Storefront Manitoba's Playlist is a monthly curated list of films, podcasts, and other resources that aim to entertain, inspire, enrich, and advance critical discussion.
In this liminal time of endless winter and covid, we turn our attention to the void. Besides, Bruno Zevi tells us the void is the very essence of architecture, not the "sum of the width, length, and height". Negative space in painting, pauses in a piece of music - absence is rich with potential.
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We turn to Michel Mosvoid who uses voids as the space for community and gathering, Kazuko Akamatsu who advocates porous buildings that mingle indoor and outdoor conditions. Raj Patel reconsiders value in his talk on the Value of Nothing. Graham Coreil-Allen categorizes all the invisible public spaces (or nothing spaces) that we tend to overlook.
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Staring into the abyss can be disheartening, but they say the night is always darkest before the the dawn.
REFLEXION
Greg Labute
2010 | 1 Minute
Two prisoners are trapped in a void. Trying separately to escape, they discover each other and have to overcome their fear in order to connect and find a way out. Or do they really discover themselves? Filmmaker Greg Labute renders an austere nightmare world using the SANDDE's stereoscopic animation drawing tool and a dark, slightly perverse imagination.
A MATTER OF VOID
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Canadian Centre for Architecture
2021 | 9 Minutes
In the second Models Talk film published in collaboration with the Canadian Centre for Architecture, Japanese architect Kazuko Akamatsu explains how she used voids to create a feeling of openness at the Shibuya Stream skyscraper in Japan.
RAJ PATEL: THE VALUE OF NOTHING
Link TV
2010 | 45 Minutes
If economics is about choices, who gets to make them? Activist and academic Raj Patel says that prices often mislead us, and he reveals the hidden costs of goods. To demonstrate his argument that the free market and corporations distort price and value, Patel suggests that the true price of a hamburger would be $200 if we factor in the hidden environmental and health costs. In this Link TV special, Patel offers a controversial critique of our present political system and argues that to understand our current economic crisis, we need to rethink our very meaning of democracy by re-balancing society and limiting markets.
FROM NOTHING, SOMETHING
Collective Eye Films
2012 | 79 Minutes
This documentary profiles creative thinkers across a variety of disciplines to find the common techniques, habits and neuroses that lead to breakthrough ideas. This is an inspiring, intimate, often funny look at the creative process - straight from the brains of some of culture's most unique and accomplished talents.
NAMES vs. THE NOTHING
99% Invisible
2012 | 12 Minutes
New Public Sites is an investigation into some of the invisible sites and overlooked features of our everyday public spaces. These are the liminal spaces within cities that are not traditionally framed as “public space” because, quite frankly, they are often ugly and unpleasant, the leftover scraps of urban design centered on the automobile. By giving these places succinct, fun and poetic names and leading people on playful walking tours, Graham Coreil-Allen says we can help start a discourse about our public spaces and how we want to envision them for the future.
HOW A DEBATE OVER 'NOTHING' SPLIT WESTERN PHILOSOPHY APART
CBC Ideas
2021 | 54 Minutes
"Nothing," it turns out, is really quite something. As in the concept of nothingness. So much so, that in the 1920s, a debate about "nothing" between two philosophers led to a lasting schism in Western philosophy. They were Martin Heidegger and Rudolf Carnap. On the one hand, Heidegger plays with language in an attempt to talk about nothing, whereas Carnap claims the dictates of logic reduce any talk of nothing to nonsense. Their conflicting views on nothing catalyzed what's now known as the 'continental-analytic split' in philosophy.
9/11 MEMORIAL & MUSEUM, NEW YORK
Monocle 24: The Urbanist
2021 | 7 Minutes
Monocle’s Chris Cermak assesses the evolution of the space left behind after the World Trade Center attacks in New York.
HOW MANY SLAVES WORK FOR YOU?
Made in a Free World
As an addendum to Raj Patel's talk on the value of nothing, we suggest you try out the interactive quiz "How many slaves work for you?"
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The survey allows users to input select data about their consumer spending habits, which then outputs a graphical “footprint” of the user’s participation in modern-day slavery (as quantified by their consumption of items created by forced labour and child labour.)
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