Part of Winter 1998
The annual New Toronto Works Show presents Toronto’s newest innovative, experimental and risk-taking film and video. Curated by Pleasure Dome members Sarah Abbott & Linda Feesey, this year’s program promises to reveal the hidden and unveil the cutting edge in Toronto’s avant-garde. Guaranteed to lift those winter blues.
Notes:
New Toronto Works Show
Curated by Sarah Abbott & Linda Feesey
Part I:
Salzwasser, Ed Sinclair (video, 2 min.)
Remembering in German landscape, a relationship lost.
Ed Sinclair is not new to video production, although this is the first of his own work in distribution, his previous credits include camera operator on Vera Frenkel’s 1992 Documenta IX installation From the Transit Bar. Two years ago, he worked with Welsh artist Sharon Morris on a Temagami video project and exhibition.
Feast I & II, Curtis MacDonald (video, 5 min.)
A quiet family dinner is made deafening as Curtis MacDonald dwells on its mundane aspects. The silence is haunting as a majestic procession carries dinner into a great hall. “Feast I & II are both dark perspectives on everyday dinning habits. We consume food to survive, yet, for some, eating habits can lead to obsessive behavioral ways of thinking about what they are consuming.” (C. MacDonald)
Feast I & II were both produced in the Integrated Media Dept. at O.C.A & D. Curtis MacDonald has been making experimental videos steadily while in school and has recently shown work at the A.G.O. He will be premiering a new piece at the upcoming Images Festival this April.
EpopŽe, Willy Le Maitre (image) & Eric Rosenzweig (sound) (video, 9 min.)
An excerpt from the Fleabotics video cycle (25 hours), the artists mechanically animate the detritus and roughage of consumer culture.
Willy Le Maitre and Eric Rosenzweig are part of Screen along with Phil Giborski. Their work integrates real time interactivity between music/sound, video and performance through tape and installation. They are currently working on a series of installations entitled Space Arm Program and Fleabotics Appearance Machine
Jawa Program III (video, 10 min.):
Freewilly 3, Jubal Brown, High Priced Spread, Jubal Brown,
Untitled#4, Leslie Peters, Scratch, Tasman Richardson
Freewilly 4, Jubal Brown & Tasman Richardson
Ad Death, Jubal Brown & Tasman Richardson
Playing video DJ to an episode of Three’s Company these six collaborative ‘commercials’ scratch new rhythms with sound and picture: a porno is stripped to five seconds; moments replayed that normally pass unnoticed; an abstract expression situates the viewer in the folds of audio and image.
Jawa is an experimental arts collective based in video, sound, internet, multimedia, installation, television and graffiti. Members include Jubal Brown, Leslie Peters, Wolfgang Bochar, Peter Ghemeling, Michael Lane, Peter Flemming, John Cheung, and Curtis MacDonald.
ABC – Story B (B as in Bullshit), Kinga Araya (video, 4 min.)
A well articulated retelling of an experience at the court of Canadian citizenship. This is the second part of Araya’s trilogy ABC that focuses on the contradiction between Canada’s political theory and it’s lived reality.
Originally from Poland, Kinga has studied in Rome, Ottawa and most recently in the MFA Program at York University. Her work with video, installation and performance examine visually and theoretically the phenomenon of speech and politics of walking … analyzing the condition of contemporary nomads that are in a constant state of becoming rather than being.
Rendezvous, Colin Campbell (video, 13 min.)
From the South of France, artist Colleena invites us into her world of daily adventures and sibling memories. Get out your Coleman stoves, this is High Camp!
Colin is one of Canada’s pioneer video artists, producing over 45 tapes since 1973. His work has been exhibited internationally since the mid-seventies. He has been active in the artist-run centre movement in Canada and most recently in AIDS related work. He teaches at the University of Toronto.
Don’t Bug Me, Allyson Mitchell (16 mm film, 1.5 min.)
Low-tech animation gives the answer to an oft asked question. Wish we could all speak so frankly.
Since beginning her masters degree in Women’s Studies at York University two years ago, Allyson has been prolific in both video and film and as a co-organizer of the 3 Minute Rock Star show.
Calypso, Andrew Hull (video, 4.5 min.)
On one of Jacques Cousteau’s deep sea explorations, two frogmen discover other mysteries of the ocean currents.
After graduating from Carlton University in Architecture, Andrew studied at the Bauhaus Dessau in the electronic media interpretation studio. Since 1996 he has produced two works, Earworm, a 45 min. fiction and Berlin Alexanderplatz, a video installation for the Ostrananie Video Festival.
Part II:
I Love It When A Girl’s Head Goes Down , Tamara Faith Berger,
(super 8, 3 min.)
Who can resist this take on a shiny steel dildo as it fills your head with questions and makes your groin ache – no matter which way your sex identifies.
This is Tamara first film. She is presently working on two more shorts simultaneously.
Electrophase, Mark Bain (video, 5 min.)
Video, originally hard mechanical images and sounds, pulse into a trance-forming gentle lyricism.
Mark is a Toronto-based video artist.
Grace Eternal, Neil Burns (16mm film, 9 min.)
A women dies in her apartment unnoticed because her data lives on is the hard wiring of computers. “A moving account of digital immortality”. (Liz Czach)
Neil is a graduate of the Emily Carr College of Art & Design, and is both a filmmaker and visual artist. His films include Fettered (’91) and Grace Eternal (’97).
Across, Cara Morton (16 mm film, 3 min.)
“…we are the abyss and also the rope across it. The abyss is our terrible freedom, the largeness of our journey which so intimidates, while the rope has to do with how we are able to re-image ourselves beyond what was possible in the past.” (Nietzsche)
Cara is currently completing her MFA in film production at York University.
Museum, Chris Walsh (16 mm film, 8 min.)
Sparse delicate blue imagery and reflective voice over tell the story of a woman consumed by filming the emotions that haunt her life. Winner of Pleasure Dome’s 1997 Sheridan College Experimental Film/Video Award.
Chris is a graduate of the Media Arts Program at Sheridan College. His films have been screened at the 1997 Toronto International Film Festival (Museum) and at the 1997 Images Festival of Independent Film & Video (Mind Wandering). He is currently working as assistant director (film components) for Atom Egoyan’s latest opera, Elsewhereless.
Many thanks to Sarah Abbott and Linda Feesey for their tireless effort in
curating the 1998 New Toronto Works Show.
Sarah Abbott is a Toronto filmmaker. This is her first curatorial endeavor.
Linda Feesey is a 1982 graduate of York University’s Film Studies Program, she has made 24 short experimental 8 mm gauge films from 1989 to the present. This is her first curatorial effort.