Malevich

This past Monday, I had to do a presentation for my Russian Studies class. On the same day, I had to submit an Abstract Statement for my final essay and a fieldtrip report. So, three assignments in one day. I didn't really think it through when choosing a presentation date.

The presentation was the most stressful of the three, as it was worth the most marks, and if I failed, I would fail in front of the class.

I did not meet my presentation partner in person until the day of. A list hard circulated around class, I'd written my name down in one of the slots, and someone wrote their's down next to mine. They contacted me over email and we sent emails back and forth as our method of communication.

Our topic was Abstract Art in Russia, with a focus on Kandinsky and Malevich. My partner had taken the initiative in starting the Powerpoint, and had begun the section on Kandinsky. So, I offered to cover Malevich as a way of dividing the workload.

This was Kandinksy's key contribution:

This was Malevich's:

Titled: "Black Square". Let's check how much a reproduction of this image might cost...

...$590 to $1950 depending on what size you want.

I felt like I'd gotten the more difficult pitch for the audience.

And my instructor was a big fan of Malevich. When she showed us part of "Victory Over the Sun", an opera that was a collaborative work between Russian artists, she indicated that the backdrop was Malevich's "famous painting". It was Black Square, and I don't think most of the people in the class even perceived it as a painting.

She showed another one of Malevich's paintings, "Yellow and Black", which is a series of overlapping yellow and black geometric shapes. She showed it from three different angles, saying that when you observe it in person, it takes a long time to analyze, because it looks correct no matter which way you view it.

I was lost. But I knew that if she felt strongly about it, I had to sell it.

I was ranting to someone about how I'd have to fill ten minutes (it was a twenty minute presentation, so assuming I took half). She said, "You've already been talking about this for over ten minutes" and suggested I just speak as I had been.

"It's just a black square! A BLACK SQUAAAAARE!"

No, that wouldn't do.

Even though me and my partner never met in person, they claimed to know who I was, as we had been grouped together in our first class. Because this person's name was something traditionally male in Canadian culture, I envisioned a guy in that group that never again returned to class. There are some people who just don't go to class, read the online notes and submit assignments online. A few weeks previous we had a presentation by someone that nobody recognized. I assumed it was a similar situation, especially because I said that we'd meet in class and they said it was impossible because they had a class directly after.

Day of, we're supposed to meet in the library. I can't find the guy, but I notice the shy girl from the back of the class. "Uh... Gryphon?"

Yup, my partner. I'd felt bad because I hadn't been too responsive with my emails (a frustration I'm sure many of my readers associate with me), but it turns out she was in every class and had not approached me. Whatever.

We get into class. Our instructor is sick and says she's "just trying to stay conscious". Not good. You don't want the person in charge of your grade to be in a negative headspace, even if it has nothing to do with you. She says that we have a "Very interesting topic". Again, not good. She's invested in this presentation, so if we step wrong, she's going to know. Each presentation before us has been at the end of the class, and she's cut into their time, but she offers us the opportunity to open the class, so that she doesn't cut into our time. So we'll have to do the full 20 minutes, and she's clearly invested in a topic I have no confidence in.

At first, we can't get the projector to work. It's just showing a blue screen despite the Powerpoint showing up on the computer. She has to call for tech support. Nobody gets why it won't work. I have to choke back jokes about this being Malevich's famous work, "Blue Square".

Eventually it clicks on for no reason and we can present. I start off with a definition of abstract art and it's influence on Russia, then hand it over to my partner to cover Kandinsky. She's short, and so I have to cover the bulk of the time with Malevich.

We start in with his early works:

At this time he used bold strokes and usually conveyed one or two people.

Then we went into his inspiration from cubism and futurism:

That's the Knife Grinder. We then go into his collaborative work, the opera, "Victory Over the Sun"

And the style he developed with his colleagues, "Alogism".

The "log" in "Alogism" stands for "logic", and the "A", is similar to "Asymmetrical" which means "Not symetrical". So "Alogism" means "Not logical".

The point of Alogism was to contradict all conventional aspects of art so that it challenged viewers to understand how their own minds work.

However, Malevich felt that by simply rebelling against artistic trends, was still allowing for artists to be defined by those trends.

He felt that God had given humanity talent to create, and that immitating God's creations was theft.

So he rejected form, including his own human form. He strove to reduce everything to zero, which would reveal a void. But he wasn't satisfied with the void, he wanted to arrive on the other side, and create the first truly original human creation.

And thus he created Black Square, which was bringing "Zero to one"

He began his own art movement, "Suprematism", which meant "Supremacy over form". He said that Black Square was the face of Suprematism, and it was his "Royal infant" that would grow into the rest of Suprematism.

Having to call a black square a royal infant in front of a crowd of colleagues has to be one of my most humiliating moments.

After this I showed another one of his works:

That's "White on White", two slightly differently off-coloured white squares set atop one another. I explained this as the tilted white square representing motion. I said that when I first looked at this image, I thought that if I wanted to represent motion, I might draw a bird or a train, but then I realized that with those images came all the perceptions and biases associated with them With a neutral image such as White on White, we can observe the concept of motion in its purest form, without any attached biases.

Then we looked at Yellow and Black

This was the class example where our instructor said it took a long time to analyze because it looked correct no matter which angle you observed it from.

I said that because it looked correct no matter the orientation, this gave the impression of a lack of gravity, and a sense of motion, where you could easily imagine it "tripping through space" which emphasized Malevich's "Cosmic reality" which opposed and earthly one.

At the end of the presentation she thanked us for a very interesting presentation. At the end of class, she repeated that she would like to thank today's presenters. Felt that was a good sign

Got our grade back today. Unfortunately, it was the worst grade that I have received in this class to date.

That means we only got 97%! So far my grades are:

Test 1: 100%

Test 2: 100%

Abstract: 100%

Presentation: 97%

I should just move to Russia.

Court Again

Went to court today. I've mentioned it, but my landlord had been increasing my rent by an illegal amount and refusing to show me my lease. When I opted to pay him only what he could legally claim based on increases from my initial rent, he decided to put in a court order.

I told him that if my initial rent was $939.00 on January 2016, then it could only have been increased to $953.09 at a 1.5% increase in 2017, and then to $970.25 at a 1.8% increase in 2018. But he was saying I owed him $972.54 for 2017 and $990.05 for 2018.

He told me that my initial rent was discounted, and the discount became inactive after my first year, "as we had discussed". This is the man who told me that I had to pay him an extra half month of rent because even if I had moved in January 1st, he had accepted me December 15th. This is the guy who, for the first four months that I had lived in the unit, told me my cheque bounced and that I would have to write him another, and I would have to show him a bank statement showing he was wrong. Giving a discount would be very out of character for him.

I told him that we had not discussed the discount, asked him what the discount was for, and told him I would need to see the lease to verify. He refused to answer all these questions. I also told him that he had reported me as having paid less than I had for June and October 2017 and I had bank statements to prove it. He refused to comment.

Happened in a text conversation, so I had him on record for denying me my lease and not answering questions. Told him I would be reporting this information if he chose to take this to court, that I would be pushing to have him pay the court application fee, and that I would be looking into paying the Landlord and Tenant Board directly from hereon out.

So, knowing what information I had, I was surprised that he decided to issue me a court notice.

This is the second time I've been to court with him this year. First time, when I explained the situation, his lawyer cussed him out, "F*** my life. He's trying to charge for fifty f***ing dollars. I don't give a sh**, I really don't give a sh**, he's trying to evict on pennies". Then when I told him my take on the rent situation he said "I'll take your word for it". When he told the judge the situation, she laughed at my landlord, and he wound up having to pay some minor charges.

 After that exchange, I was surprised my landlord wanted to go round two.

I saw the judge again this time, but there were two hearings being held, and she was overseeing the other one. Saw the lawyer, but he was representing a different case. Neither of them recognized me.

I had prepared thoroughly once more. I had bank statements for every month since moving into the unit as well as images of each of the cheques, I had copies for each rental notice and records of him denying me the lease, and three copies of all relevant information.

As soon as I told his lawyer that he had been denying me the lease, she was just like "I'll make a copy for you. I'm doing that right now."

So now I have a copy of my lease. I'm the first person that I know of in my complex to have one.

Aggravatingly enough, it turns out his numbers mostly check out. I had a 2% "prompt payment discount" in 2016, meaning that I got 2% off if I paid on the first of the month. The discount wore off at the end of the year, meaning that it was a 1.5% increase from $957.78, not $939.

I have no idea why he would refuse me access to the lease if his numbers checked out, or why he would refuse to answer what the discount was for if there was a valid answer.

We had never discussed this. We had in fact never met before I moved in, I had only communicated with the then-Superintendant. It's also a little weird that the base rent is not stated on the lease, only the discounted rent, and that it states in the fine print that the base rent is 2% more than the stated amount.

But still, it says the lease was active January 1st, 2016, so I'm glad I didn't pay for December 15, 2015 like he was requesting. And he still misreported me for June and October 2017.

Whatever. I have a small expense to pay, but after two years and two months I finally managed to obtain my lease.

Sickness, Exercise, Board Game

I've been sick the past few days. Started with stomach cramps, turned into digestive issues. Cramps subsided, still had difficulty digesting. Low fever developed. Was blinking in and out of consciousness for almost three days. Day and night didn't mean much to me. Had to cancel two work shifts and skip a lecture. One of the people I work with was unavailable, so you can look at it as either me being fortunate in not having to cancel on another person, or me missing out on a day off.

It's Kind of like what I had at Christmas, but at least the most painful symptoms came one after the other instead of all at once, for some reason. Kind of annoyed that the same thing happened to me twice in under three months,

My roommate got it too, right after I got better. If everyone's going to get it, it's better to rotate the illness than to have it all at once, since it leaves at least one able-bodied person to go out and fetch supplies.

Fever dreams are always quite entertaining. This time, I had a dream that one of the pet cats in Guelph passed away, but she came back to life as a bag of shredded carrot. In my dream, my mother described seeing her attempting to possess the bag of shredded carrot, and encouraging her by calling "Come here little one! It's okay honey!" So this bag of shredded carrot actually came to life and would meow, purr and curl up on your lap. I vividly remember that this specific bag of shredded carrot was inspired by one that is currently in my fridge. In my dream, I remember saying that I was grateful that she came back to us, but wasn't it strange that she could live without a brain and make sounds without vocal chords.

There was a certain time when I was sick, when the cramps and the fever were gone and I had regained my energy, but I still had the digestive issues and needed to be near a bathroom at all times. That issue did not seem to be subsiding at all, and it made me wonder if this was just something I'd have to live with from here on out. I got better in one fell swoop the next day, though.

Today I managed to leave the house for the first time since the illness set in. Tomorrow, I will go back to work. I don't know if I'm back 100% though. All I had appetite for today were some crispers, and I keep sweating, even in the cold. I feel great though.

My roommate is a former body builder and is the type that exercises for enjoyment. The type that feels stress and needs to "work it out". I can't empathize. When I feel stressed, I want to eat and sleep. Exercise feels boring, repetitive, painful, and time consuming. But I'm trying to turn my mind around. He dug out a track through the snow in our backyard through the community area to the fence that separates us from the creek. At first I didn't think it would be very strenuous, because the track isn't very long, but it poses a unique challenge. When running on a track or on a treadmill, you usually start strong and then run until you meet your stride. With this thing, you sprint to the fence, skid to a stop, sprint back to the yard, skid to a stop and sprint back. Plus half of it is downhill, so every time you hit the fence, you sprint back uphill.

I've used it three times.  First time I did so covertly under the dead of night, because I wanted to find out how out of shape I was privately. I overdid it, wound up hacking and coughing so bad it lasted better part of a day and I pretended I was sick to everyone else so I didn't have to explain that I was still gasping for breath 12 hours after having done the run.

My roommate does that run while punching the air, holding weights, wearing a weighted vest, and wearing a gas mask that prevents part of his oxygen flow to simulate being on a mountain. And he does it for fun.

My brother was in a Sailor Moon board game commercial. He's Sailor Mercury, and he got 2nd place in the tournament.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LIfB0L3r26k&feature=youtu.be