It's easy to get caught up in Life things like employment, finances, apartment, relationships, and being "productive" to work on these matters. Even now, working at the Art Gallery of Ontario I am usually stuck in a business & sales mindset, but every now and then I get a perfect reminder of exactly why I am so deeply in love with art and art history.

Note: This is the first public entry I've made in a long time, but I am hoping to have people stumble upon this and spark some serious debate and discussion!


This is going to be long-winded (because I'm excited about it!), but if you have the time and interest I urge you to click through the links and read about this!

( click here for the rest of the post & some images )

Comments please! I love discussions about this type of thing and would love to know your thoughts and reflections. Do you know of any similar projects or works? I expect to get many comments from visitors who have taken the tour - will they be enraged and feel played by the AGO, or will they be delighted by the enchantment of the whole idea? I'm eager to find out. What would your reaction be?


This whole project mixes my love of history, art, archaeology and performance in the most perfect way imaginable. To be honest, this all sort of makes me wish I was taking an art history course so I would have an excuse to do a proper research paper on deceptive performance works! For a while I've been toying with the idea of starting an art blog, if only to create a forum for discussion and a storage place for all of the tidbits I save from my own research and discoveries. We shall see! Maybe this will be the first entry.


Thank you for reading; I anxiously await your reactions and responses!!

In light of some recent semi-creepitude, I have decided I am going to start friends locking all of my entries again... sooo if you want to read and you're not on the list, leave me a comment.

C'est tout!

ASL today was fun times. We spent the whole class just chatting about the strike, our potential trip to Rochester or Bellville (really hoping at least one happens), and how much we sucked at producing signs in first year...haha. Those girls are great, not to mention Jon.

I am constantly impressed that he has the capacity to have a wry sense of humour about things that happen to him as a faculty member. The sheer ignorance of the union and the people to whom he reports is incredible! They actually offered to give him a HEARING AID so that he could join the picket lines - they're afraid he wouldn't be able to hear a cop car pulling in, and might get run over. (?!) He told us this little story and then proceeded to pretend to bash his head against the chalk board....hahaha. So great. Yeah, because he's deaf by CHOICE, and he just doesn't *want* a hearing aid! It's a personal statement, you see! Hah. He replied to that by saying "Oh yeah, great idea. How about you pay for a cochlear implant too!" to which they replied "What's that?"

He also made a point of asking them how he should find out if the strike is a go early on, since he has am classes tomorrow morning. You know what they told him? "You should listen to the radio"!!! Ahhh! When he told them he's DEAF, they actually had the nerve to say "Well, you should get someone to listen to the radio FOR you!" Oh man.

He decided he should go on strike AGAINST the picketers and the union, and hold up a sign that says "DEAF" with an arrow pointing down to him, and "DUMB" with an arrow pointing out to the side, at the picketers. Needless to say we had a pretty good laugh about that. It's commendable that he deals with admin so well and tolerates that kind of bs.

It's one thing to be curious about a culture or a disability, and it's another thing entirely to presume things. I didn't see it so much before I got involved with the deaf community, but it's eye-opening now that I know what they put up with. It's sort of frustrating as well that it's just impossible for everyone not just to be open to learning about it, but also to have the opportunity - because I'm sure as hell just as ignorant about other disabilities. Then again, if you're hanging out with Deaf people and you refer to their deafness as a disability, you'd better be prepared to end the conversation then and there. To many - mostly those who associate with Deaf Culture and who take ASL as their primary language (as opposed to only lipreading, vocalizing, etc) see their deafness as a way of life, and not as a disadvantage. They embrace their deafness rather than thinking of it as something "wrong" with them, or something that needs to be "fixed".

On that note, if anyone is curious about deafness or the culture I'd love to get a conversation going, and answer questions as best as I can based on my very limited experience in the community over the past three years.