 Hello there, it's Thursday at noon. I know it is. Do you remember our arrangement Thursdays at noon on CFUV Are you ready to get started? What do you have in mind? What I want to do now is called first-person plural You make it sound excessively attractive. That's what I have in mind Starting tomorrow September 19th and going through September 27th The Open Space Arts Center on 4th Street will be screening a number of underground short films and videos for Victorians to enjoy According to their manifesto, antimatter is an annual event that seeks Quote to provide a public platform for underground productions of short film and video imaginative Volatile entertaining and critical works that exist outside of the mainstream It is a forum for innovative and radical ideas Overlooked are marginalized by contemporary culture close quote Anticipating the festival let us to doing some serious thinking about what art is and isn't The place of art and society and what happens to artists who don't really play along with the status quo Our content placions let us to talk with Thomas Shields Spokesperson for antimatter and special events foreign matter coordinator for the nine-day event Another tenet of the manifesto states that antimatter is quote Laboratory for audience development and education Exhibiting works and alternative venues Outside the traditional black box of the cinema close quote We took this to heart and spent some time thinking about what is art outside the black box We share some of our thoughts about art artists and how they interact with society Finally antimatter also strives to create a quote Neutral ground designed to support the independent individual voice Regardless of the subversive or dangerous nature of its content stylistic concerns or commercial viability close quote So with this in mind we contemplated one of the edgiest Artists in history the Marquis de Sade Reviewing the film quills let us to think about the place of sex power and art in society Including the ways in which social controls are used to contain those among us Who would push the envelope a bit in order to think about the world around us? It's all good in an episode we call the power and pleasure of the world First of all, I'd like you to tell me a little bit about how the film festival is organized Who does what what kind of board of directors you have There's a board of directors who were as far as I've seen sort of silent partners. They I think they're available for consulting But I don't really deal with them personally, and then there's a Todd e-crit is the festival director as well as the graphic designer and Deborah de Boer is the the curator and she also does all the writing Emily Gooden is coordinating events as I am and I'm the foreign matter and special events coordinator My name is Thomas Shields. I mean everyone sticks to their specific job But also there's so much to do that. It's it's sort of impossible to pin everyone's duties down everyone just sort of does what has to be done So yeah, the responsibilities of the foreign matter coordinator are to get all the movies together for our foreign matter programs this year We have a program from the Philippines a program from Singapore and a program from England And so we have a little island theme going on So my my role there has been to find film festivals or curators or what have you and Commissioned them to put together a program of films for us from their country and it's yeah, just lots of researching people and chasing them down and convincing them to work for very small amounts of money and put a nice program of Films and videos together for us from their country how long has the festival been around and How have the operations changed since it got started? How has it evolved? I think it started in 98 and I think the first year all the screens were at Java I don't know if you remember that little coffee house that's where used to be where willies bakery is now and Yeah, I think they had all their screenings there with each new year of that matter There's more screenings and have more films and videos and greater attendance. I think the foreign matter That's a relatively new thing. I think in the past two or three years. Yeah, it's just getting bigger and better and Wilder tell me a little bit about the open space art center. That's the main venue for this, right? That's right. It's just a big old independent gallery. Yeah, a great big White room really nice high ceilings and put a screen up the one end and they run a bar and show movies You mentioned something about the selection process. How do you go about getting films? How do you solicit and slide films from among the solicitations? I guess it's sort of a year-round call for entries, but we start accepting entries for the next year's festival in January Yeah, people send them in I think we had about 800 submissions this year some are submitted by well I guess most are submitted by individuals We also do go out and solicit various Distributors to send us Todd and Deborah watch everything and pick the stuff that fits the festival best I guess they go they go through it all and have their pile of noes and their pile of yeses and their pile of Mavies and then they go back through and watch the Mavies and narrow it all down and then organize them into different programs And that's that what kind of content are you looking for in general? Well first of all it has to be under 20 minutes because it is a film of short film and video I mean a festival of short film and video I guess we're just looking for things that are different sort of outside the mainstream That's gonna be good, but other than that there's lots of experimental shorts and everything from experimental is just pretty straight-up narratives although less so in the narratives just because There's so much out there besides narratives that and there's so many other festivals that deal predominantly with narrative films that We don't I wouldn't say we avoid narratives by any means, but we just it's called. He's the main thing What kind of formats do you show there's some 60 millimeter films? Mm-hmm. I think there was a 35 in there I know we don't show any 35 there there are pieces that are shot on 35 But the screening format we get will be different from that. It's 35 Producers are just enormous and expensive, but we show 16 milliliter VHS mini DV DVDs Super, right? Oh, yeah, we do. Yeah, super. There's that there's actually a program with lots and lots of super It's called a insatiable like it's pronounced pronounced insatiable, but it's you know all kinds of erotic Super 8 films erotic experimental already super 8 films from Put together by Stephen Kent Jusick from New York That should be good. Looks greasy. Are you a filmmaker yourself? Do you have any aspirations in this area? No, what kind of cultural and creative Alice do you have personally? Oh, I make music your musician Yeah, what do you play? I play all the instruments. I actually met the curators And organizers of this festival because I performed last year at the opening night gala Which is called the Leafs Santa versus antimatter was they showed a Mexican wrestling movies and Mexican wrestling related Images and I played music inspired by Mexican wrestling movies. How about composition? Do you do composition at all? Okay, yeah, everything I do is original or at least Everything I do. I think I made up Who knows how original it all is no deliberate conversation Well, did you get to meet Sheila cops when she was in town? I didn't remember. She's pretty tight with the organizers She wrote a very nice introduction for it for the antimatter brochure for the program guide I thought you might have gotten a chance to meet her personal She was in town about a week or two ago And I'm sure she sure her and Todd and Debra the two organizers probably get together and drove around in Todd's Big Cadillac at the top-down music pumping something like that Todd and Debra have got to watch 800 movies to films to decide what we're going to show this year But I've been trying to see as much as I can before the actual festival starts and I think so far my favorite one is a movie called God bless America which is Playing as part of the tweak program on Thursday, September 25th at 9 p.m. And it's basically a stop-motion animation made in real-time this Directed by Tadisu Takamine I guess he and his assistant moved into a gallery space for 18 days With a camera that was automatically taking one frame every minute and they have this giant clay head Which they animate they do this live claymation So you get the effect of this clay head changing and singing God bless America. They've dubbed it in later I have no idea how they managed to have it saved up and I mean it's actually saying the words But then they're just racing around at high speeds You've got this clay head that's changing at a relatively natural looking pace And then they're just flying all over doing everything and they sleep there and eat there And you see the Sun come up and the Sun go down every day the four matter programs look really great this year program from the Philippines It's quite amazing. It's um was curated by Our friend over at De La Cruz Benares, and he's someone I got into contact earlier with this year He's actually coming to visit the festival from the Philippines to attend it But he's put together all kinds of wild underground Filipino shorts So that should be good too. That's playing on Thursday, September 25th at 7 p.m There is a URL for the festival. There is Ww dot antimatter dot W s and that contains That has everything I read over the program guide I haven't had a chance to check out the URL and of course program God's can be picked up in front of the new VI in front of the open space art center at CFUV In front of Rogarth, it's a base center downtown on the fourth floor there. You can pick up program guides as well The mall formerly known as Edens. That's right. There are two other venues besides the open space arts that are related exhibits Can you tell us something about that? Sure at Rogarth or there's filter Which is a video and sculpture installation by Daniel Laskern and Conrad Kordoski So this is another one I haven't seen this yet because it hasn't been put in the gallery yet But as I understand it's sculptures with sort of moving image twists to them Or I think there's there'll be images projected onto sculptures made of glass and all kinds of stuff like that I'm pretty excited to see it because Daniel Laskern and Conrad Kordoski are both up at UVic and I've seen some some of the stuff they done in the past and it's pretty nifty That should be good and that opens I guess it runs like they're the festival September 19th to 28th and there's an opening reception on Friday the 19th from 9 to 11 p.m There's also a film automat something of that nature. That's over at the Ministry of Casual Living on Holtein Yeah, that we're just gonna be showing At least there are five pieces in that and I'll just be playing from noon until 8 every day So you can just walk down to the front of the Ministry of Casual Living at 1442 Holtein Street There in the storefronts. There'll be a screen there. Just playing at these five pieces all the time So how does it work? You just drop a quarter in a slot or just just gonna be going. Oh a tape loop. Yeah Yeah, I love those. Mm-hmm. All right. Well, if there's anything else you'd like to add now's your chance Everyone should come on down. It'll be great festival. There's great stuff happening every night. Don't miss it All right, Thomas. Well, thanks for being here today. Yeah, thank you. You're listening to first-person plural on CFUV 101.9 FM Victoria I'm always pleased to discover exactly how robust film is in Victoria By robust. What do you mean? It endures It involves more people than you realize too. Yeah, there really is a community here Not in the geographical sense of that word But in the sense of a bunch of people who communicate with each other Coordinate their actions so forth not just an industry And yes, there is a distinction It's an important distinction too because I Think that there's a lot more creativity in having more than just an industry here Industry towns even film industry towns Will tend to concentrate much more on the monied aspects and I think Victoria is also encouraging the artistic aspects of film and It's art that I'm really interested in talking about and perhaps using the film community as Something to play off of since we indeed are becoming part of that film community At least I hope Well, I may not be up to this. I not only don't know anything about art. I don't even know what I like But I'll try to keep up with you Well, I don't think very many people know how to articulate what they know about art It isn't that they don't know art. It is that they and it isn't that they Know or don't know what they like. It is that it is elusive to talk to speak about art and That's very hard for a constructionist sociologist to say Because we tend to believe that everything reduces down to talk That's interesting because we talked about this about quality as well that you know what quality is Even though you don't know how to define quality in any kind of objective sense. I Would go one step further. There's a lot of things that you know are not art. Oh, I do So I think people look around they go wait a minute. That's just fill in the blank. That's just commercialization Look at that. It's the fifth product shot in the movie and it's only five minutes long. This is an art We know how to say what is not art But we don't really know how to say what it is And I think that that's inevitable. I have an educated guess I'd like to share with you my educated guess is this if we ever did define art it would immediately change into something else I Think art is very much about the other with a capital O That it has to be but even that is a definition and by defining it even to that extent I've already dared it to become something else So do you think that it's artistic because it lives on the edge because it's something new that creative really means Neelo creativity something out of nothing. I Don't like to think about it in those terms A because it's a difficult question and B because the issue of originality has come up frequently in my own Meanderings in the world of art and music How do you know if you're being original? How do you know that you're not being derivative or being an out-and-out plagiarist and so forth and It's an issue that gets more nebulous the more effort you spend trying to pull it apart and sort it into nice neat little boxes Yeah, and to support what you're saying about definitions Everybody says Art should be original and so there's a whole bunch of artists out there right now who are sampling I mean Moby comes to mind who are now regarded as great artists not because of what they create necessarily on their own out of nothing, but what they create out of everybody else's creations and that kind of is The shift It's it's it's almost as if he said. Oh, yeah Art is about originality. Well, let me show you something. I can do something with everybody else's stuff. Haha But how do you know how do you know when you're listening to a symphony that it's Not something that the composer Thought up largely because you listen to somebody else's work and said, oh, yeah I can rewrite that just enough so that it sounds like mine and nobody's gonna say gee You've just rewritten such and so I heard for example an apocryphal story about Brahms His first symphony got reviewed by the papers back when symphonies were still reviewed as Quote Beethoven's 10th close quote Brahms's response was That any Jack ass could see that I'm not sure if that's verbatim I don't know if Brahms responded in English or otherwise, but that was the gist of it So he owned up to it He owned up to it. Wow. He said so what? And that's not rare for now, but that would be pretty rare for his time And you hear criticisms of Vivaldi for example who wasn't Stealing from other people's work, but who didn't exactly Explore the boundaries of Sonic creativity. I've heard it said that he wrote 450 concertos or whatever the figure is but that in truth or More accurately, he wrote the same concerto 450 times And I've heard enough of his work to know that the criticism is not entirely invalid Has some foundation There's another way too, I mean you look back on history There's a lot of critique going on right now of different historical figures And the one that comes to mind the largest one that comes to mind is William Shakespeare Not only has there been speculation. Oh, I can't remember the name When there's somebody else that lived the same time as him that people thought he basically plagiarized or borrowed from or Took credit for him. I've heard the reverse said I've heard people swear on the stack of Bibles that Marla wrote Shakespeare's plays or that Bacon wrote Shakespeare's plays or what have you well He also had a sister and there are feminists now who believe that some of his plays were actually written by his sister And in order to get him produced He put his name on it to make it happen because a play written by a woman during that time wouldn't have been respected Yeah, you get that nowadays in other areas as well my understanding for example is that US Supreme Court dicta Largely comes from the pins of the underlings of the justices they get some paralegal or some Under-attorney to do the actual write-up they talk about it and they send away one of their rob Cronies underlings to do the actual writing and then they up And then they essentially put it forth as their material That's interesting. It's common knowledge that the president of the United States And I don't mean the current one, but the generalized president of the United States writes as little of his material of his spoken word material as he can get away with Yeah, who was it was a Jimmy Carter who was known for writing his own stuff I think there was one president in my lifetime that everybody made a big deal about the fact that He actually sat down and wrote his speeches. He had other people Proof it and Point out to him places where he was gonna cause panic if he said certain things Which probably means it wasn't Jimmy Carter, but it Nonetheless was regarded as unusual that he did the first draft. I Actually don't know and no one checks anymore because no one cares. Yeah So that's kind of interesting because what we're essentially saying is two things here one is that art and artists are Historically contextualized and the other thing is that Everything that is done is done collaboratively Even when only one person gets the credit one more example before he put the topic to bed The Gregorian chants are so named because Pope Gregory the generic Roman numeral supposedly wrote all of them And it's universally agreed now that he didn't That a bunch of monks wrote them and he got credit because that was the way intellectual property So called was apportioned out in those days Anything that was done by a Catholic really was the Pope. Well, I'm not sure if it was that direct But the essence of it was they were doing it in his name It's interesting in art history class one of the things that we talked about was the birth of the individual genius where it came from what it meant because for a long time Artistic endeavors from the so-called Middle Ages or the Dark Ages were considered inferior and the reason was that they were supposedly done by artisans and not by creative geniuses The truth of the matter was nobody put their names on things before really Michelangelo and Da Vinci and that time and that Particular period it was regarded as I Don't want to say sinful but it's kind of rude for you to point out that you made something It was just not conventional to do that. You created it. You put it out there I don't know whether you you know did it to the glory of God or the Pope or whatever But you didn't sign your name to it. You didn't say that was done by so-and-so It was just done and now that some of that art has been recovered. It's been found to be quite beautiful It's obvious that there was a lot of talent and a lot of skill in things that were created during that period But because of the birth of the genius and the individuality of that genius, you know kind of locating it as a talent of a particular person When something couldn't be attributed to a particular person it was regarded as inferior for a while So you're caught between skill and correct us at this point on one hand if you do it the media evil way then Pope Gregory the generic Roman numeral gets credit for everything and That's obviously offensive by modern standards Yes, but it might be indeed the modernist who gave him that credit in a sense I mean, I'm not wholly convinced that when they said Gregorian chance During that time that they understood that it wasn't the Pope who did it alone It was only reinterpreted later as his credit Welcome to the second season of first-person plural. I'm Carl Wilkerson Tune in this season as dr. Patty Thomas and I continue to explore the worlds of sociology and organizational matters First person plural can be heard on radio at its regularly scheduled broadcast time or Accessed via the worldwide web either by making use of real-time audio streaming where available or by downloading our featured rerun a Collection of mp3 files containing excerpts from a previously aired episode Consult the web page for first-person plural at FPP dot cultural construction company dot com for details The web page also includes an episode guide for the entire run of the show Each episode has its own page in turn with extensive written commentary and Links to sites on the internet with information related to the topics discussed You're listening to first-person plural this next half hour We will continue to discuss art and contemplate one of the edgiest artists in history The marquee decide It's all good in an episode. We call the power and pleasure of the world The thing that distinguishes film in my mind is that films are very rarely made by only one person the norm is very much for huge crowds of people To be involved in the production And post-production Yeah, I'm surprised even documentaries. I mean you would think that a documentary would be the easiest one-man project that there could be You take a camera a Shaky cam and you go out and aim it at things and you document it then you write some voiceover And if you've got an editing machine you ought to be able to put it together But if you watch documentaries their credits are long They're almost as long as featured films some of the longer documentaries So even when you are doing what is essentially pretty simple filming Collaborations happen So much so that there's a lot of argument sometimes over putting the credits like whose name goes first that kind of thing And I hear about this or that film being for example a Steven Spielberg film or a do you know DeLoretta's film? I think well, that's the oversimplification to end all over simplifications Exactly even if you can find it to the people who actually worked on the film and exclude the funding sources or the artists from whom the Creative element of the crew got their inspiration Well it becomes ludicrous Yeah, but don't you know it's because the director has creative control a pub Gregory production So Is that inevitably a result of the medium of the characteristics of the medium or is it just Bureaucratization is it saying that film is important enough that we assign it symbolic value symbolic import by Making it a group project. I would say both. I would say there are elements of both present Yeah, that I post the question. I have a hard time choosing between the two I think that there are certain aspects especially before video a film that just made it impossible for it to be a one-man show It would just be difficult to do everything because there's not enough hands Two hands aren't enough But I think there's also a push to make Film different and it requires Collaborative effort to make it different different from other media. Are these societal pressures? Well, yes, but are they external pressures? Are they something that comes about as a result of how society treats film or is it something? Located in film or the film industry or the film community. I Think there's a tension with a lot of social norms around film. That's why you hear it's a Spielberg production or a Spielberg film because What you have is essentially a western civilization that thinks in terms of the individual and You have this highly collaborative effort Having to be reduced down as you say ridiculously to a single person and sometimes it's beyond ridiculous We saw the second of the Matrix movies this summer and the credits Almost didn't end Yeah, there really were a finite number of names. I Realize intellectually the fact that the film eventually ended and we went home is really the only evidence I have I Really wouldn't hazard a guess as to how many different people got their names in the credits for that movie I've seen movie credits that have you know like The caretaker of one of the stars dogs You know this person babysat the dog While the movie was being shot, I mean absolutely ridiculous things like that But you know the truth is even if that's what your job is on the set is Baby sitting the stars dog that still sort of has to be done in order for the film to happen So my guess is that there are a lot of films that don't even give credit Where credit is due that there are some jobs that happen some things that are done to make a film possible That don't make it into the credits Inevitably what I would argue at this point is that That ain't unusual that there is in fact The only difference between film and other forms of production Including cultural production is That film makes an effort to point out who helped out Whereas other people who have a lot of assistance insist that they are Self-made individuals Who have done it alone In other words, I think that most efforts by human beings are collaborative Most efforts by human beings rely upon someone, but you just don't name your secretary or you don't name your slave labor When you stand up and say I made this company or I made this Book or I made this whatever and you might even argue that acknowledgements are more about That artistic endeavors Are more about acknowledgements than other places are I? think there's another factor that makes film as popular as Highly visited a locus as it is in the great big sociological and media web. I think it is Where art meets media in a way that few other things are? Media is inevitably concerned with video in the 21st century they Couldn't leave it alone if they wanted to it would simply be too great a sacrifice But film is often claimed by the art community It's often identified as an art form as something that Can be an art form in specific cases anyway You hear quote art film close quote given as a genre all the time and it's meant to be distinctive from other forms of film Including other forms of film that are entertaining or that are Relying upon visual as opposed to like other forms of film like documentary An art film is a feature-length film that isn't a feature film That would only work in film. Yeah, you wouldn't Read the book and then see the movie there wouldn't be a book that would really capture it and I think that the Possibility of this being the case the possibility of film being where art meets media more so than Any other locus in the great big sociological and media web is one of the things that gives it It's communal character It's something that doesn't ensure but only makes highly probable that there will be a whole bunch of people who take an interest in any project of a certain size I'm trying to think if there are other forms where that happens where it where it Kind of comes together and sort of overlaps in a way that Makes it difficult to define I might argue that the internet is emerging into that that you have the ad burnette Which is obviously commercial and you have the More artistic endeavors on the internet which seem Quite obviously artistic But I would also argue that there is some overlap going on and it's getting greater as Multimedia is getting cheaper where it where it is sort of where art and media are meeting first person Your source The police state is using its fallow-centric organ the corporate media to control ordinary people like you The plot line is familiar the story is of mythical proportions and Western civilization Within a particular man a passion and unmistakable intelligence line This man cannot help himself. He must write. He must create Despite the misunderstanding and anger of all those around him. He does not acquiesce to their will to their control Creativity and subversion flow from him He's eccentric driven almost unstoppable They take away his freedom and he becomes perfectly happy to pin his stories within his cell Sneaking them out to be published through a network of fans waiting to hear his next naughty tale They take away his pen and paper and he writes on his clothes with his own blood to the point of anemia They take away his clothes and he writes on the walls of his cell with his own excrement Story concerns a name is just Was prettier made as ever entered a memory Skirts high above her venous blood so right begging to be Have you actually read this body? I've memorized the novel's overripe style reveal it to be the work of the Machida sound Composed his prose from inside a madhouse careful Quills is an historical drama of sorts Supposedly depicting the last days of the Marquis de Sade After his wife has had him committed to an asylum in Napoleonic, France The Marquis fate rests on a dichotomy set between church and science The church is represented by a priest Played by Joaquin Phoenix Who believes that the Marquis writings are going to lead to a salvation because the writing of words is far better than the practicing of Of course the writing would have been okay if it had never left the asylum cell But through a laundress played by Kate Winslet The stories are smuggled out and published catching the notice of the emperor himself Napoleon sends a physician played by Michael Cain to the asylum to cure the Marquis de Sade for the good of France What results is a struggle between church and science with the man's sanity and well-being hanging in the middle Conversation like certain portions of the anatomy always runs more smoothly when it's lubricated I hear he's got a chisel to sharpen his teeth He's a writer not a madman. What's he doing in here? Most assured Fiendish is a kiss for each page It's nothing but an encyclopedia of perversions one man killed his wife off the regalum It's a fiction not a moral Jesus. How can we know who's good? Who's evil? All we can do is guard against our own corruption The audience act will be shut down by order of the emperor No one can stop Napoleon for bringing the masses. A few more months of this and he'll be fine Of course a love triangle develops between the Marquis the laundress and the priest And what results is a dark farcical comedy that predictably must end tragically With the death of the innocent laundress the torture and death of the Marquis and the eventual madness of the priest Quaid Assad a philosopher and storyteller Spared no details of gore and torture as he explored the darker side of human existence Through both practice and publication Many believe that he indeed used torture to enhance his sexual pleasure And that he practiced much of what he wrote including murdering for pleasure The truth is that it is doubtful that he got to torture others that much Because he spent most of his adult life in jail and in asylum But his writings survived him The word sadism of course Originated from his writings and refers to the sexual pleasure one gains from the pain of others His stories remain controversial Even in today's sexually permissive climate and his observations about human nature remain an important issue in philosophy During his time and after many blamed his writings for a number of violent crimes Like rock music lyrics and gory movies the Marquis writings were said to awaken dark impulses in his readers In quills, however, Philip Kaufman's directing Doug Wright's screenplay and Jeffrey rushes portrayal of the Marquis Do not match the expectations of a lecherous old man getting his yaw yaws out by watching other people's pain Instead the Marquis is an artist who pushes the boundaries But is never as cruel or as outrageous as the men of religion or science who seek to control his art through torture and torturous cures The Marquis de Saade is portrayed as the quintessential dangerous artist who must be controlled by the powers that be The audience is led to be sympathetic to the destruction of such a creative soul Much of Wright's screenplay depends upon a simple concept that has been a part of Western civilization since the time of Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci the Marquis de Saade is a genius a Genius is an individual who exhibits a greater intelligence and or talent than most everyone else a Genius excels in matters of the mind of the heart or the body in our culture We look at this quality solely within an individual who has said either to be a genius or to possess genius No person could achieve greatness within a certain discipline without possessing this quality and no person possessing this quality Could be prevented from achieving this greatness The myth is that genius is individual and internal rather than social and contextual Thus we know that the Marquis de Saade is a genius in quills Not because we are given a wide sample of his writings to examine nor because he is honored by his peers But because his creative powers drive him so fervently that he cannot help but create His will is the best evidence of his genius This confirms the myth that something inside the man makes him right even when all around him want him to stop Sociologist Daniel Chambliss takes on this myth in his article the mundanity of excellence an ethnographic report on stratification and Olympic swimmers The myth of the Olympian and the myth of the genius are similar in construction Both are said to be talented and driven to excellence by an inner quality sometimes called a talent gift or natural ability Their performances are regarded singularly without regard for those social supports that made their achievements possible Each owns his record alone We as an audience are supposed to be aware of this natural ability and be inspired by or in awe of it We are supposed to recognize that no amount of practice on our part will make any of us a great rider or an Olympic swimmer in the case of the swimmers admiration and Agulation are expected because Olympians represent their respective countries in contests Designed to bring honor to the people back home In the case of the marquee Fear and loathing are expected because the marquee's writings might lead to social chaos and unrest Both are recognized for their superiority But they are not equally respected The marquee de Saade lives on the margins of society But there are specific aspects of the story told in quills that belie this myth The marquee is supported by a huge social structure that not only encourages his continued writing But ensures a readership for his works Even as they are being suppressed The marquee has his fellow asylum inmates his daily chats with the abbey and his network beginning with the fair Madeleine He may ride on the walls with his own feces But it is to ensure that his readers know he is not giving up He does not write for his own pleasure alone and he is not able to create outside of his limited social world Thus while the film relies upon the myth of the individual genius, it subverts the myth as well Experimental films recordings and written work are subversive to varying degrees Art occurs in some ways on the edge of what has been and what could be Like the marquee's network Edgy artists need social networks even while they critique the social world around them Underground film festivals such as anti-matter Provide such a network for distribution of artworks that would not be acceptable to galleries or theaters in the so-called mainstream There is no doubt that such venues are needed So much more is being produced than one can see at Cineplexes and on television So much more is being explored But one wonders whom the division between the mainstream and the margin serves most This particular festival like many others is not exactly underground as it is supported by the Canadian Council for the Arts the Ministry of Canadian Heritage The BC Arts Council and several businesses in Victoria While these funding sources are to be commended for opening a space for experimental film and topics that are on the edge of social norms One wonders if the relegation of edgy works to the status of marginal Does not suggest the creation of ghetto instead of a forum The answer might lie in process rather than politics It is often the intention of politicos to create a black and white world in which sheep and goat are Divided into specific flocks with specific characters The process of art is not so neatly divided Ravers and culture jammers of the 1990s Started saying it's all good an expression that seems to have gone the way of groovy far out and Swell now often expressed as a way to calm down potential conflicts by suggesting that everything is going well Its original meaning was much deeper the expression. It's all good meant to suggest that dichotomies were passe Dividing the world into for and against was too simple in the emerging post-modern world of technology high-speed communications and global perspectives It's all good meant that the processes by which communications could be accomplished Could be used for a plethora of purposes and to try to decide which methods were Intrinsically and inescapably good and which methods were intrinsically and inescapably bad would be absurd Would not the Marquis agree the world of late 18th century France was a world that saw the peasants over through the aristocracy With some of the most bloodthirsty methods known in human history crowds dragged the rich kicking and screaming from their homes to the Bastille where the guillotine waited crowds cheered as blood spilled There was no doubt a thrill felt by the crowd a sense of pleasure at the pain of their former masters But this was not justice and perhaps it was not even rightly called revenge The seams showed as revolution after revolution was fought on French soil The world of haves and have nots was not as neat as it first appeared It turned out that several rounds of killing all the right people First the aristocrats and then certain factions of the revolutionaries themselves judged by their comrades as being of less than 100% ideological purity Dead little to end tyranny were to stop power-hungry people from flexing their will over others There were new people in control, but they controlled pretty much the same way as the old ones had the Marquis wrote during this time Uncovering much about the grotesque side of human nature Suggesting that it was desire and power Not justice that drove humans to do the things they did the power was apparently too intoxicating to resist or to restrain of Course the question remains open as to whether the Marquis decide would have been invited to a festival Like antimatter if he were alive and producing stories in this day and age Perhaps the Marquis was too edgy even for those willing to experience something new or forbidden no doubt Mental hospitals still act as much as places of social control as they do as places of healing It does the Marquis a disservice to lead us to believe he was a genius tortured by his own imagination The Marquis de Saade reflected the context in which he lived He threw the pleasure of the bloodthirsty masses right back into their faces and Exposed the ways in which they enjoyed the pain of those around them Art especially experimental art more than politics even radical politics Is willing to explore such constructions of power desire and humanity Perhaps that makes art subversive, but the term subversion just like the term genius Sets up an illusion of dichotomies that are much more mucky in everyday life In some ways quills is reminiscent of the film pleasantville Which depicted the simple joys of color the human figure and sex as subversions of the peace and tranquility of the pleasantries Of a controlled society the process of integrating the new characters into the black and white world changed that world forever So underground festivals give hope even if they appear to leave their subjects on the edge Such art creates ripples in the culture Even if it is never viewed directly by most people most of us have never been to a rave But raves are now part of our culture such creations spoil the illusion of control The way one drop of iodine can turn a bucket of water to a tent of red It's like when we were told that ivory soap was ninety nine and forty four one hundredth percent pure soap And you wondered how something could be pure if approximately half of a percent of it or something else Perhaps that half percent makes it all good You have been listening to first-person plural because how people get along with each other still matters First person plural is a show created for community radio by Carl Wilkerson and Dr. Patty Thomas to examine social and organizational issues Music for first-person plural is performed composed and produced by Carl Wilkerson except where noted for more information about first-person plural Dr. Patty Thomas or Carl Wilkerson visit our website www.culturalconstructioncompany.com or email us at fpp at culturalconstructioncompany.com