Notebook On Cities And Culture

Colin Marshall sits down near Nara, Japan's Tōdai-ji temple with artist, critic, and teacher Christopher Olson. They discuss his thoughts, as a Winnipegger born and raised, on Guy Maddin's My Winnipeg; the displacement, discombobulation, and respectable bullshitting of Chris Marker's Sans Soleil, a copy of which he keeps at all times on his phone; high-risk art, and the stuff that requires more time spent absorbing than creating; the still-exciting art school idea of limitations and restrictions as the engines of creation; whether or not Japan is "a land of images"; why you can't resist photographing your food in Japan, and what this has to do with the cultural sense of doing things properly or not doing them at all; the utilitarian, quick-and-dirty mindset of our North American homelands, which we notice with special force after having spent time amid Japan's superlegitimacy; the modern west's lack of filial piety, which he came to understand after getting involved with a Japanese lady (in a relationship tha