Dave Dyment | Dead Ringer

Dave Dyment

Dead Ringer

Sackville, Canada: Self-published, 2023

107-minute film on USB drive, folded poster, printed materials

Edition of 5 signed and numbered copies [+2 AP]

Last month my film Dead Ringer screened as part of Toronto’s Nuit Blanche, curated by Charlene Lau. I wasn’t able to attend but just received some photographs today and had a slew of emails - almost daily - for the first two or three weeks afterwards. All were very kind and sweet, with a few being particularly touching: 

"Dear Dave,

I hope this email finds you well. My name is Ritica and I saw about half of your documentary, Dead Ringer, at Nuit Blanche this year. My friends and I found it extremely captivating but having walked for about 2 hours before getting there, we couldn't stand still for much longer and had to leave. 

I just became a Canadian citizen and, like many other immigrants, I am navigating complex feelings about what citizenship means in a settler-colonial state. In lieu of a big celebration, I wanted to watch your documentary in full with a few friends and reflect on Toronto, a city I have grown to love through the community I have built here. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find your documentary anywhere on the internet. So I thought I'd reach out and ask if it is available to stream somewhere (even if paid). 

I completely understand if that's not an option but thought I'd check in any case. 

Thanks so much for your time and your work.

Best,

Ritica”

and

"Hi Dave, I had the honour to watch your film last night and it was one of the best things ive sat through! It was engaging, thought provoking and what really made it special for me was the historical aspects as well as the commentary on national identity.

You see, I moved to Canada exactly 3 years ago and my favourite part about Toronto has been its Multiculturalism, even thought the internet doesn’t make it seem so- but I’ve been welcomed in most spaces I sought to enter - from museums using my student id to some of the best culinary experiences. I know your film was more so an exploration of where this identity goes, but for a new resident, I find comfort in knowing I’ll contribute to this identity, and it’ll contribute to my identity, whatever it becomes.

Ektaaghusari”

It’s not available online: partly to avoid litigation, as it’s comprised of hundreds of clips from other movies, and partly because I don’t view it as a documentary, but rather as part of an ‘installation’, with the city as backdrop doing most of the heavy lifting. 

Dead Ringer debuted at Casa Loma and had subsequent screenings at Toronto City Hall, courtesy of Ruth Burns and Ontario Culture Days. Ideally, I’d like to show it the University of Toronto, the RC Harris Water Filtration Plant, the AGO,  Kensington Market, and other areas featured in the work. 

Forthcoming

The blog has been on auto-pilot for the past couple of weeks, as we catch up on things following our trip to Toronto. The books in the top image are from there - half gifted, half purchased. The second image are titles that have arrived in the mail in that time (and the preceding weeks). I'll endeavour to get to them all shortly. 

 

Edmonton Nuit Blanche: Yoko Ono | Wish Trees

Fish Griwkowsky, filmmaker, photographer, curator and art critic for the Edmonton Journal, interviewed Yoko Ono about her upcoming project for Edmonton's Nuit Blanche, here:

http://edmontonjournal.com/entertainment/local-arts/yoko-onos-nuit-blanche-art-includes-wish-tree-forest


In 2008, I curated Zone C for Toronto's Nuit Blanche, which included five Wish Trees by Yoko Ono (pictured below, with then-Mayor David Miller affixing his wish).

At the request of Nuit Blanche Edmonton, the project is being remounted, but this time as the largest installation of the Wish Tree piece, ever. There will be 121 trees installed in Winston Churchill Square (adjacent to City Hall).  Participants are invited to write a wish on tags that will be provided, and tie it to a branch of the Wish Trees. After the event, the wishes will be collected and sent to the IMAGINE PEACE TOWER in Iceland, and the trees will be planted in communities throughout Edmonton.

Edmonton Nuit Blanche: Priscilla Monge | Soccer Pitch

1st look: a construction crew from a local landscaping company (who I think volunteered their services) are creating the soccer field for Priscilla Monge's piece at 104 Avenue and 96 Street.



Priscilla Monge
Soccer Pitch

Originally created for the 2006 Liverpool Biennial, Soccer Pitch features local teams competing on an irregular football field. The wildly uneven surface renders the rules of the game moot and proposes an alternative type of play.

Priscilla Monge was born in 1968, in San José, Costa Rica, where she still lives today. Her work employs humour, irony and provocation to question existing power structures.
Her work has been exhibited in numerous important international Biennials, including Venice (2001 and again in 2013), Habana (1997), Liverpool (2006) and São Paulo (2004). Other exhibitions include Global Feminisms at the Brooklyn Museum of Art (2007) and Hotel Mexico at Luis Adelantado Gallery (2010). Her work is held in numerous public and private collections, including The Tate Britain, Mexico Vivo Foundation, Centro Andaluuz de Arte Contemporaneo in Spain and the Museo del Barrio in New York City.

Hiatus

I'm heading to Alberta today so there will either be a week-long hiatus here, or the site will be repurposed for a week - with entries related to Edmonton's inaugural Nuit Blanche event, which I have curated. Posts will be mostly off-topic, though several of the artists participating (Yoko Ono, Martin Creed, vsvsvs, Jon Sasaki, Kelly Mark, etc.) will be familiar to readers here.

Lots of books (above) to get to when we resume.

1-855-IS IT ART?

One of the best aspects of Nuit Blanche is the way that it inadvertently activates the entire city. You might stumble upon something that you had never noticed before, and it's unclear if your discovery is an art project or just some things abandoned by the side of the road, or a nice reflection of light from a nearby mirrored sign. Is the arguing couple throwing things a performance? Are those pylons around an open manhole an installation? Etc. Etc.

Tonight you can call 1-855-IS IT ART (1-855-474-8278) and the VSVSVS team will talk you through your dilemma. You can also visit City Hall, where a live feed of their call centre headquarters will be broadcast, or stream it live at 1855isitart.com.

Check out multiples by the collective at their website, here:

http://vsvsvs.org/portfolio/multiples

12 Hour Reading of bpNichol's The Martyrology

bpNichol's best known work, the life-long poem The Martyrology is a work that encompasses 9 books in 6 volumes. As an unofficial part of Nuit Blanche tonight, a twelve hour reading of the work will take place at the Church of St. Stephen-in-the-Fields from 6pm to 6am.

In an introduction to the work in in Michael Ondaatje's 1979 Long Poem Anthology, Nichol suggests that "an ideal reading would be one which begins with 1) The Martyrology, but then dips into Journeying & The Returns, Scrapture and The Captain Poetry Poems along the way, much as one might read earlier history to gain a better appreciation of a particular period. This is a notion only, a tentative map". AvantGarden use this as a jumping-off point for their reading and rewriting of the work, featuring dozens of readers, including a few open mic sections between 11pm and 2am.

Also on site, a pop-up bookstore featuring works by many of the readers and a selection of titles from the Coach House Press and BookThug. Readers include bill bissett, Margaret Christakos, Jay MillAr, Charlie Huisken, Maggie Helwig, Jenny Sampirisi, Shannon Maguire and many more.

For more information, see the Facebook page, here.

Maggie Groat | Free Land

Toronto's Nuit Blanche, now in it's 8th year, typically has a few projects yearly which involve free take-aways that multiples and artists' ephemera collectors might be interested in. Last year Rhonda Weppler and Trevor Mahovsky made beautiful glowing lanterns out of scanned consumer packaging. In 2008 40,000 Yoko Ono Imagine Peace pins were distributed.

This year's projects include Marian Wihak and Martha Griffith's Take a Penny, (X)Static Clown Factory by Ruth Spitzer & Claire Ironside and FREE LAND by Maggie Groat. The latter features a site in Simcoe Park for "temporary occupation and collective intervention through the excavation and dispersal of public soil."

From seven o'clock tonight until seven tomorrow morning, a hole will be dug in the city park and the unearthed soil (and other items?) will be parceled up and their stewardship entrusted to Nuit Blanche audiences. Early visitors will also receive a lapel pin (pictured above). At the end of the event the resulting hole will be filled with new purchased soil, rendering the gesture of the intervention invisible.

"The park is located along what was once the original shoreline of Lake Ontario, and aptly named for John Graves Simcoe, one of the major developers of early Canada. The built environs of the park resemble nothing of its indigenous roots, and its recent history is one of landfill, concrete and urban development. FREE LANDwonders: What are the implications of relocating and repurposing land? How do the lasting impacts of settler-colonialism and associated attitudes surrounding land use and the commodification of natural resources affect the places we live? Are civic spaces really ours?"

- Maggie Groat

FREE LAND is at 270 Front Street West. Visit the Nuit Blanche site, here, for more information. Groat's exhibition Other Visions & Tools for Alternatives runs until October 5th at Erin Stump Projects. 

Nuit Blanche runs from sunset tonight to sunrise tomorrow, rain or shine, and features hundreds of artists including Ai Wei Wei, Diane Borsato, Germaine Koh, vsvsvs, David Harper, David Hoffos, Michel de Broin, Kelly Richardson, Kim Adams, etc. etc.

For suggestions as to what to check out, see Murray Whyte's pics in the Toronto Star, here and Toronto Life's Sue Carter Flinn's choices here.