Programming Archives 2007

Pool Cue III - Dec 12

Video Pool gathered with friends and neighbors to share in a good time and to look back on an exciting year of video productions by our members.

The screening took place at the Kings Head Pub on 120 King Street and featured works by:

Thor Aitkenhead, Gwen Armstrong, Jake Chénier, Lancelot Coar and Paul Lukeman, Karen Cornelius, John Coutanche, Clint Enns, Elvira Finnegan, Rick Fisher and Don Rice, Susan P. Gibson, Val Klassen, Sandee Moore, Carole O’Brien, Heidi Phillips, Quidam, Lansing Bruce Roberston, Rachel Wells, and Cameron Woykin

Here are some pics from the night...

Thank you to everyone who joined us for a wonderful time at our Winter Member’s Screening, Pool Cue III! The program offered a truly diverse selection of work by local video makers and gave all in attendance a chance to discover what friends and colleagues have been up to this past year. The energy and enthusiasm evident throughout the evening was fantastic!

Special thanks are due to the King’s Head Pub, not only for providing us with great space within which to hold our event, but for treating us to gigantic trays of awesome appetizers, too!

Cathy Mattes- November 7

Aiming to shake up the conventions of traditionally-formatted talks, Mattes' presentation was inter-textual, multi-disciplinary, performative, and participatory. Furthermore, it functioned in the spirit of a happening. Mattes opened and closed the talk with a selection of karaoke songs, and they were performed enthusiastically (and creatively) by members of the audience. The talk also involved clips of video work presented in the exhibition.

We're thrilled that so many people were able to attend this event, and we are especially grateful to professors from the University of Manitoba for bringing their students down. It's not every day undergrads get to hold class in a bar!

On that note, thank you once again to Club 200 (120 Garry St.) for hosting us... it was a blast!

Below are some snapshots taken during the talk. If you, or someone you know, happened to take photos during the karaoke party afterwards, please do pass 'em on... we'd love to post them here!

And now for a little "behind the scene stuff"... troubleshooting tech compatibility in the VP office just before heading down to Club 200. Because, well, this stuff is just fascinating, isn't it? ;-)

 

Germaine Koh - Oct 16

Germaine Koh delivered a fantastic talk about her work, which surveyed her dynamic and varied conceptual practice encompassing performance, intervention, installation, new media, painting, and even knitting.

Following a lively Q & A session, attendees proceeded to try Call. The unique and satisfying experience of participating encouraged at least three more individuals came forward to join the list of volunteers. Owing to sudden unexpected technical difficulties, Relay was unavailable for use during the opening reception, but we anticipate that it will be up and running again very soon.

Thank you to Platform Gallery for welcoming Video Pool to host this event in its space, and thank you to everyone who attended!

Katsuyuki Hattori - Oct 20

Hattori is known for his skill using outmoded analogue technology to produce stunning audio and video landscapes in a live performance environment. Only occasionally using source footage, Hattori skillfully manipulates feedback loops to generate the source content for his immersive performances. Referring to his medium as abstract video-concert, Hattori presented a new work created in collaboration with two local artists – Bryan Basant and Curtis Walker (blunderspublik) – over the course of his residency at Video Pool. This live audio and multi-channel video piece was evocative of Dada artist Kurt Schwitters’ (1887 - 1948) notion of the colour organ and resonated with Schwitters’ concept of “merz”, which refers to the appropriation of found or refuse materials.

Following the presentation of this new, collaborative work, Hattori performed a piece titled Abarekoinobori with long-time collaborator and video artist Yusuke Shinmura (Japan) who sweetened Hattori's audioscape with playful bits and pixels. Together Hattori and Shinmura brought an authentic experimental electronic art from Tokyo to Winnipeg audiences.

Related Event  On October 21 from 2:00 to 4:00 p.m., Hattori gave a presentation on his ‘video concert’ technique. In his practice, Hattori allowed for many artists to contribute to a live work, each controlling a particular aspect of image or sound from the feedback. Working with aesthetic qualities of image feedback, Hattori’s work challenges notions of beauty in image making, the role of the artist in image creation, and the contemporary roles of ‘performers’.


Video Pool is grateful for generous financial support provided by:





Pictures from the event

Call and Relay - Oct 16

Video Pool welcomed residents of Winnipeg to talk to strangers via two intriguing new media projects by Germaine Koh.

Call was an interactive installation involving a hacked vintage rotary-dial telephone that connected immediately to one of several volunteers as soon as the receiver is lifted. Participants were invited to experience the unique opportunity of striking up a conversation about anything or everything with an anonymous individual at the other end of the line. 

Relay was a subtle intervention that combined the lonely signal of a flashing navigation beacon, a city electrical systems, and the invisible communications networks that surround us. A utilitarian light fixture enigmatically flashed – in Morse code – short text messages (SMS) received on a designated mobile phone number. Locally, the light would operate as a sort of bulletin board conveying news from near and far, and providing opportunities for sociability and local messaging in the immediate area and across the city. The beacon merged early technologies for communication and navigation with some of the more contemporary methods by which information and desire flow today. 

Sample decoder that (these were circulated throughout the city

Call and Relay was presented thanks to generous support provided by:

Rockstars and Wannabes - Sept 29

Rockstars & Wannabes launched on September 29 with all the appropriate fanfare. This exhibition, which features work by Warren Arcand, Kevin Ei-Ichi deForest, Skawennati Fragnito, and Benny Nemerofsky Ramsay, was available for viewing until Saturday, November 10 at Urban Shaman Gallery (203-290 McDermot Ave).

Curated by Cathy Mattes, this exhibition featured: Warren Arcand, Kevin Ei-Ichi deForest, Skawennati Fragnito, and Benny Nemerofsky Ramsay.

With the emergence of MTV and Much Music in the early 1980s, a new form of escapism, and role play surfaced for young people. How youth connected with popular singers and bands changed drastically thanks to vee-jays spinning flashy music videos that provided visual narratives to follow along with popular music. In basements and bedrooms across the land, youth held brushes as microphones, envisioned themselves in music videos, and mimicked the music stars they admired…

Rockstars & Wannabes locates artists who examine the impact of the music industry on identity, using music videos, karaoke, and popular TV talent searches as catalysts. Music as an aid in escaping cross-cultural boundaries, the longing for validation or substance in one’s life, and the lengths some will go to locate and express their inner rock star is investigated.

Warren Arcand’s contribution to Rockstars & Wannabes was a video installation that explored “how youth turn to Rock music as a form of magical thinking, or who alternatively may be used by Rock to refresh and revitalize its own iconography. Within this exchange there are many hazards and casualties, not the least of which is boundary control.” – Warren Arcand.

Kevin Ei-Ichi deForest used Karaoke to out existing stereotypes within popular music and explored the struggle to culturally fit in for those of mixed ancestry. By presenting imagery of Japanese music icons, cityscapes, and the impact of American pop-culture on Japanese youth, his video works exposed how cultural perceptions are internalized, while simultaneously reminding viewers about the potential of music to bridge existing gaps.

Skawennati Fragnito located like-minded adults who grew up in the '80s, and dreamt of being in music videos like those seen on Much Music and MTV. Her video work 80 Minutes,80 Movies, 80s Music, is an ongoing digital-video project which invites Generation X-ers from diverse cultural backgrounds, professions, and locations to live out their 80s rock star dreams in 80 second music videos created by Fragnito. New additions to 80 Minutes, 80 Movies, 80s Music were featured at the exhibition.

Benny Nemerofsky Ramsay’s video and installation work provided a glimpse of his intimate relationship with certain pop music icons. History, sexuality and identity collide in Tape, a musical monologue inspired by outtakes from American idol competitions. In AuditionJimmy, a heraldic flag and documentation of a performative marathon honours Scottish gay pop hero Jimmy Somerville. Referencing a fan's obsessive sensibility, Jimmy explores the rewriting of narratives about who gets canonized and honoured in popular culture.

With special thanks to our generous funders:













We wish to express additional gratitude to our friends, volunteers, community, and All Our Relations.

Sample Images - Click for larger versions.

Warren Arcand. Flamingo Killers.














Kevin Ei-ichi deForest. Foxy Lady, 2006.

Benny Nemerofsky Ramsay. Audition Tape.


Biographies

Warren Arcand lives and works in Vancouver, where his artistic output includes performance art, film and video, theatre and text based work. His past performance pieces include “Six Gun Sufi” (cowboy ballads and sexdeath mysticism); “Surgery” (hermaphrodism as a metaphor for Abo identity); and most recently “Superchannel” (audience members received wireless headsets giving them access to 7 channels of selectable audio with which they could mix their own ‘soundtrack’ for Warren’s simple performance task of ‘making eye contact’). He is currently teaching performance art at the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design.

Kevin Ei-ichi deForest is an internationally recognized visual artist whose practice focuses on the representation of cultural hybridity, specifically with reference to his Eurasian background. Born in Winnipeg, he was part of the fledgling punk rock scene there in the late 70s. In the spirit of his hybrid outlook, his multimedia practice includes painting, installation, video, sound art, and critical writing. He has exhibited nationally as well as in USA, Mexico, Holland, Germany, Italy and Japan. He recently returned to Manitoba as Assistant Professor in the Department of Visual and Aboriginal Art at Brandon University, Brandon Manitoba.

Skawennati Fragnito is an artist, independent curator, and occasional writer. In 1994, Skawennati co-founded Nation to Nation, a First Nations artist collective, whose exhibitions have included TattoNation and the very popular Native Love, which toured Canada. From 1996 to 2005, Skawennati was the director and primary curator for CyberPowWow, the pioneering Aboriginally-determined on-line gallery and chat space. Her most recent curatorial project is an on-line exhibition entitled Grrls, Chicks, Sisters & Squaws: Les citoyennes du cyberspace.

Benny Nemerofsky Ramsay is a Montréal-born artist working predominantly in video, text and sound. Since 2000 his work has brought together song, self-reflexive performance and lyrics from pop music as vehicles for examining the singing voice, the untranslatability of emotions into language and the ways in which emotional expression changes shape when mediated by technology and popular culture. Nemerofsky Ramsay's work has screened in festivals and galleries across Canada, Europe and East Asia and has won prizes at the Hamburg Short Film Festival, the Kasseler Dokumentarfilm- und Videofest and the Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen (all in Germany), the Toronto Inside Out Film and Video Festival as well as First Prize at the Globalica Media Arts Biennale in Wroclaw, Poland. He currently divides his time between Canada and Europe.

Photos from the event

More pictures courtesy of Scott Stephens...

Lynne Marsh: Ballroom - May 2007

Ballroom by Lynne Marsh
May 24 - June 29, 2007
@ Gallery 1C03 (University of Winnipeg)

Closing Reception & Artist's Talk
Thursday June 28, 2007
Video Pool Studios

Lynne Marsh's work is influenced and informed by: the infinite spatial expanse of game environment, the

Erika Lincoln: Sidereal Projections - March 2007

Sidereal Projections by Erika Lincoln
March 23 - April 13, 2007
Video Pool Studio
Opening Reception Friday, March 23

A virtual universe of faraway stars and planets is created from commonplace objects, compressed and reframed by video processing software in Erika Lincoln’s interactive new media installation Sidereal Projections.  Through the technological mediation of ordinary objects, Lincoln provokes a subtle distinction between the perceived and the known through making familiar objects and spaces strange.  In this work the physical world, the illusion of art and the imagination of the viewer work together to create the sense of a vast and distant universe. 

Garth Hardy: ...and I thought Guy Debord was dead - January 2007