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News

Annika Walsh shooting Chinese Croquembouche for upcoming Food Conference.

30/05/2023

In the studio this week with Annika Walsh. In her words, “Chinese Croquembouche is a savoury twist on a classic French dessert presented as a durational interactive sculpture. A traditional croquembouche consists of choux pastry puffs piled into a cone and bound together with threads of caramel. Chinese Croquembouche has a savoury filling and is bonded with a sticky, salty maple syrup caramel. Visually, the tower resembles the traditional sweet dessert, it is only upon further inspection with the smell and taste senses, that you are faced with flavours you were not expecting. This edible sculptural piece allows viewers to become participants and contributors as each choux pastry puffs gets removed from the tower for consumption. Chinese Croquembouche demonstrates my approach to food and my experiences as a Chinese Adoptee. My authenticity is continuously challenged, and I am not always what people expect me to look, sound or act like.”

 

Chinese Croquembouche will be presented at the 2023 Canadian Association of Food Studies conference themed Reckonings, Reimaginings and Reconciliations Within and Through Food Systems.
https://foodstudies.info/news-conferences/upcoming-conference/

Resident Sarah Conn presenting Remix in Victoria

05/05/2023

Sarah Conn’s experience Remixed premiered in Western Canada from May 5th-6th at SKAM studios Victoria.

The creator of the Project Trophy, which explored life’s turning points, introduced Remixed: a 45 minute personalized polyphonic playlist of true stories and prompts on transformation set in a colour changing garden inspired space.The playlist includes personal accounts of change, ordered algorithmically based on user responses in the Remixed web app to questions such as “Do you believe that change comes from inside or outside of us?” Conn combines true accounts of transformative life events with a multisensory garden space to intimately examine the movement of change through life, presence, and collective reassembling to find potential in the self.

For more on Remixed visit the Intrepid Theatre website.

 

Sarah Conn is a theater director based in Ottawa who has been developing the Remix project with a dynamic team in residence at Artengine throughout the start of 2023.

Walk on the Wild Side: Interspecies Collaboration in Art

20/03/2023
SciArt Conference Poster

We are delighted to be a partner in the SciArt Symposium organized by SAW. Through a series of wonderful conversations with SAW we have helped assemble the panel:

Walk on the Wild Side: Interspecies Collaboration in Art

 

Moderator by our Managing Director, Remco Volmer and including:

Aleksandra Bajde, a Slovenian composer-performer, cultural manager, and Phd candidate in political science, creates semi-improvisational multidisciplinary and multigenre performance art exploring expressive possibility and multidisciplinary interaction.

https://aleksandrabajde.com/

 

Cheryl L’Hirondelle is an interdisciplinary artist, singer/songwriter, Governor General Award recipient, and CEO of Miyoh Music Inc. L’Hirondelle approaches audio, video, and multi-sensory experience from a contemporary Cree worldview encouraging dynamism, inclusion, and the presence of nehiyawewin and other Indigenous languages.

http://www.cheryllhirondelle.com/bio.html

 

Tina Tarpgaard is a dancer, choreographer, and founder of the cross aesthetic dance company Recoil Performance Group, and 2 time winner of the National Danish Performing art Award. Tarpgaard examines object functionality and  the links between performers and space,often integrating both human and nonhuman software and bio-art performers.

 

https://recoil-performance.org/about/

 

Dr Jenniffer Willet is the director of the Bioart lab INCUBATOR and Canada Research Chair in Art, Science and Ecology at the University of Windsor, and founder of BioARTCAMP. Willet examines interspecies interaction, biotech, the body, and representation, to challenge the divisions between art, biological science, and technology.

https://gallery.iotainstitute.com/collections/jennifer-willet

 

For more information on the symposium check it out at SAW’s website here.

You can watch more on Cheryl L’Hirondelle’s work on interspecies communication in the Ideas section here on our website.

Art and Science Fiction Residency

12/02/2023

Join Artengine for a residency exploring the potential of science fiction as an artistic framework for imagining alternative futures.

 

This paid residency supports one artist / curator / cultural producer between 15 and 30 years of age to develop artistic research and/or a project that engages science fiction as a form of practice and politics. The residency is supported by the Digital Skills for Youth program, administered by IMAA and funded by the Government of Canada.

 

Application Details

 

Application deadline: February 12th, 11.59 PM EST

Residency dates : February 15th to March 31st

Complete applications to be sent to programming@artengine.ca

 

The residency takes the idea of science fiction as a form of practice, a set of sensibilities, and a methodology, increasingly adopted by artists as a theoretical and aesthetic framework for imagining emancipatory, decolonial concepts of futurity.

 

Potential approaches would include a critical perspective or experimental use of (digital) technology and may include: design fiction, immersive audio, game worlds, bio art, digital fashion, AI interventions, and any other critical and experimental approach to digital technologies.

 

During the residency, you will have access to Artengine’s production facilities and equipment, as well as internal and external mentorship.

 

We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada.

Artengine Slow Video Roku Channel

02/01/2023
Artengine Slow Video Graphic

Artengine is experimenting with smart TV channels. We currently have a slowwwwwwww video channel for Roku TVs. We are loading up some experiments in atmospheric moving images and you can add it to your Roku line up and check it out.

 

Search for Artengine and you should find us there!

Download and keep it slowwwwwwwwww……

Cheryl L’Hirondelle in Conversation

05/12/2022

Cheryl L’Hirondelle in Conversation

2PM, December 5th, 2022

Artengine

2 Daly Ave

Limited Reserved Seating Available. Please contact ryan@artengine.ca for more info.

The session will be recorded and posted soon here on our site.

As part of the Entanglements exhibition we are delighted to host an artist talk and conversation with Cheryl L’Hirondelle. She will discuss her work Nipawiwin Akikodjiwan: Pimizi ohci, her relationship to the eels and her research on interspecies communication.

 

Bio

 

Cheryl L’Hirondelle (Cree/Halfbreed; German/Polish)​ is an interdisciplinary, community-engaged artist, a singer/songwriter and a critical thinker whose family roots are from Papaschase First Nation, amiskwaciy wâskahikan (Edmonton, Alberta) and Kikino Metis Settlement, Alberta. Her work critically investigates and articulates a dynamism of nêhiyawin (Cree worldview) in contemporary time-place with a practice that incorporates Indigenous language(s), audio, video, virtual reality, the olfactory, music and audience/user participation to create immersive environments towards ‘radical inclusion.’

As a songwriter, L’Hirondelle’s focus is on both sharing nêhiyawêwin (Cree language) and Indigenous and contemporary song-forms and personal narrative songwriting as methodologies toward survivance. She has exhibited and performed widely, both nationally and internationally.

L’Hirondelle is the recipient of two imagineNATIVE New Media Awards (2005, 2006), and two Canadian Aboriginal Music Awards (2006, 2007) and most recently a Governor General’s Award for Visual and Media Arts (. She holds a master’s degree in Design from OCAD University’s Inclusive Design program (2015) and is a member of the University’s Indigenous Education Council. She is currently completing a practice-based PhD with SMARTlab/University College Dublin, Ireland. Cheryl is also the CEO of Miyoh Music Inc., an Indigenous niche music publishing company and record label.

https://www.cheryllhirondelle.com/home

Negotiating Digital Space in Culturally Significant Storytelling

29/06/2022

Artengine is delighted to be supporting the newly formed organization Mindful Habitats with their online presentation series Negotiating Digital Space in Cultural Significant Storytelling. These series explores the relationship between narrative and our experience of the environment around us.

Check out the upcoming talks below and register on their site to join.

 

The Omnipresence of Screens: Ideal Projections:

Brian Greenspan in conversation with Louise Pelletier: June 29, 2022 10 AM to 12 PM

In the webinar, The Omnipresence of Screens: Ideal Projections, Louise Pelletier examines how different points of view negotiate the role of the image in a digital era, while Brian Greenspan explores the concept of narrative transportation through screens and the visualization of ideal spaces.

Absences and Pluralities of Stories

Zoe Todd and Marc Neveu: July 7, 1 pm – 3 pm EST

In the session Absence and Pluralities of Stories, Zoe Todd discusses institutions and strategies of absenting stories, while Marc Neveu proposes a plurality in the reading of stories embedded in archival drawings.

Translate and Transform

Caroline Dayer and Liam Doherty: July 14, 9 am – 11 am EST

In the session Translate and Transform, Carolina Dayer and Liam Doherty discuss how translation transforms stories, their audience, places, and lives.

Narratives of Familiarity: Empathy in Storytelling

Sojung Bahng and Stephen Foster: July 21, 9 am – 11 am EST

Sojung Bahng and Stephen Foster will discuss the dangers of empathy and other ethical issues as they introduce their work in immersive and interactive documentary storytelling.

Immersive Storytelling: Negotiating Identity

Dylan Paré and Maize Longboat: July 28, 1 pm – 3 pm EST

Dylan Paré and Maize Longboat ask what it means to create a video game or experience that reflects their identities. As they each navigate what it means to create a queer or Indigenous game, respectively, they explore how game design can create a conversation between creator and user.

Sourdough Rising

22/06/2022

This week we kicked off our new cultural incubator program Sourdough. The beta version of the program includes three participants all developing new projects for their creative communities. They will meet together on a weekly basis for mentorship and workshops from leading artists and cultural producers from around the world.

 

Learn more about the program and the participants at sourdough.art

 

Jennifer A. Quintanilla

Jennifer A. Quintanilla (she/her) is a Salvadoran-American New York native who has been calling Canada her home over the past few years. She holds an M.A. in Film and Media Studies from Concordia University.

In addition, she recently earned an Arts in Medicine Graduate Certificate from the University of Florida. Her experience there led her down the path of developing a creative wellness initiative. Her project centres on how film can serve as an outlet and tool to unearth possible solutions for mental and emotional health & well-being.

 

Abdul Muse/KAR33M

Abdul Muse (he/him) is an award-winning entrepreneur and singer/songwriter. He is the founder of Woke Studios; an artistic residency for Afro-diverse emerging artists to find support for their debut work.

 

As an award-winning Afro-soul artist famously known as KAR33M, he creates narrative-style music to provide a unique perspective into the African diaspora. His project focuses on how to build alternative blueprints for success for afro-diverse genre artists within the music industry, while uncovering resources to guide their path.

 

Mikayla Gordon/Seiiizi

Mikayla Gordon (she/her) was born and raised in Ottawa. Her artist name is Seiiizi. She became a self taught Emcee, DJ and Producer with artistic roots in Hip-Hop and reggae. Since 2015, Mikayla/Seiiizi has been creating spaces for creatives to learn and showcase their talents. Seiiizi strives to build the urban arts community, while fusing her own unique twists on tracks and mixes.

 

Her project focuses on supporting multimedia immersive showcases of emerging  artists in the Ottawa region, while connecting them with new audiences.

Welcome Junior Fellows!

01/06/2022

We welcome our first Junior Fellows to Artengine – Annika Walsh and Kayla Eli!

 

The Junior Fellowship program helps recent graduates transition out of the school context and into their professional practice. Annika and Kayla will be grounded at Artengine until the end of the year, making and exploring the beginning of their artistic practices in our home here.

 

Annika Walsh is a transdisciplinary artist who was born in Chuzhou, China and adopted at 11 months of age by my family in Canada. She works with a variety of ingredients, materials, and collaborators to form my conceptual pieces and her practice covers notions from personal exploration of cultural identity, to participatory food performances, and everything in between. Her passion for all things culinary are frequently implicated in my continuous investigation of the power of food and shared meals as a tool for community engagement, conversation and congregating.

Kayla Eli is a Kenyan-Canadian video, new media, and textile artist. She explores the feeling of nostalgia by creating work that focuses on childhood and memories. When creating sculptural and textile work, she takes her materials into consideration as she focuses on found objects from thrift stores. For her media-based work, she creates non-linear narratives that challenge viewer expectations and make them question the realities in her work. While Eli’s sculptural and textile work both invites and repels the viewer, her media-based work comments on real life stories and situations in popular culture.

remixed in residence

01/04/2022
Remixed

Remixed is an immersive listening party that can be experienced at-home or in-person. Together, we travel down the spine of change, connected by our custom app, the portal into the performance. Five years in the making, Remixed gathers true stories of transformation from all over the globe in a personal and multi-faceted meditation on how we instigate change in our lives, in our communities, and in the world. In Remixed, we’re listening for the sound of change.

 

During our Artengine residency, we are developing the immersive environment of Remixed’s in-person version. The design integrates biomimetic and kinetic sculptures that unfurl over the course of the performance. Responsive and playful lighting creates a heightened and collective experience. Ever-changing, the space imitates cycles found in nature and breathes a life of its own. The installation’s movements conceal and reveal listeners, playing with public and private and creating a space of possibility.

 

Credits

Created by: Trophy

Director and Producer: Sarah Conn

Dramaturg and Collaborator: Laurel Green

Environmental Installation Design: Allison O’Connor

Mobile Development / Lighting Design: Guillaume Saindon

Mobile Development: Kieran Dunch

Backend Development: Julien Desautels

Sound Design: Nancy Tam

Decade Music Curation: AL Connors

 

Created in collaboration with community members and change-makers across Canada and beyond.

 

Remixed’s development partners include Artengine, In the Soil Arts Festival, undercurrents festival’s under development program, the Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council, and the City of Ottawa. Remixed’s community partners include Parkdale Food Centre, Ottawa Seed Library, and Wellspring Calgary Cancer Support Centre.

Welcome to New Team Members!

04/11/2021

Artengine welcomes Najeeba Ahmed and Mercedes Ventura to our team as part of a new internship program.

Najeeba (they/them) is an artist and designer with a bachelor’s degree in biology and visual arts at the University of Ottawa. They are currently doing their Masters research on nakshi kantha in Bangladesh.

Mercedes (she/her/they) is an artist working across photo, textile, web and media projects, Instagram (as medium), performative self-portraits and, of course, memes. Their work functions as autobiographical fiction investigating new spaces of the digital era.

Najeeba and Mercedes will be helping develop the new artengine.ca space, expanding its capacity and developing new content for our growing Ideas section.

This initiative is supported by the DIGITAL SKILLS FOR YOUTH (DS4Y) administered by Independent Media Arts alliance and funded by the Government of Canada.

Alpha Beta… something before 1.0

01/12/2021

We are excited to share an early version of our new Artengine site. This new space will be an ongoing and transforming space as we develop new features and refine our web presence out in public.

The most exciting change is our new Ideas section. Here we are rethinking what it means to lead dialogue about art and culture in our time. It’s a bit public television. It’s a bit YouTube studio. It’s bit art panel. Check out the content we currently have rolled out here with plenty more to come.

We have many plans for the new site, but also want to hear from you! Let us know what you think.

Indigenous Youth Mentorship

15/07/2021

Thunderbird Sisters Collective was recently awarded an exciting grant from the Trillium Foundation to develop its mentorship program for youth. Artengine is excited to be working in mentorship and exchange over the three year arc of their project development. Their program is targeted at youth’s from 12-19 and they recently kicked off with an in depth workshop on creativity and writing with Ottawa’sEnglish poet Laureate, Albert Dumont.

Thunderbird Sisters Collective was founded by Patsea Griffin and you can find more about them at their site. You can also reach out to our Managing Director, Remco Volmer, if you interested in learning more about the program.

Open Transformation

01/11/2021

As with so many things, Artengine has undertaken a significant transformation over the last few years. Poised to open a new space in the Arts Court facility in early 2020, but plans changed. We are fortunate enough in this part of the world to be emerging from some of the challenges the pandemic brought. We are back at the Arts Court, in some ways, but are still changing in many others. We are implementing new approaches to programming and changing our physical and online space to support this new direction.

We may not be open to the street, but we are open to hearing from you!

Cabin/Traces

06/10/2021

Cabinet is a theater piece set at the end of the world, unfolding for an individual inside an old telephone booth. 2359 Productions has been developing the work over a number of years, originally emerging from the Masters program in the Department of Theater at UOttawa, was included in the National Arts Center’s Zones Théâtrales Festival and this year moves into an exciting new phase of the project. Artengine has been consulting with 2359 Productions, supporting both the technical and conceptual aspects of the project, and this year the work will be in deeper development at the Artengine facility as it prepares for touring later in 2022.