FIFA and I can never quite seem to meet-in-the-middle, OR: First official Frozen Mammoth RANT!

Kim Kielhofner, still from Art of the Amplifier, 2009

As always this time of year (i.e. when the buds are destroying my capacity to think of things other than the bursting of spring) FIFA is well underway and I have yet to see a single film! Oh dear. Living amidst so much possibility often equals not getting out to much - know what I mean?

Tonight, as part of one of the Festival’s short programs, is a series of videos entitled Infiltrations (1 and 2), and it’s chock full of local artists’ work. Indeed, Diane Obomsawin, Kim Kielhofner and Victoria Stanton are just three of my favourites that have short pieces in the mix.

While I look forward to these films, I am not shocked that I often overlook this festival. I was brought up, like many folks I know, on Western European art and studied it on my own-some out of an avid love for the visual world. Yet I chalk my narrowness of scope up to where I come from, (a small town in Ontario) where wanting to know about art history at all was considered very, very suspect. The idea that this history could contain a richness-beyond-description from all corners of the world wasn’t something I encountered until as a grown up I became stubborn about expanding my aesthetic knowledge and sensibilities.

So while I do appreciate much of the subject matter of the FIFA program, I find it very limiting. It seems to be far too Western European focused to be called an International festival. Perhaps it should be re-named FIFAWE - International Festival of Films on Western European Art.

I am realizing now as I write how important it seems to open the scope of the festival. Very little is about contemporary work, the work of women, the work of anyone but old, dead white dudes (for the most part)…

And like I said, I am excited for some of it - I can’t wait to go see 2 films on Rembrandt and Caravaggio, respectively. There’s a short on Vermeer that I am eager about. Yet I suppose I am a wee surprised/disappointed that only 2 short film programs seem to be answering a need to diffuse film and video by and about a diverse pool of contemporary artists.

Or how cool would it be to every year have a focus on a specific area, or country? Art of the Middle East from the 19th century, for example. I refuse to believe that there aren’t films/interests out there that would allow this type of festival to become what it says it is, which is International.

Ok. Rant over. Tonight at 9pm at the Cinematheque Quebecoise promises to be one of the events with more contemporary programming.  I shall be there, sitting shame-faced due to that it’s the first event I’ll be going to. Or perhaps shame-faced that it took me so long to realize why I’ve never invested in FIFA deeply. Thankfully, like the rest of the salle, I will be absorbed in darkness, so no one else will see the burning of my cheeks.

Get Your Art Souterrain On

For the next few weeks, there’s an amazing conference going on that anyone interested in local art organizations, artists and practices should try to get to when they can. Started yesterday and ends the 13th of March.

It’s Art Souterrain, and it seems like a giant extension of Nuit Blanche insanity.

The website is here: while I don’t have tons of time right now to go over the roster of who’s speaking when and where and how and why, I do have the time to suggest you look over the schedule.

Some of my local favourites who’ll be yakking and performing include En Masse, Celine B. La Terreur, Alana Riley, 2Fik and Eric Bolduc. But go see folks you don’t know and be amazed by their prowess, skill and hotness. And send me pictures.

More about the event when I am not rushing out the door madly in search of cheeseburgers.

Art Pop Poppin’ up.

So Art POP is happening soon soon soon, with the first vernissage on the 30th of September at 5pm at 6600 Hutchison….

There’s a ton of stuff going on, so make sure to check out all that’s going down here.

One of the coolest parts about this year is that there are 2 central locations so it’s easy to go see a whole whackload of stuff without feeling overwhelmed. Also, as everything is going on all week, you get aladda chances to swing by and check stuff out, so no pressure. Of the peer kind or otherwise.

The artists that are showcasing this year include Bridget Moser & Jessica Campbell, Adrian Norvid, Lalie Douglas, Dominique Sirois, Kim Kielhofner, Michelle Lacombe & Sheena Hosko, Daniel Iglesia, Brendan Reed, Paul Warne, Christian Pelletier & David Beaulieu, Jean-Philippe Harvey & Adam Bergeron, Richmond Lam & Mathieu Blanchette.

It’s going to be a pretty amazing week. I am going to attempt to interview as many of these fine folks as possible to get a sense of what they’re working on, etc. so stay tuned!!

Seripop in the UK and Gordon Ball this Thursday

Remember Seripop’s No Henge installation at the Emporium Gallery?

The creative duo exhibited it again last month, at the Baltic Center for Contemporary Arts (UK), to show it off with The Trail, from 2008. They’re sharing pics of the installation process on their blog, you have to click here and see them.

-

Speaking of the Emporium Gallery, Gordon Ball’s I am sorry. Sincerely, Frankenstein exhibition opens this Thursday, August 27th from 7pm-11pm (3035 St. Antoine Ouest, #74). It’s Ball’s first solo exhibition in Montreal in over 2 years so come out and support this local photographer.

I’m told this show is full of nudity.

Let’s build a giant room-sized theremin with 16 antennas!

We would like to invite the tag-team of artist/engineers David Beaulieu and Christian Pelletier to this year’s Pop Montreal International Music Festival (September 30 - October 4) and see them build a Theremin room in our special Art Pop and POP Symposium headquarters.

The duo was last seen breaking musical boundaries with their loud-speaker suits worn by Patrick Watson and his musicians at this year’s Festival de Jazz de Montréal.

The installation of massive proportions we want them to build will invite festival-goers to participate (alone, or in groups!) in the creation of on-site, mind-blowing, improvised music as they interact in a room with 16 antennas suspended above and around them. As they are activated, the antennas trigger psychedelic sounds that are bound to excite and solicit interest from all sorts of human beings

It’s gonna be spontaneous, it’s gonna be an immediate and visceral experience, it’s gonna be communally created art instantly diffused, IT’S GONNA BE SO COOL! We’re asking all lovers of theremins, lovers of art, lovers of interactive experiences, lovers of electricity, lovers of music and lovers of the world everywhere to help us make this project happen. Your money will be used to pay for David & Christian’s hard work and the equipment they will need to make this happen.

Check out our kickstarter page, where you’ll see all the amazing REWARDS we’re offering to people that back this project. Among those, you’ll find:

• a limited edition DVD of animations made by local animators
• a DIY theremin kit
• a hand silk-screened limited edition t-shirt with a theremin on it
• an mp3 of an exclusive track from Gentleman Reg or Dishwasher
• a FULL PAGE photo of you in the Pop Montreal segment program
• a VIP Festival Pass to the Pop Montreal International Music Festival
• a personal festival friend and a cozy bed to sleep in
• a musical about you and 3 of your friends, written and performed by us. we will tape it in Montreal in front of a live audience, and send it to you.
• a custom-made Loudspeaker Suit built by Beaulieu and Pelletier

Donate to Art Pop, Receive a Drawing, Win Life

So let’s talk about this visual arts festival. It’s Art Pop, and it’s a segment of the amazing international Music Festival, Pop Montreal. Although it is affiliated to Pop Montreal, they are a non-profit organization, and as such, segments are basically responsible for their own individual funding.

So here’s the deal: sweet drawings like the ones seen in this post (but on paper), will be sent to Frozen Mammoth readers by mail, for donations of $10 CAD and more. The drawings can be mailed either to you or to anyone of your choice. Drawings will be shipped anywhere in the world, with normal shipping, without any extra cost to you.

Thank you so much for your love and support, and for contributing to a young and relevant free arts festival!

Get your MPD on tonight

If you want to see everything there is to see tonight, you better work your multiple personality disorder to your advantage:

-

• The animations of Stefan Gruber at Monastiraki (5478 St-Laurent) tonight at 8pm. His work has fluid animation and a trippy aesthetic that echoes the nonchalant sophistication of comix artists like Ron Regé Jr.

-

• Before that though, you should stop by right next door, over at Le Cagibi (5490 St. Laurent), for the vernissage of an exhibition featuring the costumes, props and photos from the in-progress short film, Smile Stealers. This is happening from 5pm to 7pm.

-

• The second edition of the Montreal 60 Second Film Festival is having its (free) Registration Party down the street at La Sala Rossa (4848 boul. St-Laurent) from 8:30pm to 11:30pm. The idea is simple: the first 120 filmmakers to sign up each make a 60 second film that will be screened in september. Entertainment will include performances by Julie Lequin (of her “This American Life” submission), magician Sébastien Talbot, zoetrope workshop, screentests - not to mention doorprizes featuring original art created for M60! More info on this incredible project here.

-

• For the 18th year in a row, Groupe Intervention Vidéo presents Vidéos de femmes dans le parc (VFP), showing 17 short video works by awesome ladies, including forever-mammoth-favorite Kim Kielhofner. This is happening at the Théâtre de Verdure in Parc Lafontaine, 9 pm.

Nicolás De Jesús - Grandeurs et décadences/The ball of the hallucinated carcasses

I am pretty excited about this exhibition that’s on until the 29th of June (so go this week!!) at the Centre Culturel Simón Bolívar, 394 de Maisonneuve ouest (métro Place-des-Arts). I’ve heard of neither the artist nor the venue, hence my inner sense of mystery is already stirred. 

The show itself is part of the First Peoples’ Festival 2009, (which officially ended Monday) and presents the prints of Mexican artist Nicolas De Jesus.

I am a big fan of traditional printmaking and Jesus’ art is reminiscent to me (at least of what I’ve seen) of some of the art of the grotesque artists that I am really quite fond of, more-than-friendly neighbours you wish would eat at your house every day.  

Here’s a write-up from the Festival website about Jesus’ work:

Born on December 6, 1960 in the Nahua region of the state of Guerrero, in Mexico, Nicolás developed his art in a family setting among the Ameyaltepec community, where the tradition of visual art on amatepaper has flourished for a long time. Nicolás’ work reflects a broad spectrum of personal experiences, from his origins in a traditional village to exile among immigrants transplanted in the USA. Through his prints, Nicolás defends his cultural identity and takes a critical view of planetary reality, through the prism of political tragicomedy. One of Nicolás’ intentions is to raise popular consciousness through art, for liberatory ends, motivating the work he does on murals in Mexico’s Aboriginal communities.

In October 2008, the artist donated this series of prints to the Committee for the Reconstruction of Petanac for fundraising purposes. All sales are earmarked for the reconstruction of this village of the department of Huehuetenango, Guatemala, razed by the Guatemalan army on July 14, 1982 after the massacre of its inhabitants, during an anti-insurrectional and state terrorist campaign.

The venue is open from Monday to Friday from noon to 7 pm so take a long lunch or quit your job to go.

Do Nothing At Casa

If you are the kind of person who likes to stay home doing nothing instead of going out dancing on St. Jean, then why not do nothing with a bunch of other people at Casa? Here’s their description of what I’m sure will be an interesting night of nothingness.

Starting at 6pm we will remove all furniture, all art on the walls, all information on the blackboard, turn off all pre-recorded music, turn off all lights. Once this is done, surrounded by the emptiness of an emptied Casa, we will simply be there, come join us in doing nothing (perhaps with a bit of chat, eat, drink). By midnight or so we will bring everything back to normal.

creature of the day breaks down creatures in the night

The creature of the day being myself, as it IS 3pm-ish, and so I wouldn’t be considered a creature in the night currently. Rational aside, I still managed to go to the second half of the animation festival Creatures in the Night last night, which was the open call-for-submissions part of the evening.

I have to admit that I was pretty blown away especially because I honestly find animation a medium with SUCH potential that it often has folks doing pretty annoying stuff. Like performance art, minus the potential. No, no, I’m kidding, I actually think they have a lot in common. Ha ha. Yeah…

One of the night’s crowd pleasures as far as I could tell was this animation from Christophe Jordache entitled, Enola Gay: (Sorry about the shoddy and short quality of this little morcel)

I have been forced, at various times or others, to use toilet paper to draw on in lieu of having anything else that will remotely function as paper, and the results have often been interesting, but it’s a hard medium to tackle. That Jordache drew on it for this entire animation (it was 2 minutes long in duration in total) is pretty amazing, and that his movements are as interesting and convincing as they are is quite unbelievable.

There were other works of greatness as well: Rickie Lea Owens had several very short, irreverant and fun pieces. Joshua Bonnetta’s Parting was an absolutely gorgeous 2 minutes of what seemed like rotoscoped dancers with a haunting soundtrack. Pretty hard to describe unless you see it, which I did, but I was mesmerized in a way that made trying to document it all at the same time quite difficult.

Finally, Karl Lemieux ended the night with an 8 minute 16mm film entitled, Moveuvement de Lumiere/Motion of Light. It looked to me like what might happen if Vic Muniz did a stop motion animation with his chocolate sauce instead of painting the Mona Lisa. Lemieux, who co-founded the film collective Double Negative, is clearly in his element with this intensely meditative and process-based work that is rooted in the experimental.

The funny thing is, I usually hate long animations (and 8 minutes is long for this kind of a thing) and I don’t often like experiemental filmmaking. I was absolutely BLOWN away by this piece however. You should truly try to get your hands on a copy of the film. I kindof couldn’t believe it. My jaw was hanging. I was aghast. For a moment, I was nothing more than a little beastie, scouraging for food and water. I was a Creature In the Night.

Thanks to Elizabeth Belliveau and articule for putting on such an amazing event.