Quick links to blogs, audio pages, pictures and more...
Audio tracks, click on:
http://www.myspace.com/micheleandersonsounds
Click on link below for pictures.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/meesherson/
For my blog click on the following:
http://travelsandtunes.blogspot.com/
Conferences
CERIS Graduate Conference (Re)
Imagining Canada: Migration, Transnationalism, and Diaspora April 23, 2010
For Conference details see: http://ceris.metropolis.net/frameset_e.html (York University)
My Presentation:
Policies for Belonging: How Canadian National, Provincial and Municipal Government can Promote a Sense of Belonging in Chinese Diaspora
Ministry of Justice Chinese New Year Celebrations/Conference Feb 11-20, 2010
"Living Culture: from Christmas in Hunan to Chinese New Year in the GTA" will explore the changing traditions of expats in China celebrating Christmas in the Chinese fashion, while comparing these to the ways Chinese New Year Spring Festivals celebrations have changed from China to Canada's Diaspora in the GTA. Namely, issues of government influence and funding, popular commercial support and regional particularities of how traditions of the Chinese-Canadian Diaspora challenge the notion of fixed traditions. This audio-visual presentation will look at culture as an evolving set of practices that use evolution as the gel of belonging to new territories and new homes.
PSi #16 Performing Publics in Toronto, 9-13 June 2010
I will be presenting “Luminato Festival: contributing to the habitus of place and
belonging?” about where Luminato can contribute to the sense of belonging of our minority ethnic communities. Are they filling in where "ethnic" festivals lack? What role do mainstream festivals play in the community and quality of life of all residents, including less visible artists and participants from minority communities? Comparing the Chinatown festival events and structure with that of Luminato will provide some guidance to major differences and points of departure.
Robarts Centre for Canadian Studies
Some interesting links for discussion as we round off our discussions with people about Toronto's Creative City
So This is a Festival blog With contributions from Taunya Tremblay (Comunication and Culture Phd. in progress at York University), Maureen Senoga MaureensNuitBlanche2009.pdf (also in progress for Phd at York U.) and Mike Bowmile (MA Political Science, York U.).
Article from Canadian Journal of Communication
Community Arts Network Article
Centre of Expertise on Culture and Community
Article on the Revitalization of Public Space
Toronto Arts Foundation on Creative City neighbourhoods
Canada's Federal Cultural Policy since 1999
Citizenship and Immigration Canada's Multiculturalism Policy
Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage 1999
Transitions - Ottawa (Carleton University) March 5-6, 2009
Paper presented - Techno-Grunge Rebels: Subcultures as markers of the transition to the post-neoliberal paradigm. Click to view long paper: Techno-Grunge Rebels: Subcultures as Markers of the Transition to the Post-Neoliberal Paradigm
Intersections - Toronto (York and Ryerson University) March 20-22, 2009
Paper Presented - Luminato Festival: Toronto's response to the crisis of space and place.
Published in e-Topia: http://www.yorku.ca/topia/etopia4.html
Robarts Centre for Canadian Studies has published the full-length version of my report: http://www.yorku.ca/robarts/projects/public_culture/
See also the Toronto Culture Working Group's blog on Festivals: http://sothisisafestival.blogspot.com/
Please note: all published reports may be quoted using proper citation. Copyright watermarks are used to discourage student plagiarism as much as possible, and to prevent non-published materials from being cited. Students are encouraged to contact the author on her blog if they have questions or comments on the contents of these papers at: http://travelsandtunes.blogspot.com/
In and Out of the Studio (Concordia University) 2005
I Heard No Cries - an audio piece and discussion paper
part 1 - I Heard No Cries Part 1.mp3 part 2 - I Heard No Cries part 2.mp3
For more on the Concordia hosted Conference visit: In and Out of the Studio 2005
Conference Website: In and Out of the Studio
In and Out of the Studio audio work: Listen to Audio Tracks
Current Projects
Robarts Centre for Canadians Studies
see website: http://www.yorku.ca/robarts/index_3.php
Toronto Public Culture Working Group has been working on Festivals and Arts and Culture Venues (2008-2010).
8 for 8: film about the Creative City in T.O. (2009-2010)
Other community institutions of art and
cultural experience are being researched, with a view to the impacts of
the Creative City policies on Toronto cultural institutions. Currently the working group is working with CURL (Collaborative Urban Research Laboratory) at York University in Toronto. http://www.criticalresearchlab.org/curl.html
We will be interviewing people that run different arts centres and collaborative artistic venues in Toronto to get a sense of how these small artistic hubs contribute to the city. Our purpose is to track transformations in Toronto's public culture. We are looking beyond the elite walls of institutions like the famous galleries and museums in T.O. and into the more more intimate, local, and grassroots hubs that are artist run.
We are also interested in their creative role and initiative in Toronto's Creative City initiative, as implemented by the Toronto Culture Plan and the interest all levels of government have in making Toronto a Creative City with a strong creative class. Both problems and benefits that relate to this intervention will be explored from the perspective of people on the ground.We want to know what the relation is between these venues, cultural policy and the creative economy.
Toronto Festival Reports (2008-2009)
These include Nuit Blanche, Luminato (Luminato Website), Word on the Street, and the Fringe Fest among others. The reports, including Luminato: public/private partnerships hang in delicate balance, have been published on the Robarts website:
http://www.yorku.ca/robarts/projects/public_culture/
Audio Tracks
Recently Completed
"parting gift" - a new audio track inspired by leaving, and what's left behind us.
Featuring Angela Carr reading from her newly published book The Rose Concordance.
Published:
Textsound, an online audio publication, published the audio mix I made of a reading of Angela Carr's first book of poetry, Ropewalk (Snare, 2006) which was shortlisted for the QWF's McAuslan Award. The piece is called "At This Point" and it appears in their audio journal issue No 5, fall 2009.
See http://textsound.org/ to hear it and other audio works.
Check out Carr's newest book The Rose Concordance, here: http://www.flipkart.com
You can also hear my other audio-philes at: http://www.myspace.com/micheleandersonsounds or listen to one of my various projects now under a subheading below.
Concordia University projects 2003-2004
These are bits of audio work taken from a documentary about Canadian interpretations of Muslim traditions post-9/11: http://artsandscience.concordia.ca/comm/gallery.html
The whole documentary is too long for this site, but an audio piece on a similar topic can be accessed below under the In and Out of the Studio Conference heading.
She Meets West
York University also conducted a Sociology Video Project in which my documentary video short She Meets West is featured. To listen to the soundtrack, with original score and real interviews, go to the MySpace link micheleandersonsounds posted above. To access the project website see the link here: http://www.arts.yorku.ca/soci/video/about.html
Artistic collaborations
Research in Motion:
CURL and Robarts - filming our interviews with local venue owners and co-ops is but one part of the project 8 for 8. We are also looking at collaborating with a local photographer to map these venues in a visual virtual web display, a 360 degree image of the venues where they are located in Toronto. By stepping back from the scholarship a moment, we hope to get a sense of the larger picture before delving back in.
Poetry in motion:
First book of poetry by Angela Carr, called Ropewalk (2006), inspired the audio mix entitled "At This Point". To hear it go to: http://textsound.org/ volume 5.
Find out more about the artist, Angela Carr, through the online Toronto poetry "Test Reading Series" here:
http://www.testreading.org/carr.html
Open Source - China Recordings 2006-2007
Having spent several months touring China, I recorded bits of life, both in public and private settings.
The audio recordings are raw, unaltered and open to sharing. Different ones will be posted here over the course of the next few months, and people can download them, use them, share them and enjoy them. They are not meant for sale or to be used for monetary, copyright, or other propaganda purposes. They are meant in the spirit of "copyleft", and promotion of positive cultural exchange.
Also, some mixes will be appearing soon, using these audio bites, that utilize open-source audio software from start to finish. In trying to keep with the spirit of sharing, I am using these recordings to promote the open-source software that will modify them, while attempting to share slices of my every day China experience.
There is a lot of news-related negative media out there that does a fine job of analyzing the political and economic sides of China, but there are few media that show the "quotidien" in China. Unfortunately, that makes it easy to forget that their experiences are much like our own. It is important to be reminded of the ordinary existence of everyday people, so as not to project onto them the fears that other media can impose upon us.
The following clip is from Hunan First Normal College in Changsha,
Hunan Province. During freshman week they have "military training",
which really only consists of a lot of marching and singing, as with
most Chinese social occasions...lots of singing. During breaks or
heat, the students sit for a while. In order to entertain the students,
the officers often sing for them. In the clip below you hear a soldier
singing for a mostly female group, in his best falsetto. You can hear
cars honk in the background, construction trucks move around them (the
school was still being built!), other students still march and count
down their steps, and the wind muffles the mic a bit. Essentially the
students yell out requests, and the soldier is more than pleased to
oblige the giggling schoolgirls.
Click here to listen: Singingsoldier.mp3 (please note quality is low and it starts quietly)
In deep contrast with the images I have seen countless times on TV of the 1989 Tiananmen soldiers, when a country is not in crisis people, soldiers included, can let down their guard and be people.
The recording of that fall day served to counter some of the deep-seeded and troubling notions I had always had of China, post-1989. Though the realities of struggle still exist in China as anywhere, their reality consists more of the above example, than of what we know from our media's coverage of political strife in China.
January 2008
Another piece is anticipated for January 2010
