Tofu, Skytrain & Dumpsters:
What YOU Need to Know.

School was the least of my worries when I moved to New Westminster to attend Douglas. There are lots
of things nobody bothered to tell me. A few memorable discoveries include:

* summer jobs seldom offer enough hours for a self-supporter.

¢ colleges go on strike, but that only attracts more students.

¢ travel discounts apply to people under the age of twenty-five.

¢ B.C. Transit bus information operators usually only suggest bus routes unless you specify that you
want to take the SkyTrain where possible.

¢ panhandlers make a very good living, far better than that of a street musician.

* the yearly flood of second-year university transfer students into specialized programs puts a lot of
pressure on the three universities. Borderline students should try transferring earlier, or be doomed to
another year of the Other Press, the SkyDrain, and the grinding scream of overdue negotiations
rippling through your conciousness.

¢ blowing bubbles reduces stress by encouraging deep breathing.

¢ the people at Sikh and Hare Krishna temples will always feed desperate students: the former on all
nights except Sundays, the latter, on Sundays. Just take off your shoes, women cover your head, and
everybody stick to their gender-assigned side of the temple. Bring change if you have any.

¢ there is income assistance for some part-time workers as well as the unemployed. So they say....

¢ — tofu does not improve with age.

¢ _ bakeries and restaurants throw out food every day , so ask to work a closing shift. At one point I even
had to do a little impromptu volunteer work in that direction. On the other hand, who says you have
to work there? The Granville Island Market dumpsters are reportedly a good place to start.

¢ don’t worry about finding furniture. People are always trying to pan theirs off on someone, and the
creative possibilities of an orange plaid sofa and a khaki lamp are endless.

¢ and before you move out of your place, get someone, anyone, preferably Mom or Dad ’cos they’re
free, to fix all those things you can’t fix yourself or you'll probably lose your precious damage
deposit.

 

Michelle Lavallee

Cafeteria
Manager’s
Comments

Questioned

With the cafeteria’s contract
soon running out, Douglas College
administration should take a stand
concerning its management.

When I asked cafeteria
manager Ted Malek whether he had
heard of the contraversial firing of
a HIV-positive White Spot
employee (the cafeteria, ICL foods,
is owneed by White Spot), he
replied:

"If he was gay, I support the
firing one hundred percent," and
later: "If he was a victim of AIDS,
he should get his job back."

I asked whether gay people
could be considered to be "victims"
of AIDS. He replied, "No."

I sent a memo to Norman
Gludovatz, Douglas College stu-

dent society speaker, and Robert
Porter, DCSS Human Rights Co-
ordinator, quoting this interview.
Both have expressed concern and
are looking into the matter.

Terry Leonard, director of
Physical Plant, (after insisting that
I not record his response,) said,
"I’m not too impressed with the
commentsmadeby Malek, but I’d
like to see the letter and I will con-
front him."

It is not known at the time of
writing if Leonard has dealt with
the matter yet.

Gludovatz expressed personal
interest in the possibility of a
cafeteria boycott, but since the Stu-
dent Society has not met to discuss
the idea yet, no plans have been
made.

Time is running out. Bidders
for the cafeteria contract toured the
premise on June 13; their bids were
due on June 21; later this week, the
contract is to be awarded.
Watch for more.

Michelle Lavallee

YOUR LETTER HERE!

TA LETTRE ICI!

 

 

 

Mary Kelly
Interim

Vancouver Art Gallery
running to July 30th
by Krista Solie”

People often think of a
humourles, didactic woman when
they think of a feminist. They
would know they are sorrily wrong
if they met Mary Kelly and saw her
work Interim at the Vancouver Art
Gallery.

Interim is a huge, humourous,
poignant, powerful piece of instal-
lation art. It is not traditional paint-
ing or sculpture; instead it is
steelwork, plexiglass and bar
graphs. Arranged in four parts,
CORPUS (body), PECUNIA
(money), HISTORIA (history), and
POTESTAS (power); Interim ex-
amines the notions of what is a
woman in our society.

CORPUS is a series of
plexiglass panels of narration and
photographs which explore how
women’s bodies are seen through
fashion, romanitc fiction and
medicine, PECUNIA is a series of
folded shiny metal cards with
engraved narrations about
newspaper adds, greeting card
sayings and economic advice ex-
amining female relations with
materal goods, HISTORIA isa set
of four open books with stories
about the feminist movement and it
effected women’s lives, while
POTESTAS is a series of metal bar
graphs and plaques demonstrating
United Nations statistics about
gender relationships relating to
population, labour and wealth.

Perhaps the most noticable
thing about this piece is its large
amount of text. You might com-
plain about all of the reading to be
done, but this is excused as you
delve into the into the minds of
countless women. You are sur-
rounded by women’s voices and
they are powerful.

\____ Many of them are real. While

 

 

 

creating Interim, Kelly kept
several notebooks, her "archives,"
in which she recorded the conver-
sations of aquaintances, friends and
family.

HISTORIA is a moving ex-
pample of women’s stories. Each of
the four book sculptures are opened
to a page which begins with a stat-
ment of how old the storyteller was
in 1968. We are given the perspec-
tives of four different women who
would now be 50, 43, 36 and 25.
Their experinces and involvement

with the
women’s
movement
demonstra
te radically 7
different
perspectiv ©
es. The eld-

est seesm™
feminism
through a@
theoritcal’

viewpoint
while ex-y
aming our
culture, the
next is in-.

feminism for political change, the
second youngest sees feminism as
a way to improve the labour move-
ment, while the youngest’s in-
cludes a declaration, the typical cry
of her generation: "I believe in
Women’s rights but I’m not a
feminist," and shows how the
women’s movement should and
can be involved in the fight against
AIDS. For people who know little
about or ignore the feminist move-
ment, HISTORIA portrays how
vital it is to perserve the history of
women and women’s history
before reactionary elements erase
it.

CORPUS’ narratives are

  

Interim Is Invigorating and Acces

humourous stories about women
dealing with aging ranging from
resorting to fashion and makeup to
more poignant stories about
women and their treatment by the
medical establishment. Particularly
moving is a story about a middle
aged women fearing she is preg-
nant. She tries to explain to a doctor
why she wants an abortion only to
realize he isn’t listening to her.
Another deals with one woman’s
fears of aging because she knows
she will become dependent on her
family and worse she knows she

   
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 

will be ignored by society as a
whole because she will be just an
old woman.

PECUNIA ’s metal note cards
are visually divided into groups
based on female socital roles such
as Mater (mother) and Conju
(wife). Each card is coppery and
shiny, some are completely opened
and easy to view, and others nearly
closed and you must crane ones
necks to read inside them. Their
narratives relate such incidents as a
woman being terrorized by a nasty
bank machine, a woman desperate-
ly wanting to buy a house and
another trying to cope with her
budget while grocery shopping for

 

 

vee wenssnsseone -

sible Feminist Art

a starving family.

POTESTAS is visually strik-
ing. Simply, it is a set of steel bars
graphically illustrating the fact (ac-
cording to a 1985 United Nations
report) women perform two-thirds
of the world’s work, recieve one-
tenth of its income and own less
than one-hundredth of its property.
There is a resounding impact when
one sees the shiny steel metal bar
representing men looming skyward
while the rusty bar representing
women is barely existant when the
graph illustrates
the sexs share of

sists of small
brass plaques
representing
stories about
women in
positionms of
power and how
they handle it.
One is a tribute
to Corazon
Aquino and how
the mild-man-
nered, demure
women toppled
an authoritian

dictatorship, shocking males
world-wide.

Interim raises questions about
female identity but it is not without
a special brand of humour. Roman-
tic novels are spoofed in HIS-
TORIA as two women exchange
"The Look of Utter and Tragic
Agreement." Fairy tales amusingly
represent aging in CORPUS when
one woman imagines herself as an
old crone bent on turning couples
into toads because of their youth.
PECUNIA has sections of advice
on how to make a million dollars -
"HOW TO MAKE A MILLION?
GET PEOPLE TO GIVE IT TO
YOU!" reads one. POSTESTAS

ee
She

=

mocks men as bringers of progress
as they are tragically unable to deal
with affirmative action programs.

 

 

 

Erotisme

 

 

Detail, Corpus,1984,85

Yet serious questions are
asked. Where has the feminist
movement gone, and is it disap-
pearing? Are middle aged women
shunned by society because they
are no longer fertile? Are women
totally dictated by how the media
views their sexuality? What types
of power are women allowed and
how can they use it?

Questions about art are asked
as well. Can written words be art?
Is art always necessarily paintings
and sculptures? Should art repre-
sent the everyday happenings of
women’s lives?

The most important question
Kelly asks is: can any one person
speak for women as a whole? In-
dicating that while popular media
thinks so, she does not. The beauty
of Interim is this belief.It allows
Kelly to suggest the conditions of
countless womens’ lives and
thoughts. Interim is powerful, and
open to anyone who wonders what
women are.

note: the Vancouver Art Gal-
lery is open late every Thursday,

and it’s free .
nee