I Ask You For Culture and All You Give Me is This Brick Snake

This week's review of Kim Kennedy Austin at State Gallery is my last review for the relaunched Terminal City. Several weeks ago, publisher John Kay had the extraordinarily bad judgement to fire Bess Lovejoy, one of the best editors I've ever worked with. According to numerous TC staffers, Kay wants to re-focus the paper on 'fun things': bars and clubs, live theatre, 'lowbrow art,' gallery exhibitions by gig poster designers, skateboard culture, etc., and to deemphasize the paper's coverage of literature and visual art.

On Friday, books editor Aaron Peck and arts editor Adam Harrison were informed by incoming editor Chris Eng via email that their services were no longer required, effective immediately. So long, so sorry, change of focus, thanks very much.

I have no idea what the paper will look like in a few months; needless to say, I no longer have any interest in being affiliated with it, nor in working for John Kay, by all accounts a staggeringly inept novice publisher whose editorial vision apparently consists of trying to tack in whatever direction he thinks ad revenue will most likely materialize from. Nor will Pulpfiction be doing any TC advertising, Kay in a single stroke having killed the two sections where my 'target demographic' might reasonably be said to reside.

About the rest of Vancouver's free media, the less said, the better. When I started at the Straight in the late 1990s, a review was 1000 words. Now it's exactly half that, the Straight's editors having arbitrarily determined that readers won't read anything longer than 500 words. So, in place of detailed exegesis and analysis, factoid blurbs. Names 'n dates! Punchy leads, and short tight sentences.

In my experience, this relentless dumbing-down of media has turned most of my friends off reading local papers all together.

So, what am I personally planning to reverse this sad state of affairs?

Starting in May or early June, I will be writing 52 1000+ word art reviews, once a week for a year, for a new online publication edited by Aaron Peck and Adam Harrison. URL and other details in due course. (The reviews will be cross-posted here within a day or two of publication).

I'm also editing an anthology of critical essays on contemporary Vancouver art, to be published early next year.

Finally, I'm curating a small exhibition of pictures by photographer Mike Grill at Gallery 69 this July. A short publication will accompany the exhibition, and its text will be reprinted here.

(Thx to local comix genius Marc Bell for today's title. His drawing of the same name (ink on Canada Council rejection letter) depicts Ray Johnson's much-beloved brick snake, its flickering forked tongue the Canada Council's old heavily-stylized green tree logo)
- posted by cjb @ 10:04 PM