His first feature film, A Life Less Empty, is a raw portrayal of how a legacy of abuse and abandonment chart a course of resilience and ultimately, survival.

PAVED arts is proud to help Rueben realize his dream of bringing this story to screen.

Check out the trailer here

The post Rueben Martell recieves PAVED arts member production fund first appeared on PAVED Arts.

The installation will be projected onto the street through the front windows of the historical building at 210 20th street West and will begin each evening from December 9th until December 16th starting at 5 p.m.

This project will also serve as the lead-up to our membership screening on Thursday December 15th in the PAVED arts event space.

The post PAVED Arts’ site specific project proudly presents “Embrace” first appeared on PAVED Arts.

Mobile Equipment:

The Red Rock Micro “Captain Stubling” DSLR bundle:  With the new found popularity of using DSLR’s as video cameras for high quality production shooting one question would constantly come up amongst PAVED members.  How do I shoot handheld with such a small camera body?  This new and useful little tool makes handheld work easy and smooth providing the camera operator with stability and grip in an ergonomic design.  The package also features a “follow focus” unit which can be used by the camera operator or an assistant allowing smooth rack focusing during hand held shots.  Come by PAVED arts to check it out, or, take our brief tutorial and rent the unit yourself for $20/day.

2011

Audio Suite:
Now featuring a brand new Apogee Ensemble audio interface.  A huge favorite of recording professionals around the world.  Apogee’s world famous pre-amp’s and digital converters now call paved arts’ audio suite home.  Also new to the audio suite, the Shure SM7b; one of the most ubiquitous studio mics ever made (especially on vocals), this mic is perfect for music, voice over narration, radio broadcast, and sound art.  Last but not least, PAVED arts is happy to say that we now offer Pro Tools 9 in our audio suite, come by and check out the most popular audio engineer software in the world… ever..

Video Suite:
Twin LED 27 inch Apple Cinema Display bring your video project to life with more screen real estate and an accuracy never before seen at PAVED arts.  Perfect for anyone working with Adobe Creative Suite

Coming Soon to PAVED arts…
Canon Rebel t2i, Arri D1 Lighting Kit, Redrock Micro “Captain Stubling” DSLR bunble

The post Production Upgrades first appeared on PAVED Arts.

November 11th – December 10th, 2011.

Check out the video of her live performance at PAVED arts here

PickUpPutDown is an interaction in and with an architectural space as a base form for an experimental sound project. Saskatoon media artist Ellen Moffat will attach instrument wire and sound materials directly onto surfaces and features of the PAVED Arts gallery space using the walls as ad hoc soundboards. Sound within this environment is amplified with contact microphones. Visitors are invited to engage with various objects and materials through direct actions and improvisation as an intuitive exploration of sound-making and listening. The subtlety, repetition and distribution of the sounds will draw attention to their character and relate to the space of the gallery as a sound chamber. This project includes in situ production, installation and performance.

Ellen Moffat’s production of media installation and public art explores site, sound and space using multi-channel sound technology, as well as text and image. Her recent projects explore methods and strategies for sound generation as interactive co-creation. She has exhibited nationally and internationally. She is based in Saskatoon, Canada.

The post PickUpPutDown first appeared on PAVED Arts.

tix: $10 in advance, $15 at the door
Tickets available at http://www.blackflash.ca/vampirebeat-2011 & PAVED Arts Gallery

This event is a fundraiser for BlackFlash Magazine and PAVED Arts.
Sponsors: Paddockwood Brewing Co., The Delta Bessborough Hotel, Colours Art Supplies and Framing, and Globe Printers.

Poster art courtesy of Joseph Anderson

The post Vampire Beat: Video Dance Party first appeared on PAVED Arts.

Co-curated by Tod Emel (AKA) and David LaRiviere (PAVED Arts).

For catalogue essay download here 

Transpiring at the cross-roads of the “psychedelic” and “DADA”, this very special project marks the first time that AKA Gallery and PAVED Arts have collaborated on a curated project from the ground floor up. For the opening reception both galleries will be turned over to PsycheDADA, deploying a range of quizzical, seductive and confounding projects that push a variety of artistic boundaries. Tod Emel has selected the work of Larry Carlson, as well as the collaborative duo Arthur Desmarteau & Allison Moore, for the occasion. To engage with these efforts PAVED Arts will present three media projects that variously challenge the limits of comprehension.

Keith Murray (Calgary) will invoke “Neon Gods” with installation work as immersive as it is captivating. Murray’s practice in particular, explores queer theory, gender, theology and trans-politics, and the contextual nature of experience itself, often using and abusing the conventions of religious fable, pop-culture, the kitsch and the carnivalesque.

Noxious Sector (Dartmouth,Victoria, Seattle) is comprised of a trio of trouble-makers: Jackson 2bears, Ted Hiebert and Doug Jarvis. Humour plays an important role with their work, and it is in this regard that the esoteric hi-jinx of Noxious Sector hold court around the boarder-lands of “scientific exploration” with all the zeal of DADA in its prime.

Jeremy Shaw (Berlin) literally experiments with DMT, the worlds most potent psychedelic drug, also known as the “spirit molecule” behind a thousand years of South American cultural spirit quest in the form of “ayahuasca.” With the DMT video installation we are confronted with an unknowable region written across the faces of subjects.

The post PsycheDADA first appeared on PAVED Arts.

PAVED Arts is proud to host an artist production residency with Toronto-Based Artist Jason Baerg.

Relations (In Development) ©2009-2011

Artist Bio: Raised in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, Visual Artist Jason Baerg has presented at such international art events as the Luminato Festival, the Toronto International Art Fair, and Art Basel Miami. Baerg has given formal artist talks at such institutions as the University of British Columbia Okanagan, New York City’s Parsons School of Design and the University of Toronto. He has sat on numerous art juries and won awards through such facilitators as the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council and The Toronto Arts Council. Dedicated to community development, Jason Baerg continues to contribute to such national arts organizations as a board member for the Aboriginal Curatorial Collective, The National Indigenous Media Arts Coalition and the Independent Media Arts Alliance.

The post Jason Baerg Artist Talk first appeared on PAVED Arts.

This insightful project is the brain-child of Cheryl L’Hirondelle, who articulates the point of departure as follows:

As we move as quickly as bytes of information, catapulted through time and space and by the imperative of our continued survival, it is important to hit the pause button, reflect on our history and pay homage to the agency and ingenuity of Indigenous pathfinders.

Codetalkers of the Digital Divide highlights a range of media, web projects and digital artwork that reinforce and pay homage to the eloquence and adaptability of these particular Aboriginal artists, and of all Indigenous languages and worldviews. By virtue of this ingenuity, we can all be modern day code talkers bridging and championing the chasm that, at one point in recent history, was thought by some to be an unconquerable digital divide.

The exhibition is a timely contextualization of what Aboriginal New Media practices were, pre-Internet, and to what they have become in the current web 2.0 paradigm and how this technology has been used to continue to tell Indigenous stories, old and new.

Codetalkers was originally commissioned by imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival, an international Toronto-based festival for their 10th anniversary and is the first of three exhibitions curated by former Saskatchewan-based award winning new media artist and singer/songwriter Cheryl L’Hirondelle.

The post Codetalkers of the Digital Divide (or why we didn’t become “roadkill on the information superhighway”) first appeared on PAVED Arts.

June 10 – July 9, 2011

With Invited Guests: Adrian Stimson and DJ “Bear Witness”
Memory Landscape is the “Not” in Resistance is [Not] Futile

In 1994, I came across a dual portrait of a young Cree boy named Thomas Moore, who had attended the Regina Indian Industrial School in the 1890s. The first portrait shows Moore dressed in tribal style clothing and holding a pistol in one hand. The second portrait shows Moore transformed into what would have been considered a model student, with his hair cut short and wearing a military style uniform.

The Thomas Moore portraits were included in the Department of Indian Affairs Annual Report from 1897 to illustrate how residential schools were converting a tribal people from “savages” to “civilized members” of Canadian society. I included the Thomas Moore portraits in an exhibition I curated for Library and Archives Canada-Where are the Children? Healing the Legacy of the Residential Schools. The exhibition opened on National Aboriginal Day in 2002, and continues to travel across Canada.

In each portrait, the expression on Moore’s face doesn’t change. I wanted to know what his expression was telling me-was he defiant, complacent, or resigned to his fate? These questions stayed with me over the years and I decided to build an exhibition of my own work around the Thomas Moore portraits. Like far too many indigenous families, I lost my father and grandfather to alcoholism. I was, however, fortunate to have lived with my paternal grandmother as a young boy, and we travelled back and forth between Buffalo, New York and the Six Nations Reserve in southern Ontario.

While visiting family elders at Six Nations, I learned about my Iroquois history and culture from my great aunt, Emily General, a prominent and respected activist. When I returned to the city, I was filled with questions for my teachers. I wanted to know why we were not learning about this history and why Indian people were treated so differently. When I first saw the photograph of Thomas Moore I remembered how I felt at his age, so curious about being an Indian living in a city, so curious about why, when I was with family at home or on the reserve, I didn’t think about these things. Why was it only in the outside world that I felt isolated and invisible?

These questions usually went unanswered. I felt that I was facing a wall of silence. What I came away with was the disjuncture between our indigenous past and the contemporary world. Back at Six Nations, ancient rituals, ceremonies, and languages were still being used and practised. But it didn’t transfer to the city and to the bars where so many Indian men spent their time.

Emily once told me before travelling back to the city: “Remember who you are and where you come from.” When I got back to the city it was late and none of my friends were at our usual corner hangout, so I went to the playground by myself. I sat there and tried to pay attention to what I could see, and smell, and hear all around me. I told myself over and over again: “This is who you are.” I also thought about my elders back on the reserve and thought: “That is who you are as well.” Photography would provide me with the tools to explore, observe, and record these worlds and give me the creative space to produce my story.

It is a story of trying to reconcile the loss of male Indian role models in my life, but also one of trying to provide my son with the positive examples my elders gave me. One day I was watching the movie Star Trek: First Contact, which included the race of evil colonizers called the Borg. The Borg’s mantra-“resistance is futile”-resonated on so many levels. I wondered if Thomas Moore went face to face with a 19th-century version of the Borg while at the Regina Industrial School. While it may have changed his outer appearance, I’m sure his memory of back home was intact.

The post Resistance Is [Not] Futile first appeared on PAVED Arts.

April 29^th – May 28^th, 2011.

Take any part of this book and go to the end of it. You will find yourself thinking of the next step to be taken in that direction. Perhaps you will need new materials, new technologies. You have them. You are in the world of X.

I take cloth and hold it over my mouth and speak. If the cloth muffles my voice at all, I pass. The other test is to hold it up to your eyes and see if you can see through it.

Annie Martin’s Untitled (horizon) 2011

This audio installation by Lethbridge-based artist Annie Martin is a window in place. It is constructed with simple materials, basically bare speakers and wires on the walls, and the arrangement is minimal, like a line drawing of a distance, of a horizon that resides below the typical line of vision. In the artist’s words, it represents a “ground zero of drawing, working with the image of horizon, which is haptic as much as visual.” As such it engages the imagination in an active and tactile way.

A topic in Annie Martin’s work is one of translucency and erasure, like stained glass and changing light, and of suggestion and association. In Untitled (horizon), the sound is like light, a waterfall of lightness. It flows from somewhere through here. It has a familiar and pleasant present-tense sound, a “folkways” effect associated with field recordings and playback. And like the horizon interpolated from a drawn suggestion, sounds that unto themselves are indefinite, take concrete form with imagination. Both our ears and our eyes can read things in this space, but we each read a different text, or we each read ourselves. The moment of perception and our proceeding from there in a deeply personal way is the material with which Untitled (horizon) is built. Here is a space that creates ideas more than contains or controls them. John Cage referred to something like this when he described making mesostics (a kind of visual poetry). The finished mass of intersecting words on a page, while coming from ideas, is not about them but produces them. The work exists in the present moment of experience inside the work by self-reflexive individuals who experience it.

The position in the present moment that Untitled (horizon) evokes is related to improvisation, because discovery and exploration in real-time are motivating forces for the creation of the total work. Annie Martin has created an opportunity for ideas, and has not privileged any one interpretation over another. If the listener is the improviser in this play of associations and recognitions, then they are jamming, so to speak. As Annie Martin explains, her “works place focus on the moment of embodied perception, extending that moment into an opportunity for deeper reflection.” In addition to this, the acoustic of the work suggests musique concrete, which is associated with composed intention and prescribed linear unfolding or playback. However, in Untitled (horizon) the way through is not prescribed, so the installation physically and conceptually is the concrete content as well as the medium for its experience. There is a play between this composition and our improvisation. There is poetry and a little humour.

Untitled (horizon) is less ornate and referential than some of Annie Martin’s previous installations with similar materials. In the past, wires and speakers on walls might have suggested constellations or outlines, maybe a number of big things up close. Other times, they might have seemed like room-sized graphic improvisations, lines drawn with curiosity and exploration. The acoustic was, in the artists own words, “a subtle spatial disorientation” or “a wash of sound open to visitor’s associations” or “a sustained sensory exploration of the lived environment.” At AxeNéo7 in Gatineau, QC, in 2009, speakers and wires arranged in a circle on the floor expressed a horizon of a kind, which was perceived from above when standing, and from outside and inside at the same time. This holds a relation to Untitled (horizon). Here, in Annie Martin’s work, there is both a distant view and a close-up on materials, and there is a play with scale and position in space and time with the viewer/perceiver at the center.

Jeff Morton, April, 2011.

The post Untitled (horizon) first appeared on PAVED Arts.

Introducing: TOON’S KITCHEN SASKATOON SCREENING ROOM
Call For Submissions

This call is open to ALL video/media artists living in Saskatoon and/or PAVED Arts Members in good standing. To apply for a screening in Toon’s Kitchen please submit:

– A short Quicktime movie  on a data DVD (readable on mac and windows platforms) representing the work to be screened (longer works are permitted, however please limit media to 5-10 minutes for review purposes).

– Alternatively, links to video on Youtube or Vimeo can be submitted.

– A short statement about the project (200 words maximum).

– In most cases we will be projecting single channel work with headphones supplied where there may be sound bleed between presentations. Any proposal that involves components outside of the default set-up must also include specific technical requirements and a plan for their implementation.

– Each proposal must also include a writer who will be commissioned to write a short (500-700 word) statement about the work.

The Toon’s Kitchen screenings will be two weeks in duration. Artist fees of $450.00 and writer’s fees of $150.00 per project will be paid. Where possible a public reception for the projects will be aligned with our Main Gallery opening receptions, otherwise public receptions will be coordinated at the discretion of PAVED Arts staff. Ten projects will be presented in the 2012-2013 season.

Deadline For Submission: T.B.A

Please address submissions to: David LaRiviere, Artistic Director, 424-20^th Street West, S7M 0X4. Email submissions will be accepted at: artistic@pavedarts.ca

For further information use the contact above or phone David at: (306) 652-5502 ext.1

The post Toon’s Kitchen Saskatoon Screening Room first appeared on PAVED Arts.

March 4th – April 9th, 2011.

David Clark’s interactive, non-linear net.art piece “88 Constellations for Wittgenstein” features a series of animated vignettes created in Flash that variously explore the life and philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein. Each of the 88 sections corresponds to one of the 88 constellations in the night sky, and, in turn, each constellation becomes a navigation device for the viewer to negotiate the associative relationships between these vignettes. As well, viewers can interact with the animations using their left hand to trigger events from the computer keyboard (in homage to Ludwig Wittgenstein’s brother Paul – a concert pianist who lost his right arm in WWI but continued his career performing piano works composed for the Left Hand). This work considers questions that Ludwig Wittgenstein pondered in his career as a philosopher: logic, language, the nature of thinking, and the limits of knowledge – all in relation to our contemporary digital world.

This work is a continuation of David Clark’s interest in long form experimental narrative art that he has explored in his award-winning website ‘A is for Apple’ (2002) and his feature film ‘Maxwell’s Demon’ (2002). The work is an attempt to find a new form of narrative experience that corresponds a distinctive characteristic of the internet; that is, the non-linear way in which we browse for information on the web. This is a work that attempts to create a kind of ‘narrative vertigo’ for the viewer as they see the interconnected stories and associations. The work is made for the internet and in some ways reflects the way that stories are now told on the internet.

The post 88 Constellations for Wittgenstein (to be played with the Left Hand) first appeared on PAVED Arts.

The selected new media public art project will be installed in the spring of 2012 with an official unveiling slated for June 15, 2012. Artist fees will be paid as per CARFAC fee schedule, as well as some costs related to installation and art materials.

Location: 235 Ave D North, Saskatoon, SK

Deadline for Submissions: Tuesday, April 10th, 2012.

Submissions should include:

• A written proposal (no longer than one page)
• 5-10 examples of past work, submitted on CD-R or DVD-R. (Video samples should not exceed 5 minutes in length.)
• Material needs (technical feasibility pertaining to outdoor installation)
• Budget

Please deliver all submissions to PAVED Arts, 424-20 Street West by April 2, 2012.
Electronic submissions can be delivered to: technical@pavedarts.ca

To learn about inspiration for this new media public art call for submissions see the video that started it all here

For more information please contact: David LaRiviere, artistic@pavedarts.ca

The post New Media Public Art Call for Submissions first appeared on PAVED Arts.

Chris Flower

Montreal based artist Chris Flower incorporates DIY/hack invention with new and traditional media, in this way making particular (if somewhat playful) reference to process based conceptual art. In his most recent work he utilizes research tools such as wind tunnels, high-speed flash triggers, and unidentified improvised devises to observe and document the physical qualities of found and everyday objects in motion. Given that many of the objects selected retain their commercial or recognizably functional character, Flower’s juxtapositions depict a clash of materials that produce the unpredictable outcomes of rock-paper-scissors: victory by brute force, victory by sublimation, victory by inscription. The result is destructive, mesmerizing, and/or simply entertaining. With an economy of means and deceptively simple process, the mundane is consistently made strange.

Recent exhibitions of Flower’s work include Artspace (Peterborough), Modern Fuel (Kingston), and Gallery 101 (Ottawa).

The post Aero/Dynamics first appeared on PAVED Arts.

The post The Pilot K-9 Artist Residency first appeared on PAVED Arts.

March 5th to April 10th, 2010

Robyn Moody’s seductive new installation will involve chains of several hundred interlocking gears on the floor of the gallery space, powered into a perpetual grinding movement. From each gear a post extends, and mounted at the top of each post is a circular mirror tilted at varying angles. The effect of the combined movement and reflection is mesmerising. As the mirrors rotate light is reflected creating a shimmering effect. An early version of the work can be seen here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=etKDeTQoiNQ.

Moody has configured the gears into “lakes,” the contours of which specifically refer to bodies of water that draw off of the Athabasca watershed. Underlying the aesthetic allure of this work the artist has also inscribed a dark content, implicating a mania that drives both a thirst for power (in a very literal sense), as well as a blatant disregard for the environment. In this way the gallery becomes a scale version of industrial spectacle, so awesome yet frightening in the same breadth.

The post POWER first appeared on PAVED Arts.

November 20th – December 12th, 2009

On the occasion of the launch of our all-new dark room within the fold of the PAVED Arts production facilities, we proudly announce the first exhibition of works from the Photographers Gallery permanent collection to be staged in our main Gallery space.

The Photographers Gallery was incorporated in 1973 as a production and presentation organization, serving the community in Saskatoon with gallery, library, collection and darkroom facilities dedicated to the furtherance of photo-based practices in the region. At the time of its founding, the permanent collection of The Photographers Gallery was one of only three such collections of contemporary Canadian photography nation wide. Over the years the collection developed through donations and bequests as well as significant first-hand contributions made by artists who produced artwork in the centre’s production facility. In 2003, The Photographers Gallery merged with Video Vérité to become PAVED Arts. The current exhibition is designed first and foremost as a celebration of the accomplishments of our predecessors. The fantastic array of work contained in the collection both reflects many facets of the cultural experience particular to Saskatchewan, as well as boasting important historical works in the ongoing development of photography as an art form.

Please join us on Saturday, December 5^th at 7:30 PM for a panel discussion that will draw together some of the individuals who played key roles in the formation and development of The Photographers Gallery permanent collection. (Panelists T.B.A.)

The post Personal Geographies first appeared on PAVED Arts.