Alright. Lets do this.

Since my last post I have been taking it easy. The only super interesting thing I did was actually recently.

So how about we do a bit of list kinda thing, and then get on to my interesting weekend.

Honestly, I've lost track of how much film I've been shooting. But it's a lot. So far I have

• 22 rolls of black and white film developed
• 7 rolls of colour waiting for me to go home to have them developed
• 2 rolls of black and white waiting to be developed

In terms of the rest of my semester I have:

• 3 more papers to write
• My final photo assignment to pass in
• 3 exams
• .... that's it?

I really lucked out this semester, as it has been by far the best one of my university career. At this time last year, I really wasn't excited about school, and in fact first semester last year was probably the worst semester I've had. It wasn't really about anything other than the fact that I didn't want to come back to school after the summer, so I wasn't motivated to do my school work, which backfired on me and ended up making my November really unpleasant. I had the final papers for 4 of my 5 classes due on either side of a weekend (Thursday, Friday, Monday). Thankfully, with the help of some extensions, I managed to get through that. SO. After that short little personal bit. How about some more list work.

Upcoming exciting events for me:

Near future:

• Final Fantasy (a band click the link to learn more about him) is playing in Sackville tomorrow night. At the Vogue Cinema.
• My friend is coming to visit, and then we are going to Moncton the next day to skateboard

More distant future:

• I'm going home in two weeks. Freaking excited about that.


Right, so, this past weekend I was part of a 48 hour project, which I organised as well. This is part of the film festival I co-organise and what it is, if you aren't familiar with a 48 film is this (in the way we made it which isn't quite how they usually are when done as part of a competition): A group of people get together, come up with an idea for a short film, flesh it out, and script it, then shoot and edit it... all in 48 hours.

The entire process was really fun and the final project will be shown at the Film Festival in March. yay!

The rest of my week is going to be spent trying to get two papers which are due on Friday done, although I might have to pass one in on Monday as my time management skills are essentially nonexistent and so I manage to over waste time even when I don't have a lot of stuff to do.

Oops!

So because I'm going to see Final Fantasy tonight I figured you could watch a video of him playing a song live to get an idea of what he's like.



Thanks for reading,

As always, if you have any questions, email me at:
jzstrsf@mta.ca


Hooray for breaks!

Due to my insane week, most of this blog was actually written on Monday the 29th. Keep that in mind.

So this past week and a few days (I didn't get around to writing my blog on Friday's as I usually do) has been both fun, long, and interesting (although not necessarily in that order). My weekend previous to this past one was composed of mostly studying for a mid term on Monday, but there was a degree of social activity as well, primarily focussed around Saturday night, when I attended both a barbeque, as well as a house party. Both were fun events, and I'd like to thank the members of both households for so generously hosting a good time.

As mentioned in my to do list for two weeks ago. I finally got around to making some prints for my photo class. I had to have 6 done by Thursday, when we displayed them in class and talked about them. The process of learning this was fun, although making a print takes me about an hour, so it's rather time consuming. Of course this class doesn't have essays or required readings, so the work you do for the class is all hands on, like taking photos, developing your film, and making prints. Due to the fact that I've been taking quite a few pictures, I had a lot of choice in what I wanted to print, and I was very happy with the 6 I ended up choosing.

Another event that happened this past week was the 12th annual Symposium of Art. As I mentioned last week I had to do some filming for the Art Gallery, and it was so they would have documentation of this week long event. The symposium celebrates performance art, and that was the bulk of what I had to film. On Monday, Jason Fitzpatrick perform "Bite and Burn" at the Struts Gallery, where he enclosed himself, and two other people (a tattoo artist, and printmaker) into a makeshift room that was only viewable through a small window. For the next three hours, he was subject to a tattoo that run the entire length of his spine, and had the printmaker transfer this we ink onto long sheets of paper, and posted on the wall of the room. It's hard to describe, but hopefully by the end of the week I can have some footage to show you.

Sym Corrigan was the next person I had to film to document her piece "in on, at, by", where, throughout the week she was mapping Sackville vocally over CHMA. She would go to various locations, and talk into a microphone. I filmed her at the intersection on Main Street and it was interesting to see her examine the intricacies of this space. On Friday I filmed the keynote address, given by Jayne Walk and then Saturday was a double header, I documented "Breathing Under Water" an opening and reception, as well as performance piece. The installation is really something you should check out if you can. In the high wall gallery (the gallery at the Owens with really high walls) there are giant spheres hanging from the ceiling. This installation works with resonance and sound, and is simply something that you need to check out. The performance piece consisted of a group of people bandaging the people attending the opening. This is again something that is better experienced than described so check out the little clip I threw together that highlights these three events (with some fireworks from the Cherrybomb cabaret thrown in for good measure).





As you can probably see, I was really busy this week, although I only had the photo assignment to present on Thursday (after writing my mid term on Monday) I really felt like I had gone through an entire week by Wednesday. In fact, I kind of made Thursday and Friday into a weekend, as I made an effort to catch up on sleep, and just generally relax a bit. On Saturday night, my good friend came to town to spend the night and hang out. Then on Sunday we drove to Moncton to skateboard the newly redesigned indoor skatepark in Riverview. Afterwards, he and his friends left for Northern New Brunswick, and I stayed the night with another friend who commutes to Sackville from Moncton for class. We hung out and played the new Guitar Hero, as well as play EA's skate, this is a game I was slightly skeptical about, but having played it, I am really impressed with it. So as you can see, my Sunday was spent entirely away from academics, or anything other than fun.

Now since my week has been so busy, I in fact wasn't able to post this blog on Monday as I had hoped. This is due largely to the fact that I wasn't able to get the Symposium footage uploaded!

My radio show this past week went really well, here's what I played:




So, in the last few weeks I have:

• Shot 12 rolls of film
• Developed 6 rolls of film
• Gone to an awesome pancake breakfast as part of a Parkinson's fundraiser
• Had all too few naps
• Bought groceries - this is worth noting as I really was running out of everything
• Worked 12 hours for the Owens
• Done absolutely no school work in the past week (except for photo, but that is fun, not work)
• Been so busy that simple things like updating a blog or my website had to be put off by many, many days
• Gone to see Bella at George's Roadhouse
• Filmed (but also enjoyed) the most spectacular artist talk I've seen at the Owen's since I started working there


Of note for this week is my Wednesday Other than going to class, which was as normal as usual, I had to film an artist talk at the Owens and shoot some Halloween photos. June Leaf presented the talk, and it really was the most incredible talk I've seen, instead of showcasing her art, she showcased herself, she whizzed through the slides she brought of her work, and instead was much more interested in fielding questions and simply interacting with the audience. After that I went home, grabbed my camera and went to the Trick or Eat reception at the president's house to take some pictures of costumes. You see my photo teacher wants us to have a print from Halloween so I figured I would go there to take some pictures. I ended up hanging out with the people there (a fellow blogger was even present) and got a bunch of candy and cookies to take home. This is the ironic part of the night is that Trick or Eat was a door to door food drive to help collect food for the food bank, and yet food was wasted at the reception. Of course finger pointing could ensue but really, to discuss to wasted food fairly would require an entire post, and would likely belittle the fact that I did have a lot of fun talking to the people at the reception. So of course, I would love to thank Dr. Campbell and Dr. Verduyn for graciously hosting the event, and of course the students who participated in Trick or Eat.

Right, well I've got another video for you. I filmed some stuff while in Moncton/Riverview and threw it together in a short little montage. The filming isn't as good as I would have liked due to the fact that I haven't been filming much skateboarding lately, so I'm slightly out of practice.

Enjoy,




Thanks for reading,

As always, if you have any questions, email me at:
jzstrsf@mta.ca