Trude
Recently, I featured my friend Iain on here but today, I want to talk about another friend doing awesome creative stuff. Meet Mathieu Trudel.
I think we first official met at the local punk bar, the Dominion Tavern sometime in summer 2001 shortly after I returned from my second trip to Nunavut. What an impressive first impression he made. There aren’t many of us francophones in Ottawa who are into rock and roll and to meet Matt was a special moment. For example, this was a dude that helped start a classic hardcore radio show called Shouting to be Heard on the University of Ottawa’s CHUO 89.1 fm. I also quickly learned that he had worked for John K’s Spumco
For a long time, I saw his work as a harking back to a mid-century animation aesthetic but now that he started using computers, I find his style has evolved a lot and while you can still see where he goes for inspiration, the form and colours Matt uses allows for rather unique results.
What inspired me to post this is that Exclaim and Pitchfork both picked up the story that Matt illustrated at 15-page colouring book for an upcoming King Khan and BBQ 7″ coming out on Fat Possum Records.
Since the record isn’t out yet, we have no examples of the colouring book. In the meantime, take a gander at a poster he created using one of my photos.
Also worth noting is that the photo included in the Exclaim article was most likely taken by one of the people in the second photo of my story about garage rock in Israel. On October 10, the guy on the far right of that photo will play with King Khan and BBQ on the same stage as The Mummies in Valencia, Spain too! Small world.
It amazes me everyday to think about how much creativity surrounds me. Sometimes things just fall into place like that.
More Israel photos & World Press Photo in Ottawa
An article I wrote along with a series of photos I took during my time in Israel last year ran in the July 2008 issue of Maximumrocknroll. Some people may have already seen it but I’ve been waiting to put it online. The wait is over. There’s also another collection of images I shot in Israel which have been up for a while.
Last night, I visited the Canadian War Museum where this year’s winning images of the World Press Photo contest are on display. It was neat to see photos from Israel and Kenya, two countries I’ve seen a decent amount of in the last 12 months. What stuck out most for me though, were the Sport Feature Stories by Erik Refner, Erika Larsen and Travis Dove. Each were so bizarre and so far removed from sport that I found it sort of hard to imagine them as relevant to the category. But still, it worked. It made obvious an essence of each sport (marathon, hunting and skateboarding, respectively) that most people tend to ignore and each story, I think, stands as a cultural monument to these pasttimes.
The Nature Stories by David Liittschwager and Paul Nicklen were also rather striking and spoke to my own experiences in the Arctic. What’s amazing is that Paul Nicklen won both 2nd and 3rd prizes in this category. This guy’s physical limits are nearly unnatural to do the things he does.
Finally, I wish I could find a copy online but perhaps it is only available at as part of the travelling exhibit. Gary Knight, the chair of the World Press Photo 08 jury, had a written statement of introduction walking into the exhibit that was refreshingly honest and offered great advice to photographers. Essentially, he called out to those who entered the contest using photos that resembled winners from previous years and how taking photos with a contest in mind is exactly the worst thing to do. Again, unless it is already and I haven’t found it, his statement should be online so everyone can read it.
If you’re in Ottawa, do not miss this. It’s only the second time it comes here and it’s one of only four North American dates (the others being Montréal, NYC and Mexico City).
World Press Photo 2008 winners gallery
Blogged in Israel
Haoneg.com, the most popular blog in Israel, posted about my time there. It’s in Hebrew though so I don’t exactly know what they wrote. They seem to cover other cool stuff but I’m saying this judging from the images.
Link (item 46 – scroll down!)
Flying with batteries
Announcements were made on January 1 that there were new rules on flying with wet-cell and lithium batteries. It all seemed a bit confusing to me but I guess they’ve been planning this for a while. How do I know? You would too if you always flew with a pair of these bad boys in your carry on.
Quantum Battery 1 (photo from Victor Grepo)
Nearly everytime I flew in 2007, I was held by security because of these things. Once, I was even questioned as to what they were…because apparently printing “BATTERY” on the top is an insufficient sign. The worst was at Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv where they weren’t so interested in the batteries as they were in ALL electronics in my carry on, passing all major items individually through the x-ray (laptop, camera body, lenses).
Anyway, the whole thing has been riddled in confusion buy leave it to Rob Galbraith to clear things up for us.
The reality is that the changes most photographers will have to make when readying to fly are less onerous than the coverage might have led you to believe. … the main and perhaps only change we’ll need to make when preparing to fly is to consistently place spare camera and laptop Lithium-Ion packs into see-through, sealable bags, so as to not give airport screeners a reason to delay the passage of carry-ons through security.
All in all, as inconvenient as this seems, my hunch is that preventing the mass shipment of lithium on an airplane makes more sense than allowing the current war on liquid to reach the point where a guy chugged a litre of vodka instead of throwing it away. I mean, if single laptop batteries are liable to explode in my face, what could happen if I tried flying with a skid full of them?
So, TSA, Transport Canada and everyone else, I’ll put my batteries in plastic bags but please, tell me that you have plans to stop taking my orange juice away when I go through security. Can’t you just swab it to determine that it is the same orange juice that is available at the café on the other side?
Read Rob Galbraith’s article (it has good links too)
Cell phones in Haifa
When the Hizbollah isn’t busy trying to blow the place up, Haifa, I learned today, is a pretty calm and interesting place.
Shortly before heading back to Tel Aviv, I was stopped by a group of Arabs (Christian and Muslim). They wanted me to take a photo of some courtyard and once I got there, I found two Canadian flags hanging on the wall. “My sister lives in Toronto…Mississauga,” says the owner of the sandwich shop to which the courtyard belongs. “We are Arab. In Canada, you have native people. Here, we are the natives.”
The small group of people invited me to sit with them. Most only spoke Arabic and Hebrew but one or two spoke some English.
One of them told me about the war and how a bomb filled with ball bearings fell on a neighbouring building. “We nearly died,” said one of the guys.
Then he asked if I had a cell phone. Looking at it, he asks “Is this from Canada? We don’t have nice phones like this here.”
They still have Bluetooth though and they really use it. In countries like Iran where the Internet is severely regulated, I’m told that cell communication is king when it comes to sharing subversive or objectionable content.
The Internet is totally free in Israel but it appears that at least with Arab Israelis, the habit of sharing material over SMS or Bluetooth has caught on anyway. Eager to share, I was subjected to photos of things like white girls in bikinis, a naked girl snorting cocaine who was described to me as a “Canadian girl”. There were also some videos. These guys started by asking if I wanted a few porn videos on my phone too. Then, they showed me some stuff that made me really understand why Bluetooth communication over the Internet is so popular. It was a short program. Two videos. It was stuff many of us have probably already seen but it wasn’t something I was prepared to see in the middle of a friendly chat.
Video 1: Beheading of a North American hostage
Video 2: Autopsy footage from Abu Ghraib?
As I said…footage that had made its way through certain circles on the Web but also footage that was quickly removed by most hosts. You can’t very easily go on Youtube and search for “beheading” and find the real deal.
They went on to show me photos of themselves holding guns both towards the camera and to themselves.
“A person who is poor in their home country cannot call that place their home,” says one of the guys. “We are like black people in the U.S. Most of us don’t have opportunities to go to university. Most of our parents work so much that they never see us. This isn’t normal. It’s not a way to grow up. But, people have to get by, so what do they do? They sell drugs, they steal. There is a serious problem with poor Arabs in Israel and people rarely think of how this creates other problems.”
Despite all this, however, Haifa, the third largest city in Israel, is maybe the most cooperative in terms of religions. Tel Aviv has a considerably large population of secular Jews in their 20s and 30s. Jerusalem, like Haifa, is a total mishmash of religions, probably some you and I have never even heard of. The difference though is that while the religious diversity in Jerusalem is a source of serious tension, people in Haifa appear to look beyond faith and see human beings. “We feel discriminated against but this is our home. We have to get along with people.”
That’s just one story but actually, I spent a good chunk of the day hanging out with a cool illustrator at the top of the mountain top before I set off on foot to the bottom, where I met the people I just wrote about. Instead of walking, maybe I could have taken the Carmelit, Haifa’s furnicular subway, which is apparently recognized by Guinness World Records as world’s shortest metro line.
This country is filled with stories.
Complexity and paradox in Israel
Where to begin? Coming here, I thought I knew something…and I guess it’s possible to get information from books and news articles but after four days here and after having spoken to dozens of people, everything seems so much bigger.
My only worry is that I can successfully communicate what I’ve learned by the end.
From a conversation yesterday:
“Most Israeli artists are left but what can you do? The economy is set up to make the Israeli people weak. You’re too busy worrying about paying your rent to think of going against the government.”
Skateboarding and copyright in Tel Aviv.
Vice Mag tried skating with the Hezbollah. I managed to skate the month-old concrete park in Tel Aviv.
The park was built by Gridline who did a seriously amazing job. People here are really stoked about it. I wouldn’t have thought that skate culture was so big here but it is – which is really rad because essentially no one is thinking about getting sponsored or anything. Instead, people are just into skating to skate.
The kids are rad too. Everyone reminds me of someone in North America. This one guy that looked like Tony Alva called his friend emo and asked if I knew what that meant.
Before the skatepark, I spent some time in a t-shirt shop off one of the main streets here. The operation is pretty intense. You can imagine that importing stuff is pretty costly so instead, a lot of things in Israel are made in Israel. Not only does this place print their own shirts but they make them too.
The most hilarious thing was that the owner would see some graphics on gigposters or threadless and simply download and print them. I suppose that licensing doesn’t really matter in this part of the world but seeing a MURPHY’S LAW design on a pink shirt is pretty funny.
No one really cares what’s on a shirt as long as it looks cool. The only has been doing this for 15 or so years. He also sells his own designs for dress shirts, jeans and other types of clothing.
Welcome to Tel Aviv.
Tel Aviv welcomed me two days ago. I am here working on a project on Nightlife and counterculture in this city. There are some details I hope that will come out in the final product but I’ll leave it at that for now.
If you’re from Israel and reading this, feel free to e-mail me!
Getting here was pretty straight forward. I left Denmark Thursday morning on a train to Prague that dropped me off in Berlin. The few hours I spent in Berlin let me finally able to have cheap takeout (eating at a restaurant in Denmark can normally cost from $15-20). Besides getting my carry on bag searched in a SPEZIAL KONTROL room at Berlin-Tegel airport, Security at Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv was easier for me than going to the United States too but I will only truly know for sure when I try to exit the country if the horror stories I’ve heard are true or false.
Leaving Århus.
From the S-Bahn to the U-Bahn at Alexanderplatz to meet my host.
“I åm in yür komputer testing für ze bømbz”
Germans are a lot worse than Danes at English which actually is kind of nice. You learn languages a lot faster when you are forced into it. And with a population of 80 million, it’s easy for Germans to get on fine without English. Denmark only has 5 million so I suppose that it isn’t too surprising that they must appeal to a more common language. It’s pretty wild to consider the population density that we find in so many countries. I had never thought of it this way but my host in Berlin told me that he often felt that Canada was kind of the Australia of the north: a few people in some places and then total emptiness everywhere else.
So far, things in Tel Aviv are very sababa. Shortly after getting in on Friday, I found myself sitting in on a band practice for a group called Got No Shame and later was at a packed party where Metalheadz First Lady of Drum and Bass, DJ Storm, was headlining. It’s also nice that after months of not being able to use my Visa in Denmark, Israel is all about it. I don’t really know why I can’t use it in Denmark but North American cards, even a lot of other EU cards don’t seem to work.
My Tel Avivi room (drapes on the ceiling are meant to catch crumbling cement and plaster)
A street view at 7am with the sound of bass still blasting from neighbouring venues.
A few more photos on Flickr. More to come. This country is amazingly complex. My hope is that by the end of my stay, I understand it a little better and feel confident in sharing this understanding with other North Americans.
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