Belong: A TV journalist's search for urban culture: From Beirut to Bamako, from Havana to Ho Chi Minh City

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COPYRIGHT@ 2004 BY JENNIFER MORTON

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reporduced stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any from or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher or, in case of photocopying or other reprographic comying, a license from Access copyright, I yonge street, Suite 1900, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, MES IES

Story editor kisha ferguson Edited by Autienne Weiss Book Design by Bill Douglus at The Bang Library and Archives canada Catatoguling in Publication

Morton Jennifer, 1962Beling: search for urban culture: from Beirut to Banaki, from Havan to Ho chi Minh City Jennifer Morton. Includes index.

ISBN 1-894663-78-0 1. Arts and revolition. 2. Arts and the poor. 3. Urban violence. 4. Urban warfeare. I Title NX180.S6M67 2004 700'1'03 c2004-909344-X The publisher gratefully acknowledges the support of the canada Council the Ontario arts Council and the department of Canadian Heritage through the Book Publishing Industry Development progea. We acknowledge the support of the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Media Development Corportation's Ontario Book Initiatiove. Printed and bound in canada Insoomniac Proess

192 Spadina Avenue, Suite 403 Tojronto Ontario Canada M5T 2C2 www.insomnicapress.com

THE CANADA COUNCIL LE CONSEIL DES ARTS FOR THE ARTS DI CANADA SINC 1957 DEPUTS 1957

ONTARIO ARTS COUNCI CONSEIL DES ARTS DE LONTARIO

BELONG A TV JOURNALIST'S SEARCH FOR URBAN CULTURE. FROM BEIRUT TO BAMAKO, FROM HAVANA TO HO CHI MINH CITY.

STORIES AND PHOTOS

INSOMNIAC PRESS

JENNIFER MOTRON

ART WILL FIND A WAY p. 18

INTRODUCTION

ART WILL FIND A WAY. THAT WAS TAKEN FROM A WALL IN MELBOURNE. IT SUMS UP WHAT I HAVE EXPERIENCED TRAVELLING AROUND THE WORLD. ART WILL ALWAYS BE CREATED NO MATTER WHERE YOU ARE. BELONG WAS SPRAY-PAINTED ON A WALL IN MADRID. IT MADE ME FEEL A SENSE OF BELONGING TO AN ARTISTIC URBAN WORLD. IT IS NOT ABOUTGLOBALIZATION,BUTRATHERCOMMUNICATION.

IT IS NOT ABOUT EXCLUSION, BUT A SEARCH FOR A COMMON BOND. IT'S ABOUT IDENTITY. I TRAVELLED THE WORLD TRYING TO FIT INTO A GLOBAL COMMUNITY. HOME IS WHERE I AM CERTAIN I BELONG, BUT I HAVE CONNECTED TO OTHER CITIES. MY KNAPSACK OF CAMERAS ALLOWED ME TO PARTICIPATE. I THINK THE

BEST WAY TO DISCOVER A CITY IS THROUGH THE EYES OF ITS ARTISTS. —JENNIFER MORTON

P.19

FORWARD

BY MOSES ZNAIMER

IN MY EARLY CAREER as a roving, troubleshooting Producer/Reporter for CBC network television's Take 30 and The Way It Is, I was every so often sent off on a story in a hurry, armed with a thin file and a single contact in it. Soon it became my favourite thing to do: hit a strange airport in a foreign

quickly you can construct and fall into that new life. Start on day one with a single name and number and by week's end your diary is bursting with tips and references and new acquaintances. Stay a little while longer and your personal and social calander is as loaded as your business agenda, and then, you vanish! I guess that's why I was so primed and open to Jennifer Morton's pitch for tvfmmes when it came. It seemed to me she was proposing to do as I had done. But where I had improvised on occasion, she was going to do it time and time again for a TV show in which she would play not only producer, director and host, but photographer as well. This played to another of my hobby horses; namely, that today's new, compact video technology, allows for complete TV craftsmanship on the part of a new kind of individual—an artist who could conceive, organize, shoot, interview, edit and present—something that not too long

BOTH THE TV SHOW AND THE BOOK REFUSE TO RECOGNIZE THE NORDERS AND NICETIES ASSOCIATED WITH MAINSTREAM TOURISM. land, sometimes in the dead of night, and by dint of tenacity and chutzpah—and not a little luck—make my way to the facts and personalities in question. As I think about it now I realize that those experiences crystallized for me the powerful allure of travel: real travel, not packaged tourism. I loved the sense of dislocation, of freedom and of anonymity. I loved the promise of travel, which, however briefly, is of a different life! It's amazing how P. 20

ago used to require an entire team. In short, Jennifer was a new kind of modern-day communicator, who I called a Videographer. However, among the cliche program formats of early television that I had sworn never to emulate at Citytv was the Travel Show (along with the Game Show, the Cooking Show, the Bowling Show...). So, if I was going to break that vow it could only be in support of a very different kind of "travel show" indeed! Jennifer told me that her shooting would be multicamera, (five different cameras, four of them hers) and

mixed media, from the hip, and without anything predetermined or set up in advance. And her portrait of the City or Country in question would be composed not of the usual Attractions and Officials, but of the music, art, fashion and media being created in that place, delivered in documentary-style and featuring video-verite technique, (Start with pictures, or rock and roll, and pretty soon you're talking politics anyways!) Such an approach resonated perfectly with Citytv's perspective on life, so I said, "OK!" Armed with a knapsack of cameras and an abundance of chutzpah, Jennifer then chased the global urban art, music and culture scene: from Havana to Ho Chi Minh City, from Bamako to Beirut. As Producer, Shooter and Presenter of tvframes, her travels took her to forty-one countries and hundreds of encounters. Over the years Jennifer and her cameramen have been dragged out of a club by riot police in Milan; tracked down and questioned in Belfast; and told to "spread "em" in Istanbul. They've witnessed spirit possession in Senegal, been left on the side of the road by more than one driver, and were actually stranded in the air and rerouted as the Twin Towers burned and fell. Now, Belong brings her unique approach to cultural reportage to print. From the dirt roads of Bamako to the people-littered streets of Mumbai, it is also a look at how culture survives in places the rest of the world associates with war, poverty and civil strife...like the Bob Marle

tourism. They're a guide mostly to the lesstravelled parts of the world or to the less travelled parts of the well-travelled parts, Jennifer likes to learn things first-hand. She brings you into the cafes and bars for smoky conversations and late night insights. She avoids the obvious. Her beat is more underground, closer to the street and dependent only on her own stamina, courage and charm to get around. There are no governments or big companies opening institutional doors; just a gutsy gal moving from contact to contact and before you know it, local music, wall-art, and new media have revealed more than any folkloric travelogue or government communique ever could, Jennifer Morton is adventurous, avantgarde and idealistic. Her fifteen-year Quest has by its sizeable output become a body of work to be noted and applauded. In the end, her message is: I went, you go too! Be inquisitive. Keep an open mind. Above all, be available to the happy accidents of travel,

MOSES ZANAIMER IS THE

cover band in beirtu, or the architect in Tel Aviv who wants

to incorporate destruction into his new buildings. in Otner words, Belong IS not a conventional travel guide and Jennifer Morton is not a conventional travel 0 writer. Herein, no tips about cheap rooms Or meals, but a

new way of understanding people and places and the great truth to that old adage, "travel is broadening." Both the TV Show and the Book refuse to recognize the borders and niceties associated with mainstream

CO-FOUNDER AND FORMER PRESIDENT/EXECUTIVE PRODUCER OF SOME TWO DOZEN STATIONS AND CHANNELS INCLUDINE: CITYTV

MUCHMUS.C, MUSIQUEPLUS, BRAVOI, AND SPACE. HE is PRESENTL

CHAIRMAN/EXECUTIVE PRODICER OF ACCESS MEDIA GROUP. ACCESS

CANADIAN LEARNING TELEVISION, BOOKTELEVISION, COURTTV CANADA, THE LEARNING ANNEX, AND IDEACITY. MOSES'TELEVISION CONCEPT HAVE BEEN LICENSED IN ARGENTINA, FINLAND, COLOMBIA AND SPAIN

AND HIS PROGRAMMES ARE SEEN AROUND THE WORLD. HE i CURRENTLY A SENIOR RESIDENT FELLOW AT MASSEY COLLEGE IN

THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO.

P. 21

I HAVE MANAGED TO KEEP ALL FORTY-ONE FO MY NOTEBOOKS. EACH CITY HAS ITS OWN. THEY ARE MY BIBLES. I BUY BAGS WITH THE REQUIREMENT THAT IT MUST SUIT MY NOTEBOOK. PARTWAY THROUGH A TRIP I SATRT TO WORRY ABOUT LOSING THEM. EVERY NAME AND NUBMER, SET OF DIRESTIONS, THEY ONLY MARK SENSE EXPENSE IS JOTTED DOWN IN SOME FORM OR ANOTHER. LOCATION, FACT, TIP AND TO ME. THEY HAVE NO STRUCTURE. I HAVE NO SYSTEM. AT LEAST ONE PANIC ATTACK ON EACH TRIP LEADS ME TO UNLOAD THE CONTENTS OF MY BAG. I WORRY THAT SOMEHOW THEY WILL EVEN BE TAKEN FROM THE HOTEL. I HAVE EVEN MANAGED TO TRANSFER THIS FEAR TO OTHERS.

HAVANA (DAYS, HAVANA NIGHTS)

THE BAND, THEAARTIST AND THE POET I HAVE SEEN THE WORLD AND I HAVE KEPT AN IMAGE OF IT, A CONFUSED MULTITUED, ALWAYS WATCHING.

KNOWING CERTAIN PEOPLE HAS MADE ME SUSPECT, THAT BEING DIFFERENT IS YET ANOTHER ADAPTATION. THE COMPLICATED WORLD SIMPLIFIED MY LIFE. SIMPLE PEOPLE COMPLICATED MY WORLD. FROM THE POEM "TANKA IDENTITY" BY PEOT/NOVELIST PABLO ARMANDO FERNANDEZ, HAVANA, CUBA

THE BAND The first day in Havana, we were walking down the street and hoard ihis incrcdihl) loud rock music blaring from an open window. We'd been looking for a rock band to profile and since we hadn't had any luck, we discovered the apiirlmcnt whore the music was coming from and knocked on ihe door. When the guy opened il. wo stood there with our huge Betacam video camera and smiles smacked on our laces. Manuel Trujillo. who lias toured Europe with ihe Piicho Lope/ hand, was ihe one blasting Guns N' Roses into the street. He invited us in. He spoke English lluontly so we started talking ] L1 tiild us about a hand named Horns that we could go to cheek oiu, and the next thing we knew, one of the members was meeting us at our hotel and whisking us off to their practice space, hi their minimalist apartment, with a huge poster of Che in ihe halkvay. was a room covered with egg cartons. We sal down and listened to I lorus play a few song!.. "You know, we lose electricity at least two weeks of the month because we use up all of our ration at the beginning." I lorus was made up of four long-haired nickers, playing a Cuban version uf heavy-lhrash-melal. They explained how hard it was to he men

witn long hair in Havana. One ol them had to cut his hair off because there was no shampoo to wash it. They'd performed on stage only twice in the last five years and because their music was no! sanctioned or promoted by the state, they had to buy their equipment on the black markei: secondhand and super expensive. There we were having a pretty open conversation, when they asked us to go hack into the egg-faiton room to tell us what they really wanted to do: get out. It was the only time we had heard anyone being critical of t'uhan society. Although there was no need, we still spoke in whispers. Cameraman Basil Young and I met up with the boys again, to give them soap and shampoo from our hotel and hang out on the Malecott. Havana's seaside boardwalk, talking about music. About a year later two guys from the eggcanon room showed up ai Citytv where I was working as a reporter producer for Tin1 XwMitsic.

P. 25

AND ASKED

THEN THEY US TO GO

BACK INTO THE

EGG-CARTON ROOM TO TELL US

WHAT THEY REALLY

WANTED TO DO: GET OUT.

HAVANA (DAYS, HAVANA NIGHTS)

They were on the run and wanted my help. I could tell they were '< street, nailing them up along a wall so we could pumped, full of adrenaline and scared about their future. They were stand back and experience his pieces outside. It staying at a safe house somewhere in Toronto. I didn't know what to was just perfect. do. They came to me for some kind of advice or assistance but I was Afterwards he invited us back in to smoke young, single, living alone and I didn't know how to help them. cigars and drink a little rum. Later, he took us out After they took off, I never heard from them again. to La Tropical, the place where Cubans go to party.

AGUSTIN SAW THE ANGEL AS BEING A MAN AND A WOMAN AT THE SAME TIME, WITH THE STRENGTH OF A I MAN AND THE SENSUALITY OF A WOMAN. To find people like Horus I took a risk. I knocked on a stranger's door and went into his apartment, not knowing where it would lead. When the band turned up at my work and knocked on my door, it was like the whole trip came full circle.

THE ARTIST Not everybody wants to leave Cuba. And of those who are allowed to leave, many choose to return, like artist Agustin Bejarano. In his early forties with a small build, I remember that he painted his canvasses stretched out on the floor, slowly revealing the image, like a sculptor carving it out of a surface. When we met him, he was working on a series of paintings of angels called Angelotes, which may sound corny but they were anything but. Agustin saw the angel as having the strength of a man and sensuality of a woman. On a canvas painted black, a muscularwinged white angel with bubbles surrounding its head shot an arrow at its target. For Agustin, it was a study of not just the body, but the soul. When we went to his house, instead of showing us his work inside his studio, he pulled his enormous canvasses out onto the

The club offered the kind of outrageous out-ofcontrol chaotic fun that could only happen in Cuba. It would never happen in Toronto. No one would let it happen. The place was packed, people stood on fences, danced on top of railings, wore almost no clothes and drank huge amounts of alcohol—and everybody, every single person there, danced. As the hours passed it went from crazy to crazed; there were no rules at La Tropical which made it such a great evening, Agustin shows his work all over the world and is one of the few Cubans who comes and goes freely. He truly believes it is important for him to stay in Havana and live in his neighbourhood with his people and be influenced by the street. For him it's pretty real. He has no desire to cut himself off by leaving. Most of the artists I met around the world wanted to stay where they were. As part of the community, they felt that was where they belonged. They had a pride of place and, without that, didn't know what kind of art they could do.

P. 29

HAVANA

HOTEL HABANA LIBRE TRYP

MENSAJE

HAVANA (DAYS, HAVANA NIGHTS)

THE POET In Cuba, Pablo Armando Fernandez is simply known as "El Poeta," the poet. We were invited over to his house, one of those old Cuban mini-mansions. We could tell that it was once a house that had had lots of parties, a house full of life. Like so many houses in Havana, it looked a bit rundown. We marched up the path to be greeted by Pablo's wife at the door. She was friendly, as if pleased to see us. We were led upstairs to Pablo's study. He read "Tanka Identity" to me in English as we sat in his study. It was a room full of books jammed in shelves and stacked on any available surface. On the walls were pictures of Che Guevara and Fidel Castro. His great disappointment is that while he met the Queen of England, Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot, he never shook the hand or looked into the eyes of his hero, Che Guevara. Pablo looks like a poet, with long, thick white hair and a beard, a little like Mark Twain, and smiling blue eyes. He speaks and writes in English but none of his three novels have ever been published in English because he was not permitted to sign a contract with an American publisher. When he was fourteen, Pablo left Cuba for New York City, where he studied English literature. Three years later he wrote his first poem. In 1959, when he was thirty, at the height of the Revolution, he returned to Cuba with his wife. After that he served as a diplomat in Europe and then Soviet Union for several years. But he always returned. Pablo chose to stay and live in Cuba even when his work fell out of favour and was not allowed to be published. Pablo, then and now, wants to be a part of

P. 33

HAVANA (DAYS, HAVANA NIGHTS)

trying to make a nation out of the island, to help it create an identity. "I belong to that immense humanity that is trying to belong," he said to me. Poets and revolutions always seem to go hand in hand. Pablo truly believes in Cuba and in the good things that it brings to its people. "I think of the revolution as a metaphor of

"I THINK OF THE REVOLUTION AS A

METAPHOR OF CUBA, I THINK THAT THE ONLY GESTURE OF LOVE IN THIS

CONTINENT HAS BEEN THE CUBAN REVOLUTION." Cuba. I think that the only gesture of love in this continent has been the Cuban Revolution, the last one, not the very first one in 1868. Because it is the only cause that has been willing to make people learn. And if I have to give my life for that and only for that—to think that every child has the opportunity of learning, not just read or write, but learning—I think that is beautiful."

P. 36

THE BLUE ONE-WAYTICKETTORIDE

"WANT TO GET OUT, GOT TO GET OUT, GOT OUT, ESCAPE FROM THE CITY OF ANGELS FIVE DAYS LATER, WHAT HAVE I GOT? I'M IN ANOTHER PLACE WHICH IS SUNNY AND HOT, THE DIFFERENCE HERE IS THAT I'M FREE AS A BIRD. NO GUN TO MY HEAD, NO BLOOD ON THE CURB." —"ESCAPE FROM THE CITY OF ANGELS" FROM THE CD, ITHAKA: FLOWERS AND THE COLOR OF PAINT BY DARIN PAPPAS

SURFER DARIN PAPPAS WAS THE BLUE SURFER. He was a real, hardcore L.A. street dude who moved to Lisbon to start his life again. He said the waves brought him. Darin only wore blue. Never any other colour. The same shade of blue, all over. It was a whole body thing. His apartment: all blue. Walls, ceilings, fridge: all the same blue. His artwork... same tone of blue. He had a huge "cross" in the kitchen made from two blue surfboards. Shoes painted blue, some with fins, sat at his front door. Blue photos of belly buttons covered the walls. Blue, he said, was the colour of his blood. And a little bit of his blood hangs on my wall. With no contacts on the ground Darin bought a oneway ticket for his twenty-sixth birthday and just sort of showed up. I loved his bravery. There he was, this total L.A. surfer who chose to pack up and leave to live in Portugal with a whole new language to deal with and a whole new posse to find. He wasn't a blond-haired, blue-eyed, pretty-boy stereotype. He was inner city. Real street. He hung out on the streets of Lisbon with his boys. He spoke slowly. He wore hoodies and baseball caps. His dark brown hair was pulled back in a ponytail and he sported a goatee. With

charisma and a kind of street cool, he projected pure confidence. Darin totally infiltrated the Lisbon art community. He had his art exhibited and managed to get General D and Cool Hipnoise to contribute to his CD Ithaka: Flowers and the Color of Paint. The sound is smooth vocals with nice background groove, and a little Portuguese rap dropped in. It's good. Darin was so out there, doing his own thing. People liked him. He speaks his lyrics and has some great lines: "I've been poor and I've been rich, I've sat behind a desk and I've dug a ditch. Rode on a skateboard and in a private plane, I've been nobody and I've had a little fame. I've got a lot of thanks for the ocean blue, because she helped me out more than a lot, keeping my mind off the have and have-nots, my loyalty don't lie in street commotion, I give my praise to the motion of the ocean, she kept me out of trouble she kept me alive, she kept me off the street away from kniiiiiiiives."

I wouldn't say it was an impulse buy. Something about owning a surfboard (even though I don't surf) appealed to me. I had to buy one of his pieces from the series The Reincarnation of the Surfboard. Darin took old surfboards with broken backs and then made them into sculptures. Of course they were blue and this one was covered in blue fake fur. It was about six feet tall with shapes P. 39

THE BLUE SURFER

cut out from the middle that made it look like the wing of a furry blue fly. He told me I could comb it anyway I wanted but it would need a serious amount of Johnson's "no more tears" before I attempted that. More important, I had to get it home in one piece. So there I was, walking down the narrow cobblestone streets of Barrio Alto with a furry blue surfboard that was taller than me. Laughing all the way, my cameraman, Steve Gelder, helped to carry it until we saw a cab. This was the start of an interesting journey home. Without a fuss the cabbie allowed us to stick it in the trunk with the fin part shooting out the back. I guess he was used to this, being a driver in Lisbon. We made it to the hotel, surprisingly without a scratch. Next we had to tackle the airport. At the check-in I was handed a couple of long clear plastic bags and some tape. I marked it FRAGILE and crossed my fingers. (Didn't even get charged for extra baggage!) At that point it had become my new friend and it would have been a disaster if it didn't survive. The Reincarnation made it across the ocean, the same ocean Darin crossed, and now hangs proudly in my house. It never fails to make me smile.

p.40

HE WASN'T A BLOND-HAIRED, BLUE-

EYED, PRETTY-BOY STEREOTYPE. HE WAS INNER CITY. REAL STREET. HE HUNG OUT ON THE STREETS OF LISBON WITH HIS BOYS.

THE REVEREND AND THE LIMO DRIVER BEING AN INSIDER / OUTSIDER IN HARLEM

"WE SAY UPTOWN. WE ARE UPTOWN. BUT WE ARE NOT UPTIGHT. YOU HAVEN'T DONE NEW YORK UNTIL YOU COME THROUGH HARLEM." —REVEREND REGGIE WILLIAMS, NYC

I HAD BEEN IN NEW YORK shooting a show for tvfmmes two months after September 11, 2001. The show wasn't about "Where were you when...?" but more about what artists were doing post 9-11 and how the terrorist attacks influenced their work. For a lot of New York artists, documentation of the city is part of their work—like Robert Berry, a photographer whose work focused on the splitting, doubling and mirroring of faces, buildings, landscapes and other objects. He'd spent years studying the Twin Towers and all of a sudden, they were gone. The show we were doing was focused on Manhattan, not the boroughs, and while it was fascinating to be there, I didn't get anything out of the art. Most likely it was too soon. The whole time we were shooting I became more interested in Harlem because of its history and the fact that even now it's going through a "renaissance." At the end of the show I decided to check out Harlem and the first place I went to was the Lenox Lounge.

Harlem's famous Lenox Lounge still packs in a crowd. It's long and narrow, but not a shoebox. Billie Holiday, Miles Davis and John Coltrane played there. Malcolm X was said to be a regular. More recently it was featured in the remake of the movie Shaft with Samuel L. Jackson. The Lenox Lounge, and its Zebra Room, has been around since 1939, and was frequented by,Harlem writers James Baldwin and Langston Hughes. Even early on a Friday night, every table was taken so we squeezed past the band and shuffled through the crowd all the way down to the end of the stand-up bar, which ran the length of the place. The original art deco styling hasn't changed, nor some of the clientele. We stayed for a drink, listened to some blues and after getting a tip from one of the lounge's regulars, we head off to a place called Perk's for dinner. Located at 123rd and Manhattan, Perk's is named after Hank Perkins. Perkins is old school Harlem. A ladies man, dressed in a sharp suit, holding a glass of champagne, he oozed charm. And the crowd around him seemed to be channelling his spirit. It was even smaller than the Lenox Lounge, but with no one from downtown checking out the scene uptown. The joint was hopping. A soul band, Eric Harris and the Extra Rich in Class, whose lead singer had a voice like Marvin Gaye, performed in a space barely big enough to hold him and the band. He was about ten feet tall and three hundred pounds and was movin' and groovin'! P. 43

THE REVEREND AND THE LIMO DRIVER

At Perk's everyone was dressed in their finery; the men in suits and hats, the women in "gomg-out-for-lhe-cvening-tohave-fun" clothes. Everybody danced, though there was no dance floor. People danced wherever Ihey happened to be standing. Standing at the bar drinking a scotch was a man wearing a grey casual suit with a black turtleneek and great smile. Not to mention a huge gold cross, gold watch and lots of gold rings. He introduced himself as the .Reverend Reggie Williams, then bumped two guys from iheir bar seats and offered them to us. We ordered catfish from the bartender and talked about Harlem. At the end of the night, he gave me his phone number and told me to call him if I was ever going to do a show on Harlem. I asked him if he would be able to hook me up with a driver who could get me around the neighbourhood, and he said no problem. So six months later, 1 came back and did a show on Harlem. Arriving at our hotel was the divine Ms. Marilyn Vine from DeVines Limo Service. She had nails "out to here," and that kind of perfect, over-thc-top makeup that takes hours to put on. Her long, thick brownish-red hair changed styles everyday, just like her nail colour. On the first day. she wore a standard issue limo uniform. On day two she showed up in a purple, faux alligator skin pantsuit. She was opinionated about men and everything else. She instantly became part of P. 46

PEOPLE DID NOT LIKE CAMERAS. IT WAS EASIER FOR ME TO SHOOT. WHEN I DID, I HAD ABUSE HURLED AT ME LIKE YOU WOULD NOT BELEIVE. PEOPLE SHOUTED THREATS AND TERRIBLE OBSCENITIES. I HAD NEVER ENCOUNTERED ANYTHING QUITE THAT BAD. IT MADE LYRICS TO THE MOST HARDCORE GANGSTA RAP SEEM TAME.

THE REVEREND AND THE LIMO DRIVER

our crew whether we liked it or not; if we went out to lunch, so did she, if we out to dinner so did she. On the flip side Harlem was not an easy place to shoot. Even the cameraman who was African-American felt uncomfortable shooting on the street. People did not like cameras. It was easier for me to shoot. When I did, I had abuse hurled at me like you would not believe. People shouted threats and terrible obscenities. I had never encountered anything quite that bad. It made lyrics to the most hardcore gangsta rap seem tame. At times Marilyn would tell me to jump in the car and we'd quickly speed away. Most of the time when I shot in the street my heart was in my mouth. I wasn't shooting anything illegal, just wide street shots with people walking through. I needed to show Harlem. Sometimes it is easier to be a woman with a camera, less chance of getting beaten up. People were tired of their faces and neighbourhoods being used to illustrate news reports on homelessness or poverty, stories on crack cocaine, or "Poor Black America." When we met up with the Reverend Reggie Williams again, it was at his day job. He worked at the Addicts Rehabilitation Center, a residence for over four hundred people. It also housed the ARC Gospel Choir made up of thirty-two singers, all ex-addicts of whom over half are still being treated. The Choir travels around the country and is invited to sing around the world. They performed the "Hour of Power" once at week at the Mount Moriah Baptist Church in the heart of Harlem. When I heard them sing, "Praise God I'm Free..." it felt like the songs they were singing had saved them. A few days after seeing the choir, we went back to Perk's and had a great night of shooting there. And we also went to the "Apollo Theater Amateur Night" which was a bit on the cheeseball side, like a bad version of Tiny Talent Time

complete with rapping grandmas, terrible rock bands, and a guy who "hooked" performers off the stage when the audience booed loud enough. Being in Harlem was a kind of insider / outsider experience. Out on the street, I was regularly threatened for taking pictures. But when we went inside—into places like clubs or artists studios—we weren't seen as media who were out to misrepresent them. No one had their backs up. The artists and musicians wanted the exposure, so they put up with us. But at the end of the night, when the cameras were turned off and put away, everyone was relieved. Then we danced.

P. 49

SHAMANS, BAIANAS AND

OH MY... BEARS,

BAIANAS DE SALVADOR DA BAHIA: TO SERVE (FOOD) AND PROTECT

Once you have a Baiana, she's yours for life. She'll protect you and in return you will eat only her acaraje and no other. The Baianas dress in white, the colour of lansa, goddess of the wind. Found throughout the streets of Salvador da Bahia, in Northern Brazil, they're believed to be highly spiritual and untouchable. Baianas don't need a permit to sell their food and are free to plop their stands anywhere they like. People bring them gifts, sometimes everyday, in return for advice and protection. Once you commit to her, she's the only one you visit. We would see Baianas de acaraje P. 50

everywhere. An acaraje is a kind of deep-fried bread made from mashed black-eyed peas and cooked in palm oil. They're usually eaten with small shrimp, a hot pepper sauce and a paste made from sundried shrimp, peanuts, cashews and coconut milk, and served with okra and diced tomatoes. It was amazing to see how much these women belonged to the current of daily, cultural life. Treated with enormous respect, Baiana represent the part of African culture that is in turn an essential part of Brazilian culture. The ancient traditions have been continued mostly through the Afro-Brazilian religion Candomble. Each person has an Orixa (god) that provides protection throughout their life. On our first night, my cameraman, Mike McArthur, and I were walking through the streets on our own. We'd gone to a traditional restaurant for dinner and were heading back to the hotel. Next thing we knew, an elderly lady dressed all in white was walking beside us. Through sign language she explained that she would accompany us back to the hotel to ensure our safety. We were shocked. Here we were, North Americans, and Mike at least six feet tall and fit, but it was a woman—a small older woman—who acted as our bodyguard back to the hotel.

TREATED WITH ENORMOUS RESPECT, BAIANA REPRESENT THE PART OF AFRICAN CULTURE THAT IS IN TURN AN ESSENTIAL

PART OF BRAZILIAN CULTURE.

BAMAKO SHAMAN SLAM: NOT LEAVING ANY TRACE OF YOURSELF BEHIND

It was our last day in Bamako, Mali and the last thing I wanted to do was see the shaman. We didn't need to go, we had enough for our show, but we had some time to kill. Close to the end of a trip, I always get that guilty feeling that I might miss something. The shaman's place was spooky because it felt like the real thing. It was a thousand degrees in this tiny, windowless room buzzing with flies and full of freaky objects meant to scare off bad spirits. And this shaman was nasty. He started making strange bird-like sounds—pretending it wasn't coming from him—and kept tapping on the wall between angry rants to our guide. He wanted money. He thought that we had paid the guy who took us there and was in a rage. I remember thinking, Don't leave any of yourself behind. No stray hairs, no pens, no hat, nothing. When we were in Mali I always had that lingering feeling that things were happening out of earshot and out of our control. Even when we got back to Toronto this guy called and left me a cryptic message. He said, "You don't know me but if I haven't heard from you in a day or so I'm going to call you back." And I thought to myself, what is going on here? So I called him back. Turned out he was a photographer from Montreal who did a lot of work with chimpanzees. For some reason, he went back and forth to Mali a lot. He'd become a kind of de facto ambassador to Canadians travelling there. He told me how he'd always give back passports to people who'd had them stolen. He seemed to be plugged in in a way that could only happen in a place like Africa. Somehow, someone gave him my luggage tag and he was calling to check up and make sure we were all okay. "You know I saw you guys as you were getting off the plane," he told me. "Your luggage was going one way and

SHAMANS, BAIANAS AND BEARS, OH MY...

you were going the other, and I thought, Oh boy, that's not good. Anyway I was calling to make sure you guys got back okay." TAIPEI TRIPPING: THE STORY OF A MADMAN, A MINI-VAN AND A COUPLE OF MONKS

In Taipei we had a madman as a guide. Always laughing and cursing, he was political and radical in a place that didn't tolerate either of those two qualities. For one of our day trips, we headed out to the Shangri-La Hotel in the middle of nowhere. On the way there, we saw an old abandoned gold mine, so he stopped the car, jumped out and screamed, "Let's climb!" We climbed all the way through it. We met up with other journalists who were jealous of our guide. Clearly, Mr. Kuo, whose title was Protocol Officer, was not the norm. He was assigned to us by the government. Basically he was there to keep an eye on us and make sure we got what we needed. He was to show us some of the different sides of Taiwanese culture. At night, he usually bowed out and let cameraman Arthur Pressick and I do our own thing. The next day we wanted to go for a walk, sans cameras. Mr. Kuo thought a nice five-minute walk around a tourist trap would satisfy us. We did it and then I decided to take us on another trail. When we were driving earlier, we could see little pagodas dotting the mountains that people could hike to and once there, stop and have a rest. So off we went, with no food and only tiny bottles of water. On this trip we brought an Aboriginal artist named Rosalie Favell from B.C., who happened to be having a show in Taipei. We walked and walked and in no time were totally lost. Soon it was midday, and the sun beat down on us. Our guide huffed and puffed; Arthur huffed and puffed; as did the artist. First we went up the mountain, then down the mountain, without getting anywhere. We were so screwed

up we didn't know where the hell we were. Five hours...we'd been walking for five hours. I started to get the giggles. At one point our lovable lunatic of a guide turned to me, his head shaking. He was not okay. He looked like he was having a heart attack. But there I was, peeling with laughter, not knowing I looked like the one whose head was going to blow off. Turned out my face was beet beet red and I was probably suffering from a combination of dehydration and frustration. We ended up at a Taoist temple built into the side of the mountain. As soon as the monks saw us, they fetched water and forced it on us. We soon realized that our hapless wanderings meant we were going to miss our train back to Taipei. No problem, the monks said, as they proceeded to herd us into their mini-van, race us back to the hotel to get our luggage and drop us at the train station. I had these great orange Gucci glasses which I left in the van. I thought it was fate that I left them behind because the colour perfectly matched the monks' robes. So I have this image now of a Taipei monk bombing up and down the mountains in square-framed, fiery orange Gucci glasses.

P. 53

WALL

ART

ANONYMOUS

AND DISPOSABLE THE DISTRACTED EYE . . . DISTRACTED MIND —PAINTED ON A WALL IN MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA, ARTIST UNKNOWN

THE THING THAT MAKES WALL ART UNIQUE is that it's in a public space. It's largely anonymous and while it's not quite disposable it's definitely not permanent. It's something that has taken time to create. Wall art themes ranged from politics in Beirut, to religion in Mumbai and Dakar, to plain old funky street style in Madrid. There are places where it's legal and others where it's not. Wall art is not "tagging," which refers to crazy, almost unreadable signatures that marks a person's territory. Milan is covered with tags and it's sad. Wall art is illegal in Milan and out of control. Almost every building has been defaced. I'm interested in paintings. I've looked at a lot of wall art and can now guess where it is from. It definitely reflects each place and what is going on there in people's minds. In Salvador da Bahia, the drum is such an important part of the culture that it shows up in a lot of wall art. In Africa, the colours are always vibrantly intense. In Panama City, it seemed every other painting was of the canal. Some were so basic looking and yet worked so well. Recently in New York City I saw a lot of wall art tributes to the Twin Towers. In Mumbai the wall art was of various gods. People had their favourite god-wall, which they would visit to engage in a qui.ck prayer. I would see people touching or kissing them. Or they would stop in front of one to pray to on their way to work. In Dakar, I don't know why, but they had so many murals of animals—big tigers and lions. Cape Verde had educational murals:

one of a woman passing a condom to her man. The everyday was celebrated—like the painting of a woman walking down the street holding a plastic yellow bowl full of fish on her head. One of my favourite pieces of wall art was in Sao Paulo. It was a picture of a man's face to which another artist had applied lipstick in red paint. I loved that. Another favourite was the Rabin Memorial in Tel Aviv. Over a painted image of Yitzhak Rabin were hundreds of comments people had written about what a fantastic man he was, along with hearts and peace signs. That kind of layering is fascinating. Other pictures that I thought were pretty wild were stencils of politicians that had been spraypainted on the sides of buildings in Beirut. I love stencils and I do consider them wall art. Some were painted on old stone buildings that weathered away. Many of them were political and had been there for years, becoming visual landmarks. Wall art is also about the texture of what it has been painted on. If it's a door or a handle or a pipe, the artist has to somehow work that in. In Harlem, one of my favourite murals is a profile of Martin Luther King, Jr. and he's crying. It's on the

P. 55

LISBON

TEL AVIV

SAO PAULO

AUSTIN

PANAMA

LIBON

SALVADOR DA BAHIA

NEW YORK

SALVADOR DA BAHIA

CAPE TOWN

PRAGUE

DAKAR

WALL ART

side of a metal shop grate. You'd think there'd be a lot of wall art like that in Harlem, but there's not. It's incredibly moving. Think of the effort of someone painting over a ridged metal grate like that in the middle of the night. My interest in wall art started out as a Polaroid project. I wanted to build a show of Polaroids, and bring in different mediums. I thought, How can I make the Polaroid distinct? and this was the way to do it: photographing wall art. What's great about Polaroids is that they give the image a frame. Also, Polaroids are disposable, they're instant, they've got the same vibe as wall art. They're fast and you can watch the image happening, developing, just like a mural. For me, documenting wall art takes it to a whole other level. It's public art but it's not in its context anymore because I've framed it. I'm not giving it a wide shot. In that way I'm endorsing it, or even legitimizing it as an art form. It's almost like putting it on canvas. I have about four hundred images from twenty-five countries in my collection and now I can't stop. I see wall art everywhere. Every time I'm in a car driving anywhere, finding good wall art is my focus and if I see one, I get all worried that I'm never going to get back to that same spot again, so I have to jump out of the car, run and get my gear or else madly take notes so I can retrace my steps. I don't always get a second chance. I regret the places I went before my wall art days, not having documented what was there—like in Belfast. The city had some political wall art pieces that I didn't do any close-ups on because I wasn't into it then. Lisbon was the first place I started documenting wall art. We followed these young artists to a wall backing onto an empty field and they each spray-painted a piece. My favourite, however, was by an artist I didn't meet. It was a simple line drawing of a man and bird.

P. 62

TOKYO

CAPE VERDE

BEIRUT

SALVADOR DA BAHIA

TEL AVIV

TORONTO

MADRID

NEW YORK

SAO PAULO

QICBEC CITY

CAPE TOWN

VIENNA

DAKAR

WALL ART

There was no wall art in Helsinki or Stockholm. I think it must have been against the law. No matter where in the world, wall art shows how people treat public space. Tel Aviv had political wall art as well as hip, urban murals. In South America, Salvador and Sao Paulo, there was great wall art. Cape Town, great wall art. Vienna, one might think, hipper than hip. Not much wall art. Great wall art in Austin, Texas. Seoul, no wall art. People don't have time or space. There's no opportunity. It's too policed. I could feel the military presence there. In a place like that, if a person's going to break the law for something, why do it for wall art? There was little wall art in Japan. I saw one piece in Tokyo and it wasn't great. They're not into it. There's no time and it's more fun to hang out in the street in some crazy outfit. The cover title for this book, Belong, came from Madrid. The only good thing about Melbourne was the wall art. That's where I photographed "The Distracted Eye ... Distracted Mind" and "Art Will Find A Way." Some places had nothing. Bali? No. Bamako had no wall art, no advertising, nothing. Zero. Zip. Not even a mural of hairstyles painted on the side of a barbershop. Over the years I've watched people do wall art around the world and I think the idea of not doing it for the fame is what is interesting. These artists either perform a function or do it strictly for enjoyment. Wall art is urban. No money is involved. You can't buy it. It's a true document of the time you were there because it doesn't last forever. Wall art is not the Bible on each city. It's similar to the way I approached going to these cities in the sense that cities are always changing, are always in flux. The stories I tell here are a documentation of what happened when I was there, who happened to be in town and what the political, cultural and artistic mood was at that time.

TAIPEI

P. 69

^Hm MOMMOM,, TPHB MORESQUE, •^m

THE CHINA STORY We missed the plane. I read the tickets wrong. I felt like I was going to be sick. So sick. I couldn't cope. The tickets were sponsored, and free. Foreign Affairs was with us the whole time. And still I read the tickets wrong. It was a bad scene. We were so ready to go home. It was time to go home. What lies could I tell? That we got stuck during the May Day parades? Who could I blame? P. 70

No one. If we missed the plane, we were stuck for another week. I couldn't stay in Shanghai another day. I was ready to go three days before I left. So we chased the plane to Beijing. The gear travelled first class. Foreign Affairs called Beijing. Did they have the power to fix things? Could they get us out of here? Oh my God, it was high stress. We arrived on the tarmac. We could see the plane. The gear had to pass through customs first. So we dragged the gear to customs. So slow. Then back out on the tarmac again, up the stairs and onto the plane. I'm shaking. I made the plane wait.. .in China! For forty-five minutes. Half a day later we touch down in Vancouver. Turns out there were four defectors on board. And I made them wait for forty-five minutes on the tarmac. It was so sad. P. 71

YEAH, YEAH, YEAH AND THE BEAT OF THE DRUM DOLLINDA AND THE GREAT GREEN FISH

"In every painting 1 want to save something that comes from the garbage and transform it into something artistic," said Dollinda. a rap artist and painter from Salvador da Bahia. In one of his "constructions" he used a white baby doll mounted on a canvas painted in a crib to demonstrate who is lying in the arms of the government. Sometimes I think of Brazil as cheesy and overdone—the idea being that a girl in a bikini will make everyone happy. Not in R 72

Salvador. Pelourinho is the Old City, the heart of Salvador. It's filled with beautiful Portuguese colonial buildings and winding cobblestone streets. Pelourinho has become the centre for the A fro-Brazilian social movement. A movement that is trying to reclaim its African heritage through music, art, drums and dance. UNESCO has declared it a World Heritage Site. We discovered Dollinda early on after seeing his work hanging in a little cafe in Pelourinho. We tracked him down and he invited us to spend an afternoon at his place. He was living in an old house just off the town square thai was once where African captives and slaves were publicly punished.

In his small room, a half-painted canvas was propped

off to the beach, I'll see you later." Ten days after I said, "Hey make me a painting," he hands me my piece. It's a fish made out of everything he found at the beach that day. The "canvas" was a purple towel, covered with a green towel painted with gold stripes to form the body of the fish. A plastic swimming flipper was the tail and the glass from a pair of sunglasses was the eye. He signed the painting using a piece from a computer circuit board and computer keys to date it. I loved it. I absolutely loved it. Thank God I didn't rush him. THE RHYTHM IN THE STREETS REVITALIZED THE STREETS

beside his single bed. A mess of paints and brushes sat on a I had t owalk in through a small, walled-off chari next to a ghetto blaster that had seen better days. As entrance to get to Ghetto Square. In th we watched him paint, nothing was procious. He wasn't middle was a stage where thirty or forty worried about paint on the floor or what he looked like or us people feverishly beat drums and sang. In the

THE "CANVAS" WAS A PURPLE TOWEL, COVERED WITH A GREEN TOWEL PAINTED WITH GOLD STRIPES TO FORM THE BODY OF THE FISH. being in the room. It was like watching a performance. He went with the music, singing and moving along to hip hop, bent over the canvas with a big smile on his face. I thought it was the best way to make a painting. So I asked him to make me one. He sauntered around town in dark sunglasses, a hat and long dreads. Time for a guy like him is flexible. He didn't seem to have a day job. "Yeah, yeah, yeah, tomorrow man," he'd say every time I saw him. "Tomorrow. I'm going

crowd were dancers; their bodies, like those of every member of Timbalada were covered with white paint in African tribal designs, The beat was unrelenting. The dancers and the crowd moved in a counter-clockwise wave around the stage. The beat never dropped. The circle moved faster and faster, and everybody danced and sweated. It got more frantic as people ran around with P. 73

hardly any clothes on. I watched this sea of white from above. Everyone wore synthetic cowboy hats—the Brazilian equivalent of a team jersey. I saw the sinewy muscles of the dancers and felt the heat coming from the crowd as hundreds of people danced for hours. Carlinhos Brown created Timbalada over a decade ago to give street youth in his neighbourhood a chance to learn music. Brown continues to live in the Candeal Favela and continues to donate money, construct schools and assist street musicians. Every Sunday Timbalada perform in Ghetto Square, smack in the middle of Candeal. Candeal was a favela or shantytown situated on a hillside on the outskirts of Salvador. It was filled with narrow and muddy streets, terrible housing, unsafe electrical connections, and limited access to clean water. Today with the help of "IT IS A PROCESS OF INCLUSION AND NOT ABOUT Brown the community is changing BEING A SECOND-RATE HUMAN. IT IS TIME TO into a . working-class ASSUME THE AFRICAN CULTURE AS AN ESSENTIAL neighbourhood. PART OF THE BRAZILIAN CULTURE." ' They say everyone is a drummer in Brazil. Carlhinos —GILBERTO GIL, SINGER, SALVADOR DA BAHIA, BRAZIL Brown is one of the most famous. He began drumming as a child— during the day he would sell bottles of water on the street and play them as drums. Today he is internationally renown for his unique way of mixing traditional drumming with electric guitars and horns. When we saw him perform, he was so high energy, his dreads poured with sweat. He was completely lost in the music. And so were we. P. 74

THIS IS MEXICO CITY. PHILOSOPHIZED OVER A BOTTLE OF TEQUILA BY IAN DRYDEN, A BRITISH EX-PAT PHOTOJOURNALIST WHO FEELS HE IS A REFUGEE FROM HIS PAST. HE'S NOW A CONCEPTUAL ARTIST.

p. 76

"WE ARE LIVING IN THE LAST BOHEMIA. BOHEMIA IMPLIES LIVING OUTSIDE THE LAWS OF SOCIETY, LIVING WITHOUT MONEY, LIVING AS YOU WANT IN DEFIANCE OF SOCIETY."

A SERIES OF MISADVENTURES IN

MALI ALMOST LOSING IT IN WEST AFRICA PICKING UP THE PHONE

Bamako, the capital of Mali, is said to be one of the poorest cities in the world. It's bordered by countries that read like a list of hellish hotspots: Algeria, Burkina Faso and Niger among others. Synonymous with war and civil strife, it has the kind of unrest that keeps many away. Yet I knew that the music and culture were strong and that there was more to this place than people knew. I'd done thirty-eight episodes of tvframes by this point and had already been to Senegal but I was still afraid to go to Mali. To add to that, I had next to no communication before getting on a plane. I'd P. 78

phone and couldn't connect. I'd connect, but no one would answer. And when I'd finally get someone on the phone, they'd say "yeah, yeah, yeah, no problem" and hang up. I had to trust my instincts that the whole thing was going to work out. To add to the pressure, the trip was going to cost a fortune. GOING WITH THE FLOW

No matter where I happen to be in the world, I always go through a bit of an ordeal about which hotel to stay at. I always want to be in the best location for going out at night; I want to be close to where people are and feel safe. It seemed as if there were only three decent hotels to pick from so I'd finally decided on the Grand Hotel and sent them a credit card to reserve our rooms.

A SERIES OF MISADVENTURES IN MALI

The minute we stepped off the plane I felt like we'd lost control. The airport was chaotic with people competing to snatch our bags and carry them and us off into their particular brand of taxi. It was high stress from minute one. We arrived at one o'clock in the morning and went directly to the hotel. They'd given away our rooms. People beat us from the airport and so the hotel just gave

stay at our driver's place. It was not by choice, We were well-treated, but corruption was everywhere, One day we were shooting out of the car window and police on motorcycles came up behind us, their sirens howling and lights flashing. With us was a guide from the tourism bureau and a driver. The police started screaming and shouting at us and then made us follow them to a street side police station, Once there, twelve policemen got out and surrounded the car, and there was even more shouting and screaming. Arthur (my cameraman) and Ingrid Moe (my editor), both got out of

"IN THE FUTURE I HOPE THAT THERE IS A BIT MORE JUSTICE. THAT THERE IS MORE JUSTICE BETWEEN MALIANS, BECAUSE THERE IS NO JUSTICE. THAT MALIANS LIKE ALL OTHER PEOPLE ARE ABLE TO LIVE AND NOT DIE OF HUNGER. THAT EACH PERSON FINDS A WAY TO MAKE A LIVING. I THINK THAT IS POSSIBLE IF WE ARE A BIT MORE FAIR." —ISMAEL DIABATE, ARTIST, BAMAKO, MALI away our rooms, end of story. Leaving the hotel in a taxi to find a place to sleep meant hours of riding around on dirt roads, littered with potholes and in some cases, ten-feet deep pits in the middle of the road. We had to manoeuvre around people sleeping next to their goats in the street. And we had to do this in the pitch black because there were no street lights. The mosquitoes were thick and buzzed in our ears. None of us had repellent on and it we were exposed during prime time—the feeding hour that malaria-carrying mosquitoes love. Eight hotels and who knows how many hours later we found ourselves leaving the city centre and being driven to the suburbs to P. 80

the car with cameras in their hands and right after, a policeman wrenched the camera out of Arthur's hand, I was scared. We had the Betacam camera and all our stock in the trunk of the car. I'd brought everything with us on the first day. Five cameras in total. I panicked, ran over and grabbed the camera from the cop, ran back and locked myself in the car. Then this whole negotiating drama went on and I ended up having to pay $300 American to get the crew back in the car and to be allowed to leave. As we pulled away the policemen were banging on the trunk of the car. I guess that's just the way things were done. I was thrilled I had money in my pocket. Later in the trip, we drove out to the largest mud structure in the world, the Djenne mosque, which had to be repaired after every rainy season. It's incredible. The whole journey to get there was crazy. The borrowed truck our driver showed up in continuously broke down. In the end, the

A SERIES OF MISADVENTURES IN MALI

journey was half the story. It was supposed to be a threehour drive and it turned into a twelve-hour drive. At one point after the truck broke down for the umpteenth time, we were put in a taxi. It was late, dark, and the guy went off the highway and cut through the desert at about a thousand miles an hour. And we were just trying to hold on, because during the day we'd seen nomads in the desert with cattle and we were petrified we'd hit something. We finally get to the ferry, which will take us to the mosque. And who should we see but our driver laughing. His truck got fixed and he managed to pick up a hitchhiker along the way and still beat us. I had to let it roll off my back or else I would have strangled the guy. STREET PEOPLE

In Bamako, everything happened in the street. Women with giant mortars grind their grain on the street, people walked their goats to market right through the downtown core. Making drums, fixing bikes and cars, selling fish, trading animals and doing laundry—everything to do with everyday life was done right out on the sidewalk. Everybody walked everywhere. Of course we stood out. There were hardly any tourists in Bamako and none like us who were carrying around armloads of cameras. There was an underlying tension in the city. Malians are poor and feel like they have nothing to gain from foreigners coming and taking their pictures. It made shooting tough, but ultimately the people that we met were friendly and soon we were plugged into a community of artists. SURVIVAL OF THE POOREST

People wanted to show us a different face of Africa—one that wasn't about poverty, AIDS or violence. They felt that

they were starting to gain a voice and didn't want to depend on North American or Western methods to build their country. They felt that they could develop Bamako and Mali in a way that would unite them with the rest of Africa. For them as Africans, to always be thought of as ignorant, backward and corrupt was horrible. The artists we met were not isolated or out of the loop. They were knowledgeable about what was going on in the world and were influenced by it. Mali only gained independence from France in 1960 and French is still the official language. While 80% of the people speak Bambara, many use French to communicate with the rest of the world. All the artists in Bamako knew each other and all felt that they could present something that was truly African, as opposed to pumping out wooden sculptures for tourists to buy as soon as they get off the bus. They wanted to make art for Africans, and let their individual voices come across. They didn't want to do art based solely on tradition. Without throwing the past away, they wanted their art to combine traditional aspects of their culture with the realities of modern, urban life. An artist of example is Awa Meite, a fashion designer and painter who collected beautiful painted leather cushions from the market and then cut them up to make pockets for the front of a skirt. The cushions could be found in many people's homes. Artist Ismael Diabate used traditional dyed fabrics from across the country and then wove them P. 83

A SERIES OF MISADVENTURES IN MALI

together to represent the different parts of society joining forces. Mali is known for its music and its mythical city, Timbuktu. Singers like Issa Bagayogo (Techno Issa), Salif Keita, Ali Farka Toure, and Habib Koite have helped put Mali on the map. And despite gaining an international following and reputation, they chose to stay and live in Mali because they knew they could do something for the country. Most of the musicians we met were successful enough that they could afford to live in France, but chose not to. Most felt they could have a better life in Mali, where they could live with neighbours and friends, celebrate their culture and not suffer from racism. This is surprising in a country that is considered one of the poorest in Africa, and where the average life expectancy is forty-five years. It's always shocking to see that artists can survive in places that are so poor. But I have found that the poorest places in the world are sometimes the ones that respect their artists the most. The musicians and artists in Bamako were some of the most successful people in society.

tourism office. He would get us through the airport smoothly. Staying close to the car with our bags in it wasn't an option. Our departure was like our arrival: it was pitch black and I again had the feeling this was not a good thing. Then the car with all of our baggage starts to drive off .. .without us. Ingrid and I had a fit. A good oldfashioned "North-American-In-A-ForeigriCountry-Fit" (albeit in French), which was unpleasant but totally necessary. We managed to pull up beside the car and our driver told them to follow behind us. Luckily at the airport our baggage was there in the car but the mysterious passengers and driver were nowhere to be seen. C'est la vie.

AS IT BEGAN, SO SHALL IT END. BUT IN THE MEANTIME...

Like all things that come full circle, we found that our last few hours in Bamako were pretty much like the first. The whole time we were there, our driver took us around in his big truck. When it came time to leave for the airport, he showed up in a tiny car and told us we'd ride with him while his buddy took our luggage and all the camera gear in another car. I had just gone through an ordeal about having to pay our whole hotel bill in cash. Turns out they took Visa. I came out to see our bags had already been put into another car...with two strangers sitting in it! Before we got to the airport, we had to drive out to the middle-of-nowhere and pick up our guide from the P. 85

WHERE WERE YOU WHEN...? THE CAPTAIN CAME ON AND DELIVERED THE BAD NEWS. THE PLANE ON THE TINY SCREEN WENT PAST OUR DESTINATION. I THOUGHT OF HOME AND WANTED TO GET OFF. WE'D BEEN ON THE PLANE for fifteen hours. Bali to Hong Kong. Hong Kong to Anchorage. Anchorage to Toronto. Brutal. I watched the mini screen in front of me; watched as the tiny plane moved slowly across the map. Four movies, three TV shows and three meals later, we were almost at Anchorage. There we'd have a break; we could finally get off this plane, stretch our legs and look at all the stuffed animals in glass boxes displayed in the airport. The last time I flew from Hong Kong to Anchorage I was sick most of the way. Never have shiatsu on your feet before a flight. All of a sudden the captain came on and said, "Terrorist attack in the United States. We're being sent back...." What? No more information came after that. Around me, everyone was sound asleep except my cameraman, Samir Rehem. I looked around, Had anyone else heard what the captain just said? This couldn't be true. We were jammed in the back of the plane. I wanted to get off. Samir and I put on headsets and tuned into Channel One. BBC radio cut in and out but I caught snippets: "Trade Towers are down.. .Pentagon hit." Then the radio cut out all together. P. 86

The next thing we knew the plane was turning around on the little screen. Then the captain came on and announced that we were going to Japan, to Tokyo. "Don't worry, we have enough fuel," he said. At this point we had been on the plane for twenty hours. I couldn't take my eyes off the map. We watched as the plane went past Tokyo. Fuel or no fuel this wasn't good. They ended up landing us in Osaka. The first night we were shipped off to a suburban hotel where CNN was dubbed in Japanese. The next day we were moved downtown and our only English information was a one-paragraph update from the airline. On the second day I managed to get my mother on the phone. Tim, my husband, was in Washington. His hotel was across from the White House and that meant it was immediately evacuated. He ended up hiring a driver to get him as far as the Peace Bridge. He then walked, pulling his suitcase into Canada where he was picked up by his brother. At the end of all my trips I always feel a sense of relief—of okay, it's over, I can relax now, there's nothing more to worry about, it is in the can. The closer you are to home, it's almost like you start doing a countdown. Now the countdown clock was delayed/on hold. I've never had that fear of not being able to get home, But suddenly that was the only place I wanted, no, needed to be. I think everybody around the world felt it that day.

NEW TERRITORY A CAPE-WEARING SUPERHERO, A POP SINGER DRESSED IN SEAL FUR AND ARTISTS WHO DO MORE THAN CARVE POLAR BEARS FROM STONE.

"FOR ME TO FLY down to Ottawa, is the equivalent cost of you flying from Toronto to Tokyo." That was out of the mouth of sixteen-year-old James Attwood, the lead singer for the band Nothing, based in Iqaluit, Nunavut. It's 1,600 air miles north of Ottawa. You can't run away from home if you live in Iqaluit. You can't even drive out of town to another town. You're stuck. All the planes that fly up there are combi cargo planes, with removable passenger seats. On tiie way up the cargo can be anything from food to trucks, medicine, furniture or construction supplies. On the way back it's arctic char, carved sculptures and the occasional medical emergency. Once I was there and checked into one of the city's three small hotels, it didn't take long to get a handle on things. After two weeks, we'd walked every street, ate in every possible place and knew everyone in town. POLARMAN Polarman believed he was a superhero. Hell, he could be. lie shovelled out people's snow-buried paths and helped kids out on the playground. He did good deeds for people, As Polarman said, "I am not super strong in the sense of smashing a building to pieces or lifting a car. I have enough skill that I can take on an ice-covered window without scratching it with my shovel." He grew up as Polarboy and when he turned eighteen he became Polarman. He wore white pants tucked in black cowboy boots, a black ski vest and a white belt, a white sweatshirt underneath that, black gloves and a black balaclava with an eye mask. Another thing he liked to do was wear little speakers on his belt that blasted out Superman's theme song. If there was an art opening in town, Polarman would be there. If there was a concert, he'd make an appearance on stage. If there was a political rally he would make it out. He was a fixture in community life. Polarman had issues. He truly believed he was a superhero. But, instead of ridiculing him, the whole

town accepted him. They didn't laugh and point and make fun of him. We wondered if we would find him and one day, looking out the window at breakfast, there he was—in his full uniform. He later met up with us in the local supermarket. An Inuit woman let him pick up her child and pose for the camera. It was a pleasure to meet him. MAKE YOUR OWN RUNWAY Jimmy Onalik had a single-engine Cessna 180 equipped with wheels and skis. It's a well-known "bush plane." He was just starting his new tour business, so in exchange for a little publicity he took us up on some flights. It was fantastic to see Iqaluit from the air. The water looked so blue and the tundra so vast. In this completely remote community we could take off, fly around, then circle till we found a flat enough spot to land on the tundra, anywhere. We made our own runway. While we walked around, or when Arthur put the camera down to go fishing, Jimmy would be on the lookout, rifle at the ready in case a polar bear popped around the corner. Polar bears are the only animal that actively hunts humans. I became completely fascinated by polar bear stories, The pilots all had one. One night a polar bear tried to break into a cabin while the guys were sleeping. Helicopter pilots told me about having their chopper surrounded by these huge bears and having to fire guns off into the air to scare them away. Then there was the story about the guy in his kayak P. 89

NEW TERRITORY

being chased in the water by a polar bear. These animals are huge, fast and vicious. From the air, we could see trails that cut through the snow. Some paths went on for days; people used them to get to other communities. The trails were dotted with huts and cabins, used by hunters or by people as an escape from the cold. BANNED FOR LIFE

The Tulugaq Bar, more commonly known as the "Zoo," had rules. Before we entered the bar, we were in a kind of holding area and on the walls were the rules. It was the only good bar in town—actually, the only real bar in Iqaluit, and all of Baffin Island, basically in all of the Eastern Artie, as I was told by the manager, Erie Dschene. The bar had a system down. If you were drunk you got kicked out and you had to leave immediately. If you didn't leave immediately you were banned or barred, as Erie said, for life. If they told you to take a taxi home and you didn't turn over your keys, you were banned for life. If you harassed the waitress, you were banned for life. Everything was about being banned for life. It was how things were kept under control. Everybody wanted to belong. Nobody wanted to be banned from the Zoo. ROAD TO NOWHERE

We met this architect and singer, Robert Billard, who was married to an Inuit woman P. 90

I WISH I HAD A ROAD TO NOWHERE IN MY CITY.

NEW TERRITORY

called OO. He wrote this song about a road that went nowhere. It went out to the tundra and then just ended. They all referred to it as "the road to nowhere." It was even marked on the map. It looked like a building project someone got tired of working on. I wish I had a road to nowhere in my city. LUC1E The first person we tried to hook up with was Lucie Idlout. A young rock singer, she had broken out of Iqaluit and toured down south in Canada. Recently her song "Birthday" from her album E5770 My Mother's Name had been licenced for use in Crime Spree, a film starring Harvey Keitel. Lucie's mother, like many Inuit up until the '70s, had their names replaced by numbers. She was political and really radical. Lucie wore dyed purple sea-pelt pants designed by Aaju Peters for her concerts in the south. She wanted to tell people how the ban on sealskins damaged the Inuit's subsistence. All of the seal was used for food and protection from the elements. It was about survival. In every house there was a meat tray at the door and fresh skins hung up to dry. Lucie and her friend, Madeleine Allakariallak, performed traditional throat-singing for us. It was created as a game for women to play when the men went away hunting for several days. The women imitated animals and birds in a rhythm and whoever laughed first was the loser. Lucie lost. She loved the mix of tradition and urban life in Iqaluit. She said the only thing missing was fresh fruit.

got the impression it's pretty close to impossible for contemporary artists to make a go of it outside their towns unless there's government funding or it's an Aboriginal or Inuit convention of some kind. The more traditional art-and-crafts economy in Nunavut is estimated at 20 million dollars a year. One art student we spoke to told us that carving has always been an easy way to make money. "Out of sugar dear, okay, I'll make a carving and sell it to the co-op." For someone trying to do other art, I think it must be one of the hardest places in the world to be successful.

F.XTRO

Many of the artists in Iqaluit didn't want to leave. Due to the cost, the reality of leaving, just to be able to see another part of the world—or even another part of Canada—was not an option for most. It was not like they had any extra money. I P. 93

THIS IS BUENOS AIRES. AS UNDERSTOOD BY DANIEL

MELERO, AN ARTIST AND MUSICIAN WHOSE STUDIO IS IN A TURRET AND WHO DOES ART FOR ART'S SAKE.

"THE MARKET IS UNPREDICTABLE AND THAT IS TORTURE. BUT IT IS GOOD FOR ART. IN OTHER PLACES EVERY IDEA IS MEASURED IN RELATION TO THE MARKET. HERE, NOBODY KNOWS WHAT THE MARKET IS BECAUSE EVERYTHING CAN GO DOWN TOMORROW AND NOBODY KNOWS WHO WILL HAVE MONEY TOMORROW. WHAT KIND OF PRODUCT WILL YOU PUT ON THE STREET? THE ONE YOU WANT."

SOME DAYS IT'S LIKE WATCHING A FILM BACKWARDS IN TEL AVIV AND BEIRUT, A GENERATION OF ARTISTS AND MUSICIANS IS TIRED OF WAR.

"I WOULD HAVE LIKED TO KEEP A FEW TRACES OF THE WAR. IT'S ONE OTHER LAYER OF OUR HISTORY. I FEAR THAT MOST PEOPLE IN BEIRUT IN FACT WANT TO ERASE THAT FROM THEIR MEMORY, WHICH IS A PITY. WE HAVE TO ASSUME ALL OF OUR HISTORY AND THE WAR IS PART OF IT." —VICTOR BALADI, ARCHITECT, BIERUT, LEBANON

WE WERE OUT ON THE STREET shooting and we saw this guy bombing along on a scooter. He saw us with a camera and instantly started talking, "You've got to meet my friend...." So we followed him to an apartment building, went up the stairs and knocked on the door. A tall skinny man with short hair opened it. The apartment was tiny and full of records. This man, Monir Khouli, was hanging out with a friend listening to a song he had recently recorded, The song was funny because he used a friend with a deadly smoker's hack to punctuate the end of each verse. We squeezed into the apartment and listened. Monir was a singer/songwriter who stayed in Beirut, squirrelled away in his apartment writing songs about the war. He said that during the war people were not interested in music, they cared more about how to put food on their table. Lebanon's civil war lasted from 1975 to 1990. Fighting still continues in the south along the border with Israel. Monir lived through the civil war while buildings were coming down around him, whereas most people his age found any opportunity they could to get out of the country. He chose

to stay. He performed a song for us at Blues Alley that he had written during the war: "Bombs and explosions, booze and drugs, poverty and downtroddeness. What a situation." What was so interesting about Beirut was that so many Lebanese were returning t the city. They felt there was a real opportunity to become a part of the new Beirut. They were starting clubs, restaurants, shops, video production studios and record companies. Then there were those who had stayed. Another guy we met, Roger Saade, opened The Alternative Shop, which sold things like hemp bags, recycled paper goo and natural soap. He was into purification of the water system and "being aware." He wanted to try to redevelop the city and have a voice in that development. "It's up to our P. 97

BEIRUT

generation," he told me. "It's time for our generation to take control over what happens to the rebuilding of the country. We want peace, we've lived through this...our whole lives have been experienced through war." This from a thirty-year-old man telling me he is part of a generation that grew up during war. Out of the more than forty countries I've been to, I can count on my hand the number of places I was scared to go. I was scared to go to Tel Aviv; I was scared to go to P. 98

Dakar; and I was scared to go to Moscow. Beirut was another place I was nervous about. But once I arrived and saw the culture and felt the people's attitude toward life, my fear dissipated. In Beirut a scooter guy introduced us to a musician guy who in turn introduced us to a whole other group of people. For me, it was important to be flexible, to be brave enough to say to myself, I'll take that risk of talking to strangers. I think it's exhausting for artists and residents in places like Beirut to always be defined by war. Unfortunately, as a journalist, I don't always want to do a

TEL AVIV

story on was, I want the art to be political or at least frustrating thing -;•<;;'less an opinion on the society. It is different from In Beirut, people felt strongly about nterviewing a politician. Artists offer a back door to the that. They didn't want to be seen only in the emotional side of daily life. context of war. They had a real hope for the Most of the people I met in Beirut were bom and future. The ones who left were coming back raised during war and were dying to be free of that image, and trying to rebuild. And, like the ones who Their culture had been defined through the narrow lens of had stayed, they all had this feeling that they war on television. were on the verge of a new beginning. In Africa, it's AIDS and poverty, or it's tribal warfare Like I said before, Tel Aviv was one of and rampant corruption. To have the world not know that those places I was scared to go to. Getting on there is life beyond that, that Africans don't live in a jungle, the plane meant going through the most that they're not all poor, barefoot and starving, must be a intense security I'd ever experienced. I'd P. 99

BEIRUT

TEL AVIV

SOME DAYS IT'S LIKE WATCHING A FILM BACKWARDS

never worked before with my cameraman, Jay Minis, and he and I were separated and questioned. The buildup was intense, but once we got there we quickly adjusted to life on the ground and the fear disappeared. We felt comfortable enough to go down through markets in the middle of the night and do things like stop at a little pizza place where a band was playing. Or go to the market in broad daylight to shop with everybody else. Like Belfast or Beirut, this is a place where people live and have a full life. And that was shocking to me. Being in that city was about experiencing so many

In North America, we might think it wrong to be at the beauty salon if all hell was breaking loose, but the attitude in Beirut was "Why not?" Life gets judged in a totally different way. It was the same attitude in Tel Aviv. So much went on there. Good bars exist even in places that have such terrible conflicts with their neighbours. There were lots of different styles of music and places to play. It was legal to drink in the streets. We went to the He/She Bar, a gay bar. We met an

IN THE CASE OF BEIRUT, I ONLY READ ABOUT IT IN THE PAPERS. THEN I WENT THERE AND THE REALITY WAS DIFFERENT. THE SAME WITH TEL AVIV.

AS A CITY IT IS AMAZING. unexpected feelings. In the case of Beirut, I only read about it in the papers. Then I went there and the reality was different. The same with Tel Aviv. As a city it is amazing. It's right on the Mediterranean Sea. It had an incredible beach culture, an urban vibe and some of the coolest clubs and best-dressed people, all out late dancing to DJs until five o'clock in the morning. And on top of it all, people were friendly. That was surprising to someone from North America because I haven't lived through war. Living life fully while war abounds seems contradictory. In Beirut, the women were all at the beauty salon. And they looked good. In a place littered with bombed-out buildings, where bullet holes punctured everything and soldiers guarded the streets, people still took an enormous amount of pride in their appearance.

industrial artist, Danny Reisner, who was working with cement, and a photographer, Judith Guetta, who saw Tel Aviv as being a mix of East and West which she expressed in her art. We were often asked, "Do you want to go out for a drink?" then twenty people would show up with all their friends and we would go out as a pack. Their sense of time was different. People stayed out later and lived a little harder. In Beirut, another artist/architect, Nadim Karam, created huge sculptures on the main road that cut from the new to the old side of the city. Enormous steel mesh creatures, outlined with lights at night, they P. 103

SOME DAYS IT'S LIKE WATCHING A FILM BACKWARDS

looked as if they were dancing in the middle of the road between lanes. Nadim wanted to do something for the people in a public space. I asked him what he did during the war and he told me he was kidnapped. "The youth of this city have experienced the fall of the city. Usually you experience the contrary—the development of the city, the growth of the city. You experience it through your eyes, like you are taking your camera and seeing it backwards," he said. The "Green Line" marked the border between the Christians in East Beirut and the Muslims in West Beirut. During the war it was the most heavily bombed area in the region. "My eyes have gotten so used to this that somehow not seeing buildings demolished is strange to me," said architect Victor Baladi. "Throughout the war—and it has been twenty years of war—I've been used to seeing every corner of a street being bombed out and now suddenly they are mended and repaired and it's very weird." He felt it was important not to hide what had happened but, rather, to incorporate some of the destruction into the new structures because it's part of the history of the people. The memory of it shouldn't be erased. Tel Aviv artist Judith Guetta mixes elements of East and West in her work: "I am trying to dissolve two elements by making patterns of the East and mixing it with the human state which is a much more Western element." Musicians in Tel Aviv were also aware that they were mixing together elements from West and East in their work, P. 104

They might combine Eastern instruments with Western melody while adding English lyrics. And the mix of the really, really traditional was great. We went and covered this rap band Dance of Simches, which was made up of Hasidic Jews. I can't say they were good, but they were pretty amusing. A'hud Udi Henis, a record producer with Helicon Records in Tel Aviv, explained to us that "Israel is a very small country and when someone is killed or maimed you usually know him somehow... if you don't know him, he was your brother's friend or cousin's.. .there is a kind of national mourning every time. There was a time when this was going on every week." Ronit Shachar sings these terribly sad songs. Her song "Dear Lover" is played whenever a disaster happens. It's in the top drawer for radio stations and used at funerals. Her song gets pulled out, put on and everybody's heart breaks. "Israelis in general are very tired," says A'hud. "Tired of fighting for everything. Tired of the pressure. This place is a complete pressure cooker." One particular international phenomenon I find, everywhere I go, is the "hippy-dippy, peace, love, dreadlocked, let's play some reggae and smoke a lot of pot" crowd. In Beirut, we saw a Bob Marley cover band. They were cool. A bit cheesy, but cool. The context was right, The scene in a place like Beirut was pretty small, Some of the people were trying to break new ground, trying to live in this century. Kay Habri had opened up the first "alternative" bar called Orange Mecanique. Roger Saade was trying to work with Greenpeace in an attempt to clean up the water and air. War ended up being a huge part of everyone's story, But so did the idea of not being stopped by it. Examples were all around us—we just had to open ourselves up to them, liana Goor was an artist and collector who had transformed her home in Tel Aviv into a museum that

showcased her incredible collection of paintings, sculptures, furniture and artifacts from around the world. She was so charismatic, a strong character with her trademark wild, salt-andpepper hair. She wore huge, chunky rings and glasses with flipped-up shades. She believed art should be shared, not hoarded by collectors. It was a daring idea to open up her private residence to the public, especially in a city where the fear of suicide bombings meant personal safety was never assured. "I am a believer that when my time comes it will come. I cannot control it. Yesterday I almost got killed, but almost doesn't count. I believe in this country and I believe in the wonderful people who live in this country." We're standing on the top of her house overlooking the Mediterranean Sea while liana talked to us about art, the many projects she had on the go, and her future. "Who knows what life will bring you and who knows what your destiny is and you can't control everything," liana said. "I'm staying here because I believe in peace."

P. 107

BIG BROTHER PAGE 00108

IT WAS POURING DOWN with rain the day we went to Shiyong's apartment. The Foreign Service were our permanent travel companions and we were not sure what to expect. Ding Yi, the last artist we talked to, did a series of paintings that were variations of the "plus" signs—his canvasses were covered with tiny repetitive +'s. These abstract pieces were meant to represent the crossroads that Shanghai society was experiencing: the meeting of East and West, the mix of old and new. There were not many, if any, contemporary galleries in the city ten years ago. Shiyong opened his door for our entourage, offered the government guys a seat near the door and led us into his bedroom, the headquarters for his installation. Shiyong said that many artists work alone, that there was not much of a community nor many places to exhibit. Like many artists, he chose to live with his art. His living space turned out to be his art. Shiyong hid microphones around his apartment. One was installed above the fridge, another beside a pile of empty bottles, another near the kitchen sink, one above the washer and dryer, one in the bookshelf and even one beside the toilet. A video camera monitored the kitchen. As he walked around his apartment "doing things," we sat on his bed surrounded by speakers mounted on a wall made of plastic. Every step he made, every action, was caught and echoed through the speakers, enough to make the room vibrate. On a little black-and-white TV screen beside his bed we could see him open the freezer. He wanted to express the idea that individuals cannot separate themselves from the society around them, Someone is always listening. Someone is watching everyone else's movements. And because of that, every action will have a reaction. During the hour we were at Shiyong's place the government guys remained quiet in their assigned seating

while Shiyong "performed" for us. It was ironic that these "little brothers" were watching us while we were experiencing an exhibit about how "Big Brother" is always watching. Shiyong had another artist over to help him translate for us and we arranged to meet at an underground bar later that night. Since we had already been refused visas for Beijing and not allowed to go to a rock concert not too far from Shanghai, we figured this bar outing was not for "our friends" to know. I don't know how underground it was, but they played rock music, the DJ had long hair and it was in a basement. The next morning our government escorts politely asked us how we enjoyed our evening at The Tribesman. That night at The Tribesman we also spoke to Geoffrey Song, a gallery owner. He felt that he was a part of a new generation that is interested in taking the best from East and West. "As long as your expression is not too contradictive to the established consciousness, the way of thinking that is OK, you don't have to worry about anything," Geoffrey explained. He had approached us and offered to talk on camera in a crowded bar. I figured he was believable if he was comfortable enough to talk the foreign media. "I hope in the future we will have much more liberty in expressing ourselves." My husband and I went to Shanghai in 2000 to adopt our daughter Ming and again P. 109

in 2002 to adopt our second daughter, Tang. The city is changing so quickly. It is trying to become the new Hong Kong, and regain its 1930s status as the "Dragon Head" of the Chinese economy. Today there are many more contemporary bars and galleries opening up with a modern feel that are actually co-owned by Europeans and North Americans. Even though cultural life in China has become more open and modern, some things remain the same. Religious and political freedoms are still curtailed and the country's one-child policy is still responsible for the large number of abandoned baby girls each year. Just being an artist in a place like Shanghai is political. An artist, musician or anyone who finds a way to

IT WAS IRONIC THAT THESE "LITTLE BROTHERS" WERE WATCHING US WHILE WE WERE EXPERIENCING AN EXHIBIT ABOUT HOW "BIG BROTHER" IS ALWAYS WATCHING. express an opinion in a creative way is automatically challenging the norms of society. In cities like Moscow, Havana, Taipei and Seoul there was some degree of surveillance. There seemed to always be somebody watching. Istanbul is one city where you must be able to identify yourself at all times. No wonder most Turkish people have on them at least one Nazar Boncugu. This blueand-white medallion is used to ward off the "evil eye." The charms are believed to deflect evil and protect the wearer from physical harm. We bought five. In Istanbul, any act committed against the unity of the Turkish State is

considered illegal. Steve, my cameraman, and I were always taking taxis in Istanbul. Several times we were pulled over by the military doing spot checks. They'd see the battery belt and the huge camera and then we'd be asked to get out of the car. That was nerve-wracking because there were language issues and we weren't fully aware of what was going on politically at the time.

ISTANBUL'S ONE CITY WHERE YOU MUST BE ABLE TO IDENTIFY YOURSELF AT ALL TIMES. One night at the Zone, a large nightclub, there was a police raid. Our hosts took us into the manager's office and then police came through demanding to see our ID. It was intimidating, but they eventually left us alone. As soon as they left the fifteen people with us in the office got on their cellphones and called other clubs to tell them the police were coming. Raids were a common experience in Istanbul at that time. Even in Belfast, Ireland, though we didn't have anyone hanging on our coattails, there was military presence in the streets, frequent roadblocks and lots of police. When I was in Belfast in 1980 the city was in a cage. Entrances into the city were manned by the military. I entered single file, and was searched before going into every shop, theatre or restaurant. Years later, in 1993, the cage had come down but there was still tension. Moving military checkpoints meant that anyone could be stopped and questioned without warning. During our two weeks in Belfast, we visited both "sides": Catholic west and Protestant east. Nobody we met thought the "troubles" would end quickly. Michael from the band LMS said it was an entire Mafia thing covered by a veil of religion. The other band members laughed and covered their kneecaps; an in-joke about how the Mafia

BIG BROTHER

likes to break kneecaps. Davy from the band Four Idle Hands blamed the vicious cycle on segregated housing estates. Communities are so polarized. Most people had never been out of their neighbourhood, except to shop in Belfast. Certainly, not to socialize. On our last day we went out with Andy White, a singer/songwriter from the South whose parents are from the North. Luckily for us he was in Belfast for a concert at Ulster Hall. Andy White, along with Sinead O'Connor, U2 and Lou Reed were featured on the album Peace Now. Money from sales was used to support cross-cultural activities in Northern Ireland. Andy sang his song "Religious Persuasion," to a sold-out crowd: "So if you're visiting some Irish town and the politicians' heads are stuck firmly in the ground and the only bell ringing has a graveyard sound. Someone's got to stand up or nothing's gonna change till religion is rearranged." Andy was born and raised in Belfast. He has always been political, writing his first poem at nine called "Riots." He picked up the guitar at thirteen after hearing John Lennon's "Give Peace a Chance." "It would be good if our lot could leave a better environment for our children, P. 113

PROTESTANTS ON ONE SIDE AND CATHOLICS ON THE OTHER. THIS DIVISION IS CLEAR-CUT FOR PEOPLE IN BELFAST BUT INVISIBLE TO OUTSIDERS.

BIG BROTHER

so that thirty years from now, we're not saying it's been fifty-three years since the troubles began," said Andy. "I think that is ludicrous. I think in a civilized part of Western Europe we should be able to work it out really." Andy picked us up in his car and drove us around town. He'd pointed out how divided the city was; Protestants on one side and Catholics on the other. This division is clear-cut for people in Belfast but invisible to outsiders. We looked at bombed-out buildings in the core and expensive bomb-proof windows on new buildings. The whole time we cruised around town, we had a microphone on Andy and recorded his take on the situation, Andy felt that Northern Ireland's problems stemmed from a kind of religious racism. It was dangerous to talk about the "troubles"— you're sure to piss somebody off. We easily passed through four military checkpoints and were left alone even as we shot out of the car window, Andy kept asking if we had brought a special pass with us. He couldn't believe that the camera was not "suspicious" or mistaken for a gun. We laughed each time we were waved through. After a while we decided to stop and finish the interview in this small park off the main road. Before we started filming, Andy called his parent's house to speak to his wife who had just had a baby. He got into a nervous state. It was a short call. Apparently at one checkpoint, the military had written down the licence plate, traced Andy to his parent's and decided they needed to talk to us. We were told to report to this central police station with all of our gear. Andy didn't want us showing up with tapes containing anything critical he might have said, because it meant that he wouldn't be able to cross the border between North and South easily again. So, right then and there we sat on a park bench and went through the tapes, Anything that he said about the Mafia, or any kind of sarcastic remark he made while passing through the

checkpoints, anything critical about the government and the military, we erased. He was supposed to come with us to the station, but he was so anxious he took off. Before heading to the station, I called the number from a phone booth and tried in vain to explain our story. The police said to pack up and be there within the hour, so we went back to the hotel and hid a few of our most precious tapes under the mattress. All I could think about was that we'd been given a free hotel for two weeks and on the last day what if the military showed up in the lobby seeking us out? Not exactly what the publicist had in mind. We were leaving the next day and I was worried I'd come home without a show. It was only the fourth show I'd done. It was such a bizarre twist—the last shooting day and we almost lost the whole thing, We drove to the police station. It was a massive grey bunker-type building right in the middle of the city, like a maximumsecurity prison. A guy in a security booth checked our names off, searched our bags and then escorted us to a holding area where we were told to wait. They interviewed us, looked at some of our footage, warned us that it was prohibited to shoot checkpoints, and told us we were free to go. I have never truly experienced what it is like to have Big Brother on my back. It was two weeks for me but a lifetime for others.

P. 115

DANGEROURS

ART HOW "SUFFERING FOR ART" CAN TAKE ON A WHOLE NEW MEANING IN 1997 The Museum of Modern Art in

apartment on a second floor of a house that was set up link

New York exhibited the questiionbel

a gallery. Each room had different artist's installation. In

installation by lee but called majestic

the Last rooom of the show called globalization State

spendor. Lees installation consisted of fish

Misery, Viotenee, there was a clothesline with pegs hanging

that were brilliantly decorated, but left to decompose over the coures of the exhibition. the pices of rotting flesh prodiced the mosh mauseating smell it was meant to

along it stretched across the middle of the room. A man want over unhooked one of the clohtes page. something dropped to the ground and it was like a bomb. ILt blew up in the roo

provoked criticism. The MOMA show was

I thought I was dead, that I was in the wrong place at

shot dowm jest a day after opening Lee

the wrong time and my time was uup. Even watching it again

became an international star.

secred me. ilt was horrific and loud. And it happened so

became an international st In Istanbul, Tukey we went

P. 116

close to me face. It was like a boumb went off in front of my ctually a bomyu did go off in my face. And that

was the installlation, what it was all about: the idce the

having a retorspective of pausls work

things arent always what you expect, denger lurks

including the proviously babbed installation

everywhere, be careful what you touch, where you step and

condused: secual views. The National

where you go. Other people laughce. I was so upset about

Gallery of Canada bought this pices in 1985

the whole thing I couldn,t laugh at all. I was so upset about

paus described it as A work about

anything from it, accpt dont stand too close to

bisexuality and all the options that come

installations. I am not sure why there seems to be a movement of dangerous art around the world. Is it becarus we are draw to danger? Or is it a dreflection of the world around us? Have we have become immune to ti in daily life? Dangerous art is interactive in every sense. It goes beyond the idea of a

with it. It includes the opinions. experiences. points of views storices ans truths and lies of twenty-seven particiipations who were generoous to share their opinings on vidce." Also showing was his dangerous vidco art 60 Unit: briuse Recorded in 1976.

installation because the viewer has to physically expericee

it is even more powerful today. and just

it. It is meant to shock. Some say it is about power. other

brother type ritual, the widce shows pa

say is is about the risk involve in being a part of it. Even

brother type ritual, the video shows paul

the Burning Man festival has a Web site"... to assist you i

literally exchanging blood with his buddy

creating dangerous art" safely. No matlere what it always

Keeneth fletcher and briis that reuslts

gets a reachtion. There may not be an actual mivement.

The vidce lasts a greelling four minutes

keep renning into artists in defferent cities who are creating

forty-one seconds. Oe secreeen Keenthe rolls

in and cless artlss interseted in landsecpws or treditional

up his shirt, draws shi blood into a needle

sculpture.

then shoots it tnto pauls shirtless back The video was orginally made to show the

LOVERS AND ARTISTS IN A DANGEROUS TIMES?

stregth of the two mes's firendishp and likely to shocj. Today with the speced of

Dateling: Vancouver, British Columbia Its not exactly a

AIDS it has become dangerous art.

place that might come to nund when thinking about dangerous art, but in this case the danger lay in what would

IT'S ALL FUN AND GAMES UNTIL

happen to the artist, not his audie

SOMEONE'S HAND GENTS KNOCKED OFF

Paul wong is an expereimental, conceptual artisl. A lot of his work addresses nulticultural life in Vancourver and

It was pouring with rain when we took the

the racism that exists there. He feels that as Canadians we'er

train for what seemen like hours int Tokya.

too afraid to comfront these issuce because we take pride in

we were hending off from downtowen into

how we integrate and interact with other cultures. Some of

one of the subrubs, the only place most

his work dealing with sexual attitudes was benned from the Vancouver Art Gallery because in was too redical. When we were there the Vancouver Art Gallery was

artists anc afford to have a decent size place to work. after tjat we wa;ked for miles in eiruele looking for the studion/garage pf Taro

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DANGEROUS ART

Shinoda. He'd done crazy dangerous art installations like a 1997 performance/video piece Caveman, which involved eating a McDonald's hamburger and blocking any chance of that hamburger ever leaving his body. We had come all this way to see a piece he recently created called God Hand. God Hand is a ten-foot arm with a helicopter rotor blade at the end. At head

them "electrobjetos," or interactive robots. They seemed more like road warrior weapons to me. Powered by small motors and made of aluminium, steel, springs and other junk, they moved in unexpected ways. I held one that looked and felt a bit like a construction man'sjackhammer. If I had let go, it would have smacked me in the face. It was meant to be funny, a menace, but not painful. The Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico bought a Morales "electrobjetos" called Triobegun Ironik, No. 98. It's attached

"I WANT TO BE ABLE TO PAINT AND IT TAKES A SKILL TO DO IT. I JUST DON'T WANT TO PEE IN A JAR AND CALL IT EARTH AND THEN CUT MYSELF AND BLEED ON THE WALL AND CALL IT BLOOD. I REALLY WANT TO BE A PAINTER PAINTER KIND OF THING." —GREGORY MILLER, ARTIST, VENICE, CALIFORNIA level it moves in a circle similar to a windmill lying down. It swirls at great speed as if it will take off. He was having trouble getting insurance and the museum was a little worried about it. They were afraid someone would get their head knocked off. A year later we met Arnaldo Morales in San Juan. He was packing up work in his studio to be shipped to New York City. The work in question was made from recycled junk he had found on his travels. He called P. 118

to the wall and looks like a rifle in cyber land. They believed it was a worthwhile investment. SENSORY OVERLOAD

At Meduse, an artistic co-operative in Quebec, had guest artists Edwin Van Der-Heide and Marnix De Nijs from the Netherlands install a large, loud dangerous art piece called Spatial Sounds (lOOdb at 100 km/h). It was set up in almost complete darkness. A speaker on a long metal rotating arm moved in a circle around the room. It could sense people

DANGEROUS ART

there, like a \\atchdog. The arm started to move in a circle, as if tracking me. I could hear the sound of the engine revving up. The more people in the room, the faster and louder it became. It acted like an animal trapped in a cage...tracking its prey. In Austin. Texas, we heard about Sieve Brudniak and drove over to his house. Austin is a groat place to he an artist because everyone is one and housing is cheap. Kor a young guy he managed 10 buy a cottage-style house right in South Austin, an artist's neighbourhood. In his l i v i n g room was a fireplace with two hand imprints embedded in it. !t looked like fresh cement on a sidew alk that some kid stuck his hands in, "Go over and put your own hands in it." Steve said. So of course. I go over, do what he says, and get the biggest electric shock. It practically shoots me across the room. And that's his art. I was expecting a secret panel to open. I le was nice but weird, His ideas are along the lines of: "Let's put this spider in formaldehyde, shove it in a test tube and stick it on the w a l l . , . " Of course, that's another piece. Being electrocuted was a new form of art for me.

crossfire, 'fhey wanted to express the idea that violence happens around us, but unlike the bomb going oft" in my face in Istanbul, it felt like the artists conveyed that idea w i t h o u t p u l l i n g my life in danger. Critics of dangerous art sny forget it. let's return to beauty. I disagree. Art isn't always beautiful, and it doesn't exist only to give us pleasure. Dangerous art is more interesting than conceptual art because it invokes the viewer. You have to experience it. It doesn't work if vou don't.

SITTING DUCKS At the Bienal de Sao Paulo, we entered a short corridor between what looked like two white rectangular units in the middle of the gallery floor. Before we knew it, "bullets" were coming at us from both sides at about a hundred m i l l i o n miles an hour, smashing against the interior clear plexiglass walls at the level of our heads. It turned out to be a skccl shooter that sent out round, clay targets: the same ones used to practice shooting birds. The artists. Yannick Vu and lien Jakober a couple whose work is a collaboration set the whole t h i n g up so you would enter the hallway not knowing what to expect. What they were trying to create was the experience of being in war and being caught in a

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NO LONGER TIED TO

THE PAST AS VIETNAM OPENS UP, ARTISTS IN HO CHI MINH CITY ARE EXPERIENCING A NEWFOUND FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION BUT THE NOT-SO DISTANT PAST CONFLICTS WITH THE REALITY OF THE PRESENT. P. 120

NO LONGER TIED TO THE PAST

POP MUSIC IN HO CHI MINH CITY sucked, It was so bad. Absolutely dreadful, Everything was fake. Bad singers were everywhere. Pop music there was made up of people who sang over-the-top love songs accompanied by synthesizers and choreographed happiness, in voices that hadn't yet gone through puberty. It didn't matter what they sounded like, it was all about how they looked. That was it. The whole industry was about creating the "Celebrity Pop Star." It was total crap. When I was there, Mat Ngoc (Pearl

environment. People didn't hang out inside. Not for a second. A good night out seemed to be cruising around on a scooter with friends. People-watching was a popular form of entertainment. It made the city exciting and accessible even without speaking the language. Vietnam as a country is opening up, and Ho Chi Minn City is leading the way. It's been described as the "New Vietnam." Although the communist government rules from the North, the dollar rules in the South, In the city, we met Doan Due Minn who had just opened a private business: a wedding/portrait photography studio. In the past artists had to restrict themselves to landscapes and portraits because it was safe and they were

ALTHOUGH THE COMMUNIST GOVERNMENT RULES FROM THE NORTH, THE DOLLAR RULES IN THE SOUTH. Eyes) was the hottest band. Pearl Eyes were five women in their mid-twenties made to look fifteen. All five wore matching outfits and looked like they weighed eighty pounds collectively. They were on TV every other day. I guess they could sing, but it was hard to tell. They were just too cute, too sweet. No music scene existed in Ho Chi Minh City. Zero. No matter how hard we looked, nothing was going on. Two-thirds of the population was under thirty, which meant they were born after the war. I could see how much they're influenced by Western music and fashion. Youth culture was easy to spot because everything happened on the street. All food gets eaten on the street. A scooter could be a table, chair or bed. People lay down and snoozed in an incredibly chaotic P. 122

not being critical of the society. Now they're experimenting and creating abstract art. Minh said for years he'd been documenting the landscape and taking these incredibly beautiful shots of the ox, the water buffalo and the rice fields. But today he looks forward to documenting the modern: the changing face of the city and its youth. He wanted his business to support his fine art photography. He said, ironically, as a Vietnamese person, if he tried to photograph scenes from everyday life, like two men squatting on the curb or a woman selling coconut drinks, they would become suspicious of him and think he works for the police. Whereas I shot without causing a stir, Nobody cared,

THISIS IS THIS VANCOUVER. DELIVERED BY CHRISTINE "TINY" TAYLOR, A COMEDIAN / BURLESQUE DANCER IN A NAUGHTY NURSE UNIFORM.

"WE ARE A CITY OF PIONEERS AND BOOZERS, WE ARE OUTLAWS; A REAL COWBOY KIND OF TOWN AND IT'S JUST GORGEOUS. WHO DOESN'T WANT TO TAKE OFF THEIR CLOTHES? WE ARE A PORT OF HOOKERS AND GANGSTERS AND STRIPTEASE ARTISTS."

HEL AT 35,000 FEET P: 126

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REDUX LETTING THE SCENE FIND YOU.

THE LEG

Sometimes everything falls in your lap. But it takes work. It's not going to fall in your lap if you're sitting in your hotel room. I'm always looking for clues—my nose leads me towards those chance encounters that no amount of planning could have made happen. It's about trying to make the unplanned happen. It's about finding serendipity. In Panama City, serendipity came in the form of a leg. San Felipe is the city's old port district. Several years ago artists began taking over the beautiful but crumbling colonial buildings and forming their own community. They started cafes and restaurants and revitalized it to the point where it's now a desirable place to live. San Felipe looked and felt like Havana. We walked into a small square with a church on one side and house with a mannequin leg sticking out from a second floor balcony on the other. I went up and knocked on the door. The owner, Rodney Zelenka wasn't there, so I left my card and a note with the housekeeper explaining who we were, how we were trying to find the scene, and that we thought his place was a great place to start. Rodney called us back and told us to come by the next day. No question, he had to be someone interesting. He was an artist and his place was wild. Split into two levels, the main floor was filled with some of his finished pieces: one canvas was covered with hundreds of old shoes, another with surgical masks. One installation had an upside-down mannequin (with both legs) painted pink, sticking out of a glass box. When it rained it rained right into the house and poured down onto hanging plants and potted trees sitting in an open space next to the kitchen. The second floor—which was Rodney's studio/living quarters—had glass floor panels so he could see what was going on downstairs. He even invited us for dinner at his beach house, which was just as interesting as his house.

The art scene was so small in Panama that everyone knew each other. If we hadn't met Rodney we probably wouldn't have met the moped-riding Gustavo Araujo, a former advertising creative director. An incredible amount of advertising exists in Panama. Driving along the highway to the beach was like passing through a tunnel of ads. Everything was being pushed at us: clothing, gas, insurance. In the city, every space was taken up with billboards. Using ad billboards as inspiration, Gustavo would have backlit signs made, some as big as eight by ten. Instead of an ad for soap, he would use his photos. Gustavo was interested more in the image rather than the photograph, and preferred to call himself a conceptual artist rather than a photographer. For example, when he was asleep, he would lock off a camera that took still photos of him sleeping every thirty minutes through the night. He P. 130

would mix those photographs with images (like windmills) that came through in his dreams. Gustavo's dreams were the only things he felt he could call his own, because nobody could lay claim to his dreams. I thought it was a fantastic idea to document yourself sleeping. I've never seen a picture of myself sleeping in my bed. It's mysterious. It's like getting outside yourself. I'm not sure if I believe in fate or karma. But I believe in luck. I was lucky to meet Rodney. My timing was right. FLYING SOLO At ten o'clock the night before I was supposed to leave for Senegal, I still didn't have the plane tickets. My cameraman Basil was as cool as a cucumber. I was not. Neither was my husband Tim. "You're going to Africa and you don't have tickets? What the hell is going on?" That night, an hour and a half later, a car pulled up outside my house and the driver for the Senegalese Consul General handed me the tickets. I had actually met the

IN DARKER AND THROUGHOUT SENEGEL, SINGER BAABA MAAL IS A HERO. BAABA HAS

A KIND OF GOD LIKE STATUS.

A MAN IN THE CROWD, ATTACKED BY A "SPIRIT," BEGAN TO FLAIL ALL OVER THE PLACE AS THOUGH HIS BODY WAS POSSESSED.

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Consul for Senegal by scanning the phone book and giving her a cold call. Again, my timing was right—Mrs. McKenzie turned out to be a huge supporter for this episode. It was my tenth show and my first time to Africa. It felt like we were already in Africa when we joined the line up at JFK in New York for the direct flight to Dakar. We arrived at our hotel to find a leper colony set up fulltime, twenty-four hours a day, just outside the front door. We had no contacts or a clear plan, just the names of a few famous Senegalese singers that we'd heard of and wanted to talk to like Youssou N'Dour and Baaba Maal. On our first day Basil and I decided to go for a walk around Dakar and ended up stumbling upon the French Cultural Centre, where we met an arrogant French film director who invited us over to his house that evening. He bossed his assistant Souleymame (Solo) Diop around, making him gather names and contact numbers for us. It turned out that the French director would be away for a couple of weeks so we jumped at the chance to hire Solo. And from then on, we could go anywhere and meet anybody. We were "in." Solo was young and creative, ambitious and smart. His small body seemed to be in constant motion. He sang a lot, mostly Bob Marley, and sang well. We spent the full two weeks with him. Originally from the Ivory Coast, Solo became an incredible asset, a great fixer and our friend. Understanding another culture isn't always easy. In Dakar, for example, people expected a formal request in person for an interview, unlike in North America where it can be set up over the phone or via e-mail. Each night, Solo would go to the homes of the people we wanted to interview the next day and present them with a present to show our respect. It was Solo who helped us find Doudou N'Daiye Rose, a master drummer who had eight wives and forty children and lived in a place difficult for a foreigner to find.

He was even able get people to talk to us during Ramadan. In Dakar and throughout Senegal, singer Baaba Maal is a hero. Baaba has a kind of God-like status and we wanted to get an interview with him. He was shooting a music video outside of Dakar in the countryside and we asked Solo to set up a meeting. The arrangements seemed complicated and mysterious. We never understood what was going on and it only became clear when we got there. We had to travel to the video shoot by taxi, which never got out of second gear. So at eleven o'clock at night, in the pitch black, we were lost. Pulling over in the middle of the countryside, we sat in the car with the headlights on. Half an hour later a truck pulled up with someone from the Baaba Maal camp. He told us to follow him. It was now one o'clock in the morning. The whole village was out, from babies to the elders, and everyone sat on the ground watching Baaba Maal perform for the cameras. They'd never had light in the village at night before, so the whole shoot was run on generators. Then rocks started to fly. The young people were upset about the lights and kept throwing rocks at the stage. Then things started to get really strange. A man in the crowd, attacked by a "spirit," began to flail all over the place as though his body was possessed. The lights had gone off again so we turned our camera light on to shoot, but the whole village started to panic. People ran from the video P. 135

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shoot, knocking down wooden fences; it was chaos. They finally restrained the possessed man. All was settled within ten minutes and everything went back to normal. When Baaba Maal finished singing, the greatest thing happened. One of the women who was an extra in the video, stood up and thanked him for coming, in song. Then he replied back to the village, in song. It was so gentle, so poetic. I couldn't believe people actually did this. It was an honour for the village to have him and, in turn, it was an honour for him to be in the village and their equal gratitude came out spontaneously. It was a great rap to the video shoot and it fell in our laps. I hear from Solo now and again by e-mail. The latest news was that he was in the Ivory Coast. It feels good that our chance meeting was more than just a job for him. We shared a great experience. LEAVING A TRAIL OF POLAROIDS Nothing is an accident. Or maybe things happen because of serendipity or karma or the unexplainable alignment of the stars on any given day. For example, before I went to Senegal, I didn't know that Cape Verde existed. But once I'd

guitar-making workshop on the island of Sao Vincent led us to discover that one of the sons, Bau, a legendary guitar player, was going to be in Cape Verde and playing that night. On every island we visited, like in other countries I've travelled, I gave out Polaroids to people, many of whom had never had a picture of themselves. Some places in the world are so remote that the only way to know what's there is to go. And even then, what you don't know or aren't looking for, ends up being the best part of the trip. I'd like to run into Souleymame Diop again sometime. It'll probably never happen. I am sure I will meet mannequin-leg man Rodney Zelenka again. But it will most likely be planned. I'll probably never be lucky enough to go to Cape Verde again, unless I cross paths with a sailboat making the voyage across the Atlantic.

WHAT YOU DON'T KNOW OR AREN'T LOOKING FOR, ENDS UP BEING THE BEST PART OF THE TRIP. heard about the place, it was always in the back of my mind. It was so remote and unknown to me and to everybody I spoke to. I had to go. In the end, it was a blind choice, like taking a dart and throwing it at the map. On the island of Fogo, a run down a volcano with a guy wearing flip-flops led to having a beer with three guys in a shack jamming on violins. Visiting a tiny, family-run P. 137

17 DAYS, 20 INTERVIEWS, 5 PAIRS OF PANTS, 2 KNIGHTS, 3 ALL-NIGHTERS, 1 POLICE RAID AND A BOTTLE OF SCOTCH TORONTO-LONDON, LONDON-MALTA, MALTA-MILAN, MILAN-MALTA, MALTA-LONDON, LONDON-TORONTO.

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DAY ONE_

DAY FOUR_

Flew from Toronto to London, London to Malta. Unpacked our gear and walked around to get some street shots of the area.

Went to a fashion shoot with Maria Fieri Soler at The National Museum, Dressed three models in three different outfits. Shot DAY TWO_ in the Museum courtyard, Interviewed artist John Bustill Leaver, the street and in a bar. who was working with limestone, the Malta was low key; meeting required building material in Malta. people was fairly easy Because John was concerned about because they speak the disappearing landscape, he would English, hang chunks of limestone on the bottom his canvasses. I bought one, DAY F1VE_ packed it in my suitcase and it Two weeks earlier, I struck crushed everything—my glasses, you a deal with Air Malta to fly name it, the whole works. us to Malta as well as Milan so I could do two DAY THREE_ shows in one, but I had to Flew in an army chopper without break it up. Five days in doors along the cliffs of Malta to Malta, eight days in Milan shoot the pre-pyramid stone temples and then back to finish and unexplained cart tracks that Malta. So we took an early date to the Bronze Age, and where flight to Milan. Checked it's believed the first wheel was out the Duomo Cathedral found. Strapped in, I kept thinking if and met up with Kirk, a my elbow hits the seat belt buckle fashion designer. He knew I'm screwed. Luigi, a stylist in New York P. 139

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who was a friend of a friend in Toronto. Luigi said Kirk would be a good person to know. Tried to find DJ Marcella. Never did find her.

office. Our contact was Luka, one of the founders; a total pothead. The squat had been around for ten years and was surprisingly livable, complete with bathrooms, hot water, kitchens, computer rooms, a bar, a DJ booth and a communal record DAY SIX_ collection. Luka insisted we go to Checked out the work of Royalty Records. We did. They Mimo Rotella at Gio played us their recent mixes. Not Marconi Gallery. Mimo is an enough was going on. Ten hours later eighty-one-year-old artist we collapsed back at the hotel which who brings posters from the was undergoing extensive and loud street into the gallery and renovations, paints over them with graffiti. Interviewed fashion DAY EIGHT. designer Ennio Capasa of Interviewed artist Stephano Arienti at Costume National. Ennio his apartment/studio. His studio was believes its part of the immaculate and looked almost setItalian psyche to dress well, dressed: white table with red And as far as the graffititomatoes centre stage, kitchen covered buildings in Milan, tucked away in the closet. He he was cool with it, it's scratched images on top of these street culture so why not. super-huge photographs. Schlepped gear down to the street, hailed a taxi DAY SEVEN_ and drove across town to interview Tried to find Pergola Squat, experimental video artist Grazia which was once a post Toderi. Watched things that could P. 140

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have been titled: Body Twirling on Floor with Stars in the Background, painfully repeated on a loop. Her work is internationally respected. I didn't get it. DAY NINE_ Went to Malibu Rehearsal Studios in downtown Milan to hear Kanipomisi (Stray Dogs) a groovy jazz-influenced band. They reminded me of a band from Lisbon called Cool Hipnoise. The lead singer of Stray Dogs had recently come out of a three-day coma after crashing his car while on tour in Italy. Later shot the scene in jazz bar Le Trottoir. DAY TEISL

Had a night out with Kirk and friends. Went to L'Angelo Restaurant at eleven o'clock, then the Base Club two hours later, then the Platico Club one hour later. Wrapped up the night with our young designer friends at Platico, a wild club with transvestites, shirtless bartenders and lots of people dancing. After we

sat down in the back to have a drink there was a police raid. A full raid, with all the hardware: trucks, dogs, SWAT guys with big boots and batons. The SWAT guys bypassed the transvestites and the Boy George look-a-likes, came over to our table and escorted us out onto the street, all without a word of English. We were searched. I was the only girl they grabbed. Then they let us go. They were looking for drug traffickers and we looked like we didn't belong. DAY ELEVEN.

Went to Pergola Squat party at midnight with around eight hundred other people. Party went to pay for renos and computers. Looked for DJ Laurent Gamier from Paris. It was too packed to P. 141

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reach him. Had a couple of hemp beers, shot the scene and split. DAY TWELVE_ Crawled to the airport for another early flight to Malta. Interviewed chef Michael Cauchi at the Re Del Pesce Restaurant. Had five-course lunch. Michael goes through two tons of olive oil every six weeks. Slept in car. DAY THIRTEEN. Checked out the Labyrinth, a jazz club, cafe, art gallery, antique shop and restaurant. Met composer Charles Camilleri at his house. He played piano for us and proudly told us he had written an opera in Maltese. On the way back to the hotel, I looked over and cameraman Mike was fast asleep. P. 142

DAY FOURTEEN^ Booked massage for me and Mike, Little did I know it would take place in a storage room of the hotel on a cold, metal operating table underneath fluorescent lighting, There were no sheets, under or over us. I don't think the woman had ever given this kind of a massage before. It was like being tickled with little feathery strokes. It was an hour-long torture test. I went first, but didn't have time to warn Mike or give that "I'm sorry" face. We'd been at an old folk's home designed by architect Richard England earlier that day. So to keep things under control, Mike— lying on his back being tickled—had to keep a picture in his head of an old man shuffling along in his slippers. Took a shower and later that night, met the Beangrowers and saw Jane Air play at Rock Cafe. The Beangrowers still send me stuff and I think they got signed to a German label.

17 DBY5, 20 INTERVIEWS, 5 PAIRS OF PANTS, 2 KNIGHTS, 3 ALL NIGHTERS, I POLICE RAID AND A BOTTLE OF SCOTCH

DAY FIFTEEN. Walked around a village festival where enormous bottles of vodka, sheep and other livestock were given away as prizes. Women baked while men played cards and dominoes. We were the only outsiders there which made it fun. Later went to Ryan's Pub and listened to local singers Chris and Moira. Moira looked like Annie Lennox. Got asked to dance by a "Knight of Malta." The Knights of Malta are an organization of dogooders from around the world that care for the sick, the poor, and the old, regardless of race, religion or language, and they actually have a castfe in Malta. It felt a little missionary. What were these older guys doing in a young person's bar? The next day we met them by the edge of the Mediterranean sea to do a quick interview. They wore their capes.

England and drank scotch. Richard was doing progressive work within the confines of Malta's building restrictions; everything from churches to a hospital. He believes every house should have a sacred meditation space. We looked at his, but didn't sit in it because it was sacred. DAY SEVENTEEN^ Woke up early. Packed for the fifth time. Boarded a plane for the seventh time in seventeen days. Flew from Malta to London, London to Toronto,

DAY SIXTEEN^ Killed time playing pool and drinking. Then met architect Richard P. 143

LOST IN TRANSLATION ON GETTING (AND NOT GETTING) THE WORD FOR WORD. "I DO NOT BELEIVE IN LUCK, BUT I CAN TELL YOU WHO HAS GOOD LUCK. WE ARE ALMOST LIVING WITH LUCK. WHETHER I BELEIVE IT OR NOT... WE ARE LIVING WITH LUCK, HAPPY-GO-LUCKY." —AKAJI MARO, DIRECTOR: DAIRAKUDAKAN DANCE COMPANY, TOKYO

I've always been loyal about getting the word for word. With dubbing the artist's soul gets lost. Ironically, we did that for the Seoul show because we thought using subtitles was like reading a book on television. It was a big mistake. Big mistake. In South America they speak a hundred miles an hour and say a hundred thousand things, and there may be a few things I missed, but that's par for the course. At the same time, on our trip to Panama, we had a translator given to us by the tourism board, who couldn't speak English. His English made no sense. It was absolute LIKE THE MOVIE LOST IN TRANSLATION, during an torture. We had to rely on this guy to get us interview with an avant-garde director of a dance company around the city, get us to our interviews and in Tokyo, I asked a question, the translator took it, had a help us map out our whole day. Luckily a lot lively ten-minute chit-chat with him, then turned around and of people in Panama spoke English so we said, "He's influenced by the sun." And I stood there: managed to find our way out, around and stunned. After I got back to Toronto I discovered that half• back to the hotel. Because the traffic in Seoul was so my questions hadn't been translated properly at all and bad, it was important to pick a place to meet indeed the translator had made up his own questions. Speaking through translators is like a long distancei artists that was a manageable drive. There phone call with an echo. It requires you to wait and be: was a constant lack of communication in patient. It's a total bore. It's exhausting and you don't end upi trying to pick places that didn't translate into having a conversation with people. Half the time a friend of' us being crammed into the back seat of a hot the artist's ends up hanging around and doing all the English car. Once we picked a location, and translation, which usually meant I was getting closer to the! confirmed it was a short drive away, I would truth. I've been lucky like that in places like Prague, ask the translator the same question, "How Istanbul and Vienna. Thanks to living on an old barge in long will it take us to get there?" The answer Paris a long time ago, I can speak French, soi would come back the same every time, communicating in places like Bamako and Dakar was okay. "About twenty minutes." Two hours later, we Ideally, I want people to speak their mother tongue; I would arrive for a simple fifteen-minute want them to be able to express themselves. I don't want toi interview with someone who didn't speak dub them because that's like taking away their voice; and I English. I laugh when I think of Istanbul. Our don't want to summarize them using voice-over, CNN-style. P. 145

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guide hated his job and the city he was supposed to show us. He'd been given vouchers for us to eat at expensive restaurants. He used our time to fill up on food and get completely trashed when all we wanted to do was grab a quick lunch and carry on. We got rid of him after a couple of days. He kept the vouchers. Another laugh is when I kept asking the tourism board for Salvador da Bahia to assign us a "hip" guide. The last thing I wanted to deal with was meeting people for the first time with a guide who had no interest in art or music. I needed someone who fit the part. Getting off the plane we were greeted by a long-haired guy who said, "Hi, I am your guide. I heard you asked for a hippie." We were lucky. Joel Gondim turned out to be a perfect match for us. During Ramadan, devout Muslims fast and usually do not perform concerts or participate in other forms of entertainment. So before going to Senegal I must have asked a hundred times when Ramadan was taking place. I found out on the plane that Ramadan would start in two days and last until the end of our trip. In the end it worked, it gave us an angle to run with. The second show we ever did was on Mexico City and I insisted that we stay in a hotel downtown. The tourism board was paying but I was adamant that we didn't end up stuck in the suburbs. In Mexico City, "downtown" means the meat packing and prostitution district. I didn't know there was a lovely area called Zona Rosa where the P. 146

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tourists stay that's right near all the action. Driving one night through the empty streets of Ubud, the cultural capital of Bali, we turned a corner and came to a "V" in the road. It was blanketed by dozens and dozens of people, all wearing white—men, women, and children—it looked like a whole village was out. They were silent and still, all kneeling on the road facing the same direction, forming a human triangle. I never found out what was going on. Why that road? Why that night? We couldn't interrupt and there was no one there to translate. Sometimes, not speaking the language means that there are things that you miss. But that night, it came across visually. It was one of those moments when I said to myself, I'm so glad I saw that...Thank God I came here, and nothing got lost in the translation.

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THIS IS SAO PAULO. THIS IS SAO PAULO...AN E-MAIL FROM ALEX PILLIS, A CONCEPTUAL ARTIST I MET ONCE AT A BAR IN TORONTO. WHEN I TOLD HIM I WAS GOING TO THE CITY HE WAS BORN IN, HE SENT ME THIS.

"SAO PAULO IS THE 21ST CENTURY CANNIBAL WHERE THE FRAME IS

COLLAPSED AND WHAT YOU EAT IS THE CITY.

SAO PAULO IS NEW YORK, ISTANBUL, TOKYO ALL WITHIN THE SAME FRAME. THE FRAME COLLAPSED. THINK OF EVERYTHING POSSIBLE AND RATHER THAN BEING OUTSIDE LOOKING IN, YOU ARE IN IT."

CONNECTING, NOT CONNECTING, DISCONNECTING

NOT CONNECTING

I didn't connect with Tokyo. Other people come away loving Tokyo. I found it depressing. It was on my hit list of places to go for so many years and in the end it was a huge disappointment. I didn't feel like I found even one spot in Tokyo where I'd like to go back to except the hotel. I want to go back now—I feel like I missed it. People rode the subway...it seemed that's all they did—take trains back and forth. Riding the subway was sleep time. Everybody slept. Everything was way too difficult. Dealing with the translation, getting around, hooking up with people, everything. I never knew if my translator was asking the right questions and I never knew if I was getting the proper answers. The process took so long, and I didn't get to connect with people. It would take hours and hours to get to places. It was freezing and I was cold the whole time I was there. We had to take the subway for hours on end with our gear on trains packed with people. There aren't enough shops or bars or cafes on the street; it's all in malls so I never got a sense of direction. Every street corner looked the same. We even went outside the city only to end up in another city. The wacky fashion stuff.. .I'd seen it to death. CONNECTING

like Havana. In an hour you can be at the beach. People go to the beach because they have time. It's part of the culture. They're fit. There are not so many rules. It is also the place where I saw my first dead person. That was the downside to Panama. In Lisbon it was easy to infiltrate the community. Like Lisbon, Venice, California, would be an easy place to live. The community is small, everybody walks, especially to the beach and the weather is perfect. If I had been a student in 1992 I would have followed the influx of Westerners into Prague and hung out for a while. It would have been fun to be one of the first Westerners there, to have started a newspaper or opened a bar. To be a part of the group that helped define and create a new scene. DISCONNECTED

There were many places in the world I felt I belonged. But I didn't belong in Milan or Melbourne. The rock and roll attitude of Melbourne bored me. Where Sydney is outrageous, Melbourne's a little dry. I didn't belong in Vienna. The whole electronica scene headed up by Kruder and Dorfmeister was pretentious. Right out from under my nose, my knapsack with ten rolls of super 8 film and a lens for a new 16mm Bolex camera were stolen in the main square. I definitely didn't belong in Vienna.

I felt at home in Panama. If I was twenty I'd live in Panama for a few years, in the old port area. This one section looks P. 151

CHASING THE SCENE IN A CITY WHERE THE SCENE IS TRUELY UNDERGROUNa DRIVING THROUGH THE COLD STREETS OF MOSCOW IT WAS NEVER OBVIOUS WHERE TO FIND THE ARTISTS BECAUSE EVERYTHING WAS HAPPENING BEHIND CLOSED DOORS. BUT BEHIND THOSE DOORS WERE PEOPLE CREATIVELY LIVING IN ALTERNATIVE SITUATIONS.

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CHASING THE SCENE IN A CITY WHERE THE SCENE IS TRULY UNDERGROUND

MY IMAGE OF MOSCOW in the '90s was a city filled with monumental architecture and new freedoms similar to the Wild West. We were there in 1994 when people were talking about the "New Russia." Capitalism was creeping in and casinos, ad agencies, banks and stock exchanges were opening and organized crime lords had their fingers on the pulse. We were not interested in the

plane touched down. After a couple of shows I learned that it was better to be open, to take tips from other artists, and see what was going on while we were there. What is the scene? For me, it's the search for the people I want to meet. It's the up-and-coming artists, not the ones that are part of the media machine. It's the vibe of the place. And it's the scene that I like to chase. My only connection was a guy I'd spoken to on the telephone. He was a freelancer for Spin in New York and he

nightlife the Mafia provided so our search took us underground. Simple things like restaurants were hard to find. Not a strip, area or even a street was set up for tourists to eat, have a drink or shop. The only thing obvious was McDonald's. Word of mouth has always been good to me. Once I nail down where I'm going, the notebook comes out. Somebody knows somebody who knows an artist or bar or band that's playing wherever it is I'm going. That's how it starts. Usually I only had a few contacts and perhaps two interviews lined up before arriving in a new city. I admit it was nerve-wracking because I had to come away with a show, no matter what happened. In the beginning, I over-planned. All of my interviews were confirmed by the time the

knew this young, seventeen-year-old girl who he was thinking of hiring as a fixer if he went on assignment there. All we had by the time we landed was her phone number and I wasn't even sure we'd be able to get her on board. We got the girl, Inna Ko/ina, who turned out to be perfect for us. She didn't know the scene, but she knew she had to find it. First she found us a driver with an old, beaten up car. Anytime we stopped he'd take the windshield wipers off the car so they wouldn't get stolen. That kind of thing. The first club Inna took us to, The Sexton, was run by a biker gang called the Night Wolves. It was one of those places you would never find by just walking down the street. The Night Wolves ran a lot of bars. They all wore serious biker jackets, with their names on the back, along with a vicious-looking wolf. But they had no bikes. We ended up seeing them twice. The whole time in Moscow we kept getting lost and having to stop and ask for directions. On the way to The

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Sexton, I remember driving the wrong way down a one-way street with our driver Victor saying that it was OK because there were no laws in Moscow. We saw a couple of punkers going down steps and into what looked to be a basement of an apartment building. Inside, The Sexton was packed and the Night Wolves were working the door. We hung around and listened to a few local bands perform. All you could get was Russian beer and dry bread topped with salami. That night we were introduced to DJ Alexander F. from Radio Maximum. He called The Sexton the "homeland" for the Night Wolves and described himself as its "Musical President." He said they started out doing security for concerts and then opened the bar. "They are rather tough guys," Alexander explained. "Life in Moscow is tough. Our situation in Moscow is rather criminal. If not them, then you'll have some other criminals." The next time we ran into the Night Wolves was at a concert. They were the security. I think the whole gang, roughly twenty, showed up. They were the kind of guys that were hard not to like. It was hard to believe that they wanted to be the Hell's Angels of Moscow. We didn't investigate any further. It was bitterly cold the whole time we were there. Snow fell constantly and even though we brought warm clothes, we were still in pain. I didn't know how cold Moscow in winter could be. I hadn't thought that through. My feet were so frozen that I waited for my toes to break off. Despite the cold, P. 156

CHASING THE SCENE IN fl CITY WHERE THE SCEME IS TRULY UNDERGROUND

people sold art and vodka or the slreet. Markets would pop up in parking lots. People would use their cars as a display case for bootlegged tapes and CDs. Busking guitar players would perform until frostbite set in. The real highlight was meeting the artists. Not many of the people we met had phones, which meant we just had to show up. Inna somehow found the addresses of artists she heard were interesting. Most were living in squats that were really, really basic. At the first squat we just walked into the building and banged on the door. We were welcomed in and offered tea from an ancient kettle. People were wearing gloves inside. It was a big apartment with an operating stove, a few pieces of furniture and some instruments,

room. He'd ring the bells wearing a leather aviator's cap and no shirt. Another guy had a big drum, thai was his thing. Another guywas a painter who only had one light in his studio and carried it around the room lighting up his pieces which were covered with layers of resin. \Ve were lucky enough to be introduced to Petlyura, the main man. of the squat, who had Lliree floors and a wild, wild space. Some of it was completely done, new windows, nice kitchen, washing machine and dryer, a bar with broken TVs for stools, a little shop and a performance

THE NIGHT WOLVES RAN A LOT OF BARS. THEY ALL WORE SERIOUS BIKER JACKETS, WITH THEIR NAMES ON THE BACK, ALONG WITH A VICIOUS-LOOKING WOLF. BUT THEY HAD NO BIKES. Steve, my cameraman, and 1 hung out and tried to blend in. space. He also had three dogs. Mere we were, sitting in this cold, desperate place, and a guy Petlyura was completely mad. As well pulled out a guitar and sang a nineteenth-century Russian as being a fashion designer, he was a folk song so beautifully. They had next to nothing, bul never musician and political activist. It was one of slopped offering us a hit of vodka. I think I was permanently those times where [ thought, 1 can't believe drunk the whole ten days. I'm in tills crazy place and we actually found The last squat that we went to was called Petlyura. Our this guy, 1 am so lucky. He put on a jacket driver Victor got us there. As we unloaded the car. he grabbed thai had speakers bui It into the pockets so he a camera bag and came along for the adventure. We entered could, walk around and groove. He made hats through a gate that led directly into a courtyard with a big old out of some sort of strange fur. There were Bentley sitting in it. It was an old hotel that artists had taken fish tanks without fish. Most of Ihe time that over. The squat was named after [heir leader and founder we talked was around the meeting room Sasha Petlyura. He was a fashion designer and performance table. He sat in a recycled wheelchair. Once artist. There were thirty artists living Petlyura's experiment of again we were offered vodka and once again, art and life co-existing in a pre-revolution hotel. 1 was drunk. Each artist shared such huge pride iu their studios. Again we just knocked on doors with our camera rolling. Most were completely surprised and eccentric. One guy had bells strung from wall to wall running the length of the P. 157

COLD CULTURE

REYKJAVIK, STOCKHOLM AND HELSINKI ARE THREE CITIES THAT LIKE TO DRINK, THAT REALLY AREN'T THAT FAR AWAY, THAT ENCOURAGE ECCENTRICITY AND THAT LIKE SEX. AS FAR AS COLD COUNTRIES GO, I'd rate Stockholm as the most beautiful, Reykjavik as the most creative, and Helsinki as the most eccentric. I think I can relate to Stockholm coming from Toronto and being a Northerner. We're very much people who "do" things, we move at a good clip and go from A to B with our faces down to the ground a little too often. That's how we deal with the cold. There's a mystery about cold places. People tend not to go to them. They're not necessarily further away or harder to get to. It's not hard to get to Nunavut—go to Ottawa and take a plane. Cold places have a bad rap about the people being cold like the weather. It's hard to break into cold cultures with the exception of Reykjavik. Everyone in Stockholm is fashionable and tidy, Everyone in Helsinki is in a band. And everyone in Reykjavik

has five jobs and five kids with five different people and it all kind of works. In Stockholm, the whole rolled-up jeans thing was in and EVERYBODY was doing it like they HAD to. We went to a Blonde on Blonde CD release party hosted by a guy named Bingo who said, "People think Sweden is a lot of blonde people running around having sex." Video director Jonas Akerland said it's normal to talk about sex within the first few minutes of meeting someone new. When I spoke to sexpert Yiva Maria Thompson, she seemed to hammer the quote home: "In Sweden we believe that we have to have a good sex life in a relationship or we quit the relationship." P. 159

COLD CULTURE

They obviously like sex in Reykjavik. After a week in town I knew everybody and they all said hello to me. It's such a tiny little town and the people are so modern. They're hooked in to the global scene. Reykjavik is only two and a half hours from London, but individuality is taken to the extreme. It was in the clothes people wore and the way they wore them. It was also expressed in their art. Everyone in Helsinki knew the Leningrad Cowboys for their wacky unicornlike hairdos, penchant for really pointy boots, and successful restaurant in the Cable Factory. These eccentrics declared themselves the worst band in the world so nobody else has to. Despite being labelled as outrageous, they managed to persuade an authentic Russian military band to record a concert with them. Unlike Bjork, they know how to keep their egos in check. I can't even hear her music without feeling like I'm going to vomit. She treated us like media scum when we travelled to a

EVERYONE IN STOCKHOLM IS FASHIONABLE AND TIDY. EVERYONE IN HELSINKI IS IN A BAND. AND EVERYONE IN REYKJAVIK HAS FIVE JOBS AND FIVE KIDS WITH FIVE DIFFERENT PEOPLE AND IT ALL KIND OF WORKS. campsite to see her perform. Do you need one hundred and fifty bikers to be your security guards when there is no backstage? It wasn't Cannes. I'm sure Icelanders are sick of being defined by Bjork. There are so many bands P. 161

THEY OBVIOUSLY LIKE SEX IN REYKJAVIK. AFTER A WEEK IN TOWN I KNEW EVERYBODY AND THEY ALL SAID HELLO TO ME.

JYRK:.

COLD CULTURE

and so many artists for such a small population. People are busy being themselves, experimenting. Not being next to New York City takes a bit of the pressure off. All three cities like a drink, hi Stockholm they like to sing while eating crayfish and doing shots, hi Helsinki, people party hard at back-toback music festivals that last all summer, hi Reykjavik every weekend the town square becomes an all ages drinking party. Cold cultures are tight-knit and know "[STOCKHOLM] IS NOT A HUB. IT'S NOT NEW YORK, IT'S NOT MILAN AND IT'S NOT LOS ANGELES AND THAT'S A GOOD THING. IT PUTS SWEDES IN THE POSITION TO LOOK BEYOND, TO LOOK OUTSIDE, TO LOOK FOR INSPIRATION ALL OVER THE PLACE." —TYLER BRULE, WALLPAPER* CO-FOUNDER, INTERNATIONAL JETSETTER

how to have fun: making babies, making music and being themselves. The cold doesn't stop them. Summer is short, winters are long, they deal with it and adapt to it. I live in a cold country and I think we behave like the weather, in extremes. I think cold cultures produce independent people, extroverted loners who are always moving so they don't freeze to death. Swedish artist Mats Brunander wanted to try and slow people down. He built six chairs or "thrones" and placed them in different spots around the city to get people to stop and enjoy the beauty and history of Stockholm. He said Swedes "wake up in the morning, have coffee, [and] then we are useful people. We don't take it easy or sit down, we want to be useful. We work, then we go to bed. I wanted to help people sit down and feel like kings."

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THIS IS SPANISH HARLEM. AS WAS WRITTEN DOWN ON A

PIECE OF PAPER WITH A GREEN MARKER BY SIDEWALK PHILOSOPHER AND WALL ARTIST JAMES DE LA VEGA, THEN FRAMED AND SOLD TO ME AS ART.

CULTURE

SHOCK I NEVER UNDERSTOOD IT UNTIL IT HAPPENED TO ME. I HAD BEEN TO DOZENS OF COUNTRIES IN ALMOST A DECADE. BUT THEN I WENT TO INDIA.

ARRIVING IN MUMBAI at nighttime and driving into the city from the airport, all I could see were bodies on the ground, covered with sheets of fabric. It looked like there were dead corpses everywhere, but it was just people sleeping; whole families, not just one but hundreds and hundreds, covered up to keep the insects off. I couldn't stop thinking, Oh my God what have we done...Why did I want to come here? This is too much, how am I going to manage? Then I got into my hotel room. There were no screens on the windows and the door could easily be kicked in, the mattress was a piece of foam and every two minutes the bellhop banged on my door asking me to pay a phone bill. It's three o'clock in the morning. Why was this guy banging at my door? Why me? He spoke English, so I shouted through the door, "Go away! I am not answering the door." This lasted for three nights. The hotel—which was usually my safe haven at the end of the day, a place to relax and escape—became anything but. The next day, after little sleep, I woke to see just how

bad things were. Kids played in a pile of sewage that a cow was eating. An addict sat on the ground preparing to shoot up. Little kids carried little kids who looked like they were dead or starving. So many people begged: people without limbs, the blind, lepers. Everyone was aggressively and relentlessly trying to sell something; they followed me, touched me, tried to sell me gum or trinkets. And if they had nothing to sell, they begged, hard. One little girl who begged us to buy formula for her younger sister, turned around and sold it back to the same vendor we bought it from. Roughly 16 million people live in Mumbai. Breathing the air is equivalent to smoking two packs of cigarettes a day. Not everybody in the city is poor—it is a metropolis full of nice cars, well-dressed people and expensive restaurants. It was totally confusing. I didn't know how to behave in a place like this. Where did art and culture fit? What was I doing talking to a painter about light, colour and studio spaces when there were people living in such dreadful conditions and literally dying in the streets? I was in shock. For the first couple of days, I kept calling home to my husband Tim. I was upset and disturbed by what I was seeing and had no idea how to handle it. I never left the hotel on my own, I just didn't think it would be any fun. I have never been that shocked before or since. Not even in Bamako, Mali, where things were similar; there the poverty was just as in your face, P. 169

people persistently followed mi:, but it didn't get to me the same way. So many people struggled to survive.... Culture shock is defined in so many ways: confusion, panic, emotional and physical fatigue, sickness, anger, depression, lack of control, feelings of helplessness and overwhelming anxiety. In other words, it's something that is indefinable. They say it conies in stages, thai it can happen when yon land in a place as well as when you return. Tli is wasn't a matter of having trouble adjusting to the language, getting aronnd or using bank machines. It was seeing people living in a way so different than anything 1 had seen before, and feeling overwhelmed at what to do about it. "Why am 1 here?" How many times have people asked themselves that question not long after getting off a plane? I had always wanted to go to India. And here 1 was, forced to look at a reality, which was so different than what I had expected. P. 171

CULTURE SHOCK

On our third day we drove out to Bollywood to interview author Vikram Chandra. He's about forty and spends half his time in Mumbai, the other half teaching in Washington, D.C. He wrote the novel Red Earth and Pouring Rain and a book of short stories, Love and Longing in Bombay. "I think here in the city, one feels that people work really hard and they try a lot of things to get ahead, to survive and they find dignity in that effort," says author Vikram Chandra when I spoke to him on a film set. "I think you have to be careful of one's conception in both directions. The bleeding heart worn on the sleeve, I find it distasteful and vulgar." What he was saying was don't judge the people, don't judge the culture and don't pity us. His words made me feel more comfortable, but I was still horrified. The thing that got to me was that there seemed to be no escape. The caste system meant that if you were born into a certain position, you were going to stay in that position your whole life, unless you were lucky. In downtown Mumbai, there was an open-air "human laundromat," crammed with people washing clothes in organized rows where one person did socks and another person did pants and so on. You might be the sock person. Then your child becomes the sock person and, in turn, his or her child becomes the sock person. Forever. But the city itself has a unique way of giving people work while simultaneously helping it function. For example, outside a train station I P. 172

saw an example of how the system worked. After a man leaves for the office in the morning, his wife makes his lunch. A guy on a bicycle comes to the house, picks up the lunch and drops it off in front of the train station. (Everyone has the same kind of lunch box: small steel bowls stacked on top of each other and closed tightly with the handle.) At the train station, the next guy sorts the boxes then passes them to the guy who takes the boxes onto the train to pass to another guy. Eventually, each boxed lunch reaches its destination: a guy on a bike waiting at the station stop who'll

CULTURE SHOCK IS DEFINED

IN SO MANY WAYS: CONFUSION, PANIC, EMOTIONAL AND PHYSICAL FATIGUE, SICKNESS, ANGER, DEPREESSION, LACK OF CONTROL, FEELINGS OF HELPLESSNESS AND OVERWHELMING ANXIETY. then deliver it to its owner at work. In other words, the box gets passed through a human chain until it reaches the office. Then, instead of carrying the box home because the trains are so packed (5.5 million take the train every day in Mumbai), Mr. Businessman sends it back the same way it came. "Because in Bombay life happens in the open out on the street, it appears that things are very difficult. The very fact that there are so many slums and shantytowns shows that people are able to survive or they wouldn't be here,"

CULTURE SHOCK

said Yashodhara Dalmia, the curator of the Sakshi Gallery, a contemporary gallery in a converted textile mill. "The fact that you can find a way of living despite great odds shows that you are creative. I think that that is the greatest creative thing that you can do in India, find a way of surviving." In an attempt to steer away from Bollywood, filmmaker Sunhil Sippy wrote and directed his first film Snip!, a comedy about ambitious people and how Mumbai is a city of social climbers. To keep costs down, Sunhil set a

they dealt with it. I felt their sense of charity in how they looked after each other. Maybe you can only truly understand a culture when it is your culture. India was a shock to my senses, but I understand it a little better now. "The thing about this city, is that the poverty is very obvious. But everyone finds some way of earning a living," said Yashodhara. "The fact that someone on the

MAYBE YOU CAN ONLY TRULY UNDERSTAND A CULTURE WHEN IT IS YOUR CULTURE. INDIA WAS A SHOCK TO MY SENSES, BUT I UNDERSTAND IT A LITTLE BETTER NOW. large part of the film in his grandparents' apartment, located in a huge, luxurious high-rise in the middle of Mumbai. During our interview with Sunhil we heard this intense drumming, so we went outside on the balcony. Twenty floors below, between two apartment buildings, a thousand people had built makeshift structures out of tin and found objects. Arthur, my cameraman, and I peered down, astonished at the vibrant shantytown, a whole other world. We were told that they were probably celebrating a wedding. By the end of the trip to India I could see through things I couldn't see through at the beginning. I could see the positive sides of the culture. I met people and saw how

street is making something out of waste and selling it gives him a livelihood. That is actually what provides the dynamism of the city."

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ART WILL FIND A WAY EVERY TWO YEARS an international art exhibition, the Bienal de Sao Paulo, takes place in Brazil. The art scene in Sao Paulo is progressive and with a population of 18 million (25 million including the suburbs), there is no shortage of galleries or artists. While we were there covering the Bienal, Rodrigo, a member of the pop band Party Up, told us about a unique happening at the Spiritual Centre of Sao Paulo. Every P. 176

Wednesday night, artists gathered to act as "hosts" for dead painters. Each of the hosts was demagnetized in a storage room before being given a paintbrush and then allowed to enter the studio. It was necessary for Steve, my cameraman, and myself to also be demagnetized before we could enter. Sitting down with our eyes closed, women outlined our bodies with their hands and then flicked the "energy" away. A few minutes later we were allowed to enter. In low light and complete silence, men and women painted furiously as

if possessed. They were channelling the masters and not taking credit for it. Their paintings were signed Monet, Renoir, Van Gogh and Picasso. I have been lucky to have worked with many creative people over the years and have channelled a lot of our experiences into this book. All over the world people have opened their doors and gave me their time, shared what they knew and what they believed in. Toronto-based Citytv was a fantastic creative place to have worked and probably the only place that would have given me so much freedom to run around the world and cut my own path. Toronto is where I was born, my family lives here, it's where I return to. It's also a city where freedom of expression is taken for granted and anyone can be an artist, Several years ago when I was in Cape Town I met musician Lennox T. Having lived through apartheid, he felt life was getting better but the past still had a hold on people. "The changes are there," Lennox said, "But they are not up to a level where everyone is feeling that we are free." Unlike the megatropolis of Sao Paulo, Cape Town is absolutely beautiful. With roads that wind along an idyllic

made out of olive oil cans, plastic bags twisted like string and woven together to make fruit bowls, a can of Coke turned into a pencil holder and toy racing cars made from bug spray cans, One night at Tiger's Tavern, Lennox T and The Stepchildren performed for a small group of us. At the end of the night he turned to me and said, "I am looking forward to worrying about tomorrow, because during apartheid, I didn't get the chance to work on myself and look to the future, because I was worried about the man who was chasing me all the time." As I was writing this last chapter I came across Lennox T and The Stepchildren's music on the Internet. He lives with his wife and children in a oneroom house on a pile of sand in a poor township, in another hemisphere. And his art found its way to me.

coastline it seemed the most perfect place in the world. But it's too black and white for me. Too many people have guns; people sleep with guns at their side. You have to check your gun at the door at certain restaurants. A lot of people lived in gated communities with heavy security. There's nobody on the street and you're told not to walk by yourself. The high point was meeting Lennox T and being invited into his house in the Langa, one of the oldest townships in Cape Town. It was basically a box sitting in a pile of sand. We walked around his community, drank homemade beer in a crowded hut and peered into people's places. Many of the walls were decorated with cigarette packages or soapboxes or even cereal boxes, arranged in a pattern to look like wallpaper. In other parts of the world I've seen jewellery boxes P. 177