Visualeyez continues to persist as an endurance performance in and of itself. Running for a week long with performances and schedules stretched with little momentum, I am left wondering if it would fare better if staggered into a compact three or four days of performances and discussions.
A strong ensemble of artists gathered once again, and as a collective they supported each other’s works and process amidst low public attendance and feedback. The works performed ranged from physical feats and emotional discharges, all in the name of justice, which looking back, is irrevocably linked to a conscious release of words, time, and ritual. Justice was therapeutic, a means to cleanse, and often times, a means to distinguish what has been wiped clean.
As an active audience member, I am left recharged from interacting with engaged artists that challenged, alienated, and evoked strong ideas and perceptions. As a general member of the arts community, I am left frustrated with the lack of organization in relation to schedules, the tardiness of the lineup details, and the isolation of the festival. As potentially transcending all disciplines from experimental acoustics to movement arts to theatre, performance artists clearly do not have their own set of audiences by its very nature as an adaptable and reactive medium. With that in mind, certain performances would have done well outside of the gallery space, engaging with the rest of the city and its citizens by simply being and intervening in their spaces, rather than expecting them to come into yours.
Visualeyez undoubtedly deserves more recognition and time from the larger community, but it also requires greater vision from the organizers regarding its ongoing purpose and the execution of that purpose.
For detailed engagements of each performance, please read festival animator Shawna Dempsey’s reports from the front line at visualeyez2008.blogspot.com
Sunday, July 27, 2008
Thursday, July 24, 2008
Prairie Artsters - A Year on the Prairie*
This past week marks the one year anniversary of this column, and there’s no better time to reevaluate what all has been said and done.
Sprouting from the infancy of Prairie Artsters online, I was invited to this print column in order to explore and share Edmonton’s visual arts community beyond gallery exhibitions. Although neither editor David Berry nor I were quite sure what to expect every other week, I would surmise that through consistency and presence we have already surpassed any expectations either of us held.
From personal musings on art making, art writing, to studio visits in communities across Alberta, my underlying intent was to humanize the form, to open up discussion on why art could possibly matter and mean anything to anyone beyond individualistic intentions. I wanted to talk to artists about what they did and what it means to them formally and contextually. Most importantly, I wanted to document the pivotal and not-so-pivotal blips in the progression of any single artist and community. As Edmonton remains so ephemeral, so transient, with a constant flow of people coming in and leaving, I needed to find some common ground to tie it all together and to be able to look forward as well as look back.
This past year has been filled with reviews, interviews and studio visits, many of them beyond the Edmonton region, which opened up some much-needed contrast. As a mid-sized city with a limited but lively artistic presence, this city remains an anomaly of equal amounts action and perseverance. From the encounters within the city, I have befriended many individuals and antagonized some, and seen many of them move on and a few return. I have been astounded as to how many brilliant artists currently live or have lived in this city, and how removed they are from the city itself in terms of participation. I feel many have stayed and looked elsewhere, working quietly and separate from local engagements.
Looking around today, it would appear that for the next group that stays, there is some intangible badge of honour in remaining and seemingly fighting for their claim to be here. There is a recognition that things here can be easily improved, and there is an entitlement to improve it. I do not know if Prairie Artsters was born of that sentiment, only that I see it beyond just the arts. Whether this idealism can be credited to the lightened burden of prairie isolation through travel and the internet, important contemporary artists are staying, if not coming, to do their work, and that is the first step to building a conscious city.
Coincidentally, as I began reading Gaston Bachelard’s “The Poetics of Space” last week, “The Home Show” opened at the Nina Haggerty Centre. Focusing on the theme of home as expressed by the two seemingly disparate groups of the Alberta Society of Artists and the artists of the Nina Haggerty, the show united under a shared conveyance that “home” is a place of memories, comfort, safety, and daydreams. Bachelard contends that your home is your first corner of the world, and that every nook and cellar, step and corner, permeates an embodiment that equals our souls, if only we choose to pay more attention to it. Staying in this adopted hometown, at least for another year, I invite you to pay more attention with me.
*First published in Vue Weekly, July 24 - 30, 2008
Sprouting from the infancy of Prairie Artsters online, I was invited to this print column in order to explore and share Edmonton’s visual arts community beyond gallery exhibitions. Although neither editor David Berry nor I were quite sure what to expect every other week, I would surmise that through consistency and presence we have already surpassed any expectations either of us held.
From personal musings on art making, art writing, to studio visits in communities across Alberta, my underlying intent was to humanize the form, to open up discussion on why art could possibly matter and mean anything to anyone beyond individualistic intentions. I wanted to talk to artists about what they did and what it means to them formally and contextually. Most importantly, I wanted to document the pivotal and not-so-pivotal blips in the progression of any single artist and community. As Edmonton remains so ephemeral, so transient, with a constant flow of people coming in and leaving, I needed to find some common ground to tie it all together and to be able to look forward as well as look back.
This past year has been filled with reviews, interviews and studio visits, many of them beyond the Edmonton region, which opened up some much-needed contrast. As a mid-sized city with a limited but lively artistic presence, this city remains an anomaly of equal amounts action and perseverance. From the encounters within the city, I have befriended many individuals and antagonized some, and seen many of them move on and a few return. I have been astounded as to how many brilliant artists currently live or have lived in this city, and how removed they are from the city itself in terms of participation. I feel many have stayed and looked elsewhere, working quietly and separate from local engagements.
Looking around today, it would appear that for the next group that stays, there is some intangible badge of honour in remaining and seemingly fighting for their claim to be here. There is a recognition that things here can be easily improved, and there is an entitlement to improve it. I do not know if Prairie Artsters was born of that sentiment, only that I see it beyond just the arts. Whether this idealism can be credited to the lightened burden of prairie isolation through travel and the internet, important contemporary artists are staying, if not coming, to do their work, and that is the first step to building a conscious city.
Coincidentally, as I began reading Gaston Bachelard’s “The Poetics of Space” last week, “The Home Show” opened at the Nina Haggerty Centre. Focusing on the theme of home as expressed by the two seemingly disparate groups of the Alberta Society of Artists and the artists of the Nina Haggerty, the show united under a shared conveyance that “home” is a place of memories, comfort, safety, and daydreams. Bachelard contends that your home is your first corner of the world, and that every nook and cellar, step and corner, permeates an embodiment that equals our souls, if only we choose to pay more attention to it. Staying in this adopted hometown, at least for another year, I invite you to pay more attention with me.
*First published in Vue Weekly, July 24 - 30, 2008
Notebook launch #6*
Featuring a stronger collective of artists with every passing issue, Notebook Magazine, now in its sixth issue, has certainly come a long way. Beginning as a side project for Steven Teeuwsen, who charged ahead a year and a half ago with camera in tow and magazine publishing at bay, Notebook is now printing more than 1500 copies per issue and beginning to distribute nationally through Magazines Canada.
What began as a project stemming from ex-pats in Taiwan, where Teeuwsen lived on and off for three years teaching english, Notebook has grown into a full-fledged arts collective, showcasing the activity of Edmonton’s visual arts community.
Cover Image courtesy of Notebook
Pushing itself as more of a presentation and collaboration of new works than an editorially driven publication, Notebook has hosted works and exchanges between their pages by the local likes of Andrea Lefebreve, Ashley Andel, Jenny Keith Hughes and Fish Griwkowsky. Although not all the artists stay, there is at least this full colour testament to their contributions to Edmonton’s artistic community. With artists interviewing each other and ongoing collaborations unfolding between the issues and possibly online, Teeuwsen couldn’t be happier about the direction of the magazine and its content.
“People are excited that it’s a local project, that this work is getting done around the corner,” he says. “A lot of people feel like Edmonton doesn’t have it going on as far as arts and culture, but people keep coming back because it’s inspiring to be part of a city to have this going on.”
Stressing that the magazine makes visual arts more accessible for those who don’t get out as much, especially into galleries, the bright glossy pages serves as a celebrated record of lesser-seen Edmonton arts and culture.
As a full time endeavour by Teeuwsen as managing editor, art director, ad sales and the guy you see behind the table at every farmer’s market and craft fair in the city, he remains extremely awed about the project and its process.
“I’m so happy to be doing this, and it is sometimes quite stressful, but I used to be quite stressed at a job I didn’t care about. Now I’m doing exactly what I want to do and I’m setting up my own days and I’m so happy to be doing it full time,” he says, but admits that he is still learning a lot about ad sales, layout and distribution. “I’m just hoping it keeps on growing. If I saw something like this coming in from Vancouver or Calgary, I would certainly pick it up. I have a fairly strong base in Edmonton and we’ll just see how it does nationally.”
*First published in Vue Weekly, July 24 to 30, 2008
What began as a project stemming from ex-pats in Taiwan, where Teeuwsen lived on and off for three years teaching english, Notebook has grown into a full-fledged arts collective, showcasing the activity of Edmonton’s visual arts community.
Cover Image courtesy of Notebook
Pushing itself as more of a presentation and collaboration of new works than an editorially driven publication, Notebook has hosted works and exchanges between their pages by the local likes of Andrea Lefebreve, Ashley Andel, Jenny Keith Hughes and Fish Griwkowsky. Although not all the artists stay, there is at least this full colour testament to their contributions to Edmonton’s artistic community. With artists interviewing each other and ongoing collaborations unfolding between the issues and possibly online, Teeuwsen couldn’t be happier about the direction of the magazine and its content.
“People are excited that it’s a local project, that this work is getting done around the corner,” he says. “A lot of people feel like Edmonton doesn’t have it going on as far as arts and culture, but people keep coming back because it’s inspiring to be part of a city to have this going on.”
Stressing that the magazine makes visual arts more accessible for those who don’t get out as much, especially into galleries, the bright glossy pages serves as a celebrated record of lesser-seen Edmonton arts and culture.
As a full time endeavour by Teeuwsen as managing editor, art director, ad sales and the guy you see behind the table at every farmer’s market and craft fair in the city, he remains extremely awed about the project and its process.
“I’m so happy to be doing this, and it is sometimes quite stressful, but I used to be quite stressed at a job I didn’t care about. Now I’m doing exactly what I want to do and I’m setting up my own days and I’m so happy to be doing it full time,” he says, but admits that he is still learning a lot about ad sales, layout and distribution. “I’m just hoping it keeps on growing. If I saw something like this coming in from Vancouver or Calgary, I would certainly pick it up. I have a fairly strong base in Edmonton and we’ll just see how it does nationally.”
*First published in Vue Weekly, July 24 to 30, 2008
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