Ghanaian sculptor Brahim El Anatsui's father was a master weaver who taught the tradition of strip-weaving Kente cloths to his sons. This textile technique has become a staple of El Anatsui's art: he amasses and refashions the debris from his community to create majestic, visual narratives that address his personal history and global issues like environmental sustainability. The North American premiere of his four-decade career retrospective When I Last Wrote to You About Africa is at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, having been extended to Feb. 27.
Feeling Canadian: Book Launch & Reading by Marusya Bociurkiw
Location
"My name is Joe, and I AM Canadian!" How did a beer ad become a
national anthem? When did Olympic opening ceremonies become an
advertisement for national superiority? What do toques and canoes have
to do with nationalism? Canadian couch potatoes need wonder no longer.
This book by award-winning Toronto-based author, media theorist,
filmmaker and professor Marusya Bociurkiw examines how affect
(passionate sites of feeling) and consumerism work together to produce
shows like Canada A Peoples' History, North of 60, and television
coverage of the 2010 Olympics. As Canadian TV expert Michelle Byers
writes, "Providing anecdotes that most readers will be very familiar
with, Bociurkiw's analysis situates us firmly within the context of
Catalytic Conversation: The Story of Stuff
Location
The Story of Stuff takes you on a provocative tour of our consumer-driven culture -- from resource extraction to iPod incineration. We will begin by watching this 20- minute, fast-paced, fact-filled look at the underside of production, consumption, and waste. It’ll teach you something, make you laugh, and it just may change the way you look at all your stuff.
This event is FREE!
Buy Nothing Day
In September 1992, the first Buy Nothing Day commenced in Vancouver, Canada. Founded on the premise of directing concern to the societal problem of over-consumption, Buy Nothing Day is understood as a worldwide day of protest against consumerism.
Contemporarily, Buy Nothing Day is celebrated November 26 and 27.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buy_Nothing_Day
How Disney devours our daughters
Cinderella Ate My Daughter: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the New Girlie-Girl Culture
A brand-new father told me that the (Toronto) hospital nurse wrapped his baby with a blanket which was blue on one side and pink on the other. She swaddled with the blue side out, then realized the newborn was a girl and re-swaddled with the pink side out. All this, about five minutes after birth.
Are corporations corrupting Canadian children?
Consuming Schools: Commercialism and the End of Politics
Interview between Dr. Gavin Fridell, Chair of the Department of Politics at Trent University, and Dr. Trevor Norris, Assistant Professor of Philosophy of Education at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto. This interview is a shortened version of the discussion that took place during the book launch of Consuming Schools: Commercialism and the End of Politics in the Hart House Library on Thursday Feb 24, 2011.
Gavin Fridell: To begin with, the forward to your book is written by Benjamin Barber who talks about consumerism as "a new ethos of infantilization" as corporations corrupt children and "dumb down" adults. I wonder what you think of this idea of "infantilization"?