What Now? After over a year of (very sporadic) posting, I am finally writing a spontaneous post (cut-and-paste from Word never seemed to protect me from awkward grammar and spelling anyway)! I wanted to comment on this project, as I have been trying for some time now to decide whether to scrap it entirely or carry on with it in some other form. I should start by saying: I really don't read blogs or think much of them. I used a blog because the template was there (thanks Blogger.com, now another piece of Google or whatever)...I remember as an adolescent even, writing in a teenage journal "there is something untrustworthy about diarists" and I still tend to feel this way, with the exception of those who acknowledge the medium's inherent self-surveillance and turn the diary into an effective public vehicle. I am not one of those people. Which is to say that this whole affair was something of a Trojan Horse. It never became a 'free forum' because mostly there were few postings. That's my fault I suspect, as have never been a wizard at promotion and did little to spread the word. I did not have the time (the miraculous time of the committed blogger) to keep up with shows the way I wanted to, and the one and only proper submission I received languished until it was no longer timely (belated apologies, Melanie!) So the invitation was rather limited in scope and follow-through. The other big point I ought to make is that despite posing as a group project, this blog was a pet project, a bully pulpit, and I think I (and you) would have enjoyed it more if I'd owned up to that and just relished the role of the bully a bit more. Victoria really has had all its needs met in the hand-wringing school of art criticism, and a little bullying could be a good thing, I think. So what now? I would love to invite suggestions. I still feel that our alternative magazines mostly publish promotional or expository writing rather than criticism (no harm there, it's just not criticism), and that the Times Colonist is mostly giving us point of view and lifestyle articles rather than framing a debate that presumes an involved (rather than speculative) reader. I have wondered about a self-published broadsheet (if I added up every time somebody has mentioned that "people really like to have something they can hold in their hands" it would only just equal the number of times I have reached this conclusion myself), but have to underscore here that I'm not really an organizer or editor, but a freelance contributor. If somebody else sets up the forum, I'll gladly write on everything going...I have also heard some suggestion of an online alternative arts & culture magazine for Victoria. Finally, there are venues abroad, such as Vancouver's Filip, or national newspapers and magazines for reviews of high-profile shows (this recently came to mind when I started making notes for a review of the AGGV's Robert Youds retrospective). The question I guess I have is whether there can be a venue for writing about art in Victoria that Victorians actually care about (or is this the question at all?) I would like to finish by saying that I am still very excited by what I have observed since coming back to Victoria in the fall of 2003. I think something quite interesting has started to happen here, and would like to see more recognition of the younger artists involved, and perhaps more crucially, some attempt to reconcile the work of younger artists and collectives with that of more established artists and teachers who have in many cases only begun to exhibit their work conspicuously locally in the last handful of years. And to hear from all of these people- the ones that are doing it at a running deficit as well as the ones who receive grants and jobs- is most desirable, to suppose that there is a debate worth involving one's self in, to choose sides, even should one choose the losing side (of course the critic, in my view, always loses as a matter of course). It is all more stimulating and worthwhile.