Video Pool marks 25 years with new works

Thanks for this 25th Anniversary coverage, Stacey!!

Video Pool marks 25 years with new works
Stacey Abrahamson, Winnipeg Free Press, April 25, 2008

Video Pool Media Arts Centre has much to celebrate on its 25th birthday.

The organization has promoted, pushed and loved video art since the early days of the medium. Rooted in community art ideals, Video Pool has been one of the most welcoming homes of creativity in Canada -- it began as a way for artists interested in working in video to "pool" together their resources.

To celebrate its anniversary, Video Pool commissioned six new media art works by Prairie artists through local curators Grant Guy and Sigrid Dahle. Each of these works gets a one-week run at various locations in the Exchange District. Dahle commissioned Richard Dyck, Steven Loft and the collaborative artistic duo of Peter Courtemanche and Lori Weidenhammer through the curatorial concept of Temporarily out of order: downtime. Seen/Unseen is the curatorial vision of Guy through the work of Sharon Alward, Daniel Barrow and Victoria Prince.

Guy's curatorial intent has more to do with performance-based artists and their works, while Dahle's intent has more to do with the vulnerabilities that occur within both the technology surrounding video and the artists who make the works. Both concepts are true to the beginnings of Video Pool, where both performance and conceptual art came together to create a base for artists looking to explore the new medium of video art.

The works by Dyck and Prince are currently showing. Barrow's Trying to Love the Normal Amount was the first of the works to debut in the city on April 12. Barrow normally performs his animations by overlapping colourful transparencies onto one another to create movement and life on screen. In this case, he puts the role of performer onto the audience. Audience members are invited to perform the work through the directions on a screen that's set up like a karaoke prompter. They are asked to play out the sad tale of a woman looking for love and comfort.

Dyck's work always has a feeling of home and history. His video The day we cut Nettie's curls, she was 7 years old is no different. Taking the story behind a 1947 photograph, Dyck creates a 3-D environment that explores the twists and turns of its tale. The environment is a series of black and white hills and gorges that the viewer travels through with the assistance of a glowing tonal orb. The sadness and strength of the story that is told through text on the screen is heightened by the silence in the room and the 3-D space. Dyck invites the viewers to ponder the scene and story that is given to them through the serenity of the created artificial hush of its backdrop.

Walking up the stairs to Prince's installation, the viewer is pummelled with the powerful fragrance of incense. When the viewer reaches the top of the stairs and the entrance to the installation room, the scent becomes almost unbearable. The candle-lit room holds Light and Alter, Prince's glistening watery installation. Two Plexiglas waterfalls stand on either side of a stone- and salt-laden path leading into a video projection and light. Viewers are invited to walk through the path to what Prince calls a "tabernacle."

She creates a new media metaphor of spirituality that is not only witnessed but experienced, and is unlike any work she has done before.

Still to come are works by Alward, Loft and the duo of Courtemanche and Weidenhammer, details of which can be found on the Video Pool website.

The six commissions and artists represent a sampling of the best artists working in new media in Canada. It is a fabulous way to celebrate the organization's achievements and is indicative of the creative and conceptual past it has had and the potential of its future.

Into the Light

Check out this fantastic 25th Anniversary coverage by Whitney Light that appeared in the latest edition of Uptown.

Click on the image to read the full article...



Thanks, Whitney!

Tonight's the night we party!

Hi Everyone!!

We've been celebrating our 25th Anniversary since January, and we plan to celebrate all year long, but tonight's the night we party!

Join us at at PLATFORM centre for photographic and digital arts (100 Arthur Street, Winnipeg MB) and share in the cheer ... and beer, and food, and fun, and friends, and art, and talk, and everything else wonderful!!

Love,
Video Pool

ps. We're accepting presents... rather, photos of presents ;-) If you have something funny, quirky, strange, unexpected, sentimental, or otherwise "big 2-5" appropriate, bring it along! We'll take a photo and post it on our blog.

Bday wishes are also welcome from those far, far away... we'll announce them on your behalf, just like they do at weddings n' stuff. Accepted by email, fax, telephone, telegram, SMS, or semaphore =-)

Silver Screens -- Preview written by Walter Forsberg

We were very happy to discover Walter Forsberg's preview of our 25th Anniversary programming in Uptown Magazine. We're sure this will mean an even bigger party tonight!

Click on the image for a larger version...



Thanks Walter!

Fantastic coverage to kick off a fantastic celebration

Wow! We're pretty excited to receive such detailed and enthusiastic coverage about our 25th Anniversary from Walrus Magazine. Thanks to Mike Landry for a great interview, which has turned into a great blog post!

25 Years of Video Pool
Mike Landry, walrusmagazine.com/blogs, April 16th, 2008

To celebrate its twenty-fifth anniversary, Winnipeg’s Video Pool media art centre made a poster detailing its history. But the twenty-five year history of an artist-run centre is as harried as they come. Rather than a straight timeline, Video Pool’s history looks more like a brainstorming session gone wrong. In the aptly titled The Incomplete, Contested, Anecdotal, Unedited, Messy, Nostalgic, Faulty, Controversial History of Video Pool So Far…,bubbles of people, places, moments in time, and minor scandals are connected with AV cables.

But Video Pool isn’t just celebrating their milestone with a poster. For the next month Video Pool takes Winnipeg by storm with six commissioned works from the centre at spaces around town.

The works are from two big names in Winnipeg: Sigrid Dahle, and Grant Guy. Dahle has been living and working as a risk-taking independent curator in Winnipeg about as long as Video Pool has been around. Guy, who comes from a background in theatre, has been involved with the centre from the very beginning.

Video Pool’s initial idea was to have the curators explore media art’s past, present, and future. But both Dahle and Guy took that theme in their own direction, and commissioned artists at different stages in their career who all have ties to Video Pool. Having a diverse representation is always important to Video Pool, says programming coordinator Milena Placentile.

“It’s really about keeping the dialogue going between different generations and making sure everyone has access to what they need at all points in their career.”

Dahle commissioned Steven Loft, Richard Dyck, and Lori Weidenhammer and Peter Courtemanche to explore “the implications of an artwork in which vulnerability, failure, requirements for regular maintenance and a reliance on (unstable) shared networks are foregrounded?” Loft tackles the question with a video installation tackling the racism, violence, and filth of an average Manitoba video lottery terminal-cursed bar. Weidenhammer and Courtemanche combine performance and sound art with a dress laden with speakers. But it’s Dyck who takes the cake for the most mind-altering reaction to Dahle’s question, “How might [a] piece’s ‘malfunctioning’ serve to create a time and space for quiet contemplation and memory.” He does this with a computer program simulating a camera moving through a 3D rendering of a photograph from 1947 according to mathematical algorithms that result in a new video each time. Yowzah.

Guy combined his theatrical background with the performance aspects of media art. He did this by asking Daniel Barrow, Victoria Prince, and Sharon Alward to address the concept of light as material or metaphor. Barrow does this a do-it-yourself version of his famed overhead projection performance. Alward brings a healthy dose of insanity with her not-quite-in-performance piece featuring martial arts and one-on-one tea ceremonies. And Prince used her commission as an opportunity to branch out from her single-channel work, presenting a video-based sculptural installation that includes water and salt, among other things.

For those familiar with Video Pool from the beginning, it should be no surprise they used this celebration to commission new work. That’s exactly why Video Pool was founded in the first place. Well, that and to pool video resources.

“That it is something designed with a celebration in mind and also designed specifically for our programming as opposed to just supporting production in principle makes it quite original for what we normally undertake,” says Placentile.

Because Video Pool doesn’t have its own programming space, it has partnered with several Winnipeg galleries and theatres to exhibit the new works. With such a tight-knit community though it wasn’t a problem getting collaborators for Video Pool’s celebration. For Placentile, who moved to Winnipeg from Toronto recently, it’s exactly this atmosphere that attracted her.

“Whether it’s something as simple as loaning equipment and then even sharing space, it can just happen in a flash. Everyone realizes how important it is to do that to be here and be successful”

For a little film collective that blossomed into a non-profit artist-run centre, Video Pool certainly has grown up. Rightly, this celebration marks its most ambitious year yet. Increased planning has led to more generous grants, which in turn has led to more programming. There’s even talk of trying to tour the six new works. With their artists becoming more and more recognized, Video Pool is starting to receive replies to their emails from around the world.

In Winnipeg though, people just appreciate that Video Pool exists. With new and expensive technologies like high-definition media, the centre is the only place where many artists can dream of accessing these high-end materials.

“It’s hard for people to enter, and they have ideas of what they want to make and do, and being part of a larger community makes it all possible,” says Placentile. “This is what drew me to Winnipeg, and Video Pool really embodies it.

Festivities kicked off April 12 with Daniel Barrow’s show at Plug In ICA. Head to videopool.org for a complete schedule.

We almost forgot to post this one!

If there was ever an interesting and valuable side-effect of grant writing, it's going through old files and reflecting on past activities.

We forgot to mention the great news of Stacey Abramson's review of Rockstars and Wannabes in Uptown back in November. So, here it is! Click on the pic to read the text in full size.



Thanks Stacey!

Share your anecdotes with us!

Twenty-five years is a long time. It's a quarter of a century. It's a big deal!

Video Pool is honoured to have stood this test of time and is pleased to have such a dynamic, colourful, and community-building history.

How long have you been a part of our history? What stories do you have to tell?

No matter how long you’ve been involved with Video Pool – 25 years, or 25 days – we’d love to read your experience, impressions, and thoughts concerning what helped Video Pool become what it is today, and how Video Pool has helped you.

Please take a moment to offer your anecdotes in the comment section of this blog entry. We’d love to start a conversation, and maybe share a few laughs, too!

You’re welcome to leave an anonymous comment, if you wish, but if you at least leave a code name and enter your email address, you can take advantage of the option to subscribe to this conversation. When someone posts after you, you’ll be notified by email, so you can come back and reply.

We’re looking forward to reading all the great information and story telling that we hope will take place here…

Thanks for helping us celebrate 25 wonderful years!

A little reminder...

In honour of our 25th Anniversary, Video Pool Media Arts Centre welcomes you to join us on Friday, April 18 at 7:00 p.m. at acerartinc. as we launch three new commissions by Daniel Barrow, Richard Dyck, and Victoria Prince.

Barrow's multi-channel interactive media installation, Trying to Love the Normal Amount, opened at Plug In ICA's satellite space (290 McDermot Ave) on Saturday, April 12, and will be available until Saturday, April 19. Barrow will direct a performance beginning at approximately 7:30 p.m.

Dyck's new media installation, The day we cut Nettie's curls, she was 7 years old, will be presented at aceartinc (290 McDermot Ave) and will run until May 2.

Prince's sculptural video installation, Light and Alter, will be presented at the ADHERE AND DENY Pocket Theatre (315-70 Albert Street) and will run until April 25.


And, please mark your calendars for the launch of a fourth commission by Lori Weidenhammer and Peter Courtemanche. This project will involve two performances -- one on April 24 and one on April 25 -- at PLATFORM Centre for Photographic and Digital Arts at 7:00 p.m.

Following the performance and Q&A session at PLATFORM on April 25, we will celebrate Video Pool's Anniversary with a reception to which all are invited.


For more information about these events and our events upcoming in May, please visit: http://videopool.blogspot.com/2008/04/ton-of-25th-annivesary-programming-to.html

Congratulations! And, Launching Soon...

Video Pool is thrilled to share the exciting news that Daniel Barrow has returned home to Winnipeg with an illustrious honour from the Toronto Images Festival (April 3 - 13, 2008).





The Images Festival Award Winners were announced at the 2008 awards ceremony and closing party, where Daniel was presented with the Images Prize for Best Canadian Media Artwork for his performance project, Every Time I See Your Picture I Cry.

We're very excited for Daniel and we are pleased to be present his newly commissioned work, Trying to Love the Normal Amount at Plug In ICA's satellite space. This exhibition opened on Saturday, April 12 and runs until Saturday April 19.

Please join us on Friday, April 18 for the launch partying celebrating this project as well as new commissions by Victoria Prince and Richard Dyck. Victoria's sculptural video installation, Light and Alter, will be presented at the Adhere and Deny Pocket Theatre (70 Albert Street) and Richard Dyck's new media installation will be presented at aceartinc (290 McDermot Ave).

We look forward to your attendance!

Planning ahead... Upcoming Performance Lectures

Mark Thursday, May 8 down in your calendars right away to be sure you don't miss a night of very serious (and seriously hilarious) lectures about art, technology, philosophy, psychology, and maybe even the meaning of life.

Winnipeg, MB (April 16, 2008) – Video Pool Media Arts Centre is proud to present an evening of performative lectures on creativity and technology by Jeanne Randolph and Glen Johnson.

On Thursday, May 8 at 7:00 p.m. at the Winnipeg Film Group's Studio (304-100 Arthur Street), Video Pool will present two live, spoken-word performances by Jeanne Randolph and Glen Johnson, both known for their creative, intelligent, and irreverent lectures. Randolph and Johnson will each address the myriad, ubiquitous, and often troubling ways technologies operate through contemporary art and everyday life.

Psychiatrist and cultural theorist Randolph will use psychoanalytic methods and concepts, themselves amenable to productive misuse, to reveal the ways in which technological devices and/or their depictions are open to creative and critical interpretation. Johnson projects digital slides in a manner reminiscent of corporate culture and middle management to support his thesis that technology has ruined art, while Randolph uses a technology associated with yesterday’s middle-school science teachers and art historians – the conventional slide projector – to comment on mass media culture. Through a hilarious presentation based on classical scholarship, Johnson will take his audience back to scenes of Lascaux, urging artists to abandon “all this technological nonsense” and to “go back to crushing berries and burning sticks.”

ARTIST BIOS

Jeanne Randolph is one of Canada’s foremost cultural theorists. A practicing psychiatrist, Randolph is also known as a performance artist whose extemporaneous soliloquies (on topics varying from cat curating to boxing to Barbie dolls to Wittgenstein) have been performed in galleries and universities across Canada as well as in England, Australia, and Spain.

Glen Johnson is a performance and installation artist whose work invariably involves text. He has delivered faux-lectures to stunned audiences in at least two provinces. He has hung a bed on one wall and nailed tiny words to another. He has performed at aceartinc, The Annex, Gallery 803, Platform Gallery, Mount Saint Vincent University, the University of Winnipeg and the Winnipeg Art Gallery. He is largely responsible for the website www.persiflage.ca. He received a Bachelors Degree in Classics from the University of Winnipeg in 1993 and expects that some day they will ask for it back.

Join us for these provocative and humorous lectures; free admission - all are welcome! A reception will follow.

These performances are presented thanks to generous financial support from The Canada Council for the Arts, The Manitoba Arts Council, and the Winnipeg Arts Council.

Video Pool thanks the Winnipeg Film Group for their generous presentation support.


VIDEO POOL MEDIA ARTS CENTRE is a non-profit artist run centre dedicated to advancing the discipline of media art by providing media artists, non-profit organizations and community groups with access to professional video and media equipment, training, distribution, and programming. Video Pool strives to be a national leader fostering innovation, experimentation, critical dialogue, and advocacy in media arts.

A Ton of 25th Anniversary Programming to Enjoy!

Remember we said we had a ton of 25th Anniversary programming in store? Well, we weren't kidding!

The following list covers everything planned, so far. We have a few more ideas in mind... and we look forward to announcing those details as soon as possible.

Daniel Barrow's presentation of Trying to Love the Normal Amount opens on Saturday, April 12 @ 11:00 a.m.

The reception -- which will also celebrate the launch of projects by Richard Dyck and Victoria Prince -- will take place on Friday, April 18 beginning at 7:00 p.m.

Catering will be provided, most generously, by The Line Up (98 Albert Street). We are grateful for their support!

Exhibitions

Daniel Barrow April 12 – 19
Plug In ICA's Satellite Gallery, 290 McDermot Ave. (Ground Floor) (Map)
Tues - Sat 11:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m; Closed Sun - Mon.

Victoria Prince April 18 – 25
ADHERE AND DENY's Pocket Theatre, 315-70 Albert St. (Map)
Tues - Sat 12:00 p.m. - 5:00 p.m.; Closed Sun - Mon.

Richard Dyck April 18 – May 2
aceartinc., 290 McDermot Ave. (2nd Floor) (Map)
Tues - Sat 12:00 p.m. - 5:00 p.m.; Closed Sun - Mon.

Peter Courtemanche and Lori Weidenhammer April 24 – May 10
PLATFORM Centre for Photographic + Digital Arts, 100 Arthur St. (Map)
Tues - Sat 12:00 p.m. - 5:00 p.m.; Thurs 12:00 p.m. - 7:30 p.m.; Closed Sun - Mon.

Steve Loft May 5 – 17
The Duke of Kent Legion, 227 McDermot Ave. (Map)
Mon, Wed - Fri 1:00 - 6:00 p.m.; Tues 2:00 - 6:00 p.m. Closed Sat - Sun.

Sharon Alward May 16 – 24
Rachel Browne Theatre (Formerly the Winnipeg's Contemporary Dancers Studio), 211 Bannatyne Ave. (Map)
Tues - Sat 12:00 p.m. - 5:00 p.m.; Closed Sun - Mon.

Performances

Daniel Barrow April 18 – Begins at 7:30 p.m.
Plug In ICA's Satellite Gallery, 290 McDermot Ave. (Ground Floor) (Map)

Peter Courtemanche + Lori Weidenhammer April 24 & 25 – Begins at 7:00 p.m.
(Question and answer session begins approximately 7:45)
PLATFORM Centre for Photographic + Digital Arts, 100 Arthur St. (Map)

Sharon Alward May 16 – 23 – At intervals throughout the duration of the exhibition except for Saturday, May 24.
Rachel Browne Theatre (Formerly the Winnipeg's Contemporary Dancers Studio), 211 Bannatyne Ave. (Map)

Openings

Daniel Barrow, Victoria Prince, and Richard Dyck April 18 – Begins at 7:00 p.m.
aceartinc., 290 McDermot Ave. (2nd Floor) (Map)

Peter Courtemanche + Lori Weidenhammer and 25th Anniversary Reception April 25 – Begins at 8:00 p.m.
PLATFORM Centre for Photographic + Digital Arts, 100 Arthur St. (Map)

Steven Loft May 5 – 6:00 - 9:00 p.m.
The Duke of Kent Legion, 227 McDermot Ave. (Map)

Sharon Alward May 16 - Begins at 7:00 p.m.
Rachel Browne Theatre (Formerly the Winnipeg's Contemporary Dancers Studio), 211 Bannatyne Ave. (Map)

Action Alert to Protect Internet Neutrality

Hey Media Artists!!

Do we really want internet companies to be able to tell us what we can and cannot view and do on the Internet? This includes uploading, as well...

The Internet has, to date, been the most democratic and effective means of sharing critical and creative information. If anything, efforts should be made to expand access and availability! Independent and public content MUST remain as widely circulated as that spewed out by corporations with commercial interests.

Stand up for freedom of speech, expression, information, community, and content!!

The following is reposted from an email sent by Campaign for Democratic Media. An action request contained within...

STOP THE THROTTLERS!

The Campaign for Democratic Media is leading the call to stop the throttling of the Internet and the strangling of our choice.

Bell and Rogers are changing fundamentally how the Internet works by dictating how Web surfers access content.

As of April 7, Bell is going to put limits on downloads by Sympatico subscribers. Internet hosting companies that buy wholesale services from Bell have already been feeling the pinch since mid-March. Meanwhile, Rogers, in addition to its own traffic-shaping activities, has announced it will charge subscribers more for Internet activities that use more bandwidth.

The companies argue they are trying to limit activities that use up a lot of bandwidth in order to maintain speed for all users.

But there is a dangerous reality hidden beneath the companies' apparent concern for subscribers.

Using the same "traffic shaping" principle, the companies can steer subscribers to their own content, or content produced by affiliated companies, and away from that offered by competitors
-- including the public broadcaster. For example, some Internet users who recently tried to download CBC's The Next Greatest Prime Minister on Bittorrent were told it would take hours to do so.

For more than a decade, the Internet was a neutral resource for people around the world to share information with each other.

Do we really want Bell and Rogers to be able to tell us what we can and cannot view and do on the Internet?

You can take action on this alert via the web at:
http://www.unionvoice.org/campaign/internet_control/88eg8uk4q7nttw6d?

We encourage you to take action by April 15, 2008

Say NO to internet control by Bell, Rogers