[PHOTO] Sculpture by Iris Häussler

From Villa Toronto:

Joseph Wagenbach was born in Germany in 1929 and immigrated to Canada in 1962. Since immigrating, he lived as a recluse in his small house on Robinson Street, Toronto, where he created an obsessive production of sculptures and drawings. After a severe stroke in 2006, Wagenbach was considered not well enough to live on his own and was referred to several retirement homes before he was taken into a bachelor apartment on Crawford Street, Toronto. In the summer of 2009 Wagenbach disappeared, his whereabouts unknown to this day.

At the time of the discovery, in 2006, Iris Häussler opened Wagenbach’s home to the public and organized guided tours through the house, offering a glimpse into his life and works, and engaging the public into the assessment of his artistic practice and biography. In 2009, three years after the discovery of Wagenbach’s oeuvre and subsequent life, the Joseph Wagenbach Foundation was established with the mandate to manage and promote Wagenbach’s artistic legacy.

Iris Häussler was born in Germany and trained at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich. Häussler’s work has been shown at exhibitions internationally, including a two-year solo project at the Art Gallery of Ontario (Toronto) and participated at the 18thBiennale of Sydney, 2013. Häussler exhibited in the exhibition More Real, Art in the Age of Truthiness, Site Santa Fe (Santa Fe) and Minneapolis Institute of Arts (Minneapolis). Häussler was a stipendiary of the Kunstfonds (Bonn) and won the Karl Hofer Prize 1999 (Berlin). Since her immigration to Canada she has received grants from the Toronto Arts Council, the Ontario Arts Council, and the Canada Council for the Arts.

[BLOG] Some Thursday links

• blogTO notes a running race this summer sponsored by Nike on the Toronto Islands.


• Centauri Dreams argues that the sustainability of technological civilizations should be taken into account by the Drake equation.


• The Dragon's Tales notes that a F-117 downed by Serbia in 1999 ended up sparking a Russian technological revolution.


• Joe. My. God. notes the release of Windows 10, while Wave Without A Shore's C.J. Cherryh is unexcited.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money makes an argument against law school.


• Marginal Revolution notes Venezuela is massively in debt to China.


• The Power and the Money's Noel Maurer notes 3-D printed houses are not yet economically competitive with conventional constructions.


• Torontoist looks at now-demolished Stollery's at Yonge and Bloor.


• Towelroad notes that Chilean legislators have passed a civil unions bill.


• Window on Eurasia suggests Russia sees Europe through the perspective of a pre-1914 imperialist, wonders if a Mongolian shift to the traditional script will cut off ties with Mongol peoples in Russia, and notes that a Belarusian national church is still some ways off.


• Writing Through the Fog shares beautiful pictures from Hawai'i.


• Zero Geography's Mark Graham examines "informational magnetism" on Wikipedia.

[LINK] "Catholic Church 'Allah' appeal shot down in Malaysia"

As reported by Al Jazeera's Kate Mayberry, this court decision has more to do with a religiously-tinged ethnic conflict specific to Malaysia than with religious conflict, as such.

Malaysia's highest court has rejected the Catholic Church's application to appeal a ban on its use of the word "Allah" in the Malay-language section of its newspaper, the Catholic Herald, bringing to an end a protracted legal battle over constitutional rights.

The five-man panel, headed by Federal Court Judge Abdul Hamid Embong, on Wednesday dismissed unanimously the application, the second by the Church.

The bench said there was no indication of any "procedural unfairness" in the court's earlier decision not to allow the Church's appeal.

[. . .]

Malay-speaking Malaysians, mostly indigenous people from the Borneo states of Sabah and Sarawak, have long used "Allah" as the Malay translation for "God", but in 2008 the government threatened to withdraw the paper's permit if it continued using the word.

The Catholic Church sought a judicial review and the High Court ruled in 2009 that it was Malay-speaking Christians' constitutional right to use the word, which is widely used by Christians in Indonesia and much of the Middle East.

[LINK] "Russia's Crisis Was Big Fun in Belarus Until the Economic Strife Spread"

Bloomberg BusinessWeek's Leonid Ragozin reports on the consequences of the Russian economic crisis for neighbouring and allied Belarus.

As the Russian ruble plunged 45 percent against the dollar last month, Andrey Kabanov made two forays from Belarus into Moscow. The entertainment entrepreneur is now the owner of two secondhand BMWs bought for about two-thirds the market price in his native Minsk. Not that he needed the cars for everyday use. “A friend is now driving one of them, and the other is just sitting in the garage," Kabanov says. "But it is an asset that I can always sell at a profit." Thousands of Belarusians such as Kabanov flocked into Russian cities before the New Year, taking advantage of the cheap ruble and the absence of border control between two countries united in a trade association known as the Eurasian Union.

For Belarusians, at least at first, their neighbor's economic crisis and worsening relations with the West brought a variety of benefits. When Moscow retaliated for EU sanctions by banning imports of cheese, apples, and salmon, some Belarusian businesses took to repackaging European products so they appear to have been made in Belarus. Two entrepreneurs involved in the repackaging business explained how the scheme works: EU-produced fruit and vegetables are swapped for their Belarusian-produced equivalents of inferior quality. The latter would be sold in the guise of EU produce in Belarus, while EU-made products would proceed to the much more lucrative Russian market. (Neither person involved in the repackaging would agree to be identified.)

Another scheme involved sending trucks full of EU produce from Belarus to Kazakhstan, also a member of the Eurasian Union. The cargo would never reach its destination, vanishing somewhere along the long route that cuts through Russia. Alterations to products exported from Europe also allowed a change in their nationality. Norwegian salmon salted in Belarus would become Belarusian, for instance, even if the entire process amounted to sprinkling a heap of fish with a handful of salt.

Many people are now opting out of the repackaging business, in part as a reflection of increasing legal risks and the waning appeal of the Russian market. The cross-border shopping bonanza has also ended now that the Belarusian ruble has fallen 30 percent against Western currencies this month, reflecting the country's overwhelming economic dependence on Russia.

When it comes to order, security, and relatively low corruption, Belarus looks something like a post-Soviet Singapore. But its economic policies are decidedly backward, smacking of the late USSR. "While the devaluation in Russia was conducted in a transparent way without imposing any restrictions on the circulation of hard currency, the Belarusian government opted for the most confusing and convoluted way possible," says economist Yaroslav Romanchuk. The explanation is simple: President Alexander Lukashenko had publicly pledged there would be no devaluation and no price hike, Romanchuk says, so when that outcome became inevitable, the devaluation was conducted in a way that allowed officials to avoid ever using the dreaded word.

[LINK] "Spain’s Partido Popular’s snide attacks on Catalan"

I can't think of a precise equivalent to the politically-inspired separation between the Catalan of Catalonia and the Catalan of adjacent Spanish regions, as described critically in Open Democracy by Alessio Colonnelli. I will content myself by noting that, in a free society, this distinction can survive only if its speakers want it to survive.

Catalan (or subsequently referred to as Catalan-Valencian) isn’t among the magic EU 24. On its official web page, the European Commission says it “maintains the policy that all EU citizens have the right to access all EU documents in the official language of the Commission, and should be able to write to the Commission and receive a response in their own language.”

The 11.5 million-strong Catalan-Valencian language is regarded as a regional language; its status is hence hierarchically inferior. That’s not the result of EU shortsightedness, but the upshot of manoeuvering from Madrid.

Bureaucracy and political meddling of the eye-for-an-eye type are the cause of this. The cultural, linguistic and editorial weight of Catalan-Valencian has been brushed aside. A crime against diversity.

Whilst Dublin pushed Irish Gaelic through Brussels’ mesh, Madrid has craftily resorted to a loophole to keep Catalan-Valencian away from the Continent’s linguistic centre-stage. The Spanish political establishment has asked for Catalan-Valencian not to be included – Spain mustn’t be internationally identified with any other languages other than Spanish.

[. . .]

Gaelic is something Ireland is proud of. Catalan-Valencian is something Spain would gladly do without, like an embarrassing relative, the awkward one you don’t want to be associated with. A bit like a skeleton in the proverbial closet.

Catalan and Valencian are one and as one, it deserves space on Spain’s international stage. That way you’d avoid the painful and hurtful case for secession. You’d stop talking about independence. You’d stop setting up bogus referendums with no constitutional value. You’d unblock the national discourse and start talking about very serious matters concerning the country as a whole.

Podemos has set a good example; it’s stretched a compassionate and friendly hand to the idea of the Països Catalans, the age-old, controversial concept of The Catalan Countries, brilliantly depicted by Joan Fuster in his 1962 seminal work – Nosaltres, els Valencians (Us, the Valencians) – on the topic of Valencian and Catalan being really the same linguistic expression of one community, of one culture.

[LINK] "Navajo Nation president sworn in despite losing re-election"

Al Jazeera notes how the refusal of the winning candidate in the Navajo Nation's recent presidential election to demonstrate a fluency in the Navajo language has led to political uncertainty.

The president of the Navajo Nation was sworn in Tuesday to continue as the tribe's top leader — even though he lost his re-election bid.

That's because the presidency of the largest Native American nation in the United States is in limbo over an election that hasn't been scheduled. As a result, Ben Shelly will remain president as part of a deal he struck with lawmakers until the mess gets sorted out.

[. . .]

Tribal lawmakers were sworn in during a public ceremony nearby in Fort Defiance that was broadcast live online. Speakers at the event hardly mentioned the presidential race that was thrown into turmoil before the tribe's Nov. 4 general election when candidate Chris Deschene was disqualified because of a ruling that he wasn't fluent in the Navajo language, which sparked a passionate debate on the importance of the language in public life.

The Navajo Nation Supreme Court mandated that the election be held by Jan. 31. But Shelly and lawmakers approved a do-over allowing all previous 17 primary election candidates to face off in a special election in June. The top two vote-getters would move on to the August general election, and the new president would take the oath of office in September.

[LINK] "How Indigo plans to become the world’s first “cultural department store”"

Carol Toller's November 2014 Canadian Business article, recently reposted at MSN, makes the case for Canadian bookstore chain Indigo's ability to transition to a new viable model of sales.

Heather Reisman[ . . ., t]he CEO of Indigo, the Toronto-based retail chain that built its business selling books, has been working frenetically to shore up plummeting sales: The company’s revenues have dropped for three consecutive years, with the most recent fiscal year ending in a $31-million net loss on revenues of $868 million. When she launched the company in 1996, Reisman called books the “heart and soul” of the business. But times have changed, and while books may be the heart and soul of the chains, they’re no longer the bread and butter.

To bolster sales, Reisman has been working to reinvent Indigo, which operates 92 superstores and 131 small-format stores under the Indigo banner, as well as Chapters, Coles, Indigospirit, SmithBooks and The Book Company. Over the past several years, the company has been quietly introducing stationery and gift items, but in the last year, Reisman has begun moving far more quickly to fill the stores with non-book items, expand its toy department and introduce exclusive lines like American Girl. (The chain opened its third doll boutique at Ottawa’s Rideau Street Chapters this month and plans to roll out up to 15 in total across the country.) Customers can still pop in to thumb through the latest Donna Tartt or Stephen King novel, but these days Indigo shoppers are just as likely to pick up a faux-fur-covered hot water bottle, some seasonal dinnerware or a cheerful print to hang in their family room, to name just a few of the new, affordably aspirational houseware items the retailer now offers. Reisman has taken to referring to Indigo as the world’s first “cultural department store,” a name that helpfully underscores the Oprah-esque lifestyle the chain has begun pushing: safe, tasteful, stylish—and, of course, well read.

At its annual general meeting in June, Reisman divided the company’s history into three distinct eras: T1 was Indigo’s initial, book-focused phase, which began when it opened; T2, a five-year transition phase, beginning around 2010, that saw the chain move into e-reading and the digital world; and T3, which marks the start of a “whole new Indigo.” T3 is now arriving, she said, and Indigo is heading into “true takeoff mode.” If it soars, Reisman will have transformed her flagging bookstores into a new commercial niche that some industry observers call a retailing first. What people who scoff at the candles and throws miss is that Reisman doesn’t really sell books. She sells taste.

The cash-strapped chain is facing some mighty headwinds. Indigo closed three high-profile stores in Toronto this spring, including the city’s iconic World’s Biggest Bookstore, which it had inherited when it purchased rival Chapters in 2001. Those that remain are devoting fewer square feet to books and more to the company’s eclectic mix of lifestyle offerings. Books still represent two-thirds of Indigo’s revenues, but sales have been trending downward over the past few years (unit sales were down by more than 3% in 2013, although they saw a small, unexplained uptick last quarter), as retailers across Canada experience what Reisman described as “meaningful sales declines.”

Dig into Indigo’s recent financial statements, and there are also signs that the transformation Reisman initiated five years ago is beginning to pay off. Revenues from general merchandise have risen by about $33 million over the past year. With the help of a certain sizzling-hot toy property and the chain’s steady move into a dizzying array of non-book items, same-store sales were up 8.3% at the company’s superstores during the first quarter of this fiscal year. (Things are going less smoothly at the small-format stores, such as Coles, where it may be difficult to squeeze in a whole department store. Same-store sales were up just 1.9%, following a 5% overall decline the year before.) Although Indigo won’t say what its target books to non-books product ratio is, it’s clear they haven’t reached it yet.

[MUSIC] Björk, "Hyperballad"

"Björk - Hyperballad" (Watch on YouTube)

It's a "Hyperballad" kind of day.