Curatorial Statement – Tim Carlson on Ryeberg Live

December 26, 2013

One hundred hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute. Over six billion hours of video are watched each month—reflecting almost an hour for each human in the global population. And that’s up 50% from last year, according to Google’s 2013 stats for the video sharing site. The company claims that the number of people subscribing daily to YouTube is up 3-4 times since last year.

The cultural influence of YouTube since it came online in 2005 has been massive: changing the game of celebrity, music marketing and education, to mention just a few things.

It was just over four years after YouTube launched that Toronto-based writer Erik Rutherford had a great idea. He would invite writers, artists, comedians and cultural thinkers to curate a collection of links reflecting their obsessions or observations about the culture of YouTube or other video sharing sites within the body of a critical essay.

Written text + video clips = Ryeberg

It was a simple formula that has yielded insightful results on the Ryeberg site from such writer/curators as filmmaker Mike Holboom, short story writer Sheila Heti and journalist/novelist Russell Smith. Check out the Most Viewed list, which includes Lynn Crosbie’s “Crazy Michael Jackson Fan” (35,938 hits) and Mary Gaitskill’s “Lady Gaga in Hell” (28,472 hits) for a taste of where Ryeberg might travel.

Ryeberg is also offers a distinctive formula for a live event and we invited Erik to host a show and invite curators to do live presentations last year at Club PuSh. It proved to be one of the most-talked-about events at the Club in 2013. So we quickly agreed to do another round.

Up-and-coming video designer Sammy Chien, who divides his time between Vancouver and Taiwan and recently posted shots of himself hanging out in Beijing with Ai Weiwei, is one of curators presenting at Ryeberg Live this year. Artist and Emily Carr University drawing instructor Vjeko Sager is another.

Novelist and art critic Lee Henderson (The Man Game) and “writer, editor, bon-vivant and occasional crank” Zsuzsi Gartner (Better Living Through Plastic Explosives) round out the evening.

Expect an entertaining and illuminating selection of Ryeberg live essays at a sure-to-be-sold-out Club event on Sunday, January 26. It might inspire you to dip into the deep well of YouTube and organize some reflections for your own Ryeberg.

Tim Carlson, Club PuSh Curator
PuSh International Performing Arts Festival

Ryeberg Curated Video (Toronto, Canada)

January 26
Club Push at Performance Works
1218 Cartwright Street, Granville Island

7:00PM