Residue — The Residue Group
This one could be a hit or miss — even more so than your average Nuit Blanche exhibit. Designed to recreate the experience of urban exploration, Residue might offer an exhilarating nighttime experience, or fall flat if the facades and props don’t hold up to scrutiny. Having said that, the photographs on display might be worth the trip all on their own. 29 McCaul Street, Beaver Hall

Source: BlogTO, “Nuit Blanche”

I suppose they can’t know it but about 90% of parts come from actual decrepit buildings! The other 10% includes some of the lighting (the stuff not found and rewired), nuts and bolts, some black cloth and the art hanging stuff.

Come in for yourself and be the judge of it!

Come to the show to see the finished product and/or purchase it!

Beaver Hall Gallery
29 McCaul St
Toronto, ON

Nuit Blanche: October 1st, 6:59PM -  Sunrise.

Exhibition: October 4-7th, 7-10pm

October 8th, 12-5pm

Artist’s Reception: October 6th, 7-10pm

After some seriously hard work, the Nuit Blanche installation I was a part of is finally ready! Tonight’s the night!

The Residue Group Presents:

On October 1, 2011, experience the thrill of an urban adventure and explore the remains of our cultural past in the residue left behind the hoarding of closed factories and derelict homes.

Beaver Hall Gallery
29 McCaul St
Toronto, ON
Sunset -  Sunrise.

Check out the Official Residue Blog for productions photos!

Maybe you can even spot me!

Stay tuned for a sneak peek of my work for the show

See you at Nuit Blanche!

I’ve finished week 2! There have been ups and downs, better days and worse days. One thing has been consistent, that is learning.

Things I’ve Learned:

• I am strong. Anyone who gets through 5 minutes of evaluation on the first day, is strong. To get through a program like this takes all the will you have and to finish even a day of it is amazing.
• The physical part is easy for some and the psychological part is easy for some but one of them will be harder than the other. For me the psychological aspect is harder because I have to change the way I look at pain and manage it. I’ve had to deal with it all my life and so separating it from who I am isn’t a simple process.
• This is a process.
• I’m still learning more and will continue to do so.
• They should put the marines through this program. They don’t have anything on me.

I have the after-therapy-can’t-thinks so I’ll continue this list later on!

Before:

I’m so tired I can’t describe it. Last night it was too cold for me, it woke me up around 5:00am-ish. I thought it was 3 or 4am and had to go potty. (Yes, I am 17 and still use the word, potty in everyday speech, live with it! ) Not wanting to wake my Mom and brother in their room I tried to slowly open the door. It totally and completely escaped my mind that my door creeks LOUDLY! She woke up and asked me why I was up and then I just got ready and hung around here until it was time to go. Which I found out today is 8:45am, only on the first day (with all the assessments) does it start at 8am. 9am is a much better start time for me, at 8am the caffeine hasn’t kicked in yet. (Maybe I should just get it in IV form… :3 )

After:

Today was… challenging, to say the least. I’m so tired now its hard to remember what I did; 20 mins. on an elliptical stepper, 2100 meters of rowing, 10 mins. on the sitting elliptical, step ups, hand ups, dragging myself with my arms on a board with wheels up a steep incline… I think you get the idea. I did some bio-feedback as well (controlling your heart rate/breathing with meditation, thoughts and being calm and so on), it was boring (if you know what meditation is then you’d find that part repetitive), the program I used was dated and lame. Oh well. The worst part is one of the parts of the program wouldn’t even respond! I ate a ridiculous amount of food at lunch again; a bag of chips, rice-krispie, grilled cheese sandwich and fries. Lunchtime is basically time to stuff your face, which is what I try and do because I burnt it all off and was hungry an hour later. I’d like to go to a bookstore tomorrow and I need a few more things from Target, namely some dishes/cutlery for the room, another bathing suit, leave in conditioner etc. All this therapy grinds down on a person. I just hope I can to sleep tonight! (And stay asleep.)

I got home from my first day of therapy at The Children’s Institute. The morning consisted mostly of assessments. I had a grilled chicken sandwich, fries plus a Klondike bar for lunch, which I burned through. It was kind of disturbing. I haven’t eaten that big a meal for lunch in a long time. (I find I get a lot of stomach trouble from the RND.) Some of the therapy was gruelling, I didn’t like the 6 min. jog/run and the inchworm animal walk was hard. Really, freaking hard. I did all of it though. The inchworm is where your bending over, hands flat on the floor and your feet touching the ground behind you, with your legs almost straight. Once you get in that position you move one hand forward and the next then one foot and the other. It was hard to cover any amount of ground because it was slow going. I like that my day (8am-4pm) ends with some hydrotherapy. They have 2 pools but the larger one’s pump is broken. It was a really lovely, albeit small therapy pool, nice and warm as well. While I was in pain doing the animal walks the only other thing that was a problem is the tightness in my back and shoulders. It is annoyingly achy.

After I got back from the hospital my brother, Mom and I went to Target. I scored a Star Trek (the original) and Wolverine t-shirt. Did you know that those pretty black and speckled white composition that I lust after in Canada and can’t find anywhere are only a 1.50$ here (Pittsburgh)? I love notebooks. Anyways, I also picked up a Flip UltraHD. OK, I’ll post more tomorrow, I can’t keep my eyes open.

I will be leaving very soon to go to the Children’s Institute for my first day of therapy. Its been so nerve racking (literally – RND is a whole heap of nerve pain!) waiting the past few weeks, but now I am finally here. While I am ready for this, I’m also nervous.

I arrived in Pittsburgh this afternoon, the reason I’m here; reflex neurovascular dystrophy. I start my therapy for it tomorrow. If you’d like to know more about RND, refer to my older post! Time to go to bed, the long drive wore me out.

Lately, I’ve been a bit blue because all my spam is in Russian. At first I dismissed it, thinking, who cares what language the spam on my blog is in. Then I realized I do! I missed having something to go to for a laugh when I logged in. All the stupid keywords and the ridiculous emails. Like 1jk2hsfnk@hotmail.com. I could translate the Russian ones I suppose but I want my spam in my language. Is that too much to ask? Although today I did get one that was in English but it wasn’t a good one. Also there’s another one in English that I’ve gotten two copies of from the same source and its for Sonic the Hedgehog DVDs. Its quite amusing. I assume that’s from my talking about my lovely Henry (the hedgehog) on here.

I was diagnosed last month with a condition called RND. It has a lot of other names and many different forms. One of the other names I am familiar with is Pain Amplification Syndrome. When I’m talking to people I usually use both. Mostly because when I say Pain Amplification Syndrome, I feel like I just made up a name for my condition! PAS doesn’t sound very . . . real. I’ll be taking something of a break from blogging while I’m getting better. Although I may update here and there.

What is RND?

Pain is usually a response to tissue damage. This damage uses the pain nerve to send a signal to ones spinal cord, which in turn sends a signal to your brain which recognizes the signal of pain.

With my condition there is a short circuit in my spinal cord. The pain signal is not only sent to my brain, it’s also sent to some other nerves, the neurovascular ones to be exact. Those bad boys control blood flow but they’re a bit wimpy when it comes to these signals. They get all scared and decide to make the blood vessels to constrict. Think of it as a chain of bullying. Now, constricted blood vessels equals decreased blood flow. This means less oxygen everywhere and it leads to a build up of acids, both of these things cause more pain. At which point the whole process starts all over again.

I got the information I used to write this little blurb from this very helpful handout. It has a nice diagram too!
http://www.rsds.org/4/youth/pdf/AMP_RNDparentHandout.pdf