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Prairie Tales 15

 

Prairie Tales Program

Prairie Tales Program

Pumpjack has been included in the Prairie Tales 15 lineup. The premiere was at the AMAAS conference in beautiful Waterton. It looks to be a great program this year with so many different works. You can even see the pump jack on the cover of the program!

 

When will this happen? June 7th, 2013.

 

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Stay on the bus

“It’s simple. Stay on the bus. Stay on the fucking bus.”

Advice for creatives that it isn’t necessarily about being an original, but staying with something long enough for it to become original.

From an article by Oliver Burkman at the Guardian via Explore.

 

 

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Noise Intercepted

 

NoiseInterrupted

 

10 challenges, 284 collaborators, 28 countries, one site.

When will this happen? Summer 2013.

Posted in Make.

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Doug Aitken series on creativity

Doug Aitken talks with different people about creativity.

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The Oatmeal on Creativity

The Oatmeal talks about creativity and his process.

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&ampersand 4: A Collaborative Art Exhibit

28Oct201213Oct201203Nov2012

My Artner Josh Fraser and I work together to create a collaborative video project. Each week we create a new work by editing, adding, subtracting or just changing the work from the week before. Above are stills from three of the works we’ve made so far. Some weeks we alternate, trading source files and partial projects. Other times we work together to create. Some weeks we build on the week before and other weeks we start something new. The product of each week is saved in an online account. We draw on our large store of video clips and our unique views of the world to create and re-create. The project is ongoing.

We submitted one of the works for consideration in &ampersand 4 and it was picked to be exhibited along with 18 other pieces made by 35 artists!

Ampersand 4 poster

The following is totally stolen from Vicki’s press release.

**Exhibition Runs: January 12 – February 2, 2013**

**Opening Reception: Saturday, January 12, 7 – 10PM**

Since 2009, I have been organizing group exhibitions to inspire, encourage and motivate artists to create new work. I have found there was a gap for artists who wanted to show individual works, but nowhere to exhibit them professionally, unless it belonged to a bigger body of work. By creating these group exhibitions, artists were free to experiment and explore, without the pressure of creating a full body of work. They are creating something new and stimulating their practice, while also having the chance to share this work with the community.

One of these exhibitions is &ampersand, an annual art exhibition that celebrates collaborations between creative minds, where each collaborator brings a different skill, practice and perspective. Collaborations are a unique experience where inspiration, motivation, and different perspectives can influence the works created. The beauty of each work comes from how new ideas emerge, as part of the collaborations, where it would not have happened alone. It is never a perfect process. As you work off each other, you start discovering your own strengths and weaknesses. Either working harmoniously or clashing ideas, by the end of it, you never know how it’s going to turn out. There are 18 collaborative works, involving over 35 artists in all stages of practice and different disciplines. This is the fourth year of &ampersand, which has continued to inspire individuals to work together, creating something new.

– Vicki Chau, curator

The curator would like to acknowledge the support of Calgary 2012, Cultural Capital of Canada, for this edition of &ampersand.

Artists (in no particular order):

Michael Mateyko & Hans Theissen
Peter Curtis Morgan, Claudette Morgan-Yez & Nigel Yez
marbella anne carlos & Derek Coonan
Larissa Blokhuis & Sarah Brownlee
Bailey Copithorne & Dat Tran
Kenzie Housego & Concetta Zurzolo
Angela Inglis & Jane Grace
Kim Smith & Victoria Mitchell
Sam Williams & Jarett Sitter
Jane McQuitty & Jill Armstrong
Andrea Mann & Sandra Vida
Alisha Weng & Esther Weng
Sara McKarney & Gabriel Staples
Andrea Williamson & Tia Halliday
Lia Rogers & Joshua Fraser
Justin Waddell, Chris Frey & Richard Brown
Joel Monea, Mark Eadie & Helen Young
Heather Reinhardt & Chika Ando

Curator’s Bio
Vicki Chau is a media artist based in Calgary, working mainly with photography and video. She graduated from the Alberta College of Art + Design, earning a BFA with distinction in Media Arts + Digital Technologies, and is currently the Programs & Outreach Coordinator at EMMEDIA Gallery & Production Society. She has been on several board and committees with various artist-run centres in Calgary, and is currently sitting on the board of Exposure Photography Festival. In her spare time, she independently organizes and curates exhibitions featuring emerging and established artists, at different venues throughout the city.

http://www.uascalgary.org/satellite-gallery.html

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About UAS:

A Contemporary Art and Education Facility

Situated in the heart of downtown Calgary, UAS supports the education and professional development of early emerging artists through offering subsidized studio space, a black and white darkroom and contemporary arts workshops. UAS exhibitions showcases early emerging artists as an important aspect of critical engagement in provincial contemporary art.

http://www.uascalgary.org/about-uas.html

 

When will this happen? January 12th, 2013.

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LISA

Just heard about this.

LISA 2012 from Blind Escrow Productions on Vimeo.

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Every Word Counts

Notes from the Every Word Counts workshop with Diana Sherlock.

Pitching, basics of pitching.

Discussion of ethical writing practice:

  • conflicts of interest
  • routed in notion of being objective
  • need to be aware of decision you make to make sure you keep to your story of your opinion but never let artist read it (this includes catalogues)
  • keep some objective distance
  • can’t be paid by the artist you are writing about (otherwise it is promotional writing) publisher + writer /= artist

 

Questions addressed:

1. What kind of writer are you? Poetic, ficto-criticism, daily journalism, art journalism, blogs.

2. What is critical writing? Critical framework through which you interpret. Open up the work to other contexts.

 

Deconstructing the writing process

Invention/pre-writing

  • brainstorming
  • mind mapping
  • free writing
  • the pentad (who, what etc)
  • when you have the impetus get the ideas down have faith that your idea matters, focus on idea of resonance.

Drafting/Disposition

  • outline
  • thesis
  • body of text
  • conclusion
  • get your ideas down, source from the artist and from secondary sources
  • is your thesis a question or a statement?
Texts discussed (in small groups)
Kristeva + Noise by Andrea Williamson Hand Held Fall 2011
Poem by Laurie Fuhr Hand Held Fall 2011
If a video is shot in the forest by David Garneau Hand Held
Rex vs. Singh by Kerilynn Ming Ho
Into the Light San Facon’s Limelight by Kay Burns
Other points from the afternoon
  • think about form of text, audience etc
  • thesis will give us a direction for a persuasive argument
  • item that is missing from critical writing, the way a good sentence is crafted
  • formal description of an artwork can serve to bring out the context of critical
  • address reception of artwork in critical writing
  • ‘fill in the blanks’ writers sometimes assume a lof of things and we don’t describe what we see
  • use description as an analytical tool every characteristic of an artwork has an effect
Then we watched Eclipse by Joe Kelly and then we described it.
Editing types of feedback – read through three times for:
  1. mechanical (small stuff, like typos etc)
  2. mid-level (structure, thesis and context carries through and develops – look backwards at linking)
  3. global (logic and big ideas)

Writers are readers!

List of encouraged publications:

Out of Psychoanalysis: Ficto-Criticism 2005 to 2011 by Jeanne Randolf

What happened to art criticism? by James Gilkins

Judgement and Contemporary Art Criticism by J Khonsary and M O’Brian

Where Art Belongs by Chris Kraus

How to write a sentence and how to read one by Stanley Fish

Post Pacific Post by Amy Fung

Technologies of Intuition by Jennifer Fisher

 

When did this happen? October 20 and 21, 2013.

Posted in Events, Make, Writing.

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Particle + Wave write up

Particle Wave Article

 

Catching the wave

Emmedia’s inaugural media arts festival highlights innovative works, old and new

Published September 27, 2012  by Cadence Mandybura in Visual Arts from FastForward Weekly newspaper.

http://www.ffwdweekly.com/article/arts/visual-arts/catching-the-wave-9810/

 

When did this happen? September 27, 2012.

Posted in Events, Make, News, Shows.

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Meanwhile…the Digital Divide

An interesting article considering that word on the street is that MADT at ACAD is disintegrating. It discusses digital, fine art and where new media fits in. Just a bit similar to discussions over the paradigm shift digital is having over music (with less piracy and lawsuits). http://artforum.com/inprint/id=31944

The discussion is also worth a read as well.

 

Meanwhile, things like this are happening. John Will takes his visual art to the radio, I’m finding it hard to grok that I saw both of these items in the same day.

 

I’m still digesting most of both of them.

When did this happen? September 25th, 2012.

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