We talked with Avenue Edmonton’s Ana Maria de la Fuente about Parka Patio:
Executive director Todd Janes knows people may think having a party outside in minus -20°C weather is a little crazy, but he thinks it’s time to embrace the realities of the city’s climate and have some fun with it.
The party is “taking the idea of loving winter and mixing it with truly Latitude flair,” he says.
Read the preview on their blog, and join the conversation on twitter at #yegparka.
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.
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.
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.
In Vue this week, Carolyn Jervis reflects on some highlights of 2011 in Edmonton art—and we’re there:
Solo Exhibit: Gary James Joynes/Clinker, 12 Tones, Latitude 53
Latitude kicked off a strong year of programming with this powerful exhibit by Edmonton artist Joynes. This show provided more than a viewing experience—it was a powerful, overwhelming immersion in raw, tonal sound—sound seen, heard and felt through your whole body. This intensity was so well balanced by photos of sand mandalas, suggesting the meditative aspect of the art experience, each created through the vibration of one of those intense tones.
There’s lots more in the article from all around town. We’re looking forward to another great year, starting with our opening receptions this friday.
Just before our holiday break, Carolyn Jervis wrote about our two December shows, Taxonomia and Working Order in Vue:
Usually my first reaction upon seeing taxidermy, or representations thereof, is to be creeped out. The posed, stuffed animal skins with their vacant glassy eyes are so transparently false in their imitation of living breathing things. Somehow Maria Whiteman’s Taxonomia, Latitude 53’s current Main Space exhibition, manages to create a space for intimate relationships with these and other preserved creatures.
Read the rest at Vue Weekly.
Avenue Magazine highlights our new show by Margaret Dragu and Freya Björg Olafson, FOMD Laboratory:
The meta-art project is about the process of putting together a collaborative show, which the artists have watched and documented as a process itself, a kind of “slow-moving reality television series,” jokes Dragu.
The artists and their work are in the gallery this week—so come by and have a look, or come to their artist talk Saturday afternoon at 2:00.
Fish Griwkowsky spoke to Emilio Rojas about his project for Visualeyez, which he performs this Sunday afternoon:
Part of the project is a pair of sealed letters he and his mother wrote each other, never to be opened. As we walk from the gallery to his hotel to retrieve hers, Rohas discusses how equal they are in the project, and how after working with him a few times she has started to ask questions of his artistic motivations. “I like that we are equal partners. With another performance artist you may have a disagreement and move on. But my mom and I are bound together,” he says peacefully.
“The collaboration began because we were really close and I’ve been in Vancouver for 3½ years,” says Rojas. Besides keeping track of how each other are doing, working together over the past two years has made their relationship stronger. “I have to say this to anyone out there, if you get a chance do something with your mother, whether it’s painting or writing or whatever you can, just do it.
Read the rest on the Edmonton Journal site
The Edmonton Journal was out at In/stall/ed on Saturday:
Empty parking lots and concrete spaces were transformed into art installations in Edmonton’s McCauley neighbourhood Saturday.
In the middle of the Sacred Heart Centre parking lot at 96 Street and 108 Avenue, 81-year-old Nick Shostak Sr. and his granddaughter Amy set up a coffee table, rug, some books and chairs. Shostak Sr. sat back in his burgundy recliner and told the audience stories of a youth filled with failed get-rich-quick schemes involving unsold umbrella hats and cafeteria trays.
Shostak’s performance was part of a free outdoor art show sponsored by the McCauley community revitalization project, where artists explored the divide between public and private life.
The article also includes a few comments from Kelta Coomber here at the gallery, as well as a little more on other projects in case you missed.
Of course, we’re still in the thick of it: come see our untitled project with Jasper Place High School students in the windows of the Artery tonight!
