Ignatieff woos Quebec with arts vow

"I want a government that understands that (Cirque du Soleil founder) Guy Laliberté, (playwright) Robert Lepage, and (composer) Robert Charlebois aren't just artists," he offered, "but symbols of the creative energy that we want to display in all the population."

"Bodah" said
If art needs help from the government to be funded it usually means the art sucks.

There's this art gallery in Quebec I walk by every day to and from work, you should see the crap in there.

"RUEZ" said
Sure, why not? We have record high unemployment but take care of the important things like arts funding. After all winning is what matters.

"kenmore" said
Sure, why not? We have record high unemployment but take care of the important things like arts funding. After all winning is what matters.

Artist hopes to float giant banana over Texas
Updated Wed. Jan. 10 2007 11:04 PM ET
CTV.ca News Staff

A Montreal artist wants to construct an enormous banana that would float over Texas, but critics say the project isn't worth government funding.
Cesar Saez conceived the project, called "Geostationary Banana Over Texas," and prefers to let the art speak for itself.
When asked why he would want a helium-inflated 300-metre banana to hover above Texas for a month, he simply told CTV Montreal: "Texas is as symbolic as the banana."
Then he added: "The banana has a lot of symbolism: phallic, humour, and political, too."
But some people were less than amused by the idea, considering both the federal and Quebec governments have already spent thousands of dollars for Saez's research and planning.
"I'm paying $65,000 to send a banana to space?" one woman balked.
Another said the money should have been spent on solving Montreal's homelessness problem instead.
The Canada Council for the Arts has defended the project, arguing Saez is an established artist and his proposal was chosen by a jury of his peers.
"The project was eligible and went to a committee, and the committee felt that the project had merit according to the criteria of the programme," said the council's Claude Schryer.
Beatrice Pepper, of the Quebec Council for Arts and Letters, said the attention focused on "Geostationary Banana Over Texas" can only benefit Quebec culture, because most contemporary artists are ignored.
"It's a big, big, big day today for visual arts in Quebec," she said.
"For probably one of the first times, a piece of visual art is getting the attention that it never gets from the media."
The project will likely require a total of $1 million before Texans see the giant banana sailing above their heads.
With a report by CTV Montreal's Caroline Van Vlaardingen

Canadian artists want to float giant banana over Texas
Project lacks funding to ensure an August launch date
Toronto Globe and Mail via Scripps Howard News Service
Originally published 10:30 p.m., June 24, 2008
Updated 10:30 p.m., June 24, 2008


Despite getting about $105,000 from Quebec and federal art-funding agencies, Canadian artist Cesar Saez's flying-banana project appears to be meeting turbulence. According to his project's webpage, the "Geostationary Banana Over Texas" has failed to get enough grassroots funding to ensure its planned launch date in August.

He dodged questions about whether the entire enterprise was a hoax.

The Canada Council for the Arts took the project seriously enough to award the artist $95,000; a spokesman praised the banana project as "a work of public art" in which the artist uses "the sky as his venue rather than a park or street corner."

But now a link from the project's website -- geostationarybananaovertexas.com -- says it has collected only 1 percent of the $1.5 million required to get the banana airborne. By June 15 of this year, the project's own cutoff date, it had raised only $12,018.

The artist is required to submit an interim report to the federal agency by February before being eligible for another $40,000 in promised funding. At that point, the agency will weigh whether the artist will "be able to succeed in his original plan," Arpin said.

A spokesman for Conseil Des Arts et Des Lettres du Quibec wouldn't comment on the banana project and referred all questions to the artist. The council has granted Mr. Saez about $50,000 over two years, in addition to $5,000 in travel costs.