Edmonton: Part 1, Azimuth Residency

PB: Yo—

ML: I’m busy.

PB: No I’m busy. I’m in Edmonton running around interviewing all these Edmontonians while you’re—

ML: Writing our touring grant.

PB: Right. Sorry.

ML: How’s it going?

PB: Great actually. After a week of being a Calgary and now a week in Edmonton, there’s a really interesting image forming of the concerns artists have in these cities.

ML: Are they the same?

PB: Not really. The biggest issue in both seems to be equity and diversity.

ML: That’s not surprising.

PB: I guess. I think a part of me assumed that given the political climate that artists would feel more suffocated by the presence of such a conservative demographic. These are broad strokes obviously—but in Calgary people seemed more interested in creating work that built empathy within that demographic and in Edmonton it doesn’t sound like people worry too much about the rest of Alberta that much. The former dodge the suits. The latter laugh off the rednecks.

ML: Broad strokes.

PB: Surely. But they capture a through-line that most of my interviews carried.

ML: Any exciting things that Albertan experiences can bring to the game?

PB: For sure. Cards concerning the boom and bust cycle of the province’s oil economy. Cards about the casino structure of getting money (approx. 70000 every 1.5 - 2 years), which is still super fucked up to me—and most people in Calgary and Alberta assumed it was the same everywhere.

ML: Any more positive cards?

PB: We need to work on finding a way to represent the closeness of these communities. People are really generous to each other here, so they say—though they didn’t seem to be lying to me... They are smaller in scale and so they do have to stand up for each other, regardless of how much they might not love each other’s artistic form. That’s what I’ve gathered at least.

ML: That’s great.

PB: And the best thing I’ve learn is—

ML: Oh crap!

PB: What’s wrong?

ML: I just realized that Canada Council’s budget forms make you list out the tour day by day. This…is going to take a while.

PB: Cool.