We may all aspire to virtue but vice is much more interesting. And while The Walrus Talks Vice might not cover all seven deadly sins it offers its eight speakers seven minutes each to ruminate on the darker side of our natures.
“We love it; as edgy as they can get the happier we are” says Ann Connors managing director of One Yellow Rabbit and the High Performance Rodeo of this year’s theme. This is the fourth year the rodeo is presenting Walrus Talks and Connors notes that the event is a natural fit for both the festival and the city as a whole.
“Calgary has a culture in many ways for this kind of speaker platform” she says citing perennially popular TEDx talks and PechaKucha Nights Calgary. In fact while the Walrus Foundation (which also produces The Walrus magazine) organizes talks across the country the High Performance Rodeo stops have been its biggest events typically with 1400 attendees.
The wide appeal comes not only from interesting themes but also from strong speaker lists. “As diverse as the rodeo is is as diverse as the speakers that the Walrus brings in” says Connors. “There’s something for everyone in the Walrus Talks — or there’s somebody.”
To wit: The Walrus Talks Vice features Bidiniband musician and author Dave Bidini and radio host Jonathan Goldstein; Globe and Mail columnist Elizabeth Renzetti and local writer Shelley Youngblut; two Concordia University faculty Viviane Namaste and Jim Pfaus; Ann Dowsett Johnston author of Drink; and Rizwan Jihan COO of infidelity website AshleyMadison.com (he is stepping in for Noel Biderman who was originally scheduled to appear).
The event format is dense with minimal introductions and concise seven-minute talks from presenters. So while it would be easy to say too much about the content speakers are planning Namaste professor at Concordia University’s Simone de Beauvoir Institute shares a taste of her segment titled “On Women Vice and Vagrancy in Canada.”
“I’m going to talk a lot about history… in relation to vice and particularly vice women and sexuality” she says. She’ll also cover the changing regulations around vices like prostitution or vagrancy laws.
And to give it a local flavour Namaste promises to integrate some Calgary stories into her talk. “There’s a history of vice in that town” she adds with a laugh.
She hopes listeners will leave knowing a little more about the history of vice in our city and country but her examination also raises broader questions. She points out that in discussing vice the first step is often to define it. “Is excessive drinking vice is prostitution vice is cheating vice — what is vice?
“One of the questions I want to ask is what function is served by vice? What does society get out of defining something as vice? Looking historically at how different kinds of activities have been regulated helps us understand that.”
And regardless of where you place yourself in history vice has powerful connotations: “I hope that people understand with nuance and contradiction the impact of vice… [and] that people reflect on the incredible symbolic power of vice” she says.
Like any performance Connors says she wants people to walk out of the room wanting to continue the conversation. The Walrus Talks makes that easy encouraging its speakers to join the audience for further discussion at a reception in the lobby following the show.
Namaste herself is looking forward to hearing from other speakers and meeting with the audience.
“I think the evening promises to have people think about vice in new and different ways and I think it’ll be thought provoking” she says “but I think it’ll also be really fun.”
The Walrus Talks Vice runs January 29 at the Jack Singer Concert Hall; the event will also be livestreamed at thewalrus.ca/live.
