Do you remember the first time you made cookies? Where you were? Who you were with? How the dough felt between your fingers? How it tasted, when you ate some cookie dough before being scolded and told it would make you feel sick? Did it make you feel sick?
My first cookie-making memory is of making peanut-butter cookies at my daycare - a classic three-ingredient thing of magic. I still love pressing the tines of a fork into the cookies, leaving my mark. We leave our small marks over time, as time leaves its marks upon us. My scattered memories shape and guide me, even those most mundane. Like the memory of crying when my mother dropped me off at daycare for the first time. I wonder if I got a cookie after that? I don’t remember anymore.
But today we’re not going to make peanut-butter cookies. We’re going to make oatmeal chocolate-chip - my favourite. I first made these cookies in my dorm in Halifax in 2014, which, unconventionally, had a small communal kitchen equipped with a working oven. Making a late-night snack with a dorm-mate, we had everything we needed but the egg. After a quick google on egg alternatives, banana was the winner, and did not disappoint. Even before going vegan the following year, the banana egg-substitute became my go-to version for this cookie.
I love bananas. I eat one nearly every day, sometimes more than one if I'm hungry and too busy to make lunch. I've been told this is gross, more than once actually. There is something about the taste and feel of banana in your mouth, that mushy chew, that gets kind of disgusting when it goes on too long. But it’s also what binds these cookies, giving them the taste and texture that I love.
This recipe was adapted from CanadianLiving.com’s Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies. CanadianLiving.com is my go-to for recipes, at least classic comfort foods like baked goods, even though I do have to veganize pretty much all of it. I like to improvise in the kitchen, combining recipes to make them my own. My mom used to get Canadian living magazines when I was a kid. I don’t really remember making recipes out of them, but for that reason it feels like a trust-worthy source. Familiar, in place of the family recipes I long for. I have transcribed a few of my Oma’s recipes over the years, carefully writing out the grams of zucker und mehl required, but something feels lost. Surely we have more food traditions than Linzertorte and Goulash?
I wonder how my attachment to Canadian Living speaks to my settler ideals? I mean Canada is fake, but, can we still make a good cookie?
shared cookie memories
Through this work we keep in mind, “not everyone has the privilege to choose to inhabit the university in these ways” (Loveless, 64).
A polydisciplinamorous reading of the third chapter in “How to Make Art at the End of the World: A Manifesto for Research-Creation” (Natalie Loveless, 2019) by Vanessa Burns & Piper Curtis 2020.
A polydisciplinamorous reading of the third chapter in “How to Make Art at the End of the World: A Manifesto for Research-Creation” (Natalie Loveless, 2019) by Vanessa Burns & Piper Curtis 2020.
A brief collection of memes centred around the theme of spectacle.
Featured in The Void Magazine’s Big Web Issue, these memes explore the sensation of becoming a spectacle simply while being oneself.
Live meme-reading/performance at the launch party at Brasserie Beabien on January 31, 2020.
From the editors: Remember when you fell three times in one day? Once before class running around the playground, you fell and scraped your knee. Just a scratch, big laugh, carry on, take a seat. Next, at recess you were running even faster and turned a sharp corner and slid on the hot concrete and busted open the other knee, but you laughed even louder, face turning red, and kept running. And finally the third time, le piece de resistance, playing four-square you rolled your ankle and fell head over heel in front of your whole middle school class: tears streaming, face the reddest it’s ever been. A rug of composure had been yanked from under your feet, and in that moment, the nakedness of entropy threw you to the wolves, eyes agape with both sympathy and schadenfreude. Somewhere in a parallel universe is another version of you, falling and re-falling ad nauseam, a glitch in the cosmos. Oh, how the moment stuck! What is falling in front of a group of people? Falling on the street? Falling emotionally with tears on the bus? How are you figured in these moments as a spectacle? Are you failing to impress and representing a rupture in the big show? We want your embarrassment, your pride, your stadium-wide moments. Show us your show or the show you're watching.
The VOID Magazine | Issue 23.1 Spectacle | Curtis
Featured in The Void Magazine’s Big Web Issue, these memes explore the sensation of becoming a spectacle simply while being oneself.
Live meme-reading/performance at the launch party at Brasserie Beabien on January 31, 2020.
From the editors: Remember when you fell three times in one day? Once before class running around the playground, you fell and scraped your knee. Just a scratch, big laugh, carry on, take a seat. Next, at recess you were running even faster and turned a sharp corner and slid on the hot concrete and busted open the other knee, but you laughed even louder, face turning red, and kept running. And finally the third time, le piece de resistance, playing four-square you rolled your ankle and fell head over heel in front of your whole middle school class: tears streaming, face the reddest it’s ever been. A rug of composure had been yanked from under your feet, and in that moment, the nakedness of entropy threw you to the wolves, eyes agape with both sympathy and schadenfreude. Somewhere in a parallel universe is another version of you, falling and re-falling ad nauseam, a glitch in the cosmos. Oh, how the moment stuck! What is falling in front of a group of people? Falling on the street? Falling emotionally with tears on the bus? How are you figured in these moments as a spectacle? Are you failing to impress and representing a rupture in the big show? We want your embarrassment, your pride, your stadium-wide moments. Show us your show or the show you're watching.
The VOID Magazine | Issue 23.1 Spectacle | Curtis
See more #deardiarymemes on Instagram
Dear Diary,
I do not always find it easy to tell others how I feel. I need creative ways to express myself and to work through the things I cannot speak out loud. The meme format - text on graphic - has provided a new and unparalleled outlet for me to share my innermost thoughts and fears. By pouring out my heart onto the internet, I have shared parts of myself I never thought I could, and connected with others in the process.
I am witnessing continually the need we have to hear and be heard, to be reminded that we are not alone and that many of our experiences are deeply relatable to both those around us and people we may never have a chance to meet.
Now, I invite you to take part in this process with me by making an anonymous entry into my diary. Some of your words may inspire memes. All of your words will contribute to a collective experience of letting go, of being heard without having to speak. Check @rude_oil_pipeline and #deardiarymemes on Instagram regularly for new entries into my meme diary. <3
On November 27th, visitors to the In House Intermedia III class vernissage were invited to participate in a live installation of #deardiarymemes. Participants entered a cozy bedroom-scene one at a time wherein they could handwrite a diary entry. They were then invited to remediate their words onto IRL memes, posted around the installation.
Concordia University | Communications | Curtis
Dear Diary,
I do not always find it easy to tell others how I feel. I need creative ways to express myself and to work through the things I cannot speak out loud. The meme format - text on graphic - has provided a new and unparalleled outlet for me to share my innermost thoughts and fears. By pouring out my heart onto the internet, I have shared parts of myself I never thought I could, and connected with others in the process.
I am witnessing continually the need we have to hear and be heard, to be reminded that we are not alone and that many of our experiences are deeply relatable to both those around us and people we may never have a chance to meet.
Now, I invite you to take part in this process with me by making an anonymous entry into my diary. Some of your words may inspire memes. All of your words will contribute to a collective experience of letting go, of being heard without having to speak. Check @rude_oil_pipeline and #deardiarymemes on Instagram regularly for new entries into my meme diary. <3
On November 27th, visitors to the In House Intermedia III class vernissage were invited to participate in a live installation of #deardiarymemes. Participants entered a cozy bedroom-scene one at a time wherein they could handwrite a diary entry. They were then invited to remediate their words onto IRL memes, posted around the installation.
Concordia University | Communications | Curtis
Three Perspectives on Self-Care... In a Zine!
November 29, 2019
This zine follow three distinct approaches for enacting self-care through art and alternative media creation.
In this zine, I continue my autotheoretical study of the practice of memeing as self-care and the therepeutic value of oversharing online. This understanding is expanded to include the community I have found through memeing and some of the collaborations that have come out of it, including a wholesome meme collaboration. Some of those memes are included in this zine. To see the rest, follow the hasgtag #uwuicidesquad on instagram.
Check out @rude_oil_pipeline on Instagram to see more meme content.
Download the zine.
Read the artist statement.
Concordia University | Communications | Bilokin, Curtis, Masella
In this zine, I continue my autotheoretical study of the practice of memeing as self-care and the therepeutic value of oversharing online. This understanding is expanded to include the community I have found through memeing and some of the collaborations that have come out of it, including a wholesome meme collaboration. Some of those memes are included in this zine. To see the rest, follow the hasgtag #uwuicidesquad on instagram.
Check out @rude_oil_pipeline on Instagram to see more meme content.
Download the zine.
Read the artist statement.
Concordia University | Communications | Bilokin, Curtis, Masella