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From Sally McKay’s blog:

Timothy Comeau’s new work “Outdoor Air Conditioning” (reproduced below) demonstrates, contra the recent humiliating announcement by PM-for-the- moment Steven Harper that Canada will not meet the Kyoto targets, that in the visual arts at least, we are doing our bit. Comeau’s work raises the bar for art within a conceptual framework, adding environmental impact awareness to create a neat tautological bundle. Not only is the work about the state of the environment (massively out of control and uncontrollable) but it is a model of environmental frugality: no materials, no crates, no shipping, no gallery, no printed matter, no mailings, no hard documentation, no archive. The work exists in the mind, and a mindful mind at that.

It leaves a child-size environmental footprint; Comeau’s computer, mine and yours (heavy metals and other hazardous materials not easily disposed of yet dutifully replaced every two years), energy consumed (see David Suzuki’s ad about the cost, in beer, of dedicated beer fridges), some miniscule part of the admittedly gargantuan infrastructure that supports the Internet. Proportionally, you have to think Comeau’s digitally-relayed concept adds hardly at all to all that, unless it is in the way it fuels the passion for ever more powerful and energy consuming digital communications.

Is it not time that every artwork include in its specifications, an environment impact assessment?

- R. Labossiere

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Today is June 5th and it’s cold outside. I declare the local weather pattern on this day to be a readymade installation entitled:

Outdoor Air Conditioning.

a free cooling centre open to the public during this global warming heat wave

From the website of Darren O’Donnell’s Mammalian Diving Reflex

Good Reads Loves Diplomatic Immunities & A Video Show for the People of Pakistan and India

Critic and blogger Timothy Comeau writes on his Good Reads site of the ridiculously narrow coverage of the “war on terror”, complaining, rightly, that even the CBC can’t seem to get more than the military’s side of the story:

“…the talk of putting a human face struck me as more this meaningless political rhetoric. Why are all these human faces those from Canada? Where do we ever see the human faces of the people we’re supposedly helping? How is their humanity ever brought to our attention? The fact that Darren could undermine the agenda of Canada’s national broadcaster with a 20 minute video perhaps suggests just how under-served we are by photo-ops, predictable rhetoric, focus on soldiers, and all the other regular bullshit.”

Check out and subscribe to Timothy’s Good Reads for lots of interesting reading, great links and compelling video on a whole range of subjects. Timothy’s the guy who got an arts grant to give a bunch of artists cable television so they could learn a little bit about what was happening in the world.

This is to document a citation.

On her blog, Milena Placentile directs her readers to the last issue of Goodreads, for my comments on Thrush Holmes Empire and the links to Michael Kuchma’s reviews.

I just found a review of last night’s Trampoline Hall, where I was the second speaker:

[...]

Growing old gracefully was ideal to the night’s second speaker as well. Timothy Comeau recalled his grandfathers fondness, in later life, for tea and crackers before bed and cited it as part of his personal vision of “the good life”. Comeau offered up personal conceptions of “the good life” as a replacement for religious, set in stone morality. He shied from any hierarchical ranking of morals or enforcement of a community standard. While his own ideal life, that of a vegan cyclist, seemed firmly at odds with the thrill seeking speed boaters he suggested as embodying a different sort of “good life”, Comeau preached only understanding and tolerance in the face of difference. When pressed, he did hint towards some vague Do No Harm principle. I couldn’t help feel that this approach would have to involve banning oil dependent thrill seeking and setting morality in stone anew, if a more environmental vision were to prevail. Yet I was made to feel that if I want to steal from the rich and give to the poor, begin a round of well planned political assassinations or force people to like good music that thats something wrong with me.

[...]

Regardless, it was great fun listening to each speaker and participating in the Q&A’s that followed. The night even wrapped up early enough for me to come home and have some tea and crackers before bed.

I was quoted in Nadja Sayej’s piece in this weekend’s Globe and Mail. Nadja talked to me for a half-hour last weekend and it’s funny to see the conversation reduced to one sentence, and to see that it was edited to say that I attend this home shows, when I in fact do not. What I did tell Nadja was that I saw some things like home-shows when I was going to NSCAD - bands playing house-parties, and in particular sang the praises of my memories of the Yoko Ono cover band, the Loco Onos, featuring the cartoonist Marc Bell on vocals - which were nothing but yodeling screams that nonetheless fucking rocked.

From The Globe & Mail Saturday 10 March 2007:

[...] Coffee and Couches takes place every two months in his butter-coloured apartment. Featuring all-acoustic local performances from groups such as the Blankket, Mantler and Jon-Rae and the River, it’s an alternative to the deafening atmosphere of rock clubs. “It’s just to get out of the bar,” says Mr. Parnell, who started his event as a series of loud house parties in his previous home in the Annex. But after he moved into this second-floor storefront, they evolved into quieter sets. With advertising through message boards and e-mail, a turnout of 30 to 50 for each event is typical, as are full pots of coffee as an alternative to bottles of beer.

“It’s a private, privileged experience,” says Timothy Comeau, a 32-year-old artist who attends home shows. “They feel special. It’s a way for the indie scene to separate themselves from the lame-asses.”

Though home shows are unconventional in nature, they never used to be. Gregory Oh, a 33-year-old music professor at the University of Toronto, notes that the idea of a musical performance at home goes back to 17th-century Europe. “Harpsichords and clavichords are small instruments; they weren’t loud enough to fill a hall,” Prof. Oh says, adding that classical musicians or their patrons would invite crowds to salon recitals. “Because they belonged in small spaces, shows were held at home. Some things haven’t changed.”

Carrie Young writing for BlogTo:

Last night I was at Gallery 1313 as one of six guest panellists in The Role of the Art Critic, the first roundtable discussion (well, rectangular-table discussion) as part of Gallery 1313’s ArtSPEAK series, along with Toronto art writers and critics David Balzer, Peter Goddard, Claudia McKoy, the Editor-In-Chief of MIX, Stephanie Rogerson, Timothy Comeau, and last but not least, our moderator Nick Brown.Gallery 1313’s Director, Phil Anderson, did a fabulous job in organizing the event, which packed in a full-house despite the inclement weather of yesterday’s “perpetual snow”, and everyone involved was simply mahvelous to meet (though some were simply more mahvelous than others — saucy Timothy Comeau for instance or Stephanie Rogerson, with whom I share a fondness for Claude Cahun — but I may be biased as they were both on my end of the table).

Source

[...] Also on the urban-culture front, Timothy Comeau’s marvellous magpie project GoodReads links in its latest edition to an Los Angeles Times piece about the “art party” issue in the L.A. scene. Timothy snappily connects it with the conversations about the nightclubbing-meets-participatory-aesthetics conundrum that have been going on in Toronto for several years, including my essay in the Coach House uTOpia 2 book.

Carl Wilson’s Zoilus January 15 2007

[...] Christopher Hutsul (or Christopher the Younger, as we like to call him) argues for ways the city can nurture its creative communities, including decriminalizing graffiti. Local “thinker” Timothy Comeau critiques this suggestion and many others on Good Reads.

Ron Nurwisah, Torontoist 17 April 2006

[...] If you hear low moaning and tortured shrieks coming from your neighbour this week, he or she might be an artist going through cable TV withdrawal (among other types).

This time last year, multimedia artist Timothy Comeau received a grant from the Ontario Arts Council to purchase cable services for eight artists for one year. The goal, Comeau says, was to see what the artists would make if they were suddenly given access to dozens of channels.

“I feel that we’re entitled to as much media/information as possible,” Comeau tells me.

“Cable TV is a library and gallery that media artists, due to their relative poverty, don’t have access to. Painters and sculptors can go to museums on free nights, but is there free access to music videos, commercials, or news programs? All are worth knowing about if your medium is video. But most artists simply can’t afford a cable TV subscription – so this project became an experiment with one person socialism.”

Performance artist and filmmaker Keith Cole used his time in front of the box to discover that he spends way too much time in front of the box.

“I will not miss having cable! I have wasted so much time – I’m happy to see it go. Although I loved it, I will not mourn it - kind of like this guy I stalked last year.”

Cole plans to make a dance piece and “a truly horrible painting” based on what he learned from reality television about successful stalking. He’s also come up with a starring vehicle for his acting career.

“What about a show with a drag queen /actress who is slightly washed up and overweight but whose career is suddenly revived … with the adorable Paul Gross as my on again/off again boyfriend who is from the wrong side of the tracks?”

Stay tuned.

RM Vaughan, ‘The Big Picture‘ National Post Sat. May 10 2005

[...] If Kantor’s work piques your interest stick around for a panel discussion on his work, Philip Monk (AGYU director and curator of the Kantor’s show Machinery Execution) will moderate and try to shed some light on Kantor’s oft-times dense pieces. And if you want to come prepared check out Timothy Comeau’s detailed post on Kantor and the AGYU show here.

Ron Nurwisah, Torontoist, 7 March 2005