Art or Trash? Art Bin Defines Creative Recycling

In Taking Out the Trash, Elizabeth Davies writes for the CBC about a new installation by British artist Michael Landy. His Art Bin is on display in London until March 14.

By invitation, the Art Bin accepts discarded or rejected works by artists - a legitimized purge described as 'defining creative recycling.'

The article goes on to suggest that the cumulative work will be hauled to the landfill at the end of the show. What is the point? Perhaps a more creative solution would be to invite the public to rummage through the bin and find new homes or uses for the items. Once it is kicked to the curb, art or trash is fair game.

Please don't use the veil of 'art' as a justification to clog landfills.

The Wisdom of Friedrich Nietzsche

In March of 1995 Mark Moran of Wyoming, Ontario began publishing Daytripping, a unique bi-monthly travel guide and directory to the wonders of Southwestern Ontario. Mark fills his paper with small town tourism information and advertisements, and nuggets of information that need to be repurposed, including The Wisdom of Friedrich Nietzsche, reprinted here.

(Portrait of Friedrich Nietzsche by Edvard Munch)

• All truly great thoughts are conceived by walking.

• We should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once. And we should call every truth false which was not accompanied by at least one laugh.

• Glance into the world just as though time were gone: and everything crooked will become straight to you.

• He who cannot give anything cannot feel anything either.

• He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.

• He who would learn to fly one day must first learn to stand and walk and run and climb and dance; one cannot fly into flying.

• In every real man a child is hidden that wants to play.

• One ought to hold on to one's heart; for if one lets it go, one soon loses control of the head too.

• All things are subject to interpretation. Whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth.

• Art is the proper task of life.

Authentic Theatre Chairs

An advertisement appeared today on the classified website Kijiji listing 'authentic theatre chairs for sale - ideal for your home theatre!' The Ingersoll Theatre for Performing Arts has 150 seats available as of August 1, when I expect they will be replaced by something more stylish, and comfortable.

Before television and the VCR kept us inside our homes, theatres were the social centres of our communities. The Peterborough Museum and Archives recreates the ambiance of an evening at the theatre with their traveling exhibition Voices of the Town: Vaudeville in Canada, currently on display until April 2 at the Spruce Row Museum in Waterford. As the promotion for the exhibit describes, a visit to an opulent vaudeville house was almost as exciting as the performance itself.

Whether it be a movie or a play, the experience is certainly enhanced when it is enjoyed in a vintage theatre in a stiff, old seat. What they lack in foam padding they compensate with history. Maybe your favourite seat in aisle seven is exactly where your granddad sat sixty years before? I know putting 'bums in seats' is essential for making theatres viable, but I prefer that mine doesn't have a cup holder or a head rest!