CONTRARIAN
by Gabriel Parniak
CONTRARIAN re-samples daily news and draws new patterns. These are quotidian reflections poking pointed fun at politics. Tongue-in-cheek garden path diatribes, Stephen Harper’s Mickey Mouse pipeline ears: censored images, uncensored texts. Using artist Gabriel Parniak’s Toronto Star collages as a starting point, the project finds lateral connections between visual and textual forms of social commentary and critique, with poems, rants, and other thoughts by Elise Boudreau Graham, Mike Chaulk, Danica Evering, Kosta Gligorijevic, Hugh Mater, Dan O’Neill, Jagdeep Singh Raina, Ro Sabourin and @Known_Unknown_Soldier. Instead of the party line newsprint missives from HQ we’re used to, these texts are contradictory and scrambled and meant to be interrogated. Tumbling a captcha jumble of aliens, shalwar kameez, Princess Diana, Jesus, Osama Bin Laden, scrotal sweat, apple turnovers, friendly fire, these narratives are drawn in the stars of low culture politics. Hands point and gesture: I want you, I give up, I guess so, who cares, that is the point, it’s not my fault, okay, okay, okay. We’re making New News, uncovering unspoken conversations between makers, poets, critics, and commentators of all levels. We’re drawing from what we know, what is at hand: newspapers, hearsay, memory, family legends. Contrarian news in hopes of writing a different future.
The first edition of 100 books was CMYK risographed at Colour Code in Toronto and has black-on-black covers letterpressed at All Sorts Press in Hamilton, ON.
