Public (E-Journal, York University)

Brenner, Amy

Poems

Dionne, Caroline

What are you looking at? Lewis Carroll's photographs and the paradoxes of perception

Côté, Jean-François

English

An Interview with Wajdi Mouawad

Straw, Will

Scenes and Sensibilities

Kibbins, Gary

Limbic Moments
Gary Kibbins
(Stills of a small city on the edge of a large lake, emphasizing the woodec
and abandoned areas. There is no consistency in the time of day or the sea-
son. Occasionally, someone is seen from a distance walking or driving,
sometimes in a cowboy or Roman-soldier outfit.)
1. This is the way things looked just before dawn: orchids and hollyhocks
compete for space between the cracks of rotting asphalt, while the econ-
omy grows rich and fat, helping the poor and the disadvantaged. Com_
passion shelters this small town like a trusting arm around frail shoulders.
The only sickness here is gambling, but plans to eliminate that problem
will soon be perfected.
2. savage Beasts prowl the hills on the perimeter of the town, probing for
weaknesses' r7retched and restless, with vile olive-brown fur, they are
nonetheless cunning, and are kept at bay only by steely resolve and high
technology. Yet even here, with all the desolation and danger, the land is
graced with the scent of lemon trees, and sometimes avocado. Tangles of
broken branches, heavy with sweet fruit, litter the hillsides, ignored by
the beasts too dumb to desire them. The trees and beasts coexist, barely
visible marks on the remote horizon. Together they look down on the
placid scene below and watch the smoke from the hearths curl languidly
up, to disappear in the straw-yellow sky.
(A five-year-old boy explores alone in various abandoned lots,)
3. But then a boy appears, different from the rest. His raughter and his
play are strange, causing unease in those around him. His innocence is
incompatible with the innocence of other children. His speech, intended
for creatures unseen, is scarcely fathomable to others. Jealousies and sus-
picions not known here for generations are newly laid bare. Those who
gaze at him as he sleeps describe feelings of nakedness and guilt. The sky
outside hardens in shades of ochre and patina-green.
(Two doctors, long white jackets in an institutional setting.)
4. Doctors are called in, skilled ones, trained to dissect the mind. Injec-
tions are given, having no outward effect on the boy. The doctors look at
each other and nod. The probing continues. Outside, the gloom deepens.
(An unfinished cellar. Doctors examine the boy who is lying on a table.)
5. The doctors, following their instincts, hasten directly to the boy's amyg-
dala, two small, almond-shaped structures just below the pituitary gland,
richly and reciprocally connected to most areas in the brain. The job of
the amygdala is to filter and interpret incoming sensory information con-
cerning our survival and emotional needs. The doctors find it quite aston-
ishingly busy, dispatching messages in directions far too numerous to
track. Some prove to be well-travelled neural pathways, and these are the
ones the doctors choose to follow. From these knotted webs and bloody
ganglia, a vague sense of displeasure begins to emerge, scarcely discernible
to the doctors. A familiar melody can be heard, faintly at first, then grow-
ing louder, the opening bars of which are played and replayed, but never
finished. S7hat the doctors would never know is nevertheless right there
in front of them, the three songs: "Ba Ba Black Sheep," "Twinkle Twinkle
Little Star," and "The Alphabet Song," it was discovered, had all these
years, been quietly freeloading off the same melody. \fhat had earlier
been the source of such enchantment, was now the instrument of disap-
pointment, and another fragile childhood was diminished.
(An older man is playing an old stand-up piano. He is improvising on "Ba
Ba Black Sheep" in major and minor keys.)
6. It is through the actions of the hippocampus just adjoining the amyg-
dala,that this trauma is so forcefully felt, for it is here, in these two inte-
grated finger-sized structures, that short-term experiences are transformed
into long-term memories. The doctors happen on other memories hiding;
stubborn, irrelevant memories, yellowed and spoiled with age. Here, for
example, is found a meaningless list of fairy tales: "The Three Feathers"l
"The Three Clever Kings"; "The Three \fishes"; "The Three Languages"l
"The Three Sluggards"; "The Knapsack, the Hat, and the Horn"l
"The Three Sons of Fortune"l "The Three Brothers"l "The Three Little
Men in the \7ood"; "The Three Snake Leaves"l "The Devil \7ith the
Three Golden Hairs"; and "The Three Apprentices." There appears to be
more, but it is becoming too obscure to see.
(The man and the boy are conversing earnestly in the room with the
piano.)
1.04
7. "Suppose one were to do this?" the boy asks. ,,\X/hat would happen
then? or suppose that happens? Then what?" The questions are tricky.
Perhaps, thought the man, they are insincere, for the boy seems to be look-
ing not at him, but through him, beyond him. Numerous, minute physical
adjustments are required to aim the two eyes, which are crucially sepa-
rated by a distance of about two inches, at the same object. But if the
object is too close, the eyes will seem crossed. The man steps back, sens-
ing the difficulty the boy's brain may be having converging the two
images of him into one. The four sides of their two brains grapple with
the problem, while across the street, at a point in space marked precisely
by the distant tip of a dead branch, the paths, of a ball thrown up and a
crow swooping down, converge perfectly.
(Close shots of man.)
8. Meanwhile, the man has been seized by a feeling of melanchory.
Nowhere is this more true than in his amygdala, two smail, walnut-
shaped structures just below the pituitary gland, whose job it is to filter
and interpret incoming sensory information concerning our survival and
emotional needs. And a rebellious, knottr bloody ganglia of neurons ir is,
blocking his efforts to rid himself from this unwanted sensation. ,,Ler me
go! Let me go!" are his muffled cries heard by no one but himself. But this
is a man who knows well the inner-workings of his brain. Through long
years of discipline and effort, he has trained himself to feel the mental
operations at work: the rhythmic swelling and ebbing of the dendrites, rhe
tugging and pulling sensations as the synapses flood with strange chemi-
cal brews. There was a time when he could scarcely guess at what they
were. Now his mind is a pharmacopoeia of knowledge. He knows with
exact precision what they are, especially on special emotional occasions.
when, as now, his brain is awash in cortisol.
(Boy in abandoned lot. He sits beside a large stuffed green frog.)
9. A cold wind sweeps down from the high plateau, scatering the
defenceless mist which clings naively to the yellowed yobelia blossoms.
The high and lonely horizon, the only home the Savage Beasts have ever
known, conceals the waves of advancing snow to everyone but the boy.
He had not slept that night, though his youthful face masks the haggard-
ness he feels. The essential rocks which he musr collect burn coldly
against his fingers. By his side sits his enduring friend. "All is not well
here," says the frog wistfully. And the boy listens, for he knows that only
the frog can speak the truth. "If P, then e," says the frog in a distracted
105
voice. "If Q, then R...." After several moments of silence, he speaks more
forcefully and confidently. "All pirates are badl' he warbles meaningfully.
"I am a pirate. Therefore, I'm bad." The boy listens with increasing interest,
as large pieces of ice crystallize out of the air and fall heavily to the ground.
"Jane is a pfuate. Therefore, Jane is a piratel' the frog continues with grow-
ing animation. "Samuel is a watchmaker. Samuel is not a watchmaker.
Therefore, Samuel is dead." His tremulous voice carries the excitement of
discoverS but his face is as still as a statue, betraying nothing, as if in
deep meditation. In some animals, facial control is located in the pons,
which can be found just above the medulla oblongata. Unhappily, no such
organ can be found in the brain of a frog. It has been suggested, however,
that the frog brain's elemental design, lacking parts more advanced ani-
mals take for granted, has the great advantage of freeing up more energy
for the cerebellum, allowing it unrivalled powers of concentration.
Meanwhile, the pitiless cold began its surprise attack on the unsuspect-
ing town. Those insects which had not yet laid their eggs for the winter
were finished as a species.
(The boy and the man are walking rather solemnly at the edge of a lake.
Location sounds are isolated and amplified.)
10. The boy and the man stroll laughingly along the grated side of alarge
pink reservoir. The green and bad-tempered clouds hovering on the hori-
zofi, are) for the moment, distracted by something just beyond the next
hill. Several beasts have been recently slain, their bodies left to rot cere-
monially under a flawlessly symmetrical mango tree as a warning to the
others. Crack! The boy's keen ear detects another gunshot, and a full
fidelity rumble splinters the pumpkin-white sky. And so at least for the
moment, life is good, the air is birdy and blue, and the boy begins relating
a news story about Sylvester Stallone he has recently encountered. A law-
suit is pending, he explains, filed by five of Stallone's domestic workers
who have been recently fired in the middle of their contract. He laughs. It
seems the servants were under strict orders to not look, under any circum-
stances, into the great actor's dark black eyes, and to immediately back
out of the room and vanish should he unexpectedly enter.
(Boy wanders off, exploring, mostly at night. The man continues walking
in various locations during the day.)
11. Though the boy embellishes the story cleverly with irony and sarcasm,
the man finds it difficult to feign interest. The pons, an organ the man
does not share with the frog, deploys different muscles to fake a smile
106
than would be used were the smile authentic, and the boy has no trouble
recognizing the difference. For the man, the cost of such attempted decep-
tion is high, for one way to trick the pons into producing a smile that
looks authentic is for the deceiver to come to believe his own falsehood.
Unconcerned, the boy delights to the sound of more gun shots, the
broken morning air so distorting their pitch that sometimes they sound
more like gabbling dogs, crooning church-bells, babies thumping, snuf_
fling, clacking, sizzling, the beeping of trucks backing up, like slamming
or grating, or like snapping or throbbing.
12. But the boy slowly drifts away, incuriously seeking his amusements
elsewhere. Life is now flawless, and the prospects for pleasure never bet-
ter. (Pause) He is very patient. (Pause) He conrinues browsing. (pause) He
eventually discovers a spot just tantalizingly out of reach of the beasts.
Ah, how he will torment them! Happily, none of his actions have any con-
sequences.
(Several children's faces, sraring straight ahead against a black back_
ground.)
13. And what luck! By the most miraculous good fortune, he chances
upon his good friends! There's Jimmy, his face ripped right off and a
sword jammed up his butt! And splendid Judy, her brains smashed all
over the ground! And Bobby, with his crooked smile, has his limbs hacked
off, bleeding from a thousand ugly wounds! The boy races deliriously
toward them. Like other brains, his brain believes that it is better to over-
respond to danger than to ignore it. ,,Hey boy,', they cry in unison, ..come,
we'll rip your head off and stick sticks in your eyes! come and kick our
guts out with us!" And just when it seems that there can't be any more
fun in the world than rhis, on the far bank of the river, but unable to
cross, shrieking with rage and frustration, are the Savage Beasts! Every
time one of them nears the river's edge, a shark leaps up, grabs it by the
throat, and pulls it screaming under the water. Moments later, bubbles of
blood and gore float rapturously to the water's shimmering surface! The
excitement of the children's whoops and cries is intoxicating.
(Boy continues his solitary exploring.)
14. soon however, over the puzzled objections of his friends, the boy,s
attentions wander elsewhere. This time he is lured not to another plea-
sure, but to the sober disciplines of duty and obligation. The brain has its
own dark methods for distinguishing what is important from what isn,t.
107
The primary, innate emotional responses allow us to react appropriately
to sudden loud noises, or dark disturbing shadows, or help us cope should
we suddenly encounter a menacing animal on our path, like a tiger, or a
snake. But there comes a time when one must advance to the secondary
emotional responses which come to us through, and are informed bn
experience. As the intermingling vibrations of children and beasts fade
behind him, new stimuli urge the boy on.
(Boy, examining the signage in front ofvarious churches, day and night.
He takes pictures with a toy camera.)
15. He carefully examines the marketing, following each letter, looking
for clues. V/hat do these marks really mean? Vhat do they say? He moves
on willfully to the next. (Pause.) And then the next. (Pause.) And the next,
still searching for a pattern, anything that might help. (Pause.) And the
next. (Pause. The boy sits down, rests, then continues.) The next. (Pause.)
The next, still looking for signs. (Pause.) And the next, still seeking the
principle which will explain their significance to a reasonable person. It's
taking too long. After all, he's just a boy.
(Boy sees a dog in the distance.)
16. But then-wait. 'ufhy, that was no dog! That was a hyena! So. They
finally penetrated the walls of the city. Of course, no one else would know.
He might have to kill it himself. No one else would have the courage or
the strength. \7ith a sigh of resignation, he gets on with the work.
Credits.
108


Limbic Moments

Peretti, Jonah P.

Correspondence
Jonah H. Peretti
Nike now lets you personalize your shoes by submitting a word
or phrase which they will stitch onto your shoes, under the
swoosh. So Jonah Peretti filled out the form and sent them 950
to stitch "SWEATSHOP" on to his shoes.
********************************
From: "Personalize, NIKE iD" nikeid_personalize@nike.com
To: " 'Jonah H. Peretti' "
Subject: RE: Your NIKE iD order o16468000
Your NIKE iD order was cancel-1ed for one or more of the
fol-lowing reasons:
1 ) Your Personal iD contains another party's trademark or
other intellectual property
2 ) Your Personal iD contains the name of an athlete or team we
do not have the legal right to use
3) Your Personal iD was l-eft blank. Did you not v/ant any
personaliz ation?
4) Your Personal iD contains profanity or inappropriate s1ang.
If you wish to reorder your NIKE iD product wj-th a new
personalization please visit us again at www.nike.com
Thank you, NIKE iD
*******************************
*From! "Jonah H. Peretti"
To: "Personal-ize, NIKE iD" nikeid_personalize0nike.com
Subject: RE: Your NIKE iD order 016468000
erEELrrr9D t
My order was canceled but my personal NIKE iD does not violate
any of the criteria outlined in your message. The persona] iD
on my custom ZOOM XC USA running shoes was the word
"sweatshop." Sweatshop is not:
l-) another's party's trademark,
2) the name of an athlete,
134
3) blank, or
4 ) profanity.
I choose the iD because I wanted to remember the toil and
labor of the children that made my shoes. Could you please
ship them to me immedj-ately?
Thanks and Happy New Year, Jonah Peretti
*******************************
Frorn: "Persona1ize, NIKE iD" nikeid_personalizegnike.com
To: "'Jonah H. Peretti"' perettiomedia.mit.edu
Subject: RE: Your NIKE iD order 016468000
Dear NIKE iD Customer,
Your NIKE iD order was cancelled because the iD you have
chosen contains, as stated in the previous e-mail
correspondence, "inappropriate slang". If you wish to reorder
your NIKE iD product with a new personal-ization please visit
us again at nike.com
Thank you, NIKE iD
*******************************
From: "Jonah H. Peretti"
To: "Personal-i-ze, NIKE iD" nikeid_personalizeenike.com
Subject: RE: Your NIKE iD order o16458000
DeaT NIKE iD,
Thank you for your quick response to my inquiry about my
custom ZOOM XC USA running shoes. Although I commend you for
your prompt customer service, I disagree with the claim that
my personal iD was inappropriate sl-ang. After consulting
Webster's Dictionary, I dj-scovered that "sweatshop" is in fact
part of standard English, and not slang. The word means: "a
shop or factory in which workers are employed for long hours
at low wages and under unhealthy conditions" and its origin
dates from 1892. So my personal iD does meet the criteria
detailed in your first email.
Your web site advertises that the NfKE iD program is "about
freedom to choose and freedom to express who you are." I
share Nike's love of freedom and personal expression. The site
also says that "If you want it done right ... build it your-
sel-f." I was thrilled to be able to build my own shoes, and my
personal iD was offered as a small token of appreciation for
13s


Correspondence

Brenner, Giorgio Agamben

For a Philosophy of Infancy
Giorgio Agamben
In the fresh waters of Mexico there lives a species of albinic salamander that
has been attracting the attention of zoologists and scholars of animal evolu-
tion for a long time. \Thoever has had the opportunity to observe a specimen
in an aquarium, is struck by the infantile, almost foetal appearance of this
amphibian: its relatively large head encased in its body its opalescent skin,
lightly veined in grey on the snout and lit up in silver and pink on the excres-
cences around its gills, its slender feet, lily-shaped with petal-like red fingers.
The axolotl (this is its name) was first classified as a discrete species, one
that showed the peculiarity of maintaining throughout its lifetime, character-
istics that are,for an amphibian, typical ofthe larva, such as branchial respi-
ration and an exclusively aquatic habitation. That it was an autonomous
species, however, was proved beyond every doubt by the fact that, despite its
infantile appearance, the axolotl was perfectly capable of reproducing itself.
Only later, a series of experiments confirmed that, following the adminis-
tration of thyroid hormone, the small triton underwent the metamorphosis
normal for amphibians: it would lose its gills and, developing pulmonary res-
piration, would abandon aquatic life to transform itself into an adult speci-
men of the speckled salamander (ambistoma tygrinum). This circumstance
could lead to a classification of the axolotl as a case of evolutionary regres-
sion, a defeat in the battle for life that compels an amphibian to renounce
the terrestrial part of its existence and to indefinitely prolong its larval state.
But this is not the case; and it is precisely this stubborn infantilism (paedo-
morphosis or neoteny) that has offered the key to a new way of under-
standing animal evolution.
What would follow, therefore, is that human beings did not initially
evolve from individual adults, but from baby primates that, like the axo-
lotl, had prematurely acquired the capacity to reproduce themselves.
This would explain a number of human morphological characteristics
(from the position of the occipital foramen to the shape of the ear's auricle,
from hairless skin to the structure of the hands and feet) that do not corre-
spond to those of adult anthropoids but to those of their foetuses. Traits
that are transitory in primates have in humans become definitive, somehow
bringing to pass, in flesh and bone, the type of the eternal child. Above all,
however, this hypothesis allows us to explain in a new way the language
and the whole exosomatic tradition (culture) that, more than any genetic
imprint, characterize h omo sap iens.
120
Let us try to imagine an infant who, unlike the axolotl, does not simpry
settle into its larval environment, but who so adheres to its lack of special-
ization and totipotency that it refuses any destiny and specific environment
as to solely follow its own indeterminacy and immaturity. while other ani-
mals (the mature ones!) merely obey the specific instructions written in their
genetic code, the neotenic infant finds itself in the condition of also being
able to pay attention to that which is not written, of paying attention to
arbitrary and uncodified somatic possibilities. In its infantile totipotency, it
would be thrown outside its self lgettato fuori di s6f, not as other living
beings are, into a specific adventure and environment, but, for the first time.
tnto a world.In this sense, the infant would truly be listening to being and to
possibility lin ascolto dell'essere e del possibilel. And, with its voice free of
every genetic directive, with absolutely nothing to say and express, the child
could, unlike any other animal, name things in its language and, in this way,
open-up before itself an infinity of possible worlds.
As the specifically human vocation, infancy is, in this sense, the pre-emi-
nent setting of the possible lpossibilel and of the potential fpotenzialel. rt is
not a question, however, of a simple logical possibility, of something not real.
vhat characterizes the infant is that it is irs own poten tiality [potenza), rt liues
its own possibility fpossibilitdl. There is something akin to an experiment
specific to infancS one that no longer distinguishes between possibility and
rcality, but turns the possible into life itself. It is in vain rhat grown-ups
attempt to check this immediate coincidence of the child's life and possibility,
confining it to limited times and places: rhe nursery, codified games, playtime,
and fairy-tales. They know very well that the question is not one of fantasiz-
ing, but that in this experiment the child risks its whole life, riterally playing
with it in every instant. The child's experimentum potentioe,in fact, does not
even spare its physiological life: the child plays with its physiological func-
tion, or, rather, plays it, and in this way, takes pleasure in it.
Good teachers know this, those who understand that games are the high
road to childhood experience. It is in this that they succeed in having the
child acquire certain customs and habits. To have a child learn to wash, for
example, it is essential to transform washing into a game; and it is by playing
that the future adult acquires his form of life lforma di uita).
Heidegger described the disquiet and movement specific to being-in-the-
world by way of the term Dasein, being-there, being in one's here-prace. It is a
question, so to speak, of a transcendence without an elsewhere, of a being out-
side itself and on its way toward its very own taking-place (Heidegger once
expressed this condition as 'being inside an outside'). what is a child,s Dasein?
one could say that it is an immanence without place and subject, an adhering
that adheres neither to an identity nor to some thing, but solely to its own possi-
bility and potentiality. It is an absolute irnmanence that is immanent to nothins.
1,21"
In this sense the child is a paradigm of alile that is absolutely inseparable
from its form, an absolute form-of-life lforma-di-uita] without remainder.
\fhat does 'form of life' mean in this case?
It means that the child is never bare life lnuda uita], that it is never possi-
ble to isolate in a child something like bare life or biological life.
The politics that we are familiar with are characterized from their begin-
ning by the differentiation of the sphere of bare life (2o6, the simple natural
life, as opposed to bios, the life that is politically qualified by free men),
which, in the classicalpolis, was confined to the precincts of the house (the
place of women, children, and slaves) and, in the modern city, has increas-
ingly and ever more profoundly come to enter the political sphere (which,
in the end, turns into the incessant deciding on life as such: the concentra-
tion camp as the place of bare life).
If the child seems to escape this structure and never allows, in its self, the
differentiation of mere life, it is not, as is maintained too often, because the
child has an unreal and mysterious life, one made of fantasy and games.
It is the very opposite that characterizes the child: lr adheres so closely to
its physiological life tbat it becomes indiscernible from it. (This is the true
sense of the experiment on the possible that we mentioned earlier.) Similar in
this respect to a woman's life, the life of a child is ungraspable, not because it
transcends toward an other world, but because it adheres to this world and
to its body in a way that adults find intolerable.
The Latins had a singular expression, uiuere uitam, which was passed on
to modern romance languages as uiure sA uie, uiuere la propria uita lliue
one's own life].The full transitive force of the verb 'vivere'has to be restored
here; a force, howeve\that does not take on an object (this is the paradox!),
but, so to speak, has no object other than life itself. Life here is a possibility,
a potentiality that never exhausts itself in biographical facts and events,
since it has no object other than itself. It is an absolute immanence that
nevertheless moues and liues.
Such, then, is the life of the child. And this is why the child is the only
integrally historical being, if history is, precisely, that which is absolutely
immanent, without ever being identified in a fact. (the battle of \Taterloo is
not any of the single facts that constitute it, and even less their sum-and
yet it is nothing other than these things). The life of the child, as a result,
instead of seeming completely scattered into small facts and episodes lack-
ing meaning and history (like the life of primitives), remains unforgettable,
the cipher of a higher history.
Translated by Elias Polizoes. [This essay originally appeared as "Per una filsofia delf infanzia" in
Perfetti (t Inuisibili, ed.Franco LaCecla (Milan: Skira Editore, 1996)l


For a Philosophy of Infancy

Moore, Paul S.

Weekday Matinée: The Scene of the Daydream in Workday Life

Aqpik, James

Graduation
James Aqpik
In the graduation at the station
they have a celebration throughout
the generation. After the
graduation I'm going to have vacation.
28


Graduation

Contributors 
Adrian Blackwell makes sculptures, takes photographs, practices architecture 
and studies urban design. 
Alan Blum is Professor in the programmes of Sociology, Social and Political 
Thought, and Communication and Culture at York University. He is also the 
Director of the Culture of Cities Project. 
Jenny Burman holds a Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Culture of Cities Project 
(2001-2). She recently completed her doctoral dissertation in the Graduate Pro- 
gramme in Social and Political Thought at York University. 
Jean-Frangois CBtC is Professor in the Department of Sociology at the Universite 
du Quebec i Montreal. His research interests include epistemology, sociological 
theory, the sociology of culture and literature and the study of American soci- 
eties. Among his recent publications are J.F.Chassay, J.F. C6t6, B. Gervais, edi- 
tors., Edgar Allan Poe. Une pense'e de la fin; and J.F. CatC, "Bakhtin's Dialogism 
Reconsidered Through Hegel's 'Monologism,'" in C. Brandist, G. Tihanov, eds., 
Materializing Bakhtin. The Bakhtin Circle and Social Theory. 
Jonathan Gainer is a novelist living in Berlin. 
25 8 Elke Grenzer is a PhD student in the Graduate Programme in Sociology and The 
Canadian Centre for German and European Studies at York University. She co- 
directed a documentary film with Peter Shevlin entitled Berlin Topographies 
(2000). 
Janet Jones is a Toronto artist who has her exhibited her paintings internation- 
ally; upcoming exhbitions include a European tour throughout Germany and 
France with "Ironic Turn." She is currently developing a series of paintings that 
problematize urban encounters, specifically the way women experience public 
spaces in cities. She is an Associate Professor in Visual Arts at York University. 
rYAN kAMSTRA is a shortcircuited language object in decompression. His text 
in this issue is part of a collaborative book-in-progress with Margaux 
Williamson entitled Castle of Pony. 
For information on projects: www.allfalldown.freewebsites.com. 
Janine Marchessault is Associate Professor and Director of the Graduate 
Programme in Film at York University. Her writings on film and culture have 
been published widely, and she is the co-editor of numerous anthologies includ- 
ing most recently, Wild Science (Routledge, 2000). 
Paul Moore studies urban sociology at York University, with an emphasis on the 
phenomenology of pleasure and amusement in city life. His doctoral dissertation 
will be an historical sociology of Canadian Movie theatres. 
Brian Poole studied in Toronto, New York, Poitiers, Marburg and Moscow and 
is currently teaching at the Institute for Comparative Literature, Freie Uniuer- 
sitat Berlin, where he hosted the ninth international Bakhtin Conference. He was 
a member of the editorial group working on the Russian edition of Bakhtin's 
collected works. He is currently working on a cultural history of allergies. 
James N. Porter teaches sociology at York University and is a member of OCAP. 
He is currently researching globalization effects in relations of local movement 
and city cultures in Toronto and MontrCal. 
John Porter has been a filmmaker, photographer, writer and performer in 
Toronto for 30 years. 
Peter Shevlin is an Australian born filmmaker and photographer currently living 
in Berlin. His films have screened in New York, London (England), Berlin and 
Toronto, and his photographs have been exhibited in Toronto and Australia. He 
CO-directed (with Elke Grenzer) Berlin Topographies (2000). 
Johanne Sloan is a MontrCaler who teaches in the Department of Art History 
and Communication Studies at  McGill University. She recently wrote catalogue 
essays for the exhibition Eluszve Paradise (National Gallery of Canada, 2001) 
and for the Peter Doig exhibition (Belkin Art Gallery, 2001). 
Geoff Stahl is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Art History and Communi- 
cation Studies at McGill University. His dissertation work focuses on anglo- 
- 
phone musicmaking in Montrkal. He contributes to the city's soundscape as 
host, on CKUT 90.3-FM, of the Rock'n'Roll Radio Root'n'Rot Roundup. 
Will Straw is Associate Professor of Communications within the Department of 
Art History and Communications Studies at McGill University in MontrCal. He 
is the co-editor (with Simon Frith and John Street) of the Cambridge Companion 
to Pop and Rock (2001), and the author of many articles on music, film and 
popular culture. 
Tom Taylor is a photographer as well as the Program Co-ordinator of Pleasure 
Dome. 
Kathryn Walter works with a range of media, sites and forms of presentation to 
study the intersections between visual art, social history, popular culture and 
design. She lives in Toronto. 
Margaux Williamson is an artist currently working on a video set in the forests 
of Toronto. Castle of Pony is her second image-text book. 
Kelly Wood received her Master of Fine Arts from the University of British 
Columbia and studied at Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design. Her "Continu- 
ous Garbage" prroject has shown widely in Canada and abroad. She currently 
lives and works in Vancouver. 


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