The University of Manitoba campuses are located on original lands of Anishinaabeg, Cree, Ojibwe-Cree, Dakota, and Dene peoples, and on the National Homeland of the Red River Métis. More
Host: Zsombor Bobák
Guests: Dr. Alexandra Juhasz, John Greyson, Wieland Speck
Two global public health crises, two invisible threats to human life. But in what ways can one compare the COVID-19 pandemic and the HIV/AIDS epidemic? What are the most striking differences? Is it ethical at all to compare the two? And what role can cinema and filmmakers play in tackling the harshest of realities brought by these viruses? Where do their responsibilities and political power lie? A conversation about visibility, power, trauma, memory, and film activism.
Special Thanks to John Greyson, Associate Professor, Film Production, York University.
Co-hosts Eliza Parkinson and Victoria Taylor of ====\\DeRAIL Platform For Art + Architecture Zoom with local PEC artists Krista Dalby, Pam Patterson, and Nicholas Peat discuss Public Art in the Pandemic: What is public art now? How has public art evolved or changed in this time? Broadcast on Artscene, Radio 99.3FM, Friday Feb 19, 2021.
Listen to the recording at https://drive.google.com/file/d/1F6DrlFm5X3s3K897ay44SwL3ppEGMiSj/view?usp=sharing
Krista Dalby is the Artistic Director of the Department of Illumination, bringing joy and creativity to the people of Prince Edward County through festivals, workshops, and other artistic events. Krista is a multi-disciplinary artist with a passion for community building, co-founding The Firelight Lantern Festival and launching winter arts festival ICE BOX. She is the recipient of the 2019 Community Arts Builder Award from the Prince Edward County Arts Council and the 2016 Arts Recognition Award from the Quinte Arts Council. A playwright, director, designer and producer, Krista spent seven seasons with Festival Players of Prince Edward County and four years as Assistant Artistic Director at Toronto’s Clay & Paper Theatre.
Pam Patterson has, over the years, had an active and varied career in art from directing the Fibre Exchange at The Banff Centre, to teaching in education at the Art Gallery of Ontario and now working as Assistant Professor in Cross Disciplinary Art Practices at OCADU, as research fellow at NSCAD, and as Artistic Director for the feminist community-based program WIAprojects where she curates exhibits, program events, and publish monographs. As a queer disability performance and visual artist, she has exhibited and performed across Canada and internationally, solo and as ARTIFACTS with Leena Raudvee. Her current visual work, funded by the Canada Council for the Arts, explores “COVID 19 Anxiety” and, in performance in pandemic isolation, she collaborates with UK artist Alisa Oleva on international WhatsApp walks.
====\\DeRAIL is co-founded and co-curated by landscape architect Victoria Taylor (VTLA) and designer and public art curator Gelareh Saadatpajouh. With years of combined experience as designers, artists, exhibition, and public art curators, these two cultural producers seek to push the definition of public art to produce unique and creative socially-engaged/place-specific art and programs. Together with collaborators and supporters, such as Eliza Parkinson, their vision is to inspire and expand the public dialogue around contemporary art, placemaking, landscape, and the experience of the outdoor spaces that we share.
====\\DeRAIL Platform for Art + Architecture is a registered nonprofit, independent arts producer, and alternative platform for dialogue and collaboration across disciplinary, geographical, and ideological boundaries. ====\\DeRAIL commissions and produces place-specific art projects to foster new conversations about public space design. Established in 2016, we bring urban and rural landscapes to life through contemporary art by moving beyond the walls of a traditional gallery space to offer a new experience to both citizens as participants and artists as contributors.
Nicholas Peat is a multidisciplinary artist working in video, sculpture and performance. His practice focuses on the construction and documentation of ephemeral sculptures and scenarios on public land, usually fabricated with materials found in situ, and in a process that is largely improvisational. His work is constructed with the expectation that it will deteriorate quickly, either through natural decay or vandalism. Peat is chiefly interested in how these works can challenge the public’s conception of what public art is and how it is experienced by the community. He was educated at Queen’s University, where he earned a B.A. in Geography and at the University of Saskatchewan where he earned is M.F.A. He lives and works in Williams Treaty, Consecon Ontario.
by Alisa Oleva
Safe/Unsafe was part of Woven Network, a 6-month virtual art-residence of 7 female artists from 5 European countries exploring the theme of invisible work and reinventing the hierarchic digital web to a real horizontal network, supported by House of Europe and partnering with Platform TU (Ukraine), Intercult (Sweden) and Fablevision Studios (Scotland).
Alisa Oleva holds a BA and MA from The Courtauld Institute of Art and an MA in Performance from Goldsmiths. Since 2014 she has worked as an artist in London, across the UK & internationally.
She treats the city as her studio and urban life as material, to consider issues of urban choreography and urban archeology, traces and surfaces, borders and inventories, intervals and silences, passages and cracks. Her projects have manifested as a series of interactive situations, performances, movements scores, personal and intimate encounters, parkour, walkshops, and audio walks.
Her practice engages with urban space, working site-specifically, with communities and collectively. Oleva’s practice works with the everyday and the accessible and by shifting it opens up new perspectives and perceptions.
Website - https://www.olevaalisa.com/
Alisa Oleva was guest artist-in-residence for the undergraduate course Materials and the Anthropocene at OCAD University, fall 2020.
Image courtesy of Alisa Oleva