Day 2- Montreal

Ahh qualifying. We slept in- and missed the morning practice sessions. Ok by us, as I was feeling the sleep deprivition pretty badly by that point.

Afternoon qualifying was cool. We were with a couple of young boys, and their enthusiasm was fun to watch, along with the cars.

Afterwards, we took time out and went to the contemporary art museum. It was worth it. The older permanent collection was shit. Pretty staid, not very interesting, and derivative of more famous artists.

But the new acquisitions were tremendous. The musee has a tendency towards installation pieces and video. Pretty risky in some ways, and interesting. Some of the videos were lame. But what I noticed that was great was the whimsical and fun nature of a lot of the art exhibited. Really funny, good stuff.

There was an area dominated by about 4 seriously OCD artists, whose work made my head hurt when I thought about how many hours they spent putting it all together.

Then there was the goofiest and most fun piece of the show. You entered a room that was seemingly empty except for about 10 bike lights mounted on the walls on either side, and what appeared to be a video camera at the ceiling in front of the room. As you walked along, the lights flickered to life, and there was a humming sound. We didn't know what was triggering the lights, and got all goofy figuring it out. Then I had an epiphany. I went out and read the artist's statement. Here goes.

Seems that the artist, working with the Montreal Criminal Justice system, provided an outlet for people serving community service. They can clean the streets, or sit in the museum on exercise bikes in little rooms on either side of the main room, and power the lights. Yup. Soylent Green is made of people, people, and the art was powered by Montreal's finest misdemeanors. We were joking about just standing in there for an inordinant amount of time and pissing off the criminals. Then getting beaten on the street by an unknown assailant who recognized us from the closed-circuit camera. Goofy and fun.