Emanuel Licha reviewed in Galleries West
Galleries West magazine visited PAVED Arts to review Emanuel Licha’s work there—if you’ve only seen the work we had up here this January, take a look at their take on other half of the show in Saskatoon.
This week is your last chance to see Emanuel Licha’s Striking a Pose (above) and Nicole Rayburn’s Pollination Proposition. We’re open weeknights until 7:00, or Saturday 12–5, so stop by the gallery when you get the chance.
After Saturday, it all comes down so that we can start building the tunnel for Parka Patio…
Striking a pose - Essay by Marie-Hélène Leblanc
If you haven’t been into the gallery and picked up your own hard copy, check out curator Marie-Hélène Leblanc’s short essay about Emanuel Licha’s work on our website in English and French:
We are constantly bombarded with images of conflict—and this work provides a perspective on the role of images of conflicts, but also on image production systems and information (real or fictional) transmitted by the flow of war images. If we are not present, how can we be certain about the pictures we receive?
Emanuel Licha in the National Post
Leah Sandals talked to Emanuel Licha about his show Striking a Pose in today’s National Post:
Q What started your War Tourist series?
A In 2004, I was living in Sarajevo and documenting a bombed house. A car arrived and one woman and two men stepped out. The men were journalists and started taking photographs. They stayed five minutes, then the woman handed me her business card, and I saw that she was a tourist guide. I was pretty naive then, because I didn’t know there were tourists of war-torn areas, and that there have been for centuries. That night, I decided to abandon my projects. I felt concerned by the war, but obviously, being Canadian and never having been under a bomb attack, I felt it wasn’t legitimate for me to speak about. But the next morning, I called the woman, and that became the first video in the series. It was like, “OK … I’ll be a tourist.” Finding the idea of the “war tourist” was, to me, an answer to this problem of legitimacy, a ridiculous way for me to address my own situation vis-à-vis wars.
Read the full article and then come on down to Latitude 53 (or PAVED Arts in Saskatoon) to see for yourself.
Latitude 53 Video Podcast
Curator Marie-Hélène Leblanc gave an informal talk at Latitude 53 for the opening of Striking a Pose by Emanuel Licha. Here are some highlights, where she speaks about the works “War Tourist” and “How Do We Know What We Know”.
Striking a Pose runs from January 13–February 11.
Of hurricanes and pollination – Vue Weekly
In “How Do We Know What We Know?” Licha does a brilliant job of opening up questions about journalism of such horrors through coverage of the recent political unrest in Syria. His film reveals the production behind a “real” live conflict, jumping between American news footage and video that records its production from the otherwise hidden windy hillside in Turkey. As the American production team leaves, a member of the local camera team asks a telling question: “How will it be when they’re gone?” Licha punctuates this question by showing how journalism makes an event real, alluding to the invisibility of stories that aren’t told in front of the camera.
Carolyn Jervis writes on our two new shows for this week’s Vue Weekly.
So how do we know what we know about war? That’s a central question raised by Montreal- and Paris-based artist Emanuel Licha in his two-part exhibition “Striking a Pose” at Latitude 53 in Edmonton and PAVED Arts in Saskatoon. The exhibition (which is curated by Marie-Hélène Leblanc and will also show at Musée régional de Rimouski later this year) takes a wide-ranging look at the way conflict is staged and the effect of this blurring of fact and fiction—not only on official reports and histories, but also on collective memory.
Today Byrne McLaughlin of Canadian Art takes a look at Striking a Pose.
Our new main space show Striking a Pose by Emanuel Licha is a joint project between Latitude 53, PAVED Arts in Saskatchewan, and the Musée Régional De Rimouski in Quebec, put together by curator Marie-Hélène Leblanc. Licha is supported by the Canada Council for the Arts.
This week the show is also opening at PAVED—but it’s not the same as ours. At Latitude 53 we’ve got two video works up, the five-part “War Tourist” and the new “How Do We Know What We Know”. Paved is going to be showing two other works: “R For Real” and “Mirages” are a continuation of the project begun in “War Tourist” but with a twist. Where the War Tourist previously visited the sites of actual conflict, separated from the violence by time and tour guides, in what Leblanc describes as a safe space. In the newer works, the tourist (who also takes on the guise of a journalist, a role further explored in “How Do We Know…”) still seeks out safe spaces to view conflict, but paradoxically ones that let him get much closer—constructed sets for training riot police in france, and a hollywood-built model Iraq in a Californian desert. The videos find the edges of these simulated conflict spaces, and so imply their own edges as video, again themes taken up again in “How Do We Know What We Know”.
The two halves of the show will be united later this year in Rimouski, Quebec.
We videotaped Marie-Hélène Leblanc speaking informally about the work at our opening on Friday, and we’ll have some highlights later this week on the blog—but if you happen to be in Saskatoon on Friday, be sure to catch her at the opening at PAVED arts at 7:00. Find out more about the works and the show there at pavedarts.ca.
Preview Striking a Pose yourself
At wartourist.net Emanuel Licha has posted excerpts from each part of “War Tourist”, a five-part video installation that makes up the largest part of Striking a Pose, so you can whet your appetite for the show—opening tonight and up in the gallery until February 11.
Janice Ryan previews Striking a Pose
Artist Emanuel Licha (emanuel-licha.com) was living in Sarajevo when he witnessed a car stop in front of a demolished home. Out poured a guide with a group of tourists who furiously snapped photos before heading off to the next viewing spot. The incident sparked the idea for War Tourist, a series of videos shot from the point of view of a tourist seeking postwar conflicts and disasters.
Opening today in Latitude 53’s Main Space, an installation of five 20-minute films shot between 2004 and 2008 will transport you from Sarajevo to Chornobyl, Auschwitz, New Orleans (after hurricane Katrina) and the suburbs of Paris (site of the 2005 civil unrest).
In each location, Licha presented himself as a tourist, hired a guide and asked to see the “worst destruction” and “most dangerous” part of the city.
In the Edmonton Journal today, Janice Ryan talks to artist Emanuel Licha about his show, Striking a Pose—opening tonight with a curator’s talk at 6:00 and a reception following.
