My third and probably last PuSh Festival show was Fare Thee Well!, an unusual art piece I caught today after work. To see it I had to get to the Lookout at Harbour Centre and look into one of several telescopes facing roughly east. For about 15 minutes I listened to sad, haunting instrumental music while a distant scrolling marquee bade farewell to various people and ideas, or showed classical quotes about goodbyes.
It was very high-concept, and it worked for me. What helped was that the messages were not all sad. One said “Farewell VHS players”. I think another was about rotary phones. “Farewell CBC” was followed by “Farewell Jian Gomeshi”. Some were downright ambiguous: for example, how should I read “Farewell Trust in the Father”? A sad acknowledgement of the breakdown of family structures, or a happy end to patriarchal authority?
There were a small number of “Welcome” messages, and all of them were either sad or disturbing. Most memorable? “Welcome Harper”. Yeah.
All in all, a job well done! My only complaint was that the setup in the Lookout needed work. The telescopes were too low, and having to look through them without moving was damn uncomfortable. There should have been some way to move the chairs up or down a bit.
And since this was my first trip up the Lookout, I made sure to take lots of pictures. It was the perfect time of day, too: just light enough to see details of the buildings, but dark enough to give them some magic.
