weewerk 13
Punchline!

Friday 12 September
show begins at 8:00
band plays 10:00
PWYC!

620A Queen Street West
(above Rotate This)
416-365-7056

Dust off your best bad jokes - or your worst good ones - and trot them out to Punchline!, weewerk's own open-mic comedy show on Friday 12 September. His eminence Nick Flanagan will host. Prizes for particularly awful specimens will be awarded by a panel of "celebrity" judges, including the People's Poet Ken Babstock and the tag-team of Sheila Heti and Carl Wilson. Art, video and sound works by Jason McLean, Jinhan Ko and Mark Soo will blow your gaskets, and whiskey-fuelled saloon bluegrass trio Elliott Brood will ease your miserable existence.

Please contact weewerk at info@weewerk.com in advance of the show if you have a prize to donate.

Biographies

Sheila Heti, author of The Middle Stories, is responsible for the Trampoline Hall Lectures.

Carl Wilson is a music editor at The Globe and Mail.

Mark Soo is a Vancouver-based artist and musician who has exhibited at the Western Front and Centre A and performed at music festivals such as Canadian Music Week and New Music West. He is also currently co-curating a music CD project for the Contemporary Art Gallery, to be published in Public magazine this fall. Soo graduated with a BFA from Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design in 1999 and is a member of the Board of Directors at the Or Gallery.

Elliott Brood is named after the victim of a grisly legend of murder, car culture, and extreme weather. Read more at www.elliottbrood.ca

Nick Flanagan is a widely recognized ex-musician and comedian. The Dallas Morning News has referred to him as "terribly bad", but who wants to be popular in a town that kills presidents? Nick Flanagan, that's who--and it breaks his heart that he isn't.

Excerpt from Jason McLean's so-called bio, available in its ENTIRETY on www.jasonmclean.com:
"[...] I was just trying to call my parents a few minutes ago. I talk to them every week,even though they live in London , Ontario,my home town, my Dad asks me sometimes how my little business is going.So i guess that's what i do; i run a little business, my artwork. I decorate things, pieces of paper, cover up things, i don't know what else to do.I've been getting into fashion lately, and i've been reading alot about economics. I've been going to the library.I'm starting to read more about politics and stuff. Maybe i've exhausted the whole art thing,maybe i'll have a real career change, a radical shift. I picked up the "New Federalist" the other day.I just finished a book,it was 500 pages; i don't finish many books. I read a book called "No Logo".I was trying to get more informed.People are like"do you really want to read that stuff?,find out what's really going on? So i thought maybe i should read about world issues. But lately i've become obsessed with handwriting.To the point where I'll go into a store, and i won't want to buy what they're selling,I want to buy what they're using to sell. I'll want to buy the sign that they wrote to sell something, or the piece of tape they wrote on, and they won't understand; so i end up having to steal things [...]"

Jinhan Ko is a a multimedia artist best known for his video and performance work. He has presented work across Canada and the US, including many lo-tech spectacles under the name Jin's Banana House. More recently, he has been instrumental in animating Toronto's DIY visual art scene through the Money House and Instant Coffee collectives.

Ken Babstock was born in Newfoundland and grew up in the Ottawa Valley. He won the Milton Acorn People's Poetry Prize and the Atlantic Poetry Prize for his collection Mean. His second collection of poems, Days into Flatspin, is also published by House of Anansi Press. He is rumoured to be working on a children's book.

Works in the exhibition

   DINING ROOM - WALLS, CLOCKWISE FROM TOP OF STAIRS
Jason McLean, Oh Nothing...Across the River in Sarnia, 2003 drawing, 36x29"
Jason McLean, Moving Backwards: The Easter Bunny Salesman in October, 2003 drawing, 36x60"
Jason McLean, Today I Ate With My Hands, 2003 drawing, 26x40"
   DINING ROOM - AUDIO
Mark Soo, 2nd Hand Story, 2003, audio
   GARDEN - VIDEO MONITOR
Jinhan Ko, True Confession #1, video
Jinhan Ko, Making Money: Wasting Time, video