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a, Baseball, Behind the Bench, Sports

Behind The Bench: A September to remember for Marcus Stroman

by Eyal Wilk on

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The last time the Toronto Blue Jays were atop the AL East this late in the regular season, the European Union did not exist, Billboard’s No. 1 song was Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always Love You,” and Liam Neeson was nominated for an Academy Award. Since the transcendent 1993 World Series team, injury, sub-par play, and disappointment have afflicted the Jays franchise and numbed Toronto fans to the point of near apathy.

At first, the 2015 season seemed no different. Just two weeks after the Blue Jays’ first team spring training workout, the team’s 5’8”  ace Marcus Stroman tore his ACL and was believed to be out for the season. Stroman’s rookie season was one of the few bright spots in a mediocre 2014 Jays’ pitching staff; he posted a 3.65 ERA, 1.17 WHIP, and 111 strikeouts in 130.2 innings pitched. The team believed he could be their number one starter in 2015.

With Stroman’s season-ending injury, it was tough to find hope in a rotation that featured two unproven rookies (Daniel Norris, Aaron Sanchez), two veterans nearing the end of their careers (Robert Dickey, Mark Buehrle), and the frustrating Drew Hutchison. Stroman, however, refused to give up on the season, and aimed to make a late-season return.

“Right when I tore my ACL, I kind of mapped [my comeback] out in my head,” Stroman told Robert MacLeod of the Globe and Mail. 

He returned to Duke University to finish his Sociology degree and endured a gruelling rehab regimen. From his more than frequent Instagram and Twitter updates, It was clear he was putting in work, but the idea of a miraculous Stroman resurrection in September seemed unnecessary. The Blue Jays would be sitting at their usual .500 record down the stretch—why rush Stroman back for a handful of meaningless starts? 

An ACL tear usually requires anywhere from six to 12 months of rehab to fully heal. Stroman was running, and throwing 80 feet across the diamond in four months. Five months after his surgery, Stroman completed his rehab at Duke.

Something strange started to happen after the All-Star break, however. Alex Anthopoulos, the patron saint of Jays fans, pulled off a set of miraculous deadline-day deals that brought in David Price, Troy Tulowitzki, Ben Revere and some key depth pieces to the bullpen. With a revamped squad, the Blue Jays were transformed into a big, blue winning machine.

In the month of August, the team went 21-6 to overcome a 7.5 game deficit and take the division lead from the Yankees. The lineup instilled fear in the hearts of the grown men trying (and failing) to pitch to them as they averaged 6.3 runs a game and outscored their opponents by 87 runs. The rotation, led by Price, has posted the lowest WHIP (1.06) and third lowest ERA (2.83) in the entire MLB. Jays fans everywhere rejoiced as their team broke further and further into uncharted territory. When Stroman’s first rehab start was announced, Jays  fans couldn’t push thoughts of ’92 and ’93 out of their minds. 

An ACL tear usually requires anywhere from six to 12 months of rehab to fully heal. Stroman was running, and throwing 80 feet across the diamond in four months. Five months after his surgery, Stroman completed his rehab at Duke. On Sept. 2, he threw 4.2 innings of shutout ball in his first rehab start with the Jays’ Single-A affiliate. After a quick tune-up in Triple-A, the unthinkable was announced: Stroman would make his season debut against the Yankees on Sept. 12. 

Any visiting pitcher will tell you that Yankee Stadium, with its short left-field porch, is the last place you would want to make your first start after returning from a serious injury. Stroman wasn’t bothered. He went five innings, giving up three runs on four hits to record an emotional win. He was electrifying in his next start against the Red Sox. Pitching in front of a sold-out crowd at the Rogers Centre, Stroman fired seven innings of one run ball, giving up six hits and striking out three in his homecoming. 

As the Jays chase the Royals for the best record in the AL and home-field advantage in the playoffs, Stroman’s unlikely return gives the team a whole lot of pitching options that they did not have a few months ago. It allows the Jays to put a struggling Hutchison in the bullpen with the option of pulling him back into the rotation if the aging Mark Buehrle needs to be rested. If Stroman can return to his top form for the post-season, the Jays will have an infusion of talent and a top-of-the-rotation starter that will gear them up for a deep playoff run. As the team reunites with their star pitcher, you get the sense that nothing can go wrong for the Jays.

Stroman has the Jays singing: “This is going to be our year.” 

a, Editorial, Opinion

Editorial: Indigenous issues must become part of campus discourse

by The McGill Tribune Editorial Board on

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Indigenous Awareness Week is now in its fifth year at McGill University. The week showcases local indigenous culture through a series of events, beginning with the Pow Wow on Sept. 18, and concluding on Sept. 25 with a symposium titled Resisting Gendered and State Violence: Indigenous Women’s Activism. The focal points of the week are the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) and Indigenous women’s issues.

Indigenous Awareness Week promotes the visibility of indigenous culture on campus and raises awareness about the issues facing indigenous peoples, but in order to break down the barriers to inclusion faced by indigenous peoples at McGill, indigenous issues must hold greater weight. Currently, indigenous issues are mostly absent from mainstream conversation. The marginalization of indigenous peoples is embedded in McGill’s institutional history—the land that McGill is built on was never ceded to the university; a series of missteps by the administration and the Government of Canada snowballed to last week’s notice of seizure sent by Kahentinetha of the Bear Clan, a kahtihon’tia:kwenio (women titleholder), of the Kahnawake Mohawk community. It stands to reason that any student of McGill should be educated in both sides of the history of indigenous-settler relations in Canada, particularly as those relations relate to McGill and local Aboriginal Peoples.

Awareness of indigenous culture and of the obstacles faced by Aboriginals must be coupled with caution to avoid entrenching stereotypes.

The First People’s House, KANATA journal, and Indigenous Awareness Week, as well as the introduction of an Indigenous Studies Program, should be commended for raising awareness of indigenous issues and creating spaces for indigenous representation and expression on campus. Student associations, including the Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU), the Post-Graduate Students’ Society (PGSS), and the Arts Undergraduate Society (AUS) should also be given credit for territorial acknowledgements at meetings.

But such steps only go part of the way to bringing indigenous issues to the forefront. The scope of their progress must be extended into the consciousness of all students at McGill. This conversation could begin in residences where new students can be encouraged to think critically about Canada’s colonial legacy by their floor fellows.

Awareness of indigenous culture and of the obstacles faced by Aboriginals must be coupled with caution to avoid entrenching stereotypes. Breaking the barriers between indigenous students and their peers will take time, and efforts to do so must be given sustained attention by students, professors, and administrators. While raising awareness is not a solution to the systemic inequalities faced by indigenous, and in particular indigenous who pursue a post-secondary education, it is a step in the right direction. Attitudes can only evolve when time has been devoted to ensuring that everyone has a stake in changing their own attitudes.

Insofar as McGill works diligently to ensure a commitment to social justice and inclusion, it remains behind other Canadian universities in terms of indigenous rights and representation on campus. McGill has hired its first tenure-track indigenous professor, but such progress seems limited when compared to the University of British Columbia, which has numerous indigenous professors across various faculties. Though the recommendations laid out by the TRC in order to narrow the inequalities between indigenous and non-indigenous students apply mainly to the federal government, McGill can do more to improve the representation of indigenous peoples. A partnership with local indigenous communities in developing those goals and the steps to achieve them must be prioritized.

As progress is made by the administration, students can spark a grassroots conversation. There are less than 200 aboriginal students in undergraduate studies at McGill, and those students face microaggressions daily, according to a study released on Jan. 2 2014 by the Social Equity and Diversity Education (SEDE) Office. By not opening up spaces for indigenous awareness, the campus participates in the silencing of a culture that has been fighting for its existence for centuries. Students at McGill must decide whether they will continue that history of silence by continuing to marginalize indigenous issues and rights, or if it is possible for our campus to become a leader in the conversation.

a, Know Your Athlete, Men's Varsity, Sports

Know Your Athlete: Paul Rakoczy

by Ellie Solloway on

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Paul Rakoczy is in a nostalgic mood as he prepares for his last season on the team. As his team gears up for the Baggataway Cup National Championship in November, the defenceman and co-captain is looking to the past for inspiration.

“It’s bittersweet, for sure,’” Rakoczy said. “I love this lacrosse team. It’s something special.”

In his four years with the Redmen, Rakoczy helped the team win their first-ever CUFLA Championship in 2012 and reach two other finals. As this year’s squad takes aim at a pennant, his knowledge and experience will prove invaluable in boosting his teammates confidence.

“We’ve got 10 guys that were on that 2012 team,” Rakoczy explained. “[They] know what it takes to win, and I think that’s huge when it comes to showing some of the younger guys how to get there.”

The past two years, however, have seen the team twice come up short in the finals. In 2013, McGill was stunned at home 14-11 by the Guelph Gryphons. A year later, the Redmen—undefeated in the regular season—lost again to the Gryphons 15-12, despite scoring seven unanswered goals in a frantic final eight minutes.   

These losses, while painful, are important to Rakoczy and the team as they plan the 2015 season. 

“We know that we can score a lot of goals very quickly,” Rakoczy said. “In the coming games, we know we need to come out faster and harder earlier in the game as opposed to letting other teams get ahead.”

The team is currently undefeated, and has outscored opponents 85-31 through its first five games. On defence, Rakoczy and his teammates have not skipped a beat after leading the league in goals against average last season.

Rakoczy has seen both sides of a championship in his playing career: Glorious victory and crushing defeat. But beyond the final score, Rakoczy is passionate about the communities he’s a part of in Montreal. He chose McGill for it’s superior education, impressive campus, and the proximity to his home in Burlington, Ontario despite receiving multiple offers from NCAA Division 1 lacrosse schools in the U.S.

 “Most Division 1 schools in the states could beat us,” Rakoczy, an Earth and Planetary Sciences major, acknowledged. “But McGill offers a nice balance for lacrosse where it doesn’t become a full-time job.” 

Rakoczy has cherished his McGill education, highlighting his experiences doing fieldwork for his department in far-flung locations such as Arizona, California, and Peru. He finds his workload pretty manageable, though balancing his work with the team often leads to “late nights.” 

Being a part of a National Championship team is definitely a perk of attending McGill compared to other schools, and after winning it all in 2012, there’s nothing that motivates Rakoczy more than the thought of sharing the taste of success with his teammates this season. Rakoczy is keeping his options open for after graduation, although he has no interest in going pro.  

“I actually kind of want to open a brewery,” Rakoczy conceded with a laugh. 

Career paths aside, when Rakoczy reflects on his four years at McGill, there’s no doubt he’ll have left behind an impressive legacy.

McGill Tribune (MT): Most used emoji?

Paul Rakoczy (PR): Sunglasses smiley. 

(MT): Favorite ‘lax bro’ lingo?

(PR): ‘Savage’ is thrown around a lot on the team these days.

(MT): Latest Netflix-binge watch?

(PR): I just finished Narcos two days ago. Fan-tastic.

(MT): Favorite team to play an away game against? 

(PR): Probably Bishops, because their crowd hates us. 

(MT): Fundraiser Samosa or Dispatch toast?

(PR): Samosa, for sure.

(MT): Finish this sentence: Donald Trump’s hair looks most like ______?

(PR): A dust bunny.

a, Student Life

Preparing for life after McGill

by Julie Vanderperre on

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Although graduation may seem far away, it is never too early to begin making plans for a career or continuing education after McGill. It is normal for students to feel anxious about postgraduate plans, and it can be daunting to not know where or when to start. Here’s a comprehensive to-do list to quell common worries and leave McGill students feeling prepared to face life beyond the Roddick Gates.

Request copies of your transcript from Service Point

This is one of the most commonly overlooked steps of applying for jobs or grad school, and it is also one of the simplest. You can easily order your transcript on Minerva or in person, and they will mail the copies to your address, or you can pick them up at Service Point. Doing this early will ensure that you don’t need to stress about the processing time (which can be up to a week during peak periods) that it takes for your transcript to arrive. You can also avoid the $15 fee that is charged for urgent transcript requests.

Attend career development workshops hosted by CaPS

CaPS hosts a series of different workshops and info sessions to help students plan for careers and graduate school. These seminars start in September, and are held throughout first semester into November. Presentations include everything from “Discover the Hidden Job Market” to “Time Management for Busy Students.” These events are also great opportunities to speak to other students who are also experiencing the same trepidation, and share advice.

Browse job listings

McGill provides several comprehensive databases of companies and organizations to check out. myFuture is the CaPS job and internship search tool that is only available to McGill students, and has a long list of reputable employers. You can apply for jobs directly through myFuture, which can help to ease access to employers who normally would be more difficult to contact. You can also tailor your job search by industry, location, and type using different job search engines listed on the CaPS website.

Attend career and/or graduate school fairs

CaPS hosts several of these, in cooperation with various faculties and student groups. The fairs take place throughout September, October, and November, and they provide plenty of valuable information on different opportunities to explore, and are a great place to begin networking.

Create a LinkedIn account

Although some people view LinkedIn’s form of cyber-networking as superfluous, it is a useful tool to research different companies and to explore the interests and connections of your contemporaries. If you already have a LinkedIn account, now is the time to update your profile with any relevant experience that you gained over the summer. Don’t forget to join groups like McGill University Alumni and your faculty’s group on LinkedIn to stay up to date on networking and employment opportunities. CaPS also has a LinkedIn peer advising service coming soon.

Draft your CV and go to CaPS’s Daily Drop-In to have it reviewed

Registration for drop-in visits opens at 9 a.m., and you must go in person to the CaPS office to register for a meeting the same day. Your CV can make or break a job opportunity, so it is imperative that it is formatted and edited to perfection.

Ask your professors for recommendations

Most employers and graduate schools will require at least one recommendation from a professor. Instructors therefore get inundated each semester with requests from students to write them shining, thoughtful, and personalized letters. Ask your professors as early as possible to write you a recommendation to avoid the rush that usually happens closer to when job applications are due. It is courteous to give professors at least one month to complete the letter. When asking a professor to write you a letter, be polite in your request and make them understand why you value their perspective. Don’t forget to bring along supplemental materials like your resume, personal statement, and any information pertaining to the job or graduate program to which you are applying.

Prep for interviews

The more you practice, the less nervous you will be for your important interviews. You can schedule an appointment for a mock interview with a career advisor, or even just practice what you plan to say with a friend. CaPS also provides a comprehensive how-to guide for preparing for interviews and making sure that you ace each one.

a, Science & Technology

Understanding the world of hiero-gifics

by Clare Lyle on

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As platforms like Short Message Service (SMS), Facebook Messenger, and WhatsApp grow in popularity, the amount of time people spend interacting face-to-face decreases. To make up for this, tech enthusiasts and artists have teamed up to develop novel ways to convey emotion over text. Ranging from the humble smiley to the more complex cat GIF, these seemingly innocuous images have had a huge impact on the way we communicate today. 

Emoticons have been used for decades to eliminate ambiguity in the tone of a text-based message. Take, for instance: ‘You’re late ;P’ vs. ‘You’re late.’ The two messages inspire very different reactions in the reader, yet contain the same words in the same order. Studies have shown that humans react to emoticons in the same way that they respond to real facial expressions. In a study published in Social Neuroscience, scientists found that the same structures in the brain that are activated when people see faces are activated when they see emoticons. A 2014 study in The Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication found that emoticons serve the same role in text-based communication as facial expressions and other non-verbal cues do in face-to-face interaction. According to the researchers, emoticons aren’t limited to just expressing happy and sad emotions.

“When following expressive speech acts, such as thanks [and] greetings, [emojis] function as strengtheners,” the paper stated. “When following directives (such as requests, corrections, etc.) they function as softeners.”

Emoticon usage follows rules that allow the user to express politeness and respect—in addition to smiley faces.

Another report, written by the keyboard app SwiftKey, presented statistics on emoji-use by country. The French used the heart emoticon more than any other nationality, while Canadians stood out for their use of the pizza emoji. Interestingly, the type of emoticon used to express the same feeling—happiness, sadness, fear—varied depending on which country the sender was from. For example, to express happiness, 🙂 is the most popular emoticon used in North America, but in East Asian countries ^,^ is preferred. 

Emoticon usage has also been found to vary between social groups. According to a study published in the Journal of CyberPsychology and Behaviour, women tend to use more emoticons than men in internet communications, although this difference in emoticon usage becomes less pronounced when people are in mixed-gender settings. 

 

THE HISTORY: 

1982: 

The first officially accepted use of an emoticon took place on September 19, 1982 when Carnegie Mellon professor Scott Fahlman posted the now-iconic 🙂 on an electronic bulletin board.

1987: 

The GIF file format is created by Steve Wilhite of the company Compuserve in June 1987 to improve on black and white image transfers without slowing down modems. The GIF introduced 256 colours to the image.

1992: 

Les Horribles Cernettes’—a parody music group created at CERN—album cover becomes the first image file uploaded onto the internet. 

1999: 

The emoji was first created in Japan in 1999 by DoKoMo i-mode—a mobile phone provider in Japan—to allow their users to add pictures in their text messages.  

2011: 

Apple incorporates emojis into its iPhone keyboard with the release of iOS 5.

2013: 

Facebook enables users to add stickers to their messenger conversations.

2015: 

In May, Facebook messenger incorporates Giphy, an app which let users send GIFs to each other in comments and private messages.

 

THE LINGO:

ASCII: 

The American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII) is a way for computers to encode characters through text. It is limited to the Latin alphabet and assigns each character (i.e., letter or punctuation mark) to an integer value, which the computer then stores and uses.

Character encoding: 

Used to represent characters by a set system of symbols or patterns—examples include Morse code and braille.

Unicode: 

A computing industry standard used to handle character sets for almost any language.

Emoticon:

A series of ASCII characters that represent a facial expression.

Emoji: 

An icon that conveys meaning by resembling the physical object. This could be, for example, showing a smiling face to convey happiness.

Bitmap: 

A way that computers represent image data as a matrix of dots.

GIF: 

The Graphics Interchange Format (GIF) is a bitmap image format that also supports animations.

Giphy: 

App that lets you send GIF files through a messaging service.

a, Science & Technology

“So, you want to become a doctor?” gives students a look into the medical world

by Esha Kaul on

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Last Wednesday’s ‘So, you want to become a doctor?’ conference, organized by MedSpecs, spoke about the process of applying to med school. The presentations, which featured current McGill medical school students and alumnus, drew from personal experiences. The event began with, Guido Guberman Diaz, M1 McGill, who provided the audience with guidance on the medical application process.

“There’s no specific recipe to get into medical school,” he explained. “Try to excel in one particular area of interest and be at least acceptable at the rest. [Be] a jack of some trades and a master of one.”

In response to a student’s question about what extracurriculars to participate in, Diaz said that it is essential to pick an activity that is meaningful. 

“Question everything you do to find the underlying importance for why you did it,” he explained. “If you can find no other answer than adding it to your CV then you should really reconsider doing it.”

For Diaz, finding meaning in his activities meant establishing a MedSpecs chapter at Concordia and conducting research during his undergraduate years—experiences he said he loved and grew from. Sharing these experiences is vital for those curious about the application process.

“It’s great to have medical students and doctors discussing their experiences and providing tips on how to succeed as a candidate,” explained Jacqueline Hsiao, U1 Science, who attended the event. 

Nebras Warsi, who is currently in his third year at McGill medical school, was the second speaker. He likened applying to medical school to making food.

“There is a lot of different things going into it, but we can all agree there is never any one type of recipe that’s always the best,” he explained. “Sometimes you can put in a little bit more sugar, which could be GPA in this case. If you have a little less sugar, you can go for those glazed cherries which could be extracurriculars.”

“It’s great to have medical students and doctors discussing their experiences and providing tips on how to succeed as a candidate,” explained Jacqueline Hsiao, U1 Science.

Warsi explained that his experience shadowing a doctor at the Montreal General Hospital allowed him to grow as a person and exemplified the importance of experiences for the sake of self-discovery and learning.

The final presenter, Dr. Leah Feldman  is a recent McGill medical school graduate and is currently a second-year resident practising family medicine. Feldman emphasized on how important it is to be passionate about what you do. She explained that as a doctor, she loves her job because of the lives she’s touched and the innumerable things she’s learned from her patients; however, because studying medicine is a long process, Feldman underscores that it’s important to understand the reasoning behind why a person wants to be a doctor. 

For those who are uncertain about their dedication, this means making it through the first year of medical school, which tends to be a decisive period. Those who have chosen the profession for money alone often become overwhelmed, and drop out at this point. 

“Most people have this idealization [about being a doctor] where […] you walk into the room, everyone is in a panic due to a code blue [and….] you save the patient’s life and go home in your Mercedes with a ton of money,” she said.

McGill medical school is unique because it gives clinical exposure to students from their second year; however, its intensity also makes it quite demanding.

“No matter if you’ve done a bachelors, masters, or PhD, it’s a ton of new information [in your first year] but it’s fun and [the professors] help you through it,” Feldman said. 

After graduating from medical school, students will need to complete a residency. This can take from two to five years and is often followed by a fellowship that can take roughly three more years—another reason why Feldman encouraged prospects to really understand their motives behind becoming a doctor. 

For those in attendance, the event helped assuage the fears of many.

“I had a different perception about medical school,” U0 Science student Irene Zhang said. “Now that I’ve heard the speakers talk, I’m [even] more motivated to apply to medical school.”

Full disclosure: Adrien Hu, co-president of MedSpecs, is the Copy Editor for the McGill Tribune.

a, Off the Board, Opinion

Off the board: Drawing the line between inspiration and appropriation

by Jack Neal on

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Following the release of Taylor Swift’s new music video for “Wildest Dreams”—the 5th single from her 2014 album, 1989—the singer and the video’s director, Joseph Kahn, came under fire for accusations of racism and glorifying colonialism. It is very easy to call out something as being racist or culturally appropriative—especially given how inherently politicized and polarized the discourse on racism is—but these claims often fall into the trap of confusing appropriation and inspiration.

Racism and appropriation have been ongoing issues within the music industry—moreover, the entirety of pop culture—for years. Hollywood has a historical tendency to substitute ethnic characters in its movies for whiter, more Western and better-known actors; Jake Gyllenhaal playing the lead in the 2010 film, Prince of Persia, is a case in point.

There have been numerous cases in recent years that have been singled out by the media and critics as racist or culturally appropriative. The recent accusations towards Swift’s video revolved around the fact that the video, “Packages [the] continent as the backdrop for her romantic song, devoid of any African person or storyline.” There are a number of underlying issues with such critiques—chiefly that the majority of said criticisms blur the line between inspiration and appropriation.

The music video for “Wildest Dreams,” which was shot primarily in Tanzania, focuses on an unrequited romance between two Hollywood stars while in the Golden Age of Hollywood. The video is objectively stunning in terms of its cinematography and art direction, but this glamour has resulted in critics hounding it for glorifying the era that the film depicts. It is important to differentiate between the fact that although the music video does portray an extremely white washed image of Africa, its director clarified that it only sought to draw inspiration from old Hollywood movies, and is ultimately, “an attempt to recreate a very specific era and aesthetic.”

“Wildest Dreams” looks to old Hollywood films such as Out of Africa (1985), evoking the grandeur and lavishness of its production, including stunningly cinematic shots of landscapes—filmed on location—as well as the melodramatic and tumultuous relationship between the film’s two main characters. Dramatic scenes, such as where Swift and Eastwood fly a propellered plane, feature sweeping frames of the Tanzanian landscape. Both films instill an admiration at the breathtaking imagery and striking landscape in which they are respectively set.

Both examples highlight the importance of respecting a culture other than one’s own when it’s being depicted for artistic value.

The criticism that Swift and Kahn have received for the video can be compared to Katy Perry’s appearance at the 2014 American Music Awards, in which she dressed up head-to-toe in a Geisha costume on a stage that boasted a brutal mix of Japanese and Chinese-inspired props. For the performance, Perry’s face was painted alabaster white and her hair fashioned in the shape of a fan. She carelessly combined Japanese and Chinese cultures into one cringe-worthy—albeit visually stunning—performance. Perry was neither paying tribute to nor celebrating the cultures that she literally stepped into the shoes of in order to put on a striking and conversation-inciting performance.

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Swift was celebrating the romance and glamour of Old Hollywood, as well as its artistry and cinematic value. Perry’s performance, on the other hand, saw her appropriating two other cultures for no reason whatsoever other than to create a visually arresting sight.

Both examples highlight the importance of respecting a culture other than one’s own when it’s being depicted for artistic value. While it’s important to acknowledge the differences in criticism—Swift’s on the grounds of glorifying colonialism, and Perry’s for its blatant cultural appropriation—these two performances tread a dangerous line between confusing appropriation and inspiration. Whatever Swift’s intentions with the music video, we can appreciate it for the piece of art that it is. As Kahn stated, “There is no political agenda to the video. Our only goal was to tell a tragic love story in classic Hollywood iconography,” and ultimately, that is exactly what was achieved.

The music video sticks to its representation of a 1950s Hollywood film set superbly, capturing the glitz and glamour of the old-world movies it strives to evoke. And like the old-world films it is so clearly inspired by, whilst there remains freedom to debate whether or not it is in fact racist or culturally appropriative, it can still be fully appreciated for its artistry, its cinematic value, and artistic elements.

Owen Kydd's video of a knife
a, Art, Arts & Entertainment

Pop Dialectic: Owen Kydd’s Durational Photographs

by Christopher Lutes & Alissa Zilberchteine on

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Is the latest exhibit at the Montreal Museum of Fine Art, Owen Kydd: Durational Photographs, actually a representation of high-quality art, or is it nothing more than a meaningless gimmick?

Keep scrolling to read another perspective

Emotionless frivolity does not make good art

Alissa Zilberchteine

 

 

 

When some people see a great work of art, they feel a kind of ‘high.’ The connection can be instantaneous because art is all about aesthetics; its visual appeal is what is meant to draw a person in. This approach can sometimes be tricky in today’s era of contemporary art, where artists are increasingly working with untraditional mediums and therefore emphasizing the concept rather than the aesthetic. The artist statement has become essential in understanding the work. Despite this, the art itself is always more important than gimmicky concepts or authorial intent.

The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts is exhibiting the videos of Los Angeles-based artist Owen Kydd as part of their 14th edition in Montreal’s biennial Mois de la Photo. Kydd is a successful emerging artist in the contemporary photography scene who has exhibited his work in New York, Paris, Amsterdam, and Vancouver, and has recently become a finalist for the Aimia | AGO Photography Prize. Kydd’s work plays with the conventions of photography and film by taking still, immobile shots and prolonging their temporality by shooting four- to six-minute films.

The show is a bit conflicting: Kydd demonstrates strong technical knowledge of photography, but his art doesn’t evoke that jolt of seeing something great. When it comes to art, everyone has their own distinct tastes and definitions of what constitutes quality, but what they all have in common is the same realization and recognition when we finally come across it. That feeling is non-existent when observing Kydd’s exhibit.

Kydd is a strong photographer. His compositions are compelling—they’re unpredictable, eye catching, and incorporate many complex visual forms. This is particularly evident in his more abstracted works such as “Blue Wall Three Parts,” a video of a blue wall with various papers, pieces of tape, and marks on it, flapping occasionally as a gust of wind goes by. In this manner, Kydd films the everyday: Building walls, stationary objects, and even people. What makes his abstract works successful is that he references these familiar things in a subtle way by creating a composition that forces the viewer to focus on other elements such as the texture and colour, as opposed to identifying the subject matter.

While a little less than half the pieces are shot in an abstract manner, the other videos were blatant shots of ordinary objects with little change occurring throughout their four-minute run. While it is evident that Kydd is attempting to show the subtle beauty of the ordinary day, he may have gotten a little carried away with this idea. This is most obvious with his piece, “Knife,” which shows a still shot of a knife on a table as unglamourous as any standard knife in any standard home. A four-minute video of Kydd’s knife felt wholly unnecessary, considering the only real action were subtle changes in reflection every few seconds. There’s nothing interesting or memorable about it, and while Kydd wants to focus on the ordinary, an artwork still needs some sort of aesthetic intrigue in order to resonate with its viewers.

While walking through the show, visitors may find themselves ticking off an imaginary checklist to qualify whether or not the exhibit displays actual art or just a zealous gimmick. Strong composition? Check! Compelling colours? Check! But while Kydd fulfills most of these academic criteria, his work doesn’t have that intrinsic feeling that lends emotion and memorability to classic masterpieces.

If you have to ask whether a piece of art is good, then it probably isn’t.

 

 

Pretentiousness aside, understated simplicity shines

Christopher Lutes

 

 

To judge the extent to which this can be called art, one has to decide whether or not they find this to be a gimmick. Admittedly, when reading interviews with Kydd and looking at some of his pieces online, it seemed that way; he came off as esoteric and snooty, and his pieces of art looked boring and pedestrian. Also, the term “durational photography” felt like a lame attempt at seeming innovate.

This negative perception quickly changes when actually confronted with the exhibit. Tucked away in the basement of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, one is greeted with two separate walls of text explaining the concept behind the exhibit. The text has a tone that seems to be insisting that it be taken seriously, highlighting specific themes in Kydd’s work and decrying “an era in which the image has become promiscuous and the gaze infinite.”

The first thing that will strike viewers is how small the exhibit is. Consisting of just eight pieces, the exhibit’s smallness is a huge benefit in that it allows every piece to be properly taken in and understood by the viewer. It also limited the choice of instalments that the curator could select, resulting in only the best pieces getting chosen.

The pieces are fascinating both in terms of their movement and their transitions between shots. Even the least interesting photography subject imaginable—a blank wall—is made interesting when the camera focuses on it in extreme close-up. The camera jitters slightly, bringing a sense of vibrancy and movement to a stationary object. Other pieces cycle through a series of shots transitioning with either soft dissolves, in the case of a series of shots looking through a storefront on a lazy day, or with quick, jarring cuts. The latter occur in a piece called “20 Degree Views, August,” which cycles between shots of the open sky. Here, where the only spatial frames of reference in the first place are  panels of wood and metal at the bottom of the screen, the viewer becomes increasingly disoriented by the relative quickness of the cuts.

Other pieces are more notable for their lack of change. “Marina and Yucca,” for instance, juxtaposes a black-and-white shot of a Yucca plant with a colour shot of a person. The more one looks at this lengthy static shot, the more the difference between the two states of living became apparent. While the Yucca doesn’t move at all during the minutes-long shot, Marina, the human subject, tries desperately to maintain the illusion of still photography. She squeezes her closed eyes and furrows her brow, seeming paradoxically more alive than the still life formula seems to allow. Contrasted with the completely still Yucca, what results is a unique commentary on the differences of being alive in plants and animals. While a plant’s natural state is stillness, humans can’t help but move around, even when trying to be still for a few minutes. This is something that cannot be captured by traditional photography.

The through-line across the pieces is their impeccable composition. Kydd has an exceptional grasp of framing, using the colours in his subjects to create artificial borders, evoking a tacit realization of how his work is divided. He also seems to be interested in windows and reflections, with pieces like “Studies in Blue” looking at reflections of cars passing by, or a shot of a gently swaying palm tree made slightly abstract by a window in between the subject and the camera.

Ultimately, it seems like the problem with the exhibit isn’t one of art, but of poor marketing. While “Durational Photography” might be a pretentious name, the actual art of it is simple and understated, quietly breathing new life and meaning into a familiar medium.

 

 

Sicario
a, Arts & Entertainment, Film and TV

Sicario takes unflinching look at war on drugs

by Steffan Engling on

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This is not the usual laid back, lowbrow action movie. In Sicario, director and Quebec native Denis Villeneuve (Prisoners, Enemy) has created an unnerving look into the drug conflict along the border of the southern United States. In this story, neither the Mexican and American authorities, nor the drug cartels are playing by the book. At the end of this cinematic tour de force, moviegoers are left with their preconceived notions shattered.

The story begins when a hardened but idealistic FBI agent, Kate Macer (Emily Blunt) and her kidnap response team storm a compound near Phoenix, Arizona, which turns out to be a dumping ground for victims of the cartel rivalries. Marked by this traumatic experience, Kate decides to join a spontaneously arranged inter-agency task-force, led by a mysterious advisor named Matt, (Josh Brolin). After teaming up with Alejandro (Benicio Del Toro) in El Paso, Texas, the group leads a prisoner extradition from Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, sparking a string of violence that spirals out of control. As Kate stumbles deeper down the rabbit hole, her own role in the tale becomes more and more ambiguous. The plot culminates with an explosive climax in which all storylines converge for a surprising finish.

Sicario manages to paint a thrilling, thought-provoking picture of cartel violence in Mexico and the American Southwest. While Villeneuve can be criticized for lack of nuance when it comes to the portrayal of Mexican characters, overall the movie instills  the sense that in this conflict, simplistic moral categories like 'good' and 'evil' do not apply.

Much of this effect is owed to the performance of Blunt, who skillfully portrays the mental disintegration of Macer. Blunt’s authentic, detailed, and tense breakdown causes the viewers to soon find themselves wondering about their own moral codex. Her performance is so powerful that the other characters tend to pale in comparison to her. Del Toro manages to evade that risk by instilling Alejandro with an air of mystery, grief and thinly-veiled rage that leaves the audience longing for more. Brolin, on the other hand, remains rather superficial in his role as hardcore, no-nonsense agent Matt. This is partially due to the plot, which does not, by design, provide much depth to this character.

The mood in Sicario—a growing feeling of suspense and uneasiness—is to a large extent set by the cinematography of Roger Deakins. Using impressive aerial shots of the desert, Deakins transports the feeling of loneliness and omnipresent danger. Murky close-ups of the characters make them more relatable to the audience. Combined with the powerful score by composer Johann Johannsson, which builds up tension masterfully, Sicario makes for an extraordinary cinema experience.

Villeneuve and his cast have created an impressive portrait of this deadly conflict. It will be hard for the average viewer to judge how close to reality this film actually is. Regardless, this movie will certainly provoke much thought about responsibility for the killing that continues every day in cities along the U.S.-Mexico Border.

Sicario is playing at Cinema Excentris (3536 St. Laurent Blvd) until Oct. 2. 

a, McGill, Montreal, News

Inaugural Anti-Austerity Week aims to educate students

by Jennifer Chan on

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The Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) held its first ever Anti-Austerity Week Sept. 14 through 18. According to SSMU Vice-President (VP) External Affairs Emily Boytinck, the events and workshops were intended to educate the McGill community.

 “The purpose of Anti-Austerity Week was to develop baseline public education for folks who haven’t been involved in anti-austerity work before, or those who still want to learn a little bit more, and to invite people with different perspectives about anti-austerity to speak in workshops,” Boytinck said.

SSMU Mobilization Coordinator Nicholle Savoie echoed Boytinck’s sentiments, explaining that the aim of Anti-Austerity Week was not to organize students against austerity, but rather to inform them.

“A lot of people who were interested in getting involved didn’t necessarily know what was going on, or know a ton about austerity,” Savoie explained. “So we thought that it would be good to start-off the year with a week to get informed and hear some different perspectives [….] SSMU isn’t in any way leading the anti-austerity mobilizing on campus. Our role is to facilitate the spread of information and to support groups that are already doing [anti-austerity] work.”

Savoie additionally explained how students can continue to take part or learn more about the movement in other ways. 

“Build links with other campuses and organizations and the McGill students who are already mobilizing on campus,” Savoie said. “Read about anti-austerity through the Montréal media co-op [….] Francophone universities have been really active in pushing the anti-austerity narrative, which has trickled into McGill campus, and now we’re starting to get really involved.” 

Molly Swain, president of the Association of McGill Support Employees–Public Service Alliance of Canada (AMUSE-PSAC) led an informational workshop on Sept. 15 entitled “Mobilizing from the Margins.” Swain discussed the history of the anti-austerity movement in Montreal and shared what she would like to see happen in the future.

“My hopes for the future of the anti-austerity movement is that it begins to expand to its conceptions of struggle, and its analysis of austerity as a fundamental part of capitalism, rather than simply a neoliberal trend that can be solved if certain kinds of public funding is reinstated,” said Swain. “The anti-austerity movement should be reflexive to the needs and realities of those participating in it, and its strategies and tactics should be determined that way, rather than by relying solely on what may have been effective in past struggles.” 

SSMU hopes to continue the conversation on austerity in the future, though plans to do so aren’t yet certain. 

“There are no specific events planned right now, but we will definitely be hosting more soon,” said Boytinck. “We also will be organizing contingents to various demonstrations throughout the Fall.” 

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