Get Schooled, Get Shocked, Get Stuffed: Three Plans for Contact Photo Fest

With over 200 exhibitions and events going on--and a new festival planning tool on its website--there's about a bazillion different ways to experience the Contact Photography festival, which officially starts today. In today's National Post, I offer three potential plans: one for smartypantses, one for slatterns, and one for stealth gourmets. Here's an excerpt:

Plan 1: Get Schooled
Legendary Canadian brainiac Marshall McLuhan inspired this year’s Contact theme on the pervasive influence of images, and there’s plenty to engage intellectuals here. Today’s media-wisdom wannabes must see David Rokeby and Lewis Kaye’s Through the Vanishing Point at U of T — which recreates McLuhan’s heady Monday-night seminars in the very classrooms where he once taught (39A Queen’s Park E.) — and set the PVR May 7 at 10 p.m., when TVO airs one of McLuhan’s last interviews. Also key is The Mechanical Bride, another McLuhan-phrase-titled show focusing on branding and media at MOCCA (952 Queen St W). There, Kota Ezawa alters IKEA-catalogue images, while former runwayer Britta Thie acts as both photographer and model. Smart billboard installations by Hank Willis Thomas, Barbara Kruger and Olaf Breuning will prompt double takes on advertising strategies and stereotypes at Spadina and Front, Dundas and McCaul and Queen’s Quay respectively, while Penelope Umbrico’s Pearson Airport installation analyzes the world’s most popular Flickr trope — sunsets. Umbrico’s PM Gallery show of busted eBay TV screens also looks like a bookworm best-of, as does Barbara Probst’s show of perennially savvy multi-angle pics at Jessica Bradley (1518 and 1450 Dundas St. W.). Providing vital information on overlooked realms is another repeat Contact strength: Always Moving Forward, a much-anticipated show of contemporary African photography at Gallery 44 (401 Richmond St. W.) fits the bill, along with journalist Finnbar O’Reilly’s exhibition on the Democratic Republic of Congo at CBC (250 Front St. W.) and Toni Fouhse’s images of Ottawa crack addicts at Pikto (55 Mill St.). The North American premiere of Zineb Sedira’s Middlesea at Prefix (401 Richmond St. W.), including an interview with international übercurator Hans Ulrich Obrist, also beckons. Finally, the Magnum Lecture Series from May 4 to 6 at Ryerson will get you inside the head of the world’s best photographers.

For my picks on the eye- and tummy-appetite fronts, read on at the National Post's blog, Posted Toronto.

Image of Marshall McLuhan from UTAC Contact show Probing McLuhan, via Posted Toronto

Barbara Kruger Q&A Out Today

Barbara Kruger has taken over the AGO facade for the Contact Festival. My interview with her about the work--and her longer 30 year legacy of incisive artmaking--is out today in the National Post. Here's an excerpt:

Q: How else has the power of images changed?

A: Well, I've been interested for a long time in the way pictures tell us who we are and who we want to be -- and who we can never be, too. But time online has changed people in incredible ways. I really see a difference in the attention spans that people have, particularly young people, who I teach at a university. Just look who goes to movies - a lot of people go to "event movies," but other kinds of narrative don't hold them. I think sustained narrative is in a real crisis. Sometimes I ask my students, "Do you ever think you'd be interested in going to a movie that's not about you?" They'd rather go on Twitter and talk about what they're doing. I don't say that judgmentally. It's just a way cultures have changed.

Q: Speaking of cultures, do you find working in Canada different than the States?

A: There's a phrase I've used before: "Belief plus doubt equals sanity." One without the other is sort of strange. For a while, doubt seemed like it was grounds for arrest in America. I'm sure Canadian politics has some of the same baggage. But maybe I'm wrong. I feel like Canada and the States share a particular situation, a geographical adjacency that spills over into various cultural and linguistic forms -- and now medical forms! And of course, where would American comedy, which is so important to me, be without Canada?

Image of Kruger's classic I Shop Therefore I Am 1987 from the National Post, Courtesy Mary Boone Gallery

Get Yo Face on Brookfield Place - Contact Style

From what I hear, this year's Contact festival, which starts May 1, will have some pretty interesting installations. One will be a stained-glass style mural, created by Quebec duo Doyon Rivest, that plays up the cathedral-like style of Brookfield Place's Calatrava-designed atrium. And next week, downtowners have a chance to perhaps become a part of the final installation--Doyon Rivest are conducting a public photo shoot on Tuesday March 30 at Brookfield Place from 10 - 5 pm. As described in the Contact release that went out today,

Sitters will be photographed in the dark with their faces illuminated by their electronic portable devices: cell phone, iPod etc. Each photo will take approximately two minutes. The captured portraits will be digitally compiled to make one image that will be displayed as a large-scale installation.

About the Installation:
Doyon-Rivest will make spectacular use of the cathedral-like qualities of the Galleria. The artists will transform the Bay St entrance's 18-meter-high window into a giant stained glass-like artwork.

About the Project:
Le siècle des lumières, an encompassing image will reveal a series of portraits lighted by the small screens of portable electronic devices. These sources of light only reveal faces, which seem to float in an undetermined space, creating an atmosphere that makes us think of the beauty of the night sky.

Image of Doyon Rivest's Le siècle des lumières, 2008 from Contact