Currently in process with several new projects, including a piece for Graphical Recordings 002, featuring a selection of Canadian film and video artists reworking Michael Snow's "Poem" (1957).
Excited to announce that the World Premiere of my new film pastoral (2014) will be at Festival du Nouveau Cinema in Montreal, in the Lab #1: Impressions programme, screening on October 10th and 17th! The programme features works by Robert Todd, Vincent Grenier and Alexandre Larose. I will be in attendance for the screening on October 17. You can read a full write-up on events at FNC 2014 here.
Today I did some updating of the website, resulting in a significant increase in images and much less text. Hopefully people can still find their way around -- part of the motivation is to reward exploration. I still have a lot more content to put online, including some newer films and older videos, photography and collage, but these things take time.
Two recent screenings to note: routes (2011) was shown in the 90-second film programme at Winnipeg Underground Film Festival on June 26th, and hand-processing (2010) was a part of the "Visions" programme hosted by The Picture Show in Brooklyn, NY, on June 27-28th.
I am happy to announce that Montreal Underground Film Festival will present routes (2011) and mementomori (2012) as part of its 2014 lineup! Info will be on their website by next week, but from looking at their programming from last year, it seems clear there will be plenty of good company from other great Canadian and international film artists.
Additionally, last weekend recomposition (2007) was shown with a live scoring by composer Chris Thornborrow at Synaesthesia III: Film & Music, presented by FAWN Opera & New Music, in collaboration with The Seventh Art. I really enjoyed Chris' sonic re-interpretation of my work, which took the piece in several interesting new dimensions, generating substantial emotive force by the end. As well, the other works in the programme were also excellent — I particularly enjoyed Eva Kolcze's Markings 1-3 and Christine Lucy Latimer's The Magik Iffektor. Thanks to Patrick Murray and Amanda Smith of FAWN, and co-curator Christopher Heron of The Seventh Art, whose thoughtful approach towards selecting films (and including a Q&A following the screening of each piece!) was a real treat. Christopher interviewed myself and Izabella Pruska-Oldenhof about The Loop Collective several years ago - you can watch it here.
Here are some pictures from the recent installation of FLUX/FALL (2012) at Performative Ecologies, dc3 Galleries, in Edmonton, AB, March 16th - April 4th, 2014.
The second image doesn't show the installation very well, but gives a good context of the opening, from the guitarist that improvised over the drone soundtrack for a period of time, to performance artist Paul Couillard (seen here standing directly in front of the work), who conducted a series of micro-interventions in addition to giving an artist talk that night.
memento mori is being shown in Brooklyn on February 28th as part of an excellent programme curated by Jonathan Caouette of "films that exemplify the state in which we are half asleep and half awake," including work by Jaimz Asmundson, Solomon Nagler, David Lynch, Peter Tscherkassky, Gaspar Noë, Harmony Korine, Guy Maddin, and more... what an epic lineup, it is an honour to be a part of it!
Over the next months, I will also be presenting at several academic conferences: Performative Ecologies (University of Alberta, March 21-22), Process: In Media Res (Harvard University, April 10-12), Innovation and its Contestants (McGill University, April 18), and the annual Film Studies Association of Canada conference in late May. I am also co-curating an art exhibition, entitled Cross Sections, as part of the York/Ryerson Communication and Culture conference, Intersections 2014: Thinking|Feeling.
I've created a new tumblr account to serve as a photo archive for some of my 35mm photographs captured between 1998 and 2005, all of which were scanned in the process of creating memento mori. 1000 or so images will be uploaded over the course of the next 12 months through an automated process 2-3x daily... Slowly putting the pieces back together...
It's been a little while since I posted, but now that the new year is here, many big things are in the works. I recently worked with filmmaker Peter Mettler to create a condensed version of his 2009 film Petropolis: Aerial Perspectives on the Alberta Tar Sands. This new edit was produced for Neil Young's "Honor the Treaties" tour, in support of First Nations legal challenges to the expansion of mining sites in the Athabasca region, and has caused quite a stir in the national debate. Not only was the film shown at all the performances in the tour, it was viewed 21,000 times online in less than a week!
As well, four exhibitions of my own films will take place this month: Untitled (2013.08) (2013) and Nude descending (After Duchamp) (2013) both screened at the recent "Stephen Broomer vs. Toronto" event hosted by Open City Cinema at Winnipeg's RAW Gallery, in a great programme curated by Broomer with works by Clint Enns, Eva Kolcze, Christine Lucy Latimer, Mark Loeser, Emmalyne Laurin, and Cameron Moneo. Hand-processing (2010) will be shown at Sight Unseen's Open Call January screening curated by Kate Ewald and Lorenzo Gattorna in Baltimore, MD, on January 30th, and I will be in attendance for the screening. Nude descending (After Duchamp) (2013) will be presented at "Beyond," Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra's New Music Festival on January 31st.Grid07 (2013) will show at Punto y Raya Festival of Visual Music in Reykjavik, Iceland, also on January 31st. (View the festival's trailer here.)
Still from hand-processing (2010), 3 minutes, 16mm, colour, sound