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THIS IS NOT A MEAL!
Documentary, El Bulli: Cooking in Process;
Gereon Wetzel, Filmmaker.
by Simone Keiran
♫ A law was made a distant moon ago here:
♪ July and August cannot be too hot. ♫
Overlooking a half-moon cove called Cala Montjoi, near Roses, along Spain’s lush Costa Brava, there was once a restaurant open only six months of the year. They accepted reservations one single day out of the entire year and, yet, filled every available space. The white-washed adobe building with floor-to-ceiling windows floated cloud-like under towering arbutus on a cliff with stunning views of the warbly mermaid-filled Mediterranean.
A WILD CSÀRDÀS OF REVENGE
Calgary International Film Festival’s Presentation of
A Halába Tábcoltatott Leány (The Maiden Danced to Death)
Laszlo Zsolt (Gyula Udvaros) and Bea Melkvi (Mari) on the Banks of the Danube.
Hungarian and Slovenian folk dances are so intricate, it takes years of practice to acquire the necessary precision and dexterity before the dancers can proceed at the breakneck speed of a professional company. One misstep, one forgotten element of movement, one careless moment of distraction and a Rube Goldberg’s progression of disasters unspins. When everything goes perfectly, however, the dance leaves viewers breathless, pulses racing like the dancers themselves.
Sunday, 25th September, 2011
Globe Theatre Upstairs
By Simone Keiran and Aidie Keiran-Arney
A collective theme runs through the short movies crafted by young filmmakers for the 2011 Youth by Youth Film Competition, an annual feature of the Calgary International Film Festival: the problems they perceive are apocalyptic in nature, overwhelming in scope, and hopes are fragile and tenuous. Even at the elementary school level, they are anxious to reach out and overcome the experience of alienation between people. The most innocuous and lighthearted of the films had philosophical inquiry at their core, not to mention crushing social critiques and violent explosions. These young filmmakers have wrestled and wrangled the monstrous scale of these problems into scenes and stories small enough to fit through the camera iris. The results were surprisingly elegant and well-realized.
HarriSand, HARRISON LAKE WORLD COMPETITION OF SANDCASTLES:
Ephemeral Art boosts tourism, adds value to local communities.
Fantasy themes abound at the HarriSand Sandcastle Competitions in Harrison Lake, in the Fraser Valley, British Columbia. Photo by Simone Keiran
Vandalism to 9 sandcastles cost Harrison Lake $120,000 in revenue, proving that even ephemeral art attracts enough tourist dollars to make the investment worthwhile.
by Simone Keiran
published 15 August, 2008
Western Canadian Travel; Suite 101.com
Joni Mitchell’s adage about “Don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone” certainly applies here.
Everyone knows that art galleries and museums are major visitor attractions. Public art forms like well-conceived architecture and landscaping, sculptures and two-dimensional works such as murals also not only beautify cities and towns and make them better places to live in, but signal pride and success to tourists and investors alike. It is not so well-known that hosting a world-calibre sandcastle or ice sculpture competition can attract hundreds of thousands of dollars to a community.
This lesson became abundantly clear after midnight on 7th August, 2008, when vandals evaded a security detail to climb a fence and destroy nine of the world-famous “Tournament of Champions” sandcastles at Harrison Lake near Vancouver, BC. The estimated cost of damage reported by CTV’s Darcy Wyntonyk ranged around $120,000 in lost revenue if the unique art pieces couldn’t be fixed. Not bad for an art form which began with little more than buckets and sand.
Canadian team, Peter Vogelaar’s “The Pirate Queen” was one of the sandcastle sculptures that was destroyed during the vandals’ attack. Photo by Simone Keiran
Of course, ephemeral sculpture competitions are a serious business now. One world class competitive team from California made over $300,000 in 1990 demonstrating the art at beaches and malls alone. Professional sandcastles can take a doubles partnership around 50 man-hours or a team of 5 to 6 sculptors over 100 man-hours to complete and are reinforced with environmentally friendly white glue or other agents. Many of the participants are trained as professional artists in other media such as ceramics or bronze, and their aesthetic knowledge shows.
Often the competition includes a People’s Choice award where the appeal tends to range from comic narrative to popular beauty. Sculptors’ Choice awards incorporate more intricacy and difficulty of engineering. Often the images include fairytale or historical elements, allegorical tableaux or even religious iconography.
The Sandcastles are displayed in an enclosed space set aside next to the lagoon on Harrison Lake’s popular beachfront. Entrance fees are donated to charity. Photo by Simone Keiran
Snow sculpture competitions have become a favourite art event held during Winter Olympics. Peter Vogelaar, a contestant from the BC interior, won gold as a member of the team which sculpted at Torino in 1996. He has also won several sand sculpting awards at Harrison, showing how versatile the skills are for producing ephemeral art, and his public demonstrations included a well-publicized event at Metrotown Mall in Burnaby.
Harrison Lake, in the Fraser Valley of British Columbia, is about an hour’s journey south of Vancouver along the old Route 7 highway on the way to Hope. It is an attractive resort town on a picturesque lake, and provides a nice contrast to the busy urban bustle of Vancouver. Photo by Simone Keiran
Harrisand, Harrison Lake’s famous sand sculpting contest began in 1986 as a demonstration event. To be sure, the town has a number of significant advantages. It is already a resort, blessed with awe-inspiring scenery, a beautiful public beach, hot springs, marinas and other tourist amenities. The International Champions Competition moved there in 1989 from White Rock when the angular grains of the local mountain lake sand trumped the spherical “tumbled” ocean grains for durability and ease of production, but this was after the purse was sweetened by the local Lion’s Club.
As with every venture geared towards tourism, such competitions only work if the local community support them meaningfully, by offering sufficient prize money and perks to attract the good artists and audience numbers. Vigilant security also helps.
Competitors at Harrisand vet themselves through elimination rounds at other competitions, by apprenticeship for a minimum of 3 years to master sand sculptors, by endorsements from mayors or other major public figures, or by proving their worth as sculptors with successful careers in other, less ephemeral media. The standard is high and this is reflected in the quality of the finished pieces.
The 19th Annual Sand Sculpture Competition at Harrison Lake starts on the 2nd of September, 2008. The exhibition continues until October 19th. Over 60 teams are expected to participate. Information, competition entry details, rates and hours are available online at the Harrisand official website.
CHINESE LANTERN FESTIVAL:
Lighting up Fantasy Gardens in Richmond, BC, Canada.
The 2008 Greater Vancouver International Chinese Lantern Festival, with its scenes from Chinese history, science, folklore, mythology, and cartoons, combines fluff with fact in the oddest style.
By Simone Keiran
published 03 August, 2008
Western Canadian Travel: Suite101.com
At night, the two dragons which tower at the corner of Richmond’s Fantasy Gardens seem to come alive, glowing like movie screens in a theatre. Their purpose: to generate more appreciation for Chinese culture in Canada.
The gateway is through another lantern, a pastiche of traditional architectural detail which evokes impressive entranceways from the Forbidden City to the Great Wall, except topped with rodents. These cartoon creatures, which look like Steamboat Willie, puzzle visitors, but they refer to Chinese astrology; 2008 is the Year of the Rat. They aren’t mice at all.
Traditionally, lantern festivals are held at Chinese New Years when the year honouring one of the twelve legendary animal companions of the Buddha progresses to the next. This means they light up the seasons’ darkest hours. The middle of the Canadian summer means long days and late shows, and the astrological significance of the rat goes astray. All the same, its scale, colour, variety and invention present quite a spectacle.
It’s as though organizers couldn’t quite decide what they wanted to do. A stunning tableau of Kylin—mythical creatures which bring good fortune, fashioned from tens of thousands of tiny coloured apothecary bottles which glow like jewels and impress visitors with the ingenuity and artistry of their creation—is positioned next to a kitschy scene of nylon turtles, swans and other cutesy pond critters. This abrupt shift to the absurd with no transition happens throughout the exhibition.
There are breathtaking moments. “Carp Leaps through the Gate of the Loong” features sculptures built entirely out of china—blue-&-white porcelain bowls, cups and spoons intricately strung together. They form fish, dragons, lanterns, and rime the waves like sea-foam. Not only is the piece a novel play on China, quite literally, but its beauty and cleverness stays with viewers.
The sheer scale and diversity of the enterprise is impressive. It covers acres of park. At the heart is a life-sized pagoda stretching up for three fiery tiers into the darkness, its mannequins of court musicians the only nod to China’s ancient dynasties. There are scenes from Journey to the West, the legend of the Monkey King, Taoist legends, and even the Loong, a mysterious deity from whom the Chinese descended.
Some dioramas sport science-y names like “The World of Insects.” Except, a dinosaur world where T-Rexes feasted on prey from different epochs, while unconcerned Duckbills grazed five feet away, never existed. Not even in China. This is the child’s eye on nature, not science itself. Often the lanterns contain clever riddles for children to decipher, although some of them can leave adults stumped.
These anachronisms are key: to fully appreciate the lantern show, disbelief must be suspended. Science gives way to make-belief, since facts complicate fantasies. Those who look for the sublime in external nature through art or intellect will be grounded by grinning rats.
The cartoon RCMP Musical Ride, speaking of anachronisms, is bizarre. This includes the row of columns topped by RCMP officers interspersed with sparkly rats like a psychedelic Appian Way. Elsewhere, glowing totem poles are derived from native art in the Pacific N.W. This is Canadian culture reflected back to us, both ridiculous and sublime.
How strangely fitting that show is set within Fantasy Gardens, the loss-leader amusement park with its heritage Dutch-Christian themes of farmhouses, churches, windmills and castles, which brought down the Social Credit government of British Columbia back in 1991. Some things are best enjoyed by not looking too deeply past the first layers of fluff.
Fantasy Gardens Lantern Festival website
Steveston and No. 5, Richmond, BC, Canada
Night show: 8:30 – 11:30 pm ($25 per adult; children over 12/seniors $20)
Day show: 11 am – 2 pm ($15 per adult; $10 per child/senior)
family passes, season passes and discounts available online
Until 21st September, 2008
A second helping for Kimberley and Invermere festivals.
Published ARTiculate, Spring/Summer 2006
Two successful Arts Festivals with very different flavours began in 2005, and response from the communities, artists and performers was so positive, they’re back in spades.
