and some [...]

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Place de la Paix

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L’Épicerie d’importations MAIN

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Kaketitukaput

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Isle au Soeurs, July 31

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The Colonial Project

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Cochinita pibil

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Café Cléopâtre

Begin forwarded message: From: “D.L. Epstein” Date: April 27, 2008 11:38:55 AM EDT (CA) To: “felicity tayler” Subject: Re: Café Cléopatre oh yes, Randy’s transformations were something to behold then, I don’t know if his standards have been maintained, but to see him as a man and then again in drag it was really incredible [...]

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Pignon sur rue

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Nonlinear expenditures of time and resources

Art production and acts of generosity are fundamentally generative, but nonlinear, expenditures of time and resources. In this way they contradict the accepted functions of production and utility that are associated with meeting societies basic needs, or the process of its expansion. Each could therefore be seen as potential processes of liberation from the inevitable [...]

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Montréal Red Light

I made a visit to Stella today to pick up some copies of their excellent bilingual independent magazine ConStellation. I had a warm welcome, and as usual enjoyed reading their literature. The magazine is full of strong writing, insights and multifaceted nuances, with a very professional presentation. It generally makes me think about what it [...]

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The antithesis of neighbourhood

Under capitalism, all is spectacle. Branding is the antithesis of neighbourhood. How can the symbolic language inherent to branding adjust to a process that includes the local community: the residents who study and work in a neighbourhood, plus the daily flux of permanent and temporary occupants.” — dAb Collective, “Urbanism versus Branding for Montréal’s Quartier [...]

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Espace mobile // Mobile Space

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September, Sackville, N.B.

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And if traditional tropes continue to persist…

Why did discussions around landscape in Canada before the 1960s tend to champion national difference and distinctiveness, often under the banner of exceptionalism, while more recent debates have focused on issues of colonial power and dispossession, transnational crossovers, and regional idiosyncrasy? What relevance do traditional landscape tropes have in a world of vastly altered political, [...]

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The Habitant Farm

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Permissions

I was sketching at the pier on my day off from the Symposium. From afar I noticed a landscape painter with her easel set up facing towards Baie-Saint-Paul. I thought it might be interesting to reverse roles and to talk with her. She was an artist from Ottawa who has visited the region regularly for [...]

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Informer le goût artistique de la prochaine génération

J’ai passé un beau moment avec Hélène Béliveau et Roger Alexandre, deux artistes représentés par les galeries québécoises. J’ai rencontré Roger pendant que je peignais Le chasseur d’ours. Il m’a expliqué quelle impression il avait eue de moi: de loin, il était impressionné par mon talent, mais lorsqu’il s’était aperçu en s’approchant que je peignais [...]

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Cumshewa

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CHU TANNÉ DÉ TOUÈLE

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Qu’entendons-nous par l’Art?

Primo, l’expression de nos émotions, fussent-elles bonnes ou mauvaises, devient une œuvre d’art sensée ou insensée, belle ou imparfaite, selon que sa forme est parfaite ou rudimentaire. Secundo, qu’une œuvre est grande en raison du degré de Vérité, de Bonté, et de Beauté qu’elle atteint dans le jugement des gens qui pensent clairement. Tertio, que [...]

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Le choix du peuple

Canada’s Most Wanted and Most Unwanted Colours Les couleurs les plus et les moins désirées par les Canadiens Blue / Bleu 30% Green / Vert 18% Beige 8% Maroon / Bordeaux 6% Yellow / Jaune 5% Purple / Violet 5% Teal /Sarcelle 5% Peach / Pêche 4% Pink / Rose 4% Red / Rouge 3% [...]

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Cette nouvelle condition territoriale

L’histoire des paysages en Occident illustre bien la dynamique opérant entre lieux et non-lieux. Cette histoire pourrait en effet être abordée comme une conquête sensible des non-lieux, conquête d’espaces réputés « affreux » ou inhabitables, qui seront progressivement approivisés, investis de valorisations culturelles, transformés en lieux et en paysages. L’art a joué et joue toujours [...]

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The space between the words public and art

Is “public” a qualifying description of place, ownership or access? Is it a subject, or a characteristic of the particular audience? Does it explain the intentions of the artist or the interests of the audience? The inclusion of the public connects theories of art to the broader population: what exists in the space between the [...]

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The creation of national identities

What might appear as contradictory, that is, the fact that economic globalization seems to be accompanied by an increase of cultural divisions, is only so on the surface. It is a fact that, in a world where exchanges of goods and ideas are more and more frequent on an international level, people are increasingly aware [...]

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