(WWW) Hegemonics

The Depreciation of the Fake, Part ll

Munching On Planet of the Arts

by James Baker

his article came into being when it was
relayed to me, through that most semiotic of
Eco-esque communication channels, The
Hoffman, that Jonathan and Harald, two of
the editors of Planet of the Arts, wanted someone
(me) to write about the PoA and Planet Hollywood
as cultural entities. Well, if they were going to spring

for dinner, why not? Irony is always easier to appre- .

ciate when some one else is footing the bill (and
someone is always paying for it). But what, b’sides
the word “planet” in the title, do these two “enti-
ties” have in common, or even in contrast?

The more | think about Planet Hollywood, the
less | like it, and | didn’t like it that much to begin
with. Except for the knowledge that someone,
somewhere, is getting filthy rich of fthis project,
which never fails to warm the mercenary cockles of
my heart and, | suppose tangentially, that the bigger
the chain gets, the more work Stallone and Willis
will have for themselves, and less time to make the
movies that made the show possible. That’s not a
bad thing either.

Planet Hollywood sez it’s a restaurant purporting
to celebrate the place of movies in our lives. But it is
really about the replacement of movies for our lives.
Why actually talk to someone when there's a video
monitor to watch, and an ambient sound volume
that keeps all but the most excited of exclamations
from being heard. And | resent being made to feel
like a loud obnoxious American, which, if you'll
permit this small bit of Canuck cultural superiority, is
what Planet Hollywood makes me feel like, from the
limited selection of food | am offered to the way |
have to shout at the person across the table from me
to the inescapable impression that | am a bad person
for not revelling in the movies as | should.

And this perhaps is the key to looking at both
Planets: what they're both about, basically, when it
all comes down to it, in essence, more or less, is the
mediation of our relationships to each other. The
PoA, written in an art school, mostly by art schoolers,
mostly about art and art school, is a mediator

Bue

between ourselves and a collective experience of art
school, of our own context, and, indirectly, a media-
tor between ourselves and the art/design that is
made/performed/perceived here. Which is in itself a
mediator between ourselves and our contexts and
others and their contexts, hopefully a meaningful
and kind mediator. Planet Hollywood isn't.

I'd like to think the PoA is, and | honestly don’t
mean this ironically, a “kinder, gentler” channel than
Planet Hollywood. Yes, | know, | find it hard to see
those words together without thinking of the bully

who gave them to us, and | wonder what he thinks
of Planet Hollywood. Here at Emily Carr Institute,
despite being such a small school, just over half the
size of my high school, there're a lot of strange foax
doing really weird things a lot of the time, and,
sooner or later, someone is bound, inadvertently |
hope, to step on someone else's toes, or knock them
down and skin a knee. And someone's got to put the
band-aid on. The PoA may be one means of doing
that, although | hope it’s also a little more than that.

March 1997 / Planet of the Arts 33

After all, I'm paying for it, just as you are. And I’m
not just talking about money.

Planet Hollywood celebrates homogeneity and
noise. The PoA? That's hard for me to say, as | can’t
escape the lurking feeling that this very article is far
more noise than signal, embedded as it is within the
PoA itself, and hence a part of the very channel it's
trying to understand, | think it's having a difficult
time of things.

Perhaps the best description | have for the PoA is
an anecdote. Two issues ago it ran an article that |,
to put it mildly, thought was erroneous. And | was
concerned about the either careless or deliberate
spread of misinformation at a time when | think the
school both for its internal health and its health as
an institution in a volatile economic context could
least afford that kind of misinformation. So | could
have stewed on that for a while, or respond. Which
is what | did, though the response was, in the words
of all those kind enough to read it, “too damn
long.”

Oh well. | wasn’t aiming at the thirty-second-
commercial-sound-bite audience of Planet
Hollywood. And despite the ridiculous length, the
foax at the PoA were generous enough to give it
space, unedited, though a little judicious pruning
may not have been a bad thing. And | thought to
myself, “well, the system works,” and felt better
about the whole thing. The system works, and I’ve
had my say, and there is now at least a dialogue, a
discussion, a series of voices moving back and forth
and stepping on one another's toes and saying
“sorry” and trying not to do it again.

And | wonder if Planet Hollywood would be so
accommodating.

[One last note: if this article seems a little lop-
sided in giving space to Planet Hollywood, well,
that’s because | found it hard to discuss something |
haven't even seen yet, the issue of PoA that this'll
appear in. How to describe something still evolving,
changing, hopefully improving? Planet Hollywood,
now, that’s easy.] @s

Tom Becher, Dean of Design
Glen Clark, Honorary Patron of the Institute

Admissions (604) 844-3850

Re-initializing art,
Re-booting design,
Re-creating B.C.

Endowments 844-3871

PHOTO BY ALEXANDRA CRAM

 *

ign Division (Industrial Design)

Scott Gallery 844-3811

Solly’s

Parting

Saleem Khatak

Planet of the Arts Magazine 844-3861

Bagel run

Pushing gale of wind

Swift wheeled journey to

Bagel
Review
Haiku

by Alan Hoffman
with James Baker

James with bagel

Motorbike tempest

Plain

Cloud of steam for tea

Chewy smooth skin yields to bite
But inside tender

Chocolate chip

James has his with jam
a harvest of summer past

But Jenn thinks them strange

Sesame seed
Cello plays to join
Sunlight entering window

Classic elegance

I forfeit comfort
As obligation calls me
Swift to Emily

iW) Hegemonics March 1997 / Planet of the Arts 33
The Depreciation of the Fake, Part

Munching On Planet of the Arts

PHOTO BY ALEXANDRA CRAM

Re-initializing art,
Re-booting design,
Re-creating B.C.