My Reviews of Books

Beautiful In My Worn Clothes: The Transgressions of Love by Rod Dubey

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


What is love?
Rod Dubey has written a unapologetically political book about love. Dubey’s story of love does indeed transgress into historical, political, philosophical dialogues on religion, conservatism, David Hume, the surrealists, and current Canadian politicians for starters. The intellectual terrain is remarkable for a small book. But a more suspicious ‘transgression’ begins with the author’s acknowledgements: “…my editor at Charivari Press…provided extensive notes on my original drafts. I have freely used his ideas, suggestions and sometimes his words.” Rather than seeing this act of borrowing as a kind of abuse, I believe, this acknowledgement is a statement of affection, if not an act of love itself - an action that refers to some of the concepts within this book.

There is a kind of beauty in The Transgressions of Love as the writing winds its way through poetic quotations intermingling time, era, and text as though part of one long tome. The first part of the books’ title ‘…beautiful in my worn clothes…’ perhaps refers to the many metaphors for love that are intertwined with stories of personal will and aesthetic freedom. For Dubey the history of love is also the history of power and control, of community and activism, of both autonomy and symmetry. Within this history is also a critique of love how love and consumerism have undermined relationships and how religion has tried to dehumanize the emotion.

This highly interesting book is both an intellectual and emotional exploration of love. It is a beautiful expression of poetry and pictures that documents a political history of love, an emotion that is forever powerful and mysterious.

- Allison Cameron, independent reviewer for Musicworks Magazine, Goodreads and @ allisoncameron.

Mar 7, 2013



S : ON
Le son de l’art contemporain canadien
Sound in Contemporary Canadian Art
(bi-lingual texts)

Edited by Nicole Gingras

In 2003 Éditions Artexte published S:ON a book with accompanying CD that speaks to various facets of sound and visual arts in a Canadian contemporary art context. This well researched publication grew out of a residency held by curator /art critic Nicole Gingras in 2002 at the Montréal based contemporary art information centre Artexte. As Ms. Gingras points out in her introduction ‘the ground to be covered, or rather skimmed, was quite vast, with no shortage of singular examples.”

Generally speaking, the research done is excellent and the context of some of the articles is curious. S:ON endeavours to create "…a forum for discussion based on the act of listening,” and includes 18 interdisciplinary artists from across Canada involved in a variety of audio practices.

The book is divided into four sections: Penser le son/Thinking through sound; Volumes and Surfaces; Espaces d’écoute; and, Modulations - installation body and machine body.
Thinking through sound includes a lovely, poetic (yet brief!) purview of the life and work of composer/sound artist Pierre Mercure written by Raymond Gervais. In it Gervais recounts the historically piquant times of 1948 Montréal when the manifesto Refus Global was published. Author Paul-Émile Borduas and Les Automatistes had a decisive influence on Mercure’s artistic consciousness and consequently his predilection for mixed media and involvement in the much later Fluxus movement. Volumes et Surfaces includes fascinating articles by Christof Migone discussing space and silence in his article: Volume – a history of unsound art, Michèle Waquant discusses her acoustically rich work Impression Débâcle where sound and visuals mesh into a kind of aural cinematic landscape; and, sound designer Colin Griffiths (collaborator with Rodney Graham and Stan Douglas among others), discusses acoustics, architecture, and the audience member. From Listening Spaces we read about Nicolas Reeves installation Le Jardin des Ovelyniers where a glass aquarium houses five oranges each with two electrodes implanted. The variable voltage current eventually results in a ‘chant des oranges.’ Most interesting from the final section Modulations is the triptych of interviews conducted by Nicole Gingras via email with improviser Alexandre St.-Onge, visual artist Jean-Pierre Gauthier and multi-media artist James Partaik. The first three questions for each interviewee are identical and result in some radically different answers, especially that of Alex St.-Onge. He states frankly that self-expression in musical improvisation is something that disgusts him.

The CD portion of the book has also left much to the imagination. With 15 different artists represented it is jam-packed with both excerpts and complete sound pieces. Interestingly, only two of the artists with texts in the book are represented on the CD. The disc includes works by sound artists Pierre-André Arcand, Diane Landry, Rita McKeough, Daniel Olson and Rober Racine among others. Highlights of the CD include: Hugh Le Caine’s Mouth Cavity Oscillator, Martin Tétreault’s Citation, Daniel Olson’s Soundtrack, and Emmanuel Madan’s Soundwalk through “Incredibly Soft Sounds.” Bios of all of the artists on the CD are included in the book.

For both research purposes and engaging articles, S:ON is a book/cd to be read, seen, heard and appreciated. It leaves much for the imagination to ponder and initiate further investigation, reading, creation.

…en particulier grâce à Hélène Kay.

Jan 15, 2010