The Influence/Influenced Issue by The Link Newspaper

03 January 2021 Volume 41, Issue 03 thelinknewspaper.ca

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H APPY NEW YEA R! And welcome to Concordia’s winter 2021 term. Whether you’re in Montreal, elsewhere in Canada, or living abroad, we’re ready and eager to welcome you to the Concordia community. Together, we’ll learn to do things differently and do them well. Have a great term!

Graham Carr President graham.carr@concordia.ca

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Table of Contents 4 — Comic 5 — Editorial 6 — Becoming an Influencer 8 — Living Off the Grid 11 — The Labels that Leads Us 12 — Reviving the Tradition of Tattooing in Indigenous Communities 15 — Racism in Tech 18 — Fetishizing Technology Widens the Gender Gap in Journalism 20 — We Connect: Conceptual Photography 24 — Internet Friends in the Age of Isolation 26 — Abolish Celebrities 29 — Fiction: American Motels 32 — Screen Time All the Time 34 — Can Crystals Become Your Rock? 36 — The Ups and Downs of Taking Medication 37 — Ici, We Speak Franglais 41 — Inside Montreal’s Activist Postering Subculture

“Only memes in CP style allowed,” since 1980 JA NUA RY 2021

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Graphic Maria Chabelnik

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Who Is Controlling You?

What is the first thing that pops into your head when you hear the word “influence”? Perhaps you think of social media stars, the state of being “under the influence” of drugs or alcohol, or social influence exerted by powerful people and institutions. Maybe you think of the influence of social justice movements to bring people together in community to achieve a common objective, or the power of art to influence our hearts and minds, or the legendary social figures in the past who have used their standing to implement change in the world. As social animals, human beings are always susceptible to being swayed by external stimuli—whether personal or political. Whether it’s by our parents and our friends, our schools and our professors, our communities, our leaders, or the drive for economic or personal success— everyone is expected to tailor themselves in some way to these forces. In today’s world, influence goes hand in hand with technology. Algorithms on social media platforms like Youtube and Twitter track your interests and keep you engaged with suggested content. Your data is recorded and used by companies for advertising purposes. Politicians

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use social media platforms to spread political ideologies and monitor their own popularity. Technology can be both consolation and adversary as we seek to carve out space to live—especially in the context of the pandemic. It has been used to improve public health measures, but it has also been a vector of misinformation about the virus on a mass scale. It’s been used to connect us to our loved ones, but it’s also sown division as social media has been inundated by hatred and bigotry. Even though it has the potential to bring us entertainment during this mundane social period, technology can also dishearten us by forcing us to compare ourselves, and our lives, to others. It’s always important to examine the society around us and gaze upon normalized structures and systems with a critical eye. Whether as fringe as internet rabbit holes or as mainstream as celebrity culture, it’s imperative we question the points of influence that limit us—and to ask how we can define meaning in our own lives. Now, more than ever, ask yourself: Are you a person living freely in the world, only being influenced for good and by positive forces—or are you a machine?

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I’m a Content Creator A Concordia student reflects on her quest to become a full-time influencer Amanda Wan @itsamandawan

’m a 22-year-old communications student at Concordia, and for the past three years I’ve been creating content on YouTube and Instagram, accumulating 14,000 followers. Some would consider me an influencer, but I prefer “content creator.” When I hear the word influencer, I get mixed feelings that are hard to explain. There’s a negative connotation. When people hear “influencer,” they think of someone who gets paid to do nothing except post photos on social media. They think of that 16-year-old TikTok star who dances in her bedroom, that 20-year-old who posts a picture in her mirror every day on Instagram, or that guy on YouTube who posts weekly and gets paid for it. These come off as minimal talents and minimal-effort posts, but this is because people don’t really know what goes on behind the scenes. Working as a content creator includes so many things—responding to emails, time management, and planning—not just taking a picture and posting it. I prefer calling myself a content creator because I feel people may take me and my work more seriously. I once referred to myself as an influencer on my Instagram story, and I was faced with business students sliding into my DM’s saying “You don’t even have that

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many followers” and “Who are you even influencing?” This makes it feel like a popularity contest. It’s always about numbers, numbers, numbers rather than content. Getting those messages made me feel a sense of embarrassment for the type of work I do and made me feel very undervalued in the community. People don’t realize how much work goes on behind every single content creator’s journey. The time and effort that goes into this is crazy—truly not something I knew before stepping into this world. There have been nights I’ve stayed up until 1 a.m. editing a video or a photo for a brand collaboration. There are times I forget to eat because I’m too preoccupied with a project I’m working on. This is a job I love staying up for, but when there is that backlash and negativity I sometimes ask myself if people will ever take me seriously. The baggage the word influencer has gives me a lot of self-doubt, but funnily enough this only motivates me to work harder and get further in my career—to not only prove others wrong but prove myself wrong. The world of influencing is magical, and I wish people wouldn’t cast such a dark light upon it. My journey has taken me to Los Angeles three times for VidCon to collaborate with other creators. I spoke on a panel at Playlist Live in Washington D.C. about how to start your own YouTube journey. I’ve made such incredible friends and connections. The people I’ve been able to connect with all have such unique stories, but we all have one thing in common—wanting to inspire and motivate others with our own journeys. I call myself a content creator or a blogger because it really encompasses what the job is—creating content for myself and for brands. Being called an influencer is not something I hate. It comes with this type of job, so it has been something I’ve learned to get used to. I have mixed feelings about the word, but at the end of the day influencers are putting so much work into their craft and deserve to be recognized for that and seen in a positive light.

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Courtesy Amanda Wan

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Off the Grid: Life in Quebec’s Remote Communities Self-sufficiency outside the constraints of the city Anne-Sophie Jobin @annesophiejobin

The COVID-19 pandemic has led many people to reevaluate their place in society, with some dreaming of abandoning it. But is relying on oneself and one’s close community for food cultivation and life’s other necessities realistic in Quebec, a four-seasons province where most people live in cities? Meet Shad Ferron, Alex Guérin, and Jean-Nick Trudel, three men who have found a way to live a self-sufficient lifestyle in remote communities of Quebec. Ferron lives in Yamachiche, a village in Mauricie, approximately 30 minutes away from Trois-Rivières. He makes a living from agriculture and dairy production, while being a craftsman and a public entertainer. “I’m independent of electricity, heat, I almost have all my food. I am able to be self-sufficient in general in all life aspects,” said Ferron. “Every morning I have my eggs, my milk, the baker is in the village with some organic and locally made flours, and my vegetables are almost all harvested. They will be dehydrated, frozen and transformed for the winter.” In other words, whether it is from his own production or his community, he is always able to find what he needs. Ferron produces most of the food he consumes acT HEL INK NE W SPA P ER .C A

cording to the season, even though it sometimes means he will be eating more frozen food during the winter. Grocery stores could close forever, and he would easily survive. “If tomorrow you told me, you do not have a job anymore, so no more income, but all your expenses and debts are erased, I could just build my house, add more buildings to my farm, I would feed myself with my animals and vegetables, and for the rest, I would figure it out,” Ferron added. Ferron really believes in a lifestyle where people help each other and exchange services. According to him, this is the best way to create a circular and local economy. This system is comparable to what was the norm for our grandparents and great grandparents, at a time when villagers would simply help each other to make things work. “Basic needs that are food, shelter, and security are not met anymore. If you today, you put a standard human in the middle of the forest, he will never be able to survive. Some people are not even able to build themselves a shelter, to make a fire, or to find food. They would die in three days,” said Ferron. This is the main reason why Ferron decided to live his own life, off the grid, independent and self-sufficient. He

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p. 8: Shad Ferron, milk producer and farmer, lives in a remote community 30 minutes away from Trois-Rivières. p. 9: Alex Guérin, founder of Prendre Racine, works on his farmland. Photos Anne-Sophie Jobin and Britanny Romeo-Clarke

explained he does not like how the modern world operates where human beings rely on the whole system to survive. He prefers to live his own life and do what he likes at his own pace. He owes much of this independence to his community and network which provides him with products and services that otherwise would not be available to him. Other members of his network live in nearby villages and also practice self-sufficiency in their own ways. Alex Guérin is one of them: he adapted his self-sufficient lifestyle to his business, Prendre Racine, where clients can find edible products from Quebec forests. “I like to say that it is a tree farm, where I have a breeding ground, trees, shrubs, perennial plants. Basically, I bought land and the objective is to maximize the land and harvest here,” said Guérin. His mission is to put lesser known Quebec products on the map, like nuts, herbs and spices, while developing a new economy and diversified agriculture. He wants to produce unique products and open up markets that have not yet been exploited in Quebec. While travelling, Guérin realized that several countries in the world had their own particular spices and herbs

based in their geographical location. Quebec is no exception, but consumers ignore the range of local choices available to them and lean toward buying foreign products at lower prices. If consumers do not get used to incorporating local products into their plates, the process of being economically independent in Quebec becomes more difficult. “It is very important for our province, we need more artisans in Quebec because this is what will define our landscape,” said Guérin. “Our objective is to feed people here, not to export.” Guérin and Ferron are both mainly focused on food self-sufficiency since they have farmland and animals. However, they still rely on Hydro-Québec for electricity. On the other hand, a friend and member of their community lives in a self-sufficient home completely off the grid just a few kilometres away. Jean-Nick Trudel lives in a village called Saint-Éliede-Caxton. His house is equipped with a photovoltaic system, which is composed of one or more solar panels combined with electrical and mechanical hardware that use energy from the sun to generate electricity. Built under the Earthship JA NUA RY 2021

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Top: Jean-Nick Trudel, General Director of Quebec Public’s Market Association, uses a photovoltaic system to generate electricity. Bottom: Trudel’s house in Saint-Élie-de-Caxton. Photos Anne-Sophie Jobin and Britanny Romeo-Clarke

principles, this type of house was invented in New Mexico more than 40 years ago. Its goal is to harmonize the house with thermodynamic principles so that the house requires minimal maintenance from its inhabitants. His energy comes from his 16 batteries and the photovoltaic system. “Today, for example, it’s partially sunny, so the greenhouse’s temperature went up to 30 degrees Celsius. It heats up the whole house, and during winter, when it is minus 40 degrees outside but sunny, the greenhouse’s temperature can reach 30 degrees and the house is at 20 degrees, so I don’t need anything else to heat it up,” said Trudel. T HEL INK NE W SPA P ER .C A

However, Trudel depends on his community to eat. As the director of the Quebec Public Markets Association, he is closely connected to local producers like Ferron and Guérin who provide him with fresh food. His goal is to eat locally grown food all year long. He is what we call a locavore; he does not allow himself to eat strawberries in the winter, or any type of food that is not in season. These spending habits were the norm not too long ago. The Quebec tradition of receiving an orange for Christmas highlights the past luxury of tropical fruits. Even though we cannot really go back to that lifestyle, the current reality is a luxury that could not be achieved in a self-sufficient Quebec. “Without being survivalist or crazy about this, it is important to have a simple reflection on how to not be a burden if something happens, and be in the team of those who would help instead of those who would need help,” said Trudel. He explained that these houses let him have the autonomy and resilience he always dreamed of, adding that it is not an expensive lifestyle. “Anyone who does not have a lot of money could do it. When I started my project, I was earning under the minimum wage.” According to Ferron, Guérin, and Trudel, the best part about their lifestyle is to only have to count on themselves. They also learn to be autonomous as a group and create collective resilience. Indeed, the pandemic was a turning point that highlighted Quebec’s dependency on the system and exterior markets for some of our basic needs. Remember the empty shelves in supermarkets, the race for toilet paper, or the rationing of egg cases—all occurrences that have raised questions about the autonomy of Quebec. “We have six months coming up where greens will be harvested and where we will have to import products. So what should we do to feed ourselves, but feed everyone as well?” asked Trudel. In any case, Quebecers have made their desire to encourage our local economy clear over the past year. Premier François Legault even promised it: he wants to bring Quebec towards greater food autonomy. Things are moving forward. With that said, several issues make this promise difficult, because some of our needs make us dependent on the rest of the world. There is something to be done if everyone is helping out.

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Who Am I? Labels, Society, and Identity A personal reflection on how labels influence our self-perception Rhea Giuliana

Graphic Joey Bruce I am a mixed-race woman who was always taller and larger than my peers. Growing up, I was always made aware that I was different from those around me. The label of being overweight plagued me for a long time and still does. People tend to look down on someone overweight. This made me extra cautious in how I dressed. I heard many times that fat people should not wear leggings, or that if skirts were above my knees, it was gross and nobody wanted to see that. So, the label thrown on me by others influenced my style. It also instilled fear in me because I was always worried people would judge me if I wore things society deemed inappropriate for a fat person. Labels are inescapable elements of our lives. On the surface, this can seem a simple means of classification.

However, in my experience, labels can also create a lot of dissonance. During the provincial election in 2012, when there were talks about tuition hikes, it seemed like voting for the Liberal Party meant accepting the hikes. I was told that since I was a student, I should not vote for the Liberals. However, I am also an anglophone. At the time, I felt the Quebec Liberal Party was the only one that acknowledged the importance of my language and wanted to avoid separation. I felt torn between two important labels that were in direct conflict— being a student and being an anglophone in Quebec. I had to figure out which label took precedence, and this caused a lot of internal conflict. Some would tell me my student status was most important and others that my anglophone identity is permanent. It led to a lot of reflection, and I

realized just how complex it is to make personal decisions. I had to succumb and choose one identity over the other. I am half-Cuban and half-Italian. So, to many people, I am deemed “not coloured enough,” which has put me in a precarious position. I never feel comfortable speaking out about issues about People of Colour. I was actually once told “no offence, Rhea, but you are not Black enough to talk about Black issues. You can pass for white, so please don’t act like you understand.” I was completely shattered. The comment hurt me because I had always thought of myself as a minority, and for someone else to label me as not Black enough was shocking. My ethnicity, that I had no control over, was suddenly incompatible with each other. I never even thought about trying to pass for white, because I didn’t mind being mixed-race. This changed how I saw myself and influenced me to be less vocal. When labels are used, there are assumptions that get attached to them. The way these stereotypes get used ultimately influence the ways we interact with other people. The issue is that stereotypes, according to the Momentous Institute, “contribute to a dysfunctional class system.” And in a lot of ways, this can explain why stereotypes are used. The fact is the different ways we are classified contribute to the types of things we might choose to believe. The question as to why labels have such an influence on us has been one I have been reflecting on for quite some time now. Society has created the labels that we use to define ourselves, which suggests an acceptance to some extent. In accepting the labels, we can unintentionally accept notions that come with them. We are products of our society, and that ultimately impacts us in ways we are not always aware of. JA NUA RY 2021

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Reviving a Cultural Tradition How Indigenous women are reclaiming the art of traditional tattooing Esteban Cuevas @esteban_bam_bam

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It was overwhelming.” This is how Ashley Appaqaq, an Inuk woman and traditional tattoo artist living in Iqaluit, Nunavut, describes how she felt when she first received her first traditional tattoo. Indigenous Peoples in North America have a long history of traditional tattooing. There is no way to know precisely how and when it started, only that its roots stem from long before European settlers first set foot on the continent. The designs and their meanings vary between Indigenous Peoples and communities. For a long time, Inuit women would get tattoos from needles made of bone, either by the hand-poking technique or skin stitching. The tattoos could mark a milestone, such as a woman’s first menstruation or readiness for motherhood. Tattoos were seen as a rite of passage to womanhood. According to Appaqaq, a woman bearing many would be seen as beautiful and be highly respected. “It’s something really beautiful that many people don’t know about,” said Appaqaq. The decline of traditional Inuit tattooing began with the arrival of Christian missionaries in Canada’s Arctic. Edmund James Peck was an Anglican missionary who played a major role in the Christianization of the Inuit. Having learned Inuktitut after his

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arrival to Canada in 1876, he was able to translate Biblical material by using Inuktitut syllabics. This enabled Christianity to spread quickly, precipitating the decline of Inuit traditional tattooing. Tattoos and other Inuit cultural practices were looked down upon and forbidden by the Christian missionaries. “Where I am from, in Sanikiluaq, they have not had [tattoos] in so long that we didn’t even have elders that even remembered people having them,” said Appaqaq. “So it was hard to learn.” While the tattoos once were common, they have become rare in certain communities. Still, there have recently been many new initiatives to bring back traditional tattooing. Alethea Arnaquq-Baril’s documentary film Tunniit: Retracing the Lines of Inuit Tattoos and the Inuit Tattoo Revitalization Project led by Hovak Johnston, a prominent traditional tattoo artist, have helped people learn more about the traditional art. While Appaqaq only recently started tattooing, her journey began four years ago when she was first tattooed by Johnston. Many other Inuit women have received tattoos from Johnston using the traditional hand-poking technique and been taught to perform the art themselves. “I felt so much lighter—more of myself,” said Appaqaq on the first tattoo she received. “I could feel my ancestors behind me because the first markings I put on myself were traditional. I could feel my grandfather, who had been there when I was younger, and I could feel my grandmother who I have never met before—and all those who came before me.” Like Appaqaq, many others have been inspired to learn about traditional tattooing through the work of Johnston and Arnaquq-Baril. One of them is Theresa Etok, an Inuk woman from Puvirnituq in Nunavik. “I used to not believe in tattoos,” said Etok, explaining that her hometown was very Christian and that tattoos, whether traditional or not, were not always well perceived. Johnston revitalization project was one of the reasons she decided to receive her own.

p. 12: Tattoo artist Arsaniq Deer in the process of tattooing her friend, Theresa Etok. Courtesy Theresa Etok p. 13: Ashley Appaqaq in the process of making a tattoo using the traditional hand-poke technique. Courtesy Ashley Appaqaq

The Inuit are not the only ones to have their own tattooing traditions. The Haudenosaunee, a historical confederacy of nations primarily located in modern-day New York state and southern Ontario and Quebec, had their own traditions of hand-poke tattooing. The designs and meanings vary. While very different from Inuit tattoos, Haudenosaunee tattoos would also reflect social status and mark achievements.

“I feel like there is a huge need and demand for [traditional tattooing] in our communities,” said Amberley John, an Onyote’aka (bear clan) woman who is an emerging traditional tattoo artist and team member of Earthline Collective, an organization founded in 2015 to teach and support cultural Indigenous tattoo practices across Canada. John, who is pursuing a master’s in interdisciplinary Indigenous studies at the University of

Arsaniq Deer (left) and Theresa Etok (right) after a tattooing session. The Vshaped Inuit design on the forehead represents entering womanhood. Courtesy Theresa Etok JA NUA RY 2021

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British Columbia, was trained at the 2017 Earthline Tattoo Residency in hand-poking and skin-stitch tattooing methods. Focusing on Haudenosaunee designs, she wishes to use traditional tattooing as a way to heal intergenerational trauma caused by centuries of colonization. “I don’t like it when things get culturally romanticized, when using the term medicine. Eating properly, eating healthy—that’s good medicine. Spending time with your family, that’s medicine. Even going to watch our community members play our traditional sports—that can lift you up,” she said. “Tattooing is just another form of medicine. A holistic one.” “There is a lot I have to heal from, and I feel like helping others heal is helping me,” said Appaqaq, who believes traditional tattooing has a role in healing the wounds caused by colonization. “And I just think it’s making us, Inuit as a whole, stronger, trying to decolonize ourselves by getting our marks back.” While there are many reasons to receive tattoos, such as their beauty or strong traditional meaning, for many it’s also a way to show cultural pride. “Growing up, I didn’t know where I belonged since I wasn’t in my community,” said Etok, who spent a big part of her life outside of Puvirnituq, her hometown. “I had no sense of belonging and I kind of had an identity crisis.” She explained that living away from home made her feel stuck between two worlds. When visiting her hometown, she would feel like she wasn’t Inuit enough. “It helped me in a way that I was able to get confidence on who I am and where I come from,” she said of her first tattoo, which she received from a friend of hers. Like Etok, many Indigenous people live away from their communities. For John, tattoos can serve as a way to remain connected to one’s origins. “They’re still a part of the community,” said John on the Haudenosaunee people who live away. “And sometimes these tattoos can feel like a hand reaching out as well.” “It’s not [just] something on T HEL INK NE W SPA P ER .C A

Elaborate Inuit finger tattoo honours the deity Sedna also known as “mother of all sea beasts.” According to the myth, she gave birth to different sea creatures from each severed joint after her father cut her fingers. Any woman without finger tattoos would be denied to the afterlife. Courtesy Theresa Etok

“I could feel my ancestors behind me because the first markings I put on myself were traditional.” — Ashley Appaqaq our skin for the rest of our lives,” said Appaqaq. “It’s something that gives us power to be who we are.” Tattoo artists also cherish the experience of tattooing itself. Since hand poking takes longer than using a machine, relatively small designs can take hours and even more than one session. They describe it as a personal and meaningful process they get to share. Details in traditional designs can vary depending on the life experiences of a person and the reasons for wanting a tattoo vary from person to person. “We have more time to talk to each other, to share memories and knowledge,” said John of the nearly 100 people—family, friends, and community members—she has tattooed. “At the end of the night, they aren’t clients. They are friends, they are sisters, they are brothers,” said Appaqaq.

“They are so much more because I now share a bond with them.” Despite all the efforts to bring back traditional tattooing in Indigenous communities, there is still a long way to fully bring back traditions that have nearly been wiped out by colonization. Revitalization projects, documentaries, books, and research have all helped to preserve the traditions of countless Indigenous communities. With their work, the tattoo artists hope to be able to inspire others to get their own marks. “There is a responsibility to that,” said John on the collective efforts to conserve and share the valuable knowledge. “We have to make sure we’re treating those designs with the reverence and respect they deserve.”

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Racism in Tech How biases become embedded in software and algorithms we increasingly rely on Abegail Ranaudo

Graphic Joey Bruce

We think of AI in a way that science fiction has presented it to us,” said Jupiter Fka Imani, an activist and “hood strategist” who studied mechanical engineering and computer science at the University of Massachusetts. “I’ve been watching this show called NEXT, which just wrapped up, and it’s basically following this AI that is intentionally trying to eradicate humans.” Though we don’t know for sure what the future has in store, we can be sure AI will become only more integral to our day-to-day lives. “Everyone’s scared of Google,” Imani said of the search giant’s use of AI, adding it’s not the AI we should be afraid of, but how it’s being used. Deep learning, an AI function, mimics the way an organic brain sorts and processes information, which is a process of building artificial neural networks akin to how a brain’s nerve cells would collect signals from others. A deep neural network is “deep” because of its multiple layers that transform data and produce effective insights, allowing for speech and image recognition and natural language. JA NUA RY 2021

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Imani referred to a video circulated online of a Black man who was trying to get soap in a Marriott restroom. A dispenser using near-infrared technology did not recognize his dark skin, but it could recognize the hand of a white man who was also there to demonstrate the technological setback. The soap dispenser incident is a microcosm of a pressing issue in tech. “The majority of people who were working on these databases, initiating and developing them, [are] white [and male],” said Imani. They believe that AI should not be something to fear, but rather an opportunity for others to educate themselves and think more critically about the technology we’ve already grown accustomed to using daily. Technological systems receive input to perform and supposedly provide society with better outcomes. From manufacturing to traffic safety assistance, AI is very much beginning to make up part of the social fabric. “The AI that we have is essentially taking information that we’ve given it in trying to make intelligent decisions that mimic humans, but they’re not thinking for themselves,” Imani said. “If you actually look at the science and the mechanics of it, we’re nowhere near able to develop an AI that could mimic humans [entirely] right now.” Technology has been an incredible tool in many ways in fields of engineering, medicine, design, but also in the fight against racism. Police body cam footage, surveillance tape, and bystander video all provided proof that George Floyd was murdered in Minneapolis while being arrested for allegedly attempting to pay with a counterfeit bill. Social media algorithms and news aggregators showed articles and think pieces relating to the Black Lives Matter movement, highlighting the daily prejudices endured by Black people and other marginalized groups. However, technology can also perpetuate the racism latent in our public education, employment, healthcare, policing systems, and other institutions.

communities to distrust police, these institutions work with powerful databases and algorithms, with AI aiming to identify the potential for an individual to offend, according to a report from The Citizen Lab and the International Human Rights Program at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Law. Police stop data, gang databases, reports by members of the public, under-reported crimes, under-documented crimes, arrests, convictions, and guilty pleas all fall within the umbrella term “algorithmic policing.” The Citizen Lab identified the use of algorithms by police services as typically for crimes that have not yet occurred, a pre-emptive monitoring and forecasting system that can supposedly predict potential crime. Racialized and marginalized communities—including women—are less likely to report crime, due to unrecognized language or cultural barriers, fear of being deported and of law enforcement, or prior bad experiences with police and a mistrust of police institutions. For individuals and communities susceptible to systematic mistreatment through criminal record checks, algorithmic policing only heightens police scrutiny and adds long-term negative effects to local health, safety, poverty, and human dignity, according to the report. “We’re experiencing a ton of medical racism that impacts our treatment and our outcomes,” noted Imani, who is Black. Racism in the Canadian healthcare system was fatal when Joyce Echaquan, a 37-year-old Atikamekw woman, filmed herself clearly in pain and being abused by healthcare workers on Facebook Live video last September. Before AI can begin to assist doctors and clinicians in hospitals, they have to be trained to use it to make better clinical decisions, according to an article in Stroke and Vascular Neurology. Similar to algorithmic policing, hospitals also work with data and AI. Data generated from clinical activities may include medical notes and electronic recordings from medical devices, physical examinations, and clinical laboratories and images. “You get this data that’s biased,” said Imani. “That means white folks [who] have never even considered or engaged with us critically are now creating algorithms to figure out who should get care. Who should be—I am not going to say denied care but—unprioritized. “So when, for example, you’re developing a machine-learning algorithm that’s going to decide when someone needs healthcare and when someone does not need healthcare, you have the biases inherent to our healthcare system creating data that’s already biased because Black folks typically don’t have access to quality healthcare,” they continued.

“You get this data that’s biased. That means white folks [who] have never even considered or engaged with us critically are now creating algorithms to figure out who should get care.” — Jupiter Fka Imani

The policing of Black lives

Montreal is no stranger to systemic violence. Sheffield Matthews was a 41-year-old father struggling with poverty, according to CTV. He was in distress and holding a knife on Oct. 29. That’s all it took, at an intersection in NotreDame-de-Grâce, for him to be shot by Montreal police after allegedly approaching their vehicle. He was one of many Black men who have fallen prey to police brutality in NDG alone—others include Anthony Griffin in 1987 and Nicholas Gibbs in 2018, both of whom were killed by police. Even though there is ample reason for racialized T HEL INK NE W SPA P ER .C A

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As of right now, police and hospital algorithmic data remain inaccurate, biased, and exclusionary. At the rate that facial-recognition technology is being incorporated into identifications, algorithms could potentially become a second pair of eyes for working analysts, according to the National Institute of Justice in the U.S. Facial-recognition software used by law enforcement compares suspects’ photos to mugshots or licence plate images, termed “one-to-one” matching. One-to-one algorithms developed in the U.S. were all inaccurate in matching Asian, Black, and Indigenous faces, according to the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology. Indigenous people suffered the highest false-positive rates. “Affect recognition,” a subset of facial recognition, will seek to do more by interpreting faces and detecting “micro-expressions,” matching them to “true feelings.” Not only are these scientific justifications highly questionable and most inaccurate out of other forms of identity tracking methods, but prolong a history of racist pseudoscience and malevolent practices, according to New York University’s AI Now Institute. Its report outlines how faces could become tied to personal data. “Once identified, a face can be linked with other forms of personal records and identifiable data, such as credit score, social graph, or criminal record.” Last June, Amazon decided to implement a one-year ban on police face recognition software as nation-wide protests surged across the country against racial inequality. The problem has also surfaced in remote education. The Concordia Student Union received numerous reports that online proctoring systems discriminate against students with darker complexions, turning up “lack of brightness” error messages. It highlighted these concerns in an open letter demanding, in part, that the university cease using online proctoring software.

Lack of diversity in tech

Imani recalls a conference for tech companies they attended for an engineering class a couple of years ago. “As someone who looks at and really enjoys the kinds of production that these companies will put on, it’s amazing to see how they envision technology being incorporated into the lives of regular people,” they said. However, Imani encountered only two Black people at the conference. Many working for current big tech companies, such as Tesla, Facebook, Google, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, are white and male, developing technologies that mirror their own biases. Their products can exclude or disregard people with darker complexions and of different ethnicities and backgrounds. According to Bloomberg, only three per cent of workers in technical jobs at America’s eight largest tech companies are Black. “[Google is] now facing this really intense backlash of how Black women are being treated, especially in these specific fields around data and AI,” said Imani. They were referring to the company’s recent ouster of a renowned AI-ethics researcher, Dr. Timnit Gebru, because of academic

research she had co-authored highlighting the risks of large language models—key to Google’s business, according to MIT Technology Review. “They are talking about going to Mars,” said Imani, referring to Elysium, a sci-fi film depicting a world where the wealthy live on board a luxury space station while the poor are left to fight and fend for themselves on Earth. AI should be actively centred on community development and must avoid “recreating that whiteness and embedding it into the technology,” said Imani. The goal, they said, should be to shift our entire social structure. “Our job is to critically engage with the whiteness that created this system, currently.” JA NUA RY 2021

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Fetishizing technology widens the gender gap in journalism When it comes to gender equity in media, our tech culture is only making things worse Clara Gepner

recent survey by the International Federation of Journalists has revealed that the COVID-19 pandemic has disproportionately affected female journalists. This comes as no surprise as we know there is an ongoing gender crisis in media throughout the world. Despite the so-called feminization of journalism and anecdotal evidence of women at the highest levels of the profession in Canada, female journalists, in general, are still underpaid. Data from the 2016 Statistics Canada census shows that male journalists were paid an average of $5,500 more than women, and women of visible minorities were paid an average of $28,000 less than white men. They were also underrepresented in top-level management and governance positions, according to the International Women’s Media Foundation’s 2011 Global Report on the Status of Women in the News Media. This gender crisis is set against the backdrop of the larger crisis of journalism, caused by the digital revolution and the ensuing drop in advertising revenues that has triggered news outlet closures and job losses throughout the world. Despite the problems it has caused, technology has been lauded by some forward-thinking journalists as journalism’s saving grace. To them, fancy technological advances—such as data visualizations, interactives, and virtual reality—are the solution to dropping readership and audiences’ lack of trust in journalism. However, like Nikki Usher argued in her 2014 Washington Post op-ed, I think fetishizing technology could widen the gender gap by making it harder for women to thrive in journalism jobs. Although technology potentially creates some opportunities for women, who can create brands and carve T HEL INK NE W SPA P ER .C A

new niches for themselves through social media and blogs, it may make things worse for them in legacy and digital-first news organizations. Vivian Smith writes in her 2015 book Outsiders Still that, although there are more women in journalism schools than men, few women remain in journalism careers once they have children because of “workplace inflexibility and newsroom cultural inequities.” Newsroom culture, whether in legacy media or new digital start-ups, heavily discriminates against women, with editors assigning fewer hard news stories to women, offering them fewer opportunities for advancement, and pushing them into precarious freelance work. And as Usher explains, “technology brings with it a toxic culture that has long marginalized women” into an already discriminatory newsroom environment. Today, very few newsrooms are still hiring, but those that do, mostly digital-first start-ups, are looking for people who can analyze data, code, and make infographics and interactives. Unfortunately, this means the only jobs available in journalism are for programmers: mostly white men work in tech. This is in part because from a young age, women are discouraged from working in STEM and computer science, and the culture within these fields discourages those few who make it from staying in these careers. According to Statistics Canada, the number of women working in computer science in Canada decreased from 30 per cent to 25 per cent between 1991 and 2011, despite an overall increase in the number of people working in these fields. Some journalists are trained in programming in journalism schools, and since women are overrepresented there, one could think that most women journalists now entering the field are capable of producing interactives and visualizations. However, the pervasive male-centric culture of tech

OPINIONS

“Ultimately, we must remember that the people who work on the news affect what becomes news.” also reaches into universities, where according to Usher, women are discouraged from learning to code because they fear that “they’ll be left to do it all on their own or that they’ll be seen as nerdy.” This accentuates the imbalance between men and women who have the skills to fill the available technical jobs in newsrooms. On top of this, women who work at legacy and digital-first newsrooms are faced with the incursion of an organizational tech start-up culture that has been notoriously hostile to women, rife with sexist comments and dismissiveness. Although I absolutely agree that there are incredible benefits to using technology to help with reporting and attracting readers on the internet, we also have to be extremely careful not to replicate the discriminatory and exclusionary practices of tech start-ups and STEM fields. We need to demand changes at the newsroom level to combat discriminatory practices and masculine values, but more importantly, we need to focus our efforts further upstream at the journalism school level. In order to equip female j-school graduates with programming skills, we should demand more coordination between computer science and journalism departments so that programming becomes integrated into the journalism curriculum.

As data journalism professor Meredith Broussard explains, we have to combat the “subtle social forces that actively discourage women from entering STEM fields” by creating inclusive coding courses where women feel encouraged to learn technology. Ultimately, we must remember that the people who work on the news affect what becomes news—particularly, whose stories are told and whose voices are heard—which means that if news organizations do not reflect the society they are reporting on, the news cannot fully capture the diversity and complexity of that society. As we all know, that can have real implications on democracy and the society we live in. In a context where women journalists—especially Women of Colour—are still routinely marginalized, we must actively fight against normalizing and fetishizing a technological culture that could make things even worse than they already are. This article is part of a series of opinion pieces about journalism and its place in the world today. These articles will appear in our opinion section throughout January and February.

Graphic Sheena Macmillan JA NUA RY 2021

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Photoseries by Félix Bonnevie

Photoseries by Felix Bonnevie

Photoseries by Félix Bonnevie

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Finding Solace in Internet Friendship The importance of connecting with others digitally during the pandemic Delanie Khan-Dobson

always knew I was an extrovert, but I didn’t realize how much I thrived in the company of others until last year during the first wave of the pandemic. I came to recognize this specifically when the Quebec government began implementing restrictions on social gatherings. I really struggled with the switch from socializing in person to online. I yearned for the physical presence of others, which left me feeling mentally and emotionally depleted. Research has shown that many young people have become increasingly lonely due to the pandemic. In one study from the What Works Centre for Wellbeing, researchers found that individuals 18-30, those with a low household income, those living alone, those unemployed, and those facing a mental health condition were all at a “heightened risk of loneliness during the pandemic.” Perhaps out of boredom—hoping it would make the days go by faster—I became much more active on social media. I increasingly found myself replying to Instagram stories or tweets that resonated with me or that I thought were funny. Seemingly everyone I interacted with on social media also struggled with feelings of loneliness. I felt more connected to them and less alone because we all seemed to be T HEL INK NE W SPA P ER .C A

going through similar experiences. Some of my online interactions during the pandemic have been with people I had existing friendships with outside of social media, and a handful with acquaintances I only knew superficially offline. Increasingly, however, I have begun talking to and befriending people who I have never met face-to-face. I would notice we had mutual followers or friends on Twitter or Instagram, so I saw an opportunity to make a connection with them. My closest online friend is a connection I made this past year, who I’ll call Amy. We both attended the same university for our undergrads but were in different years and programs. Amy followed me on Instagram and immediately started replying to all my stories. At first I found this annoying, because I had never met them and they acted like they already knew me. When they kept messaging me throughout the months, I realized they were genuinely trying to get to know me and become friends, even if this friendship only existed online. Eventually, we became close, perhaps due to our similar experiences dealing with poor mental health and the loneliness of daily life in a pandemic. Not all of the connections I have made online have worked as successfully as the one I have made with Amy, and perhaps that is because, for a lot of people, interacting with others on social media can come across as very surface-level and not very intimate. I understand that, and I have previously had that perspective. Part of me remains wary about the online connections I have made, and I worry if post-pandemic they will continue or if they will simply fade away. This past year, however, those otherwise superficial interactions I might not have thought twice about previously have been so essential. The friends I have made via social media live all over the country, and the correspondence I have with

OPINIONS

them is something I look forward to every day. I have felt so connected to a handful of these internet friends that we have begun exchanging letters with each other through the mail, expanding our interactions outside of a solely virtual setting. I suppose I had dabbled with developing friendships with people over social media, but I always maintained that connections I made online were less intimate than the experiences I would have with friends face-to-face. Eva Hagberg, in her article “How to Keep Friends During the Pandemic” for The Atlantic, questions this belief that friendships and intimacy must happen in person. She explains that creating and maintaining friendships at a distance has been commonplace through letters, phone calls, texts, and online messages long before the pandemic struck. The pandemic has reaffirmed that we don’t need to be in the same physical space with others to develop new friendships and strengthen existing ones—that we don’t need to be next to one another to feel close. Marlee Bower, a postdoctoral research fellow studying the social determinant of health at the University of Sydney, backs up the belief that we can be just as close to those we befriend online as those we see in person. She explained to the BBC that, owing to social restrictions, internet friendships are now just as easy to manage and maintain as the friendships of those who live in the same city as you. The digital friendships that I have had with people throughout this year have allowed me to express pent-up frustration, sadness, and anxiety related to the pandemic, leaving me feeling heard and validated. In return, I hope that I am able to give them the same feelings of comfort and ease. There is a hopefulness and resiliency that comes with developing a sense of closeness at this time, both with new friends and old—being able to connect with anyone during a pandemic, virtually or otherwise, is a feat to be appreciated.

Photo Philippe Champagne

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The pandemic has reaffirmed that we don’t need to be in the same physical space with others to develop new friendships and strengthen existing ones— that we don’t need to be next to one another to feel close.”

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It’s Time to Abolish Celebrities The perniciousness of celebrity culture was on full display last year

Mzwandile Poncana @mzwandilep_

Even though COVID-19 transcended borders, class, and status, it quickly became crystal clear that the pandemic wasn’t the great equalizer many suggested it was. Racialized, poor, and working class people, for example, were more susceptible to the worst effects of the pandemic than the rest of the population. Yet, not only did many massmedia outlets and celebrities initially attempt to pretend everyone was on a level playing field, they also inadvertently revealed how deeply out of touch they are with the rest of society. Early on, in March, Gal Gadot rallied a legion of her fellow celebs to sing a poorly edited and flavourless rendition of “Imagine” by John Lennon—many described the video as condescending and useless. Priyanka Chopra posted a video of herself honouring healthcare workers by clapping into the ether. Madonna posted a video of herself speaking about how uniting the coronavirus was whilst seated in a polished tub—rose petals were strewn around her in the silver-tinted bathwater. The billionaire David Geffen, who was rightfully attacked for showing off his $590-million yacht with the caption “I’m hoping everyone is staying safe,” deactivated his account shortly after the inevitable backlash. When Pharrell asked his fans to donate money, they asked him, a millionaire, to donate it himself. Jennifer Lopez was criticized T HEL INK NE W SPA P ER .C A

for posting a video of her and her family enjoying themselves in the closed-off garden of Alex Rodriguez’s Miami compound. When Ryan Reynolds told everyone to “stay at home, save lives’’ from his comfortable loft, people described it as thoughtless. One tweet read, “Girl, people are dying” in response to Cardi B asking her 1.4-million Twitter followers if she should buy a purse for $88,000. This level of tone-deafness was made even more clear during America’s—and, subsequently, the world’s— mid-year uprising against anti-Black racism. One tragic response that stands out is the two-minute video posted by the actress Sarah Paulson, again with a group of celebrities, all montaged together reciting a script about “accepting responsibility”—watching it felt like watching a dramatic audition for an A24 film. Again, many saw it as white celebrities centring themselves in a movement that wasn’t entirely about them; many suggested that the celebrities could’ve just donated money or given Black people more opportunities in the filmmaking world instead. All of this tone-deafness points to one thing: we need to start thinking about the function of celebrities, and whether or not celebrity culture deserves to exist at all. Celebrity culture, in loose terms, is the world’s collective obsession with the personal lives of celebrities. It also refers to how details of ce-

OPINIONS

Graphic Nanor Froundjian lebrities’ personal lives are consistently disseminated through the media, and thus always in our faces. It is intertwined with consumer interests—celebrities turn their fame into a commodity. The existence of the culture is validated insofar as people are interested in celebrities and are willing to make accomodations in their own lives in order to take part in celebrities’ lives. However, the culture, so ubiquitous that it’s become unnoticeable, is proving to do more harm than good. For example, many experts have expressed concern about what this media does to the general population’s mental health. For example, it’s no secret that many see celebrities and immediately attempt to replicate their lifestyles, appearance, and personalities. Carla Marie Manly, a clinical psychologist who deals with self-esteem and body image, says in Shape Magazine that when “perfect” photos of “perfect” celebrities are put on a pedestal as the “ideal” standard, “those who are not able to achieve this truly impossible level of perfection secretly feel ashamed and defective.” As one body image specialist, Adrienne Ressier, put it in Shape Magazine: “With reality shows so popular, one can imagine that, with luck, anyone can be a celebrity.” Since everyone can be a celebrity, everyone is expected to be celebrity-worthy. This goes beyond self-esteem.

A study from the United Kingdom suggested that celebrity worship can lead to narcissism—because people aspire to the level of notoriety and importance of their favourite celebrity—and poorer mental health. Another study, from the British Journal of Psychology, suggested people who increasingly engage with celebrities’ lives slowly begin to disengage with their own. It can also lead to symptoms such as depression, anxiety, somatic symptoms, social dysfunction, and stress. People who worship celebrities deal with stress by withdrawing from the world around them and living “in a state of denial,” according to the study. Beyond the detrimental mental health effects and the egregiousness of watching celebrities flaunt their wealth whilst poor people are struggling to afford food and rent, a defining, yet overlooked, characteristic of the culture is that the existence of celebrities is based on a system of exploitation. Celebrities are the most visible representation of the wealthy class and are, therefore, both affirmers and beneficiaries of the idea of meritocracy. A meritocracy is a society in which civilians who display superior skills or talents are rewarded with higher social mobility and leadership. In this way, every citizen supposedly has the opportunity to be recognized and advance in proportion to their abilities and accomplishments. This is the society we live in today.

However, meritocracy—initially created as a way to create fairness—has been critiqued for creating the same inequalities it attempts to quell. Daniel Markovits, the author of The Meritocracy Trap: How America’s Foundational Myth Feeds Inequality, Dismantles the Middle Class, and Devours the Elite uses parental wealth as an example: “Rich parents now invest unprecedented time and money in education, creating a meritocratic inheritance that enables their children to dominate competitions for admission to elite colleges and for elite jobs.” This unfairness is similarly seen in celebrity culture, where family ties remain an undeniable tool in one’s climb to success. (The Kardashians are the most visible and arguably the most regularly admonished example.) In the book Against Meritocracy: Culture, Power, and Myths of Mobility, Jo Littler argues that meritocracy is the “key cultural means of legitimation for contemporary neoliberal culture.” Littler highlights a few notable issues with meritocracy; the first issue is that it endorses a competitive system where, by definition, certain people must be left behind: “The top cannot exist without the bottom,” as she says. She suggests this leads to a legitimization of inequality, damaging community “by requiring people to be in a permanent state of competition with each other” in order to succeed. JA NUA RY 2021

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This manifests in the way that the talents of celebrities become less about art—how it can heal and inspire a sense of community in the world—and becomes more about who is more talented than whom, and thus who deserves more attention. Meritocracy is also dysfunctional because it rests on the idea that talent and intelligence are innate, whilst also ignoring that the ability to climb the social ladder is simply much easier for some than it is for others. This relates to the idea of how, for many, the title of celebrity has been given to them only because of whom they’re related to—their subsequent success would not be possible without the celebrity status they are born with. This illusion also leaves out people with disabilities who may find it more difficult to succeed in a world with systems that weren’t designed with them in mind. Perhaps Littler’s most stinging critique is that meritocracy, and therefore celebrity culture, functions as a myth used to obscure and extend economic and social inequalities. Meritocracy relies on an overemphasis of merit and talent in order to make it appear as if the people in higher-level positions in society earned their place—and that that position shouldn’t be questioned. This overemphasis leads to us being forced to ignore the profound advantages of parental wealth and social location. Celebrities are thus purveyors of this system. They innocently litter us with pictures of their lavish lifestyles— at the same time, we’re forced to buy into an idea that they are deserving of the riches and of the higher positions they have. This leads us to collectively accept that only merit and talent are the boosts to success—whilst ignoring the staunch amount of inequality that has to exist for celebrities to be in their hierarchical position in the first place. Littler offers a small solution: she suggests a complete replacement of the individual success ladder with the less divisive ideas of mutual progress and egalitarianism. It’s not an overnight process, but beginning the conversation and acknowledging the problem is the first step. T HEL INK NE W SPA P ER .C A

Celebrities do have a large platform that can be used to broadcast important issues and ideas—however, we should start debating whether or not that platform should even exist if it means that one voice can only be heard if a group of others are simultaneously being silenced. There is currently a catastrophic humanitarian crisis. Numbers of Yemeni children died of hunger whilst we all gleefully welcomed in the new year. UNICEF warns that, due to the effects of the coronavirus, 10,000 additional children will die each month. On top of that, the United Nations warns that the poverty caused by the pandemic in poor countries carries significant comorbidities. It predicts 13 million girls being forced into child marriages and two million girls suffering genital mutilations due to interruptions to campaigns against the practice. Diminishing access to contraceptives could lead to 15-million unintended pregnancies. Seventytwo million children could be pushed into illiteracy, according to predictions by the World Bank. Nicholas Kristof argues in The New York Times that the calamity in poorer countries is due to “indifference” from western countries—we have our rose-colored glasses on. So when a celebrity posts about their $88,000 purse or their $590-million boat—remember why. It’s not because they worked hard for it and they deserve to show it off. It’s because the wealthy class needs you to pay attention to them—to put all your attention there, instead of to their amassing wealth and to the ensuing destruction that they are catalyzing in the rest of the world. Indifference in itself is a second pandemic; we cannot afford to sit back and obsess over maintaining the illusion of meritocracy whilst parts of the world are slowly being dilapidated. Celebrities do not deserve more attention than you; they were just lucky. No amount of hard work or talent justifies the attention we give them—especially when unnecessary attention only makes them wealthier. It’s time we turn our eyes and ears away from them and towards those who need us the most.

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American Motels

Ann Krystel Désirée Michel

Their bodies are touching in the electric blue lights. It looks like a ball-

point pen has tipped over the room and tainted the dancers.

Jane’s wet blonde hair is dark with sweat and sticks to her back, ex-

posed by her halter top. There’s hair stuck to her teeth, sticking to all the gaps between them.

She’s holding on tightly to Quintana’s dark hand, the way women do

in crowded places. Quintana’s golden hair is draped over her back like an expensive coat. It’s the colour of burnt grass, the kind that surrounds trailer parks. Her bangs are practically blinding her, dipping in her lilac eyeshadow and thick mascara.

In this sea of white trash, she’s the Black queen.

This is the American dream:

dancing in a sleazy club across from your motel in a nameless town.

A town that’s sliced in half by a main street decorated with neon lights, some of which haven’t worked since ’78. Only the important ones still bellow in the dark: liquor store, vacancy, naked ladies, XXX videos, Sunday service.

In this town, Jesus Christ is an essential, even at night.

This is the American dream:

following a band in a beat-up blue pickup—two girls going to dark

places, through thick crowds and smoke-filled rooms because they want to keep catching the lead singer’s pale, wet eyes—Paul’s.

There’s a broken window in Paul’s eyes. They’re crying eyes. Girls

swim in the salt like mermaids. They’d learn how to breathe underwater for Paul Holzer.

The heavy bass switches for another when the song changes, and the

blue lights turn into deep red. As Quintana cranes her neck to look for Paul—or any of the four guys for that matter—she catches the sight of two tongues mingling to her right. The couple’s teeth are tainted red by the lights, making it seem like they bit into each other’s flesh and drew blood.

People hunt in this town. Quintana knows. They’re blood hungry, like JA NUA RY 2021

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hanging from a thread in some seedy guy’s garage, deep in the woods.

Her veins throb. She tugs on Jane’s hand.

“Have you seen the guys?”

Jane cranes her neck as well, her long hair swaying and caressing the middle of her back.

The pretty one.

As Jane shrugs, Quintana speaks again.

“I wanna go back to our room.”

Jane rolls her eyes.

“You always do this. You promised that if I let you come with me, you’d try to be fun.”

The comment stings right between Quintana’s brown eyes. She bites the inside of her top lip hard and exhales heavily.

“I know, I’m sorry. I’m just—I’m tired.”

“It’s only…” Jane looks at her designer knock-off watch that she still swears to Quintana is real. “2:50 a.m. We’re

staying. Billy said he’d buy us drinks.”

Quintana searches the room for Billy—the drummer—or

Marty or David. She knows Paul’s probably in the bathroom or some unlit corner doing coke off of a pretty girl’s breasts. She wishes she cared the way she pretends she does.

Her heart lurches, suddenly—the kind of abrupt move

it makes when you suddenly realize you want to go home—and it doesn’t surprise her. It’s been jumping around since she agreed to follow Jane across the country in a rented truck. All they’ve seen on the road for the past three weeks is the tour bus’s licence plate. Jane never said why the band hadn’t let them ride with them.

Paul had jokingly said, naked next to Quintana on some for-

gettable bed, that “pretty girls spread their legs all fine, but then they wanna talk over the TV or your card games.” At her silence, he’d added—annoyed, somehow—“I’m kidding, I’m kidding!”

“We haven’t seen them in over two hours. Let’s just go back

to our room and they’ll know to find us there.”

Jane doesn’t say anything for a moment. Quintana knows

they’re thinking the same thing: if they leave the guys’ sight, they’ll leave them behind. Jane will never say that out loud, though. She’ll never let herself admit she’s not an intrinsic part of everyone’s life.

“I’ll buy you a drink,” she says instead. “You used to be fun

in high school. What happened?”

Quintana forces a laugh and walks through the damp mass

Graphic Joey Bruce

of bodies.

“We’ve just finished. Technically, we’re still in high school.”

Jane rolls her eyes again and leads them to the tiny bar. The man behind—mullet-wearing, teeth yellowed by tobac-

co—smiles at them. Jane preens, and although he’s not interesting in the slightest, Quintana’s jealous because she sees the quick glint in his eyes when he looks at her friend.

“What can I get you, pretty things? On the house.”

“Well, if it’s on the house, we’ll get something for you, too.” Jane leans against the bar, her pale breasts spilling from

her shirt. “Anything you want.” He smiles bigger at her, his tongue poking behind his broken teeth. “Quintana, what do you want?” she adds.

“Whatever you’ll have.”

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Quintana looks around and spots Paul, beautiful eyes glazed over, walking towards them. He stands out in any

crowd, but especially in this one. Even intoxicated, he walks with the confidence of someone who has never for a second doubted that he’s the favourite. Her body deflates with slight relief. She’s never truly relieved to see him, but at least he’s a familiar face.

“Where were you, my muse? I was desperately bored without you,” he announces. Although he’s speaking to her, it

feels like he’s addressing the whole room.

“I was dancing; waiting for you.” The words sound clunky coming out her mouth; she’s imitating Jane. He doesn’t

notice though, he didn’t know who she was before she got here. He smiles, all his straight teeth beaming at her.

“Darling girl.”

Even when he says ridiculously grand things like these, Quintana knows that Paul is never imitating anyone. He was

born to be adored and to shimmer in the dark.

The bartender slides her drink over to her—an old fashioned,

which she hates—that Jane only ordered to impress him. It’s hard for Quintana to know who she is on these roads, who she’s been since meeting Jane over a year ago. She constantly imitates her friend who only does things she thinks other people want. Paul grabs the glass and takes a generous sip.

“I love that you love old fashioneds,” he tells Quintana. He

dips his fingers in the drink and fishes out the cherry. “Stick out your tongue for me, will you, babe?”

As she does so, she thinks of her father. She left home to be

with a bunch of strangers because she let her best friend convince her that she missed rock ‘n’ roll. Whatever that means.

Paul puts the cherry on her tongue, and Jane slides closer

to them because she wants to be close to anything that might attract attention. Quintana bites into it with a big, fake smile. Paul grabs her waist and kisses the corner of her jaw as she chews.

“I’m gonna write a song about you,” he mumbles against her

skin. “I’ll call it cherry or brown sugar or Black girl or something.”

So far, Paul’s written seven songs about her. About the way

she chews, the way her accent changes when she speaks to her parents over the phone, about her natural hair, about how her ancestors were slaves, about Haiti, about her chipped nail polish.

She used to find it romantic, back in the beginning of sum-

mer. Now, she’s wondering how many girls’ lives he’s stolen to put in his songs. How he capitalizes on the quirks they pretend to have to please men like him. The white boy writing about the Black girl’s life like she’s not even real.

Quintana wants to say give me back my life. What she says instead is “can’t wait.”

She’s the least powerful here. She only followed them because she thought every exciting teenage experience could

only happen as long as Jane was near. She let her straighten her hair and dye it blonde, so she’d look like a real dream.

She feels like an emptied-out ship. If she dies on the road, nothing will sink down the waves with her. She’s an empty

shell.

“I wanna go back to our room,” Jane says to Paul.

He smiles at her.

“You have the best ideas, sweet Jane.”

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Social Media ‘Addiction,’ Instagram Activism, and Loving one’s Phone in 2021 Examining the uptick in screen time during the pandemic

Delanie Khan-Dobson For many, the first reflex after waking up is to grab your phone, “catch up” with what you missed while you were sleeping, and try to find some sort of solace in the online world, hoping it will provide comfort within a day-to-day existence that can feel pointless. Although what could be seen as a deep love affair has developed between many individuals and their phones, depending on it as a comfort blanket in a variety of situations, does this reliance equate to smartphone and social media addiction? “My screen time has increased so much. I’m embarrassed to admit it, but last week my phone told me that I was averaging eight hours a day—that’s more than an entire workday,” explained Nathalie Scott, a linguistics student at Concordia University, detailing how she had greatly increased the time she spends on her phone, perceiving this as something negative. Scott noted that she found herself constantly reaching for her phone throughout the day, distracting her from responsibilities. “I just can’t stop myself from doing it,” she said. “I open Instagram as soon as I open my eyes in the morning and it’s the last thing I do before I close my eyes at night. I also do it during class time!” Maureen Adegbidi, a recent graduate of Mount Allison University who now works full-time from home, also noticed that she had been spending more time on social media and felt more reliant on her phone. “I feel like [my phone usage] has been worse since the pandemic, but hours-wise it’s pretty similar to before. I think I feel that way because I T HEL INK NE W SPA P ER .C A

have less stimuli than I would otherwise,” Adegbidi wrote in an email. As a result of the pandemic, many people spent more time on social media, and their phones in general this past year while working and studying from home. One result of spending increasing amounts of time on social media has been the rise of digital activism online, which, for better and for worse, can allow people to believe they can keep up with and spread information and call out injustice, all from the comfort of their phone. At the beginning of June, in the midst of what seemed to be growing support and action for the Black Lives Matter movement, there was an uptick in the amount of Instagram users starting to share infographics. These infographics, easily digestible PowerPoint-style summaries on a variety of subjects about social justice and activism, were often used as a way to appear knowledgeable and to teach their followers about a variety of contemporary and historical topics. Adegbidi, who works in an organization centred around racial justice, shared her thoughts on the rise of Instagram infographics and online activism through social media during the pandemic. “Infographics have always been around,” she said. “Activists use them because they’re effective. They’ve just gone mainstream as our once less accepted causes went mainstream as well. It’s less about usage and more about people who aren’t politically activated participating and sharing when they wouldn’t otherwise and activists who are outputting more as they saw it was effective.” Elaborating, Adegbidi didn’t think online activism

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and social media addiction were related, believing that those who do care actively and wish to be engaged politically will be online regardless to gather, organize, and disseminate information. “When you are politically active you feel like it’s your duty to be aware,” she said. “Awareness takes info and info means screen time. I know that when I’m not online when something major happens, I feel ignorant and complicit, which makes me want to be in that space.” For someone like Adegbidi, whose daily work revolves around racial justice and activism, being more social and politically aware and active requires spending more time with her screen. In opposition to this, however, is the view that many people participate in what is often referred to as “slacktivism,” activism that does not extend past what individuals share and post on social media. One can share infographics about racial injustice and exploitation to appear informed and aware, while barely making any commitment to the actual issues at hand. Dr. Stefanie Duguay, an assistant professor in the communications department at Concordia researching internet culture and social media platforms, shared her perspective. Although she could not speak specifically to the physiological addiction and technology use, she did point out the importance of examining the increasingly common use of the term “addiction” within popular discourse about tech-

nology, social media, and smartphones. The idea of social media addiction “is in the public consciousness,” Duguay wrote, explaining that she was not surprised by what I had been hearing from others about their perceived dependence on or addiction to on social media and smartphone usage. However, Duguay stressed the importance of unpacking the term addiction and how many individuals are using it as a way to shame themselves over daily habits and routines that actually make a lot of sense given the growing importance of technology in their day-to-day routines. “What we mean by addiction is often ‘habit,’” she said. “We enact a large majority of our communicative activity in present life through our phones, and this is reinforced by our jobs, the availability of leisure activities, and media formats, so why wouldn’t we be using these technologies almost constantly?” To understand people’s increasing use of social media, it is important to examine how it is used through the wider lens of technological behaviour. Although it is easy to punish ourselves believing we are doing something wrong and unhealthy by spending more time on social media and the internet, Duguay said, “our phones connect us with family, friends, and familiar media, so why wouldn’t we feel as though they are a source of comfort?”

Graphic Maria Chabelnik

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Can Crystals Become Your Rock? Concordia students discover hidden gem in spirituality

Talia Kliot

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rystals are more than just pretty stones— they’re said to have properties that can influence one’s life. “Crystals are a way to connect with something tangible, to help you connect with your intuition,” said Raphael Hul, cofounder of Crystal Dreams, a Montreal business that sells crystals and other merchandise relating to spirituality. He explained that he sees crystals as a “bridge” between the physical and spiritual world. Alexandre Rivard, co-founder of OM Bien-être, a local wellness shop that sells crystals, explained that while some people just collect them because they’re beautiful, most people are concerned with their energy.

That being said, it can take some time to warm up to the spirituality that using crystals demands. “I was very logical, so I had a hard time connecting with the crystals at first,” said Hul, who was studying electrical engineering before he decided to start his business. He was fascinated after he learned about clear quartz, a crystal known to help with communication, in one of his engineering classes. He was taught that clear quartz was a key component in the early days of radio, thus facilitating communication on a physical level as well. Though they’ve been around for millennia, crystals have undergone a cultural resurgence in recent years. Now they grace the pockets of many, Concordia art students at the forefront. Maria Aouad, a Concordia art history and film studies major, has been using crystals for the past two years. Now a staple of her self-care ritual, she describes crystals as a “good luck charm.” When asked whether this “good luck charm” has had a tangible impact on her life, Aouad was quick to recall her final exam period at the beginning of the pandemic. “I was having such a hard time being creative,” said Aouad. Not sure how to solve her problem, she turned to crystals, citrine in particular, carrying it in her pocket when she was working on assignments. “I really felt like it really got me out of my little creative block. And so I actually got through finals pretty well,” she said. Art history student Lili Carrubba grew up with crystals around the house but only started using them herself at the start of the pandemic. She finds them “very therapeutic” and even holds them when she does tarot card readings. “I’ve been really stressed. What makes me feel better is meditating. I’m just sitting, relaxing, holding crystals and it’s to ground myself a little bit,” said Carrubba. She explained that her personal life is currently “very hectic,” but that using crystals helped her clear her mind. Pablo Vargas, a film studies student, became interested in crys-

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tals after seeing people with them at school, but also through TikTok and Twitter, where they are gaining traction. When asked to describe them, however, he opts for a “more scientific” explanation, pulling heavily on the notion that everything is vibrating, and the vibrations of the crystals affect our own in some way. He said that “people react better” when you bring science into it. Vargas uses the blue agate crystal to cope with anxiety and stress, feelings that surfaced when he recently began a new job. “I feel like it really does help me to feel more calm and not overthink things,” he said. Perhaps most importantly, those who use crystals stress that placing all your faith in them is not going to solve your problems—you have to be willing to put in work as well. “I think it has a lot to do with intentions,” said Carruba. When she uses crystals, she must sync up her own mindset with what the crystal is meant to help with. Hul compares crystals, and spirituality in general, to exercise; you have to keep practicing and setting your intentions. “Spirituality is something that you have to work on and devote your time to,” he said. “It’s your work plus the work of the crystals as a tool,” said Rivard. “Crystals won’t do the dishes for you.” He related a story of when his dog had a mass on his leg. He said he put a crystal under it, and a few hours later the dog was healed. While some might chalk this up to coincidence, he said he hears stories like this all the time. “Our role is not to convince anybody. It’s just to show people that there is something more than the physical world that anyone can connect to to become the best versions of themselves,” said Hul. “Some people think it’s a placebo, but placebo means it works,” said Aouad. She feels as though they do make a positive difference in her life, and it doesn’t matter whether that is based on the energy of the crystals or based on her intentions. Either way, I think it’s safe to say that crystals definitely rock.

Graphic Nanor Froundjian

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Under the Influence of Anti-Anxiety Medication An account of the ups and downs of being treated for anxiety Thomas Quinn @QuinnMtl On a Wednesday in March 2018, I went to the emer- and they were for a long time. We finally found the right gency room and a doctor diagnosed me with severe anxiety dosage at 20 mg of citalopram and 10 mg of buspirone daily disorder. He prescribed me 10 mg daily of the antidepres- with one mg of clonazepam for panic attacks. I applied to sant citalopram, a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor or journalism at Concordia University and was accepted. SSRI, and 0.5 mg of clonazepam for panic attacks. This came to an end in the fall semester of 2020. I Starting mid-August 2018, things got significantly wasn’t mentally prepared for full-time remote learning. worse. My anxiety symptoms were more intense than I had For certain journalism courses, remote learning did ever experienced before. I wasn’t able to sleep at night. I not affect my ability to complete assignments. For others, was having constant this was not the case. I agonizing stomach routinely met obstacles cramps. The only relief trying to complete I found was drinking my assignments, such alcohol, which would as interview subjects decrease my abdominsaying “I can’t let you al pain and temporarily come over because it is alleviate my anxiety. I illegal.” was on a one-way road How can you to self-destruction. blame them? We’re in I desperatethe midst of a global ly needed help and pandemic in a city in informed my doctor. the red zone asking They tripled the dosthem to allow us into age of my prescription their bubble, potentialfor citalopram to 30 mg ly contaminating them and added buspirone, with a deadly virus for which can be taken the purposes of a school in combination with assignment. This led to citalopram to boost its me having daily panic efficacy. My dosage of attacks and my doctor clonazepam was inprescribed one mg of creased to one mg. I clonazepam daily until can’t say this helped, the end of the semester. but it changed how I Ultimately, I felt. Instead of feelthink anti-anxiety ing anxious, I now felt medication has had a Graphic Jennifer Lee @thesketchbook nothing. I felt apathetpositive influence on ic and indifferent to life my life. Without it, I in general. I slept all the time and whenever I was awake, I would be a prisoner to my anxiety. I had little to no conwas just waiting until I could sleep again. trol over my emotions and how they would change drastic Eventually, I adjusted to my dosage. However, I ally in a short period of time. I had little to no control over told my doctor how I was feeling. They recommended we my ruminating thoughts. After being treated, I had more decrease the dosage. For a week to 10 days after the de- self-control than I had ever had before. When I was youngcrease, I was irritable and my emotions changed dramat- er, I would question why people would take these medicaically. I also felt what I would describe as random jolts of tions when you could use more natural coping mechanisms electricity coming up my spinal cord. such as yoga, meditation and exercise. For some people, It seemed like things were finally going to be okay, that isn’t enough. T HEL INK NE W SPA P ER .C A

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Ici, We Speak Franglais

How a mélange of French and English gives rise to a unique cultural language

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Chahinez Dib @cchahinezd

Let’s grab some beer at the dep” or “J’trouve pas d’parking” will probably become your préférées “Frenglish” expressions, as you will often hear them in the city. The food—particulièrement our poutine adorée, bagels, and Schwartz’s smoked meat sandwiches— and multiculturalism are part of Montreal’s vibe. Montreal is one of the cities in Canada where Frenglish, or, in French, le franglais, is spoken. This mix of French and English words is how Montrealers have come to adapt in an environment where these two languages coexist—and maybe to show off a little. Like many Montrealers, Clyde Boucher uses Frenglish on a daily basis to communicate with his friends and family. The 22-year-old Notre-Damede-Grâce native has used this dialect since elementary school. “Some of [the students] were already mixing French and English in their speech, so I gradually picked that up,” he explained. Growing up in a French-speaking household, Boucher had to learn English at school. Although his classes were in French, most of his classmates and friends were anglophone. For him, Frenglish is a big part of his life, and he does not see himself going without it. “It comes to me so naturally without even thinking twice about

it. [...] It is second nature for me,” said Boucher. “Even if you don’t speak a word of French, chances are that you will still understand what we say,” he added. Montrealers will often say that they speak Frenglish without even noticing. This language is born out of a culture influenced by the presence of French and English groups within the same city.

Bilingualism in Montreal

Montreal owes its language dynamic to its colonial history of language contact between the French and English communities. Canada’s large English-speaking population has influenced Quebec French to add some English words into the language and vice versa. Although French is the primary language of Montreal with 57 per cent of the population speaking it at home, Montreal is one of the most bilingual cities in Canada. In fact, more than half of the city’s population is bilingual. English-French bilingualism in Quebec has continued to rise over the past decade. According to the 2016 census results, bilingualism doubled in Quebec from 25.5 per cent in 1961 to 44.5 per cent in 2016. A way to observe this linguistic mosaic in Montreal is to visit the different neighborhoods in the city.

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A guide to help you feel at home in Montreal Whether you are a Montreal-native or just moved to the city, you are not considered a real 514 if you don’t speak Frenglish. Here are a few expressions that will help you better understand this unique Montreal slang. 5 à 7 after work: This is the perfect way to ask your colleagues to go out for “Happy Hour” after work. C’est l’fun: If you want to master the Québécois accent, you must combine the article and the noun and pronounce them as one word. On va bruncher?: This phrase is probably my favorite one to hear. Who does not love to be asked to brunch, right? Let’s grab some beers at the dep: English-speakers call convenience stores “dépanneurs” or “deps.”

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You will find that French is more dominant in Montreal’s east end—which is composed of the arrondissements of Rivière-des-Prairies-Pointes-auxTrembles, Anjou, and Montreal East— whereas the western part of the city is more anglophone. Known as the West Island, these lovely neighborhoods include Kirkland, Pierrefonds, Dollard-des-Ormeaux, Pointe-Claire, and Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue. Sometimes, Boucher will feel like choosing a language over the other to express certain words because they make more sense in that language. Many Montrealers also feel that way. Jean-Marc Augustave was born in Ahuntsic-Cartierville, moved to Saint-Laurent when he was seven and is now living in Laval. Unlike Boucher, Augustave grew up in a bilingual household. With both of his parents being from Haiti, Augustave has been mixing French and English from a young age. “I definitely learned Frenglish from my parents,” said Augustave. St-Laurent borough—one of the most multicultural ones in Montreal with 81 per cent of its residents being first or second generation immigrants— is where Augustave learned the linguistic influences in Montreal. For him, speaking this one-of-a-kind language made him who he is today. “It’s deeper than just mixing English and French in one sentence, it’s about sharing different cultures and mindsets,” he added. “But mostly, it is about having a unique identity as a city that’s multicultural.”

Code-switching: The real term to define Frenglish

Although most Montrealers define this linguistic mosaic of switching from a language to another as “Frenglish,” in more academic circles, it is known as “code-switching.” Code-switching refers to the use of two or more languages in a single conversation. For Olivier Brosseau-Côté, a master’s student in linguistics, the use of code-switching among Montrealers shows that they have acquired two linguistic systems and are comfortable enough to switch from one language to another. Code-switching can be used

for multiple reasons. Some people might code-switch to make themselves better understood, to express certain feelings, or to demonstrate the ability to speak two languages. “[Montrealers] are used to switching languages all the time to facilitate communication with people,” he added. Bilingualism and code-switching are markers of Montreal’s identity. For Augustave and Boucher, the ability to speak Frenglish goes beyond simply being fluent in both languages, it is the intertwining of two cultures to create one. “I haven’t seen people anywhere else mixing French and English in the same sentence,” said Boucher. “We recognize [Montrealers] by their language, which is rarely the case in other Canadian cities,” he added.

How multiculturalism influences the language

Not only has Frenglish emerged from the coexistence of French and English within the same province, but Montrealers also came up with another unique slang. Other cities in Canada incorporate multiple languages into parlance. Toronto slang is sometimes composed of Jamaican words, while Montrealers not only mix French and English together, but other languages as well. Montreal has a large Arabic and Haitian population, which influences the way younger generations speak. This slang contains mostly words from these two communities. However, this slang will be mostly mixed with French words.

Linguistic tensions in Quebec

Montrealers will come up with their own language by mixing French, English, Arabic, Haitian Creole, and sometimes a bit of Spanish. But not everyone looks at this mixing of languages positively. Quebec French has a long-standing conflict with the use of English as many Quebecers are worried that the French language is declining. In November, Premier François Legault expressed his concern regarding

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Montreal’s multicultural identity

Did you know that Montreal is one of the most ethnically diverse cities in Canada? Well, now you know. Here are some of Montreal’s most diverse neighbourhoods. St-Léonard: Located in the east end of the island, St-Léonard is a mainstay for Italians and Haitians. The Italian community in Montreal is one of the largest in the country, second to Toronto. St-Laurent/Ahuntsic-Cartierville/Jean-Talon Est: These three neighbourhoods have large Algerian and Moroccan populations. In fact, one in five inhabitants was born abroad. There are 200,000 North Africans in Canada, including 80 per cent in Quebec, and 70 per cent in Montreal alone. Plateau Mont-Royal: Oui, French people from France call the Plateau their home. If you take a walk in the Parc Lafontaine, don’t act surprised if you see them having a picnic lunch and siroter a bottle of wine while smoking cigarettes.

Graphic Florent Aniorte

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“It’s deeper than just mixing English and French in one sentence, it’s about sharing different cultures and mindsets. [...] But mostly, it is about having a unique identity as a city that’s multicultural.” - Clyde Boucher

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Montreal businesses that are unable to serve their clientele in French. According to Brosseau-Côté, many Quebecers see Montreal’s bilingualism as eroding French language and culture. “[Quebecers] have many linguistic insecurities because we are afraid of losing French to the profit of English,” said Brosseau-Côté. “Lots of Quebecers see this mixing of languages negatively because we are scared of English taking over.” However, Brosseau-Côté does not think that the French language will disappear anytime soon. For him, the laws that protect French in the province, such as the Charter of the French Language, known as Bill 101, are strong enough to maintain French. Clarissa Belleville, 23, started to use Frenglish at a young age to communicate with her classmates. Born in a French-speaking home in Montreal’s South Shore, her parents enrolled her in an English elementary school when she was 5. “In the first few months there, I could not speak a word of English,” said Belleville. “When I wanted to communicate, I would use Frenglish because it was the only way that I could get my message across.” Belleville thinks that as much as people want to push that Quebec is a French province, more and more people are either speaking Frenglish or full English. In fact, 45 per cent of Quebecers declared in the 2016 census that they speak both languages, whereas the number in 2011 was 42.5 per cent. This growth in bilingualism in Quebec mostly came from native French speakers. She agrees with Brosseau-Côté that there are many laws that enforce French in the province, and that it is virtually impossible that the French language disappears any time soon in the province. “I feel like the more you push the French language, the more the ones that don’t speak it will reject it,” she said. Montreal-based comedian Sugar Sammy—who also calls himself a Karen whisperer and a shit disturber— shared a tweet last September trolling Quebec’s decision to strengthen the French language in the province instead

of focusing on getting small businesses back on their feet during the pandemic.

Sammy tweeted, “In Québec, when businesses will go bankrupt, we’ll make sure they do it in French.” The comedian received backlash after he published this tweet. Although these linguistic tensions in the province can generate debates, Frenglish is here to stay. “I do think that this language is a unique part of Quebec’s identity,” said Belleville. “Because everyone is using it, it becomes a third language for us.” In Montreal, you will often get asked what your mother tongue is. Although some will answer either French or English, many Montrealers wish they could answer “Frenglish” to that question. “It’s kind of the third unofficial language in Canada,” said Augustave. Multiculturalism and the coexistence of French and English contribute to the richness of Montreal’s identity. “I think we are lucky to live in such a multicultural city. [...] It helped us invent our own language,” said Augustave.

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Inside the World of Activist Postering in Montreal How a subculture of artists takes its message of social change to the streets, one sheet at a time

Marcus

Bankuti @marcusbankuti

Whether Stefan Christoff is setting out to “make racists afraid again,” advocate for exploited workers, or defund the police, he begins in his kitchen, whisk in hand, a smell faintly like bread rising to his nose. The concoction is one part flour, six parts water, and in about 20 minutes, it will be a smooth, sticky paste. In the winter, he must work swiftly, his adhesive still scalding. The wheat paste will freeze quickly on a metal pole, but if he’s fast and the mixture is hot enough when he dips the brush, it will work. Christoff, a Montreal activist and community organizer for nearly 20 years, is a devotee of street postering, a politicized style of street art that still thrives in the city, even in the age of social media. “I think any sort of real democratic discussion takes action,” he said. In a city renowned both for its dynamic arts scene and its political tensions, the street itself is a battleground of ideas, even as it teeters on the edge of commercialization. The world feels rapidly more virtual, but a cacophony of posters—many defaced or covered— cram street lamps, walls, mailboxes, and construction sites, fighting to be heard. “You can’t just put your work on the wall and be like, ‘That’s the work that I did and if someone goes over it then it’s gone forever,’” said Chris Robertson, owner of screen-printing shop La Presse du Chat Perdu and a collaborator of Christoff’s. “You’ve got to keep pushing, you’ve got to keep doing work and putting it out there.” “I like the idea that it stays up

for a while, but it’s not totally permanent and it’s not impossible to get off,” said Christoff. “[...] [Y]ou just need hot water and a scraper, that’s it, and it takes like 10 minutes.” The ephemeral nature of the art form reflects an ever-changing zeitgeist. “A lot of what I put up is not that super artistic but it is creative in a sense, and I think it’s an evolving space depending where we’re at politically in the moment,” said Christoff.

Taking the streets

Many prefer the cloak of darkness, but Christoff often goes out in the light of day, keeping his tub of wheat paste hidden in a reusable shopping bag to avoid being hassled by the police. His openness about what he does is a political decision—an embodiment of his belief that street art is not something that should be hidden. “I do those things for a reason, and I don’t want to be doing that in the dark. I do that intentionally in a public way,” he said. Those who plaster our public spaces with messages of action or solidarity see the medium as a mode of intervention. “What’s good about street art is it takes it back to messaging on the street being a space for public democratic debate as opposed to being mediated by who’s going to pay the most to get a message out there,” said Christoff. Claiming space for community activism is an essential component of street art, said Kevin Lo, a part-time faculty member in the design and computation arts department at Concordia JA NUA RY 2021

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University and the owner of LOKI, a design and communications studio. “It’s hard to measure any sort of practical effect, but I’d like to think that it shows a certain form of contestation,” he said. Lo often designs posters and has at times put them up himself. “As a designer, I feel it’s really important to do this kind of work and get it within what I would call a public sphere,” he said. Some post on platforms such as Instagram to strive for the same effect, but for Lo, reaching the public sphere primarily means getting into the street. “The way social media tends to work and the way the internet tends to work these days, it’s not so much a public sphere anymore,” he said. “Everyone has opinion bubbles.” He noted the way algorithms dictate the messaging each person sees, a corporate filter that doesn’t apply to the street. “I have really mixed feelings about social media,” said Lo, who spent years as an interactive designer working in advertising. There’s amazing activism being done on social media, he said, yet the platforms themselves are addictive, meant to be commercialized. Success is quantitative, and engagement itself is commodified. A poster on the street, in comparison, may not grab a person’s attention as well, but it’s disruptive. “I think that’s what makes T HEL INK NE W SPA P ER .C A

it powerful,” he said. “I think our city streets are more vibrant and more meaningful when the debates of our time are expressed on them,” said Christoff. While Christoff often goes out in the daytime as an expression of his philosophy, there is ample reason to avoid it. “Stefan goes out during the day, which is not my style,” said Robertson. “I’m more of a go-out-at-midnight kind of person.” He likes that people will leave him alone at night, though he recognizes this is a privilege he has over street artists who present as women. The other issue, aside from unwanted attention from passersby, is police harassment. If someone is putting up commercial posters, such as for a concert venue, they aren’t likely to get a hard time, Robertson said, but this can change depending on the content. “If you’re putting up work that’s about defunding the police, things like that, then they’re really going to have a problem with you and they’re going to start trouble with you,” he said. Yet, postering is not illegal, at least when it comes to public property in Montreal. A bylaw prohibiting the practice was struck down in 2010 by

the Quebec Court of Appeal in a case involving Jaggi Singh, a well-known activist in Quebec. Singh was fined under the bylaw in 2000—not the first time he had been charged—when he was out postering near Ste-Catherine St. E. and Berri St. for the Montreal Anarchist Bookfair. He was found guilty in 2003 but was acquitted on appeal in 2010. The Quebec Court of Appeal found the bylaw infringed on the freedom of expression of Montrealers because there were not many spaces designated for the activity. Postering had been allowed on boards known as babillards, but these were few and far between. Singh told the court that in years of postering, he had only noticed two babillards, both near McGill University, and that because they are so small, using them would require covering up posters for events that had not yet happened. Posters at the time were also permitted on construction hoarding— the fences surrounding construction sites—but these were often plastered with commercial advertising. “Most people think it’s illegal, but it’s actually not illegal,” said Lo. “Cops will still harass you for it because cops still think it’s illegal too.” Public reception can range from love to hate. Lo recalls his first experiences with postering when he was still taking classes at Concordia. He had designed a series of anti-consumerist posters as part of a project that related to intervening in the public sphere. He pasted them on glowing, tubular advertising columns so that they covered up commercial messages. Most of his pieces were torn down quickly, but he recalls finding a message on one still left intact, written in the corner in ballpoint pen. “Merci beaucoup,” the stranger wrote. “Je t’aime.” “It sparked in me this idea of how powerful design can be to actually communicate with people and to create a dialogue and create an interaction,” said Lo. However, the messages can also attract venom. Lo notes the resurgence of farright groups in Quebec. “I think we’re

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seeing with some of these more extreme groups, extreme-right groups, they also like to take public space in these ways as well,” he said. Christoff, for his part, recently received hateful calls to a phone number he included on posters advertising an event to benefit Beirut following the devastating explosion at its port in August. The man who called was incensed by the fact the posters, now defaced in black marker with the word “français,” were in English. He complained the posters had no place in Quebec because they were not in French and because they supported the rights of immigrants. He swore and said he hoped Israel would invade Lebanon again. French versions had been posted nearby, Christoff said.

The impact of street art

“You usually never know if you got through to people,” said Robertson. The real change is effected by community organizers, he said, but the role of postering is to bring awareness, to motivate people, and to bring ideas into people’s consciousness. “A lot of people are getting involved in these campaigns because of those posters,” said Muhamed Barry, a member of Solidarity Across Borders and the Immigrant Workers Centre. He isn’t involved in posters, but he believes they help local causes and the people they seek to support, such as new immigrants. “They see the posters somewhere in the city, they read, they go online and call us,” he said. Often these people are victims of exploitation. Christoff sees postering as one mode of action, and his activities often collide. Like Barry, he is a member of the IWC. Among other things, the organization advocates for Dollarama warehouse workers it says are underpaid and labouring in unsafe conditions. Christoff takes pleasure in taking this message to the doorstep of the dollar store’s outlets. “It’s very important to speak out because a lot of people are exploited by employers in Canada,” said Barry.

Stefan Christoff uses a wallpaper brush and homemade wheat paste to plaster political messages around the city. Photos Esteban Cuevas

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The poster, designed by Robertson, reads, “Justice for Dollarama Warehouse Workers, Status for All,” a reference to calls for regularization to be granted to all undocumented migrants and temporary workers in Canada. The poster’s thick blankets of black ink convey gravity and draw the viewer’s eye to the workers gathering in the centre of a warehouse floor. “The worst thing would be for people to walk by and just not even care, not even think about it,” said Robertson, but the goal is not necessarily to change minds. “Street art is supposed to be confrontational, but the other side of it is the sharing of love as well, to the people the work is talking to.” This year, drawing on his identity as a Japanese-Canadian of mixed heritage, Robertson’s work has focused largely on anti-racism in the wake of COVID-19. One of his pieces is a black-and-white depiction of a woman dressed in traditional Japanese attire, a mask covering her mouth. It reads, “My ethnicity is not a virus.” In one instance, somebody wrote in marker on the concrete next to the poster: “Virus is from Wuhan, China. This is Japanese garb, bigot!” “I was talking about evoking a strong emotion, positive or negative, and that is the goal, and it is,” said Robertson. “But especially with this work, which is so personal to me and my experience, when people deface this and write racist things on this, that hurts.” Another poster, designed by Jessica Sabogal, an Oakland-based muralist who is a friend and collaborator of Robertson’s, reads “Whiteness lacks awareness but always has an opinion.” It has been defaced in multiple locations. Still, the value of such artwork can go beyond simply making people question their views. “People can feel like other people are sticking up for them,” Robertson said. “As much as I’m trying to talk to the people that are perpetrating the racism and stereotypes and stuff, it’s also for the people in my community to feel like their voice is being heard.” “I think for people who feel alienated, I’d like to hope that these sorts of interventions help,” said Lo, who believes creating visibility and taking space can be inherently empowering. “I think in some ways what’s i T HEL INK NE W SPA P ER .C A

“I think our city streets are more vibrant and more meaningful when the debates of our time are expressed on them.” — Stefan Christoff

mportant is for someone, even someone like me, if I can see a poster that is aligned to my values and that is beautiful and is energetic and has a strong message, it reinforces that for me and makes me feel less alone in the world and in the city,” he said. Besides this, a poster can have a practical value: it can invite residents to attend something. It can give the date, time, and place. It’s also something people do because it’s what they feel they have to offer. “I’m not an essayist, I’m not a musician, so those aren’t my forms of communication,” said Robertson. “This is. Whether it’s the most powerful one, I don’t know.”

The convergence of artist and activist

“I think it’s still quite a challenge to mobilize artists, and it’s still quite a challenge to get activists to ap-

preciate the role that art has, so there’s definitely still a challenge, but I think slightly less of a challenge in a city like Montreal than elsewhere,” said Lo. Lo identifies with social anarchism, a philosophy that links individual autonomy and community solidarity. He describes a political awakening in the late 90s and early 2000s around the fight against corporate globalization, influenced in part by writings from Mexico’s far-left Zapatista movement. Lately, he recognizes psychological motives in the way he channels his creative energy, finding that Montreal has a special way of bringing out this convergence. Even in Montreal, however, commercial influences are everywhere. Robertson resents that the international MURAL Festival in Plateau-Mont-Royal has no issues securing funding each year, yet something like Unceded Voices, a mural festival celebrating female Indigenous artists, struggled to stay afloat and is now defunct.

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“If you can’t sell Fido phones, then it doesn’t get the same notoriety or recognition as these other things,” he said. Street postering nevertheless has a way of resisting commercialization. Some posters are photocopied, but for reasons such as authenticity and cost, many are produced by other means, such as screen printing. This process involves burning stencils into mesh screens that then have ink pushed through them. It’s the way a lot of these posters traditionally get produced, according to Lo. “I think in some ways the actual handmade quality that comes out of a screen print, there’s something there that is special, there’s something that has a certain aura that I don’t think you can get with digital reproduction,” he said. It’s tactile and smells of ink. “Each print is actually a unique object

where if you push a little bit harder, it’s going to be darker. If you let up in a certain area, it’s going to be a little bit lighter. If the screen gets a little bit worn out, there’s going to be a little bit of leakage,” he said. “I think there’s also that aspect of the kind of humanness of that printing. It has a little bit of that imperfection that I think is really important to give it that sense of aura and that sense of materiality.” Christoff has a stack of posters at home that were designed by Lo and came off Robertson’s screen printing machine. This is the pile Christoff reaches for one recent afternoon, the wintery air hovering around -4 C. Steam pours from his glue, hot off the stove, as he rushes to Plaza St-Hubert in La Petite-Patrie with a friend from New York. They find a lamppost across from Sabor Latino at Bélanger St. Christoff dips his wallpaper brush in wheat

paste and paints the metal pole. His friend, who has come along to look out for patrol cars, flattens a sheet against it. Christoff brushes the poster with a coat of glue. It’s a simple piece, nothing more than bold, black lettering on white paper. No one knows how many will see it before it fades, before it gets scraped off, covered up, or defaced. No one knows how many will take its message to heart:

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The Link is published four times during the academic year by The Link Publication Society Inc. Content is independent of the university and student associations (ECA, CASA, ASFA, FASA, CSU, AVEQ). Editorial policy is set by an elected board as provided for in The Link’s constitution. Any student is welcome to work on The Link and become a voting staff member. Material appearing in The Link may not be reproduced without prior written permission from The Link. Letters to the editor are welcome. All letters 400 words or less will be published, space permitting. The letters deadline is Fridays at 4:00 p.m. The Link reserves the right to edit letters for clarity and length and refuse those deemed racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, libellous, or otherwise contrary to The Link ’s statement of principles. The Link acknowledges our location on unceded Indigenous land. The Kanien’kehá:ka Nation is recognized as the custodians of these lands and waters. Tiohtiá:ke is historically known as a gathering place for many First Nations. T HEL INK NE W SPA P ER .C A

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The Influence/Influenced Issue

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We Connect: Conceptual Photography

Fetishizing Technology Widens the Gender Gap in Journalism

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Can Crystals Become Your Rock?