Exhibition & Event Archive

Pool Cue: VP members’ screening. Check out some video art at Video Pool’s 2006 member’s screening.

Reasonable & Senseless: The Technical Disaster is a multi-channel video installation presented on 20 tiny, four-inch monitors displayed in rows, on two shelves. Historic footage depicting a famous disaster is displayed on each monitor, while one animated letter apears and disapears –superimposed as if writen in smoke – on top of each clip. Seen together they spell out the words “reasonable & senseless.”

From September 20th to 23rd, 2006, Winnipeg will play host to the Independent Media Arts Alliance’s annual national conference and will present some of the most innovative and exciting film, video and new media art in the country. This three day festival and conference will showcase impassioned and contentious artwork and thinking in independent media art.

The animated works of Amy Lockhart exemplify the homey charm and naïve humour of do-it-yourself animation. Films in this program span the artist’s 7-year animation practice and include her most recent animation, an epic non-linear narrative, Walk for Walk and the wildly popular Miss Edmonton Teenburger series. Whimsical and absurd, the animated films and videos in this program speak of innocence, dreams and hope. This program is presented in conjunction with the IMAA Conference, September 20-23, 2006.

The Pit Bar, Dawson City deconstructs the seamless representation of perspective and movement in traditional video. Artist Allison Hrabluik meticulously constructs a miniature, three-dimensional stage with paper
cut-outs of figures taken from each frame of her original video and recreates her source footage using stop motion techniques. The video will be installed alongside its toy-like theatrical set and paper figures, providing viewers with a glimpse of the artistic process. The Pit Bar features Canadian indie-rock stars The Constantines and was recorded in Dawson City.

Any Port in the Storm is an eight-channel, site-specific video installation housed in a semi-subterranean building constructed especially for the piece.

The work develops the theme of shelter – both physical and psychological – by leading viewers though multiple, loosely connected narratives. Filled with multiple speakers and monitors, the bunker-like installation space comes alive with the sights and sounds of the world around us. Emerging from the installation into the surrounding forest, the viewer’s experience of this natural site is reframed by the introspective mood of the installation.

This screening traces Culp’s development as an activist film maker – moving from documentarian and agit prop styles to a poetic reflection on personal politics. Recently he has engaged in blurring genres by introducing elements such as found footage and hand processing techniques into the familiar format of the documentary film.

I wish to challenge activist video’s secondary, ‘service’ status within activist movements, asserting video production in itself as an ideological struggle that must be rendered visible. – Jonathan Culp

Curated by Ingrid Mayrhofer, Active Layers presents the work of five women artists using interactive technologies to engage the viewer’s imagination and experience.

Interacting and performing with, through and to the artworks, the viewer explores hidden layers and renders active images.

Following the screening, Walking and Being will be available for viewing February 17-24 during regular Video Pool hours, in the Video Pool third floor studio. Includes Video Pool Media Arts Centre artists: Grant Poier, Brenna George, Nida Home Doherty, Ley Ward and John Morgan, Jack Lauder, Marian Butler, Janet Hawkwood, Terry Billings, Alex Poruchnyk, Erika MacPherson, Val Klassen, Nicole Shimonek, Lori Rogers.

Art’s Birthday is an annual event first proposed in 1963 by French artist Robert Filliou. He suggested that 1,000,000 years ago, there was no art. But one day, on the 17th of January to be precise, Art was born. According to Filliou, it happened when someone dropped a dry sponge into a bucket of water. Filliou proposed a public holiday to celebrate the presence of art in our lives. In recent years, the idea has been taken up by a loose network of artists and friends around the world. Each year the Eternal Network evolves to include new partners working with the ideas of exchange and telecommunications art.