Independent record stores keep drawing in music lovers with their extensive album collections, service and atmosphere that can’t be replicated by any department store. PHOTO BY NEETU THIND

Neetu Thind
A&E Reporter

Independent record stores around the world will open their doors on April 21 to crowds of excited fans anxious to kick off Record Store Day.

“It’s the biggest day of the year,” said Tim Baker, Sunrise Records’ head buyer. “It’s like Christmas for us.”

Sunrise Records in Cloverdale Mall, 15 minutes from Humber North campus, is among 180 Canadian stores offering special release albums, concerts and parties to celebrate Record Store Day.
The goal of the event is to bring attention to and celebrate independently owned record stores, said Carrie Colliton, Record Store Day organizer.

“It’s important that the younger generation in college and high school know what the record store is about,” she said.

Despite digital downloads, 60 per cent of all music sold is still in physical forms like CDs and vinyls, Baker said.

“There’s something special about owning albums and listening to them as a whole, instead of downloading one song you like from the artist,” said Talia DelCogliano, third-year theatre performance student at Lakeshore. “Music brings people together in ways unimaginable, so why not give it the respect it deserves?”

Record Store Day is an opportunity for old and new customers to tune into the real record store experience.

“A lot of people like to have human interaction as they experience, discover and buy their music. Record stores are the place where all of that can happen,” said Colliton.

This is a feeling that keeps young fans coming back, said DelCogliano.

“There are days where I’ll spend hours just searching and digging through vinyl,” she said. “I just feel comfortable shopping there and not having sales associates following me around trying to make a sale.”

The first Record Store Day in 2008 included over 300 stores with less than 75 special CD and vinyl releases, said Colliton. This year the event has expanded to over 1,500 stores in over 21 countries.

The event now has over 300 special album releases from artists like The Black Keys to Katy Perry and David Bowie.

Participating stores can be found on recordstoreday.com or through the RSD Guide app available for iPhones and androids.

The iPhone camera brings a new take on photography that can be seen at Contact’s annual photography festival from April 26 to May 25. PHOTO BY KOLLIN LORE

Kollin Lore
A&E Reporter

“Public” has become correlated with photography nowadays and the word is the theme for Contact, an annual photography festival in Toronto and one of the largest photography events in the world.

Now in its 16th year, the festival will feature the photographic works of over 1,000 local, national and international artists. One of the over 200 events featured at Contact is iPhoneography, running from April 26 to May 25 at the IX gallery.

iPhoneography is a juried exhibition that showcases photographs captured on mobile phones by professional and amateur artists and documentarians.

“The iPhone has made people instant photographers; everyone has it at their disposal,” said Jennifer Reedie, a local photographer whose iPhone photos will be featured at Wychwood Barns Community Gallery from May 22 to May 31, as part of the festival.

As acknowledged on the Contact website, social media – a catalyst for rebellions across the Middle East and the Occupy movements around the world – thrives off photography and, more specifically, cellphone cameras.

“The real advantage of an iPhone is it allows you to post an image right away through Instagram or Facebook or Flicker or a number of social media platforms,” said Jim Dawson, a Toronto-based photographer. “It makes photography very spontaneous.”

Chantal Denne is part of the photography support staff at Humber and one of 20 Humber students whose “Made in China” exhibition will be featured at the Contact festival from May 3 to June 4 at the Joseph D. Carrier Art Gallery.

“Professional photographers have an entirely different standard of what they consider to be acceptable photographically,” she said. “But on a general level, for the everyday person, it’s huge. We have iPhone moms at soccer games – everybody is a photographer now.”

Humber grad Julie Wilson writes short pieces of fiction based on her observations of people reading in public, usually on transit. PHOTO BY SHARON TINDYEBWA

Sharon Tindyebwa
A&E Reporter

Julie Wilson had just graduated from Humber’s creative publishing program when she witnessed a woman become “physically distraught” as she neared the end of A Complicated Kindness by Miriam Toews.

From this encounter on the Danforth subway line, the Seen Reading blog – now turned book – was born.

Wilson said she understood the feeling of not wanting to say goodbye to a character after finishing a book, but was also intrigued by the fact that reading is thought of as an insular activity so “what does it mean when you take a book and go out in public?”

“I literally ran to the bookstore and got a copy of this book and read it in one day because I wanted to know where she was at and why she was so moved. And from there it sort of triggered this compulsion to wonder how readers react when encountering really specific passages that sort of move them,” said Wilson.

At the time, Wilson was commuting daily to work and she began documenting what people were reading in transit on her blog.

The blog consisted of “microfictions” – short pieces of writing usually under 500 words – based on Wilson’s observations.

She would take down a description of the reader, the book they were reading and then she would go to the bookstore and turn to the page that they’d been on when she observed them. From there she took all those elements and made up a short passage.

The blog gained popularity quickly.

“When I first started this it was accompanied by a certain level of anxiety because I had intended it to be really casual and very private. And within the first couple of weeks it got all this attention and I was on the CBC,” Wilson said.

At first Wilson said she felt as if she had to chase what she calls a “sighting.”
“There was a period of months when I would go on the subway and sort of start immediately scanning for someone reading,” she said.

These days, however, Wilson will only “sight” a reader who sits down or stands next to her.
“I feel like there is some sort of conversation there when it comes to physical boundaries, this is a person who has decided for their own reasons that they are comfortable, they have decided they want to be in my circle so it feels less intrusive somehow,” she said.

A friend suggested Wilson turn the blog into a book.

Wilson approached Robyn Read, the former acquiring editor of Freehand Books, who was ready to participate in the project.

“I am from Toronto originally so I knew about Seen Reading as a blog and a movement, and even before Julie approached me, I was a big fan of it,” said Calgary-based Read.

The two worked on the book together through a series of meetings, emails and phone calls.

“Julie is a really good listener. When you have an author that is willing to communicate with you and interact with you then it is a process that involves hard work but not necessarily a difficult process,” Read said.

Freehand Books released Seen Reading in print format on April 1, the same day as Harper Collins released it as an e-book.

“This is very unique,” said Wilson. “We don’t think this is something that has been done in Canadian publishing where we have two competing publishers simultaneously publishing the same book in different formats.”

The cover for Gord Hill's comic The Anti-capitalist Resistance. COURTESY OF GORD HILL

Katlyn Fledderus
A&E Reporter

Radical readers are in luck this week as political graphic novelist Gord Hill launched his second comic book, The Anti-Capitalist Resistance Comic Book, today at Vancouver bookstore Spartacus Books.

“I wanted to highlight militant resistance and portray it in a positive light as opposed to the demonization it receives from the state, media and leftists pacifists,” said Hill of the comic.
“To inspire and inform people about radical anti-capitalist resistance and how capitalism arose to become the dominant socio-economic system of the world.”

The documentary-styled comic highlights the four main militant radical anti-capitalist resistance movements since 1999 including the Seattle WTO protest, Quebec City 2001, the anti-Olympics campaign and the Toronto G20. The publication also mentions several shorter stories on Globalization, Reclaim the Streets and the G8 summit in Rostock, Germany.

“Those who’ve already seen it are astonished by the stories Gord tells,” said Brian Lam, publisher of Arsenal Pulp Press, where the comic book is published. “We met with [Hill] and were impressed by his integrity and commitment to the causes in which he is involved.”

Antanas Sileika, director of the Humber school for writers, compared Hill’s publications to political comics by Joe Sacco and Art Spiegelman.

Hill, who has been involved in resistance movements since 1987, began writing on these issues as a way to let people understand the struggles and history of resistance.

“It enables me to convey graphic symbols that text by itself cannot do,” said Hill of why he chose the comic style to publish his story. “I believe we must use all forms of communications to counter the stare and corporate propaganda.”

Lam said that one of Arsenal’s goals, as well as Hill’s, was to have these messages reach youth in hopes that they would feel empowered and encouraged by them.

“What’s striking about Gord’s books is that they convey a great deal of alternative history – stories you don’t see on the six o’clock news – in a very fresh and engaging way,” said Lam.

Hill said that he also hopes his publication will quash any misconceptions readers had about the resistances instigating “mindless violence by a bunch of idiots without analysis.”

Hill’s first book, The 500 years of Resistance Comic Book, is used as a textbook in college and university courses and Lam said that they hope for the same outcome with this latest comic.

Marc-Anthony Sinagoga, founder of FunnyMan Inc. PHOTO BY LISA GILLAN

Lisa Gillan
A&E Reporter

A 2011 Humber grad is bringing a new brand of classier comedy to the Canadian scene.

“Whether you’re six years old or 60 years old, you need to leave laughing,” said Marc-Anthony Sinagoga, founder of FunnyMan Inc., a company that puts together comedy shows every other month.

He said he wants to make comedy shows better for audience members and comedians alike.

“I was at one of my friend’s shows, he puts it on in the basement of a Firkin and guys come down after a Leafs game. And they’re like ‘yeah, you know I just can’t wait to throw a bottle at some guy if he says something I don’t like,’” he said.

“Like if it’s one of the hardest art forms to perfect kind of thing, then why doesn’t it have the same respect as theatre and dance and painting?” he said. “I don’t get that.”

Sinagoga started his company last June – about the same time he graduated from Humber’s comedy writing and performance program.

FunnyMan Inc. has put on five shows so far, and will be hosting its sixth at the Richmond Hill Centre for the Performing Arts tomorrow.

The headliner of the show is Trixx of Much Music’s Video on Trial and Stars Gone Wild.

For his part in the upcoming show, Trixx said people should expect “high energy, lots of laughter, and if they have asthma they should bring their puffer.”

Mauro Sinagoga, Marc-Anthony’s father, said he had some reservations about his son pursuing a career in comedy at first, but he’s been encouraged by the different aspects of the business Marc-Anthony has been able to pursue.

“He’s done okay for himself and he’s getting some pretty good exposure,” he said. “And I think comedy as a whole, it is helping what he’s doing, so I’m happy in that regard.”

Sinagoga also received a scholarship from Humber to attend the comic scriptwriting program.

“I had to write a few pages on my writing goals and that kind of thing and I won it through that,” he said.
Sinagoga said he plans to begin the program this September.

Canadian ’90s band I Mother Earth has reunited to play a few gigs and release some new music.

“First it sounded crazy,” said Bruce Gordon, who plays bass in the band and attended Humber’s music program in the late ’80s. “I’m living in Florida now and I have a full-time position with the Blue Man Group in Orlando. But the way we started talking about [reuniting] made it seem a lot more feasible and enticing.”

Gordon said the reason I Mother Earth initially decided to call it quits at the end of 2003 was that they had been maintaining an intense itinerary, including touring for ten years.

“It takes a lot of dedication and focus to maintain that band lifestyle and you have to make a lot of sacrifices.”

He said the band got support from people in the industry as soon as word got out about their plans to reunite.

“Live Nation was very excited and jumped all over the prospect, and the Sound Academy [in Toronto] – the venue we performed at – was very excited and extremely accommodating.”

Gordon said the group rehearsed at Sound Academy for the three days before their reunion shows on March 22 and 23. They also released a new song called We Got the Love on March 20.

Gordon said instead of making records or touring like they had, this time around the band wanted to “do things on our own terms. Do things for the fun of it and just for doing it. For the music.”

Nick Brown, a first-year sustainable energy and building technology student, remembers the band from the ‘90s.

“If they produce honest music, then good for them,” he said. “The indie scene’s way bigger than it was when they came out so there’s a way larger alternative rock audience than when they were a band. So hopefully they do well.”

Gordon said the band is hoping to play some shows in Ontario this summer and continue working on new material.

Will Jarvis, Humber music faculty, was Gordon’s private lesson teacher.

“He was quite a good student,” Jarvis said. “He was always at the lesson and very eager as a student.”

“I didn’t really know much about musical theory because I was more or less self-taught,” Gordon said, getting his strong theoretical foundation from studying at Humber.

Director Shawna Steele and producer Nathaniel Lingard are excited to unveil the world premiere of their documentary at Hot Docs this year. PHOTO COURTESY OF SEAN DEAKIN

Neetu Thind
A&E Reporter

A documentary by Humber film and television students will get its world premiere at Toronto’s Hot Docs international documentary film festival.

MANHOOD shares the story of a young man with a penile injury coping with his sexuality, emotions, and relationships while learning to redefine himself as a man, said producer Nathaniel Lingard, 23, who created the concept.

“It’s a good movie because it’s different,” said director Shawna Steele, 23.

Steele was the first to hear that their film was one of 25 films selected, from more than 300 Canadian submissions, to be part of the festival.

“I found out through a phone call and was literally jumping around in the kitchen,” she said.

Lingard was returning home from New York when Steele filled him in. “It was pretty much the biggest news of my life and I just started yelling on the bus,” he said.

Lingard was inspired to create the film based on the experiences of his cousin David, who he said suffered this traumatic injury in real life.

Seeing the reaction after their first Humber screening was a special moment for everyone involved in the project, said Steele.

“You put all this work into something and there’s a crowd of people that are enjoying it—it was such a satisfying moment.”

Lingard said watching an audience of 200 people view the film their group put everything into, and seeing the crowd love it, is “a feeling you can’t describe.”

Having their first major film at a festival as students is a major accomplishment for the entire production crew, all of whom are Humber students.

“It’s a big deal and very few Humber films get into Hot Docs,” said Steele. “We feel like we’re representing the school, our classmates, and we’re just trying not to embarrass ourselves.”

It is also important to note that the documentary was not selected as a student film, said Alex Rogalski, Canadian programmer for Hot Docs.

“We don’t make any distinction. We are watching it on par with all the other submissions we receive, whether they have been making films for a decade or if it’s their first.”

The short documentary stood out to the festival because of its unusual and honest story, said Rogalski.

“It takes you inside people’s lives, which is what great documentaries do,” he said.

Hot Docs is one of the most respected festivals across the globe, providing viewers access to great cinema, said Rogalski.

“Many of the documentaries will be the first chance audiences have to see these films, so we are really bringing the world to Toronto audiences.”

MANHOOD will open for feature documentary The Final Member and will play three times during the festival, which runs from April 26 to May 6.

Tickets can be purchased through hotdocs.ca for as little as $5 a movie. Students have the opportunity to attend daytime screenings of documentaries for free before 6 p.m.

Tetley Tea has recognized the work of a student in Humber’s postgraduate fundraising and volunteer management program in the international community.

Laura Armstrong is one of four humanitarians featured in a series of internet commercials as part of the company’s Green Tea Renewal Party project.

“They make you think that they’re filming you and that this is going to be kind of like your video application and then Tetley’s going to review it and decide who wins,” Armstrong said.

“They want you to think that you’re applying for this but actually you’ve already won it.”

Armstrong was selected because of a company she started in 2011 called A Work of Heart, after volunteering with other international aid organizations such as Global Youth Network.

“I wanted to find a way to go back and help them on my own,” she said.

A group of women Armstrong met in Kenya while volunteering had told her their biggest concern was their daycare.

“It was very rundown, it wasn’t very safe, it needed a lot of upgrades,” she said.

Armstrong asked the women to write out what they thought the expenses would be to upgrade the facility.

“It came to about $1,000 U.S.” she said. “It wasn’t a lot of money so I decided to start selling my artwork and use that money to get the daycare done. It took about one year.”

Josh Maltin, a friend from her undergraduate days at Wilfrid Laurier University, recommended Armstrong for the Tetley program.

Maltin is also friends with someone who works for the advertising company Tetley hired to produce the commercial.

“He called about how they’re doing this campaign and they’re looking for people who kind of fit the bill of doing good things for the world,” Maltin said. “As soon as he mentioned that, Laura’s name came to mind immediately because I knew she was doing this project.”

When Armstrong was contacted, she was asked what she would do if given a grant of up to $15,000.

“I said if I got a computer that could edit film and maintain a website that I could have in my house that’d be great,” she said.

So Tetley bought her a new iMac desktop and hooked her up with a design firm that will build A Work of Heart’s professional website.

Since completing the daycare project in Kenya, Armstrong and her organization have been planning a multi-phase project.

“We want to buy five acres of land. You need to own five acres of land in order to build a school on it and for it to be recognized by the Kenyan government, so we’re trying to find a plot of land that’s big enough to support a school eventually,” she said.

At first the land purchased will be used for farming.

“The women are going to be taught agriculture, how to farm and how to sell their products in the market,” she said.

Once A Work of Heart has acquired enough resources, construction on the school will begin.

“She’s wonderful,” said Ken Wyman, coordinator of the postgraduate fundraising & volunteer management program at Humber. “She’ll have a great career in fundraising,” he said.

Ford Bros. Meats by Dan Springer. PHOTO BY KOLLIN LORE

Kollin Lore
A&E Reporter

Rob Ford’s past war on street art has proven an inspiration to the city’s artists, who have produced a small gallery’s worth of satiric caricatures of the combative Toronto mayor.

Fordmania is an art exhibit at toy store/gallery Atomic Toybot in Leslieville, consisting of fractured portraits of the city’s outsized head executive.

“We started seeing more and more Rob Ford art and we decided to put it out there as a gallery event. It was an open call for anyone who wanted to submit anything,” said Cory Bartlett, who owns Atomic Toybot with his fiancée, a local artist known as Maz.

The exhibit, which is intended as a non-partisan event, displays 30 anti-Rob Ford illustrations, paintings, and an art piece constructed on a pizza box.

The illustrations include submissions such as a close up portrait of Ford raising his middle finger with the headline, “Welcome to Toronto.”

Another is “Defecation of Opinion,” which depicts the mayor with his pants around his ankles, sitting on top of the TTC logo.

While those two clearly put their point across sharply, other illustrations are subtler, like a classified used-Ford ad by Toronto based illustrator Freyda Goodman depicting a dishevelled Rob Ford.

“He’s such an interesting topic these days, you either love him or hate him and with a name like his,” said Goodman. “A used Ford sale, I couldn’t resist.”

The gallery is inspired primarily from the politically themed street art that has increased since Rob Ford declared a war on graffiti last spring.

“It seems his war elevated the profile of street art and graffiti to a higher level than it’s ever been held in the city, so I think it’s kind of a gift,” said Joel Richardson, an artist and filmmaker who is the creator of a large mural on Dupont Street, west of Lansdowne Ave.

The mural, as Richardson describes, is “a playful critique on aspects of derivative based finance.” It is the second mural Richardson had to draw in that location after the city had the first one erased because of alleged political messaging (a character who resembled Stephen Harper). Following community support, he received city permission to create another one.

“I think it’s a form of expression, and given the space or if it’s done tastefully, it always triggers responses that can be positive or negative,” said Noni Kaur, program coordinator and professor for visual and digital arts at Humber. “It’s a language, and a lot of street artists are developing that language.”

Kaur said Humber art students are practicing graffiti in class settings.

The Graffiti Management Plan, administered in January by the Transportation Services Division of Toronto, contains four areas: enforcement against tagging and illegal graffiti vandalism, support for victims of illegal graffiti, support for permitted graffiti art, graffiti function coordination.

The plan defines graffiti vandalism as any markings that are made without permission and incite hatred or violence against a person or group.

Conversely, graffiti art is anything that aesthetically enhances a property and surroundings, by adding brightness, colour and done with permission.

Expanding out of the plan is StreetARToronto, which helps to increase awareness of street art and its role in a community as a means of counteracting against graffiti vandalism.

“There is a lot more clarity now for people on what they’re allowed to do legally on buildings. We spoke to the graffiti arts community, and they understand now that graffiti art is permitted if the owner of the building gives permission,” said Elyse Parker, director of Transportation Services for the City of Toronto.

Despite the plan, artists and street painters alike say Ford’s declaration of a war has created a bitter taste, which primarily inspired Fordmania.

“Rob Ford, he’s one of those politicians who likes to be divisive,” said Richardson. “He wants to divide people and make everything into a war: it’s a war on the car, it’s a war on this, it’s a war on the taxpayers. I’m pretty sure Rob Ford has never really fought in a real war. I’m not really angry with him, he’s just an embarrassment to the city.”

Fordmania runs until April 23.

Students rehearse for Country of the Blind, this year’s theatre backstage project production. PHOTO COURTESY OF SHAWNA J. EDWARD

Sharon Tindyebwa
A&E Reporter

Students graduating from Humber’s theatre performance and production programs will stage a show based on H.G. Well’s Country of the Blind at Toronto’s Theatre Passe Muraille.

The show is part of the theatre backstage project run entirely by students, with faculty on hand to advise.

“Last year was the first year that we did it and it was a huge learning opportunity,” said Diana Belshaw, acting teacher at Humber, who helped create the project. “We agreed that this was a very important piece of their training to actually go there and do it, and so we build pieces of the curriculum towards that this year,” she said.

All 22 graduating students from the theatre performance program are participating, as well as eight graduating theatre production students.

The group this year decided to take a different approach to the creation and development of their show.

“We are trying lots of new things,” said performance student Ryan Dainbridge, 21. “I think it is a pretty ambitious thing to take on a show about blindness.”

Students chose Country of the Blind by vote and have continued to do everything collaboratively.

“They are doing something that is quite unusual. They are working without a director to make the show which means they are all taking some part of the decision making responsibility,” said Belshaw.

The students broke into five groups and adapted chapters of the short story on their own without an overall director. They then reconvened to put the parts together and create one unified story.

“We have been trying to form a new way of going about things and trying to find a new process to take by dividing up the story and letting people sort of go nuts and then bringing it back together,” said performance student Sebastian Marziali, 22.

“The hardest part has been combining all of the five sections – actually bringing that huge group together with different styles and different ways of creating and trying to make one logical show,” said Dainbridge.

Khadijah Roberts-Abdullah, 23, a performance student, said she is excited for audiences to experience the project.

“You don’t really understand the magnitude of the message you are sending until you are at the end of the road,” she said. “And getting closer to the end of the road, the show is becoming an eye opening experience.”

Belshaw said the biggest takeaway for students last year was that they could create, produce, build and perform in a production on their own.

“If nothing else, it gave them the confidence to be able to move forward into a professional world that can be quite intimidating,” she said.

Dainbridge said he feels the show has prepared him for graduation because it has taught him how to work with others and how to solve difficulties that arise during the production process.

“I feel comfortable going out into the industry by myself, not with the guidance of teachers.”

Country of the Blind runs from April 17 to April 21.