18 December 2012

THAT'S A WRAP!


THANK-YOU EVERYONE WHO CAME OUT AND SUPPORTED PLATFORM THIS PAST SATURDAY NIGHT @ OUR 8 x 10 RAFFLE / AUCTION PARTY!!

8 x 10 2012 was a HUGE success!

We are so thankful to all of the contributing artists whose work was raffled and auctioned at our event this year. 

 PLATFORM 8 x 10 2012 FUNDRAISING SPONSORS INCLUDE:

The Loft Gastropub
Peasant Cookery
Designtype
Fleet Galleries
The Labworks
Photo Central
and 
Chris Krawchenko / Maximum Realty

The PLATFORM Fundraising Committee and Volunteers include:

Karen Asher / Brenda Stuart / Duncan McNairnay / Erika MacPherson / Mandy Malazdrewich / Talia Potash / Dave Grywinski / Sarah Crawley / Derek Dunlop / Collin Zipp / Kegan McFadden / Divya Mehra /  Mark Olson / Anna Weir / Heidi Malazdrewich / Kevin Doole


***  If you have yet to claim the work you won, please note the PLATFORM office will be open from Tuesday through Friday this week, 12noon to 5PM, and by appointment.***


PLATFORM will be closed for the holidays from the 22nd of December 2012 until the 14th of January 2013.


03 December 2012

8 x 10 FUNDRAISER + PARTY!!

 * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *  
 Three Additional Photographs up for BIDDING as part of the 8 x 10 hoopla:


William Eakin,
24Hours (2012)
archival inkjet print
24" x 24" 




David McMillan 
Kindergarten Hallway, Pripyat (2012)
c-print 
24" x 30"


Lisa Stinner-Kun
untitled [Spike] (2012)
archival inkjet print
30" x 40"

  
Advance bids may be emailed to the Gallery and are accepted up til 5PM the 15th of December. 
 
 * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * 
Our 2 Gift Draw Items are in!

Courtesy of Chris Krawchenko of Maximum Realty, you could win this Mastercraft 10" Table Saw with Heavy Duty Steel Stand. Or you could win this Pentax X-5 Digital Camera, courtesy of Photo Central

Tickets available the night of the fundraiser.





 * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *  Please join us 
SATURDAY 15 DECEMBER 2012
from 7-Midnight:

 

TICKETS NOW AVAILABLE
@ PLATFORM

$45 each

ONLY 100 AVAILABLE! 






Fundraiser: ART DRAW + PARTY @ PLATFORM
Mistress + Master of Ceremonies: Divya Mehra + J. J. Kegan McFadden.
music by DJ J JACKSON
Proceeds to support the programming and outreach @ PLATFORM



Participating Artists Include:

KAREN ASHER
C. GRAHAM ASMUNDSON
IAN AUGUST
LISE BEAUDRY
SCOTT BENESIINAABANDAN
DEREK BRUECKNER
STEVEN LEYDEN COCHRANE
SARAH CRAWLEY
DEREK DUNLOP
ERIKA DEFREITAS
CLIFF EYLAND
LORI FONTAINE
DENTON FREDERICKSON
ASHLEY GILLANDERS
LARRY GLAWSON
NOAM GONICK
DAVE GRYWINSKI
ANDREW HARWOOD
RICHARD HINES
ERIC LESAGE
JEN LOEWEN
ROBERT LOWE
KEVIN MCKENZIE
GUY MADDIN
MANDY MALAZREWICH
DUNCAN MCNAIRNAY
KEGAN MCFADDEN
ERIKA MACPHERSON
DIVYA MEHRA
DAVID MILLER
ANDREW MILNE
FREYA BJORG OLAFSON
SUSY OLIVEIRA
DEMETRA PENNER
TRACY PETERS
NATASHA PETERSON
HEIDI PHILLIPS
TALIA POTASH
PRZEMEK PYSZCZEK
DOMINIQUE REY
PAUL ROBLES
JON SASAKI
THEO SIMS
SUZIE SMITH
ADRIAN A STIMSON
BRENDA STUART
DIANA THORNEYCROFT
SUSAN TURNER
COLLIN ZIPP
AND  MORE...

Silent Auction Featuring Work by:

WILLIAM EAKIN \ LISA STINNER-KUN \ DAVID MCMILLAN

EVERY TICKET GUARANTEES AN ARTWORK.
ONLY 100 TICKETS WILL BE AVAILABLE.
CORRESPONDING NUMBERS TO TICKETS WILL BE DRAWN AT RANDOM ON DECEMBER 15TH, 2012
WHEN YOUR NUMBER IS DRAWN, YOU ARE ENTITLED TO SELECT A WORK FROM THE WALL.


TICKETS: $45 @ PLATFORM
DOORS @ 7PM
DRAW STARTS @ 7:30PM


Additional 8 x 10 sponsors include: 
The Loft Gastropub; Peasant Cookerie; The LabWorks; & Fleet Galleries.

01 December 2012

Cheryl Sourkes continues until 8 December 2012


 For Immediate Release


Exhibition
    02 November - 08 December 2012

Artist Talk
    01 November @ 12PM, School of Art, University of Manitoba | ARTlab 364

Opening Reception
   Friday 02 November    7PM



  CHERYL SOURKES
             

*Best*Amateur*Webcams*

PLATFORM centre for photographic + digital arts is pleased to present the solo exhibition, *Best*Amateur*Webcams*, by Toronto-based artist Cheryl Sourkes.

Featuring a new interactive data projection and a selection of digital prints,  *Best*Amateur*Webcams* is the final exhibition in PLATFORM's thematic year where the Centre has presented research stemming from the idea of the palimpsest. This research has attempted to correlate the ancient palimpsest (ie: re-writable history) as a contemporary metaphor for photographic practices.

Sourkes' exhibition explores weighty topics such as voyeurism, connectivity, and the ongoing power-dynamics in image taking  / broadcasting. Her art practice draws on the webcam-o-sphere for inspiration and for material. Over the past decade, webcams have changed from an obscure feature of computer hardware to standard equipment. These cameras provide access to formerly inaccessible or else neglected sites and subjects. Their presence on the Internet clocks quotidian reality and more nearly mirrors everyday life than does any other visual modality. Sourkes re/presents imagery generated by these cameras, while considering their theoretical implications. On the technical level, her production investigates the possibilities of low-resolution images. Typically low-res signals immediacy and urgency. It references Internet communication. Webcams along with cell phones and other wireless mobile devices operate in an ever-expanding zone of distributed consciousness. So on the level of technique, as well as on the level of content, webcam-generated material enacts a noteworthy paradigm shift taking place in visual culture.

Artist Statement

    Webcams automatically produce viral images that disseminate widely at great speed; their output however is completely fugitive. As each manifestation is quickly replaced by the next, these photographs disappear almost as soon as they come into existence. Webcam images are virtual refuse that participate in economies of the discard. They are portals to inaccessible places. Gathered together however, webcam photographs constitute a portrait of contemporary culture, one that interrogates the more readily available, popular media versions. The images in this exhibition have been culled from personal webcams. They show computer and television screens, people sleeping, gamers in Internet cafes, etc. This work embodies absence, delay, substitution, deferral, displacement, distribution, dissociation, dissolution, that sort of thing. 



As part of our commitment to critical discourse,  PLATFORM has commissioned a new text by award-winning poet, Rachel Zolf,  to accompany this exhibition. This response takes the form of a one-act play, however the allusions and illusions to online chatter are unmistakable.

PLATFORM is very pleased to be partnering with community organizations, including the Martha Street Studio / Manitoba Printmakers Association, who is hosting Sourkes in a brief residency where she will print new work for her exhibition at PLATFORM; as well as the University of Manitoba School of Art, who are hosting an artist lecture by Sourkes prior to the exhibition opening.

Please join us for the opening reception Friday 02 November beginning at 7PM.  Refreshments will be served.


For more information about this exhibition, please contact the Centre directly:
PLATFORM | 121-100 Arthur Street | Winnipeg, Manitoba | R3B 1H3 | 204.942.8183 | www.platformgallery.org


Bios:

Veteran of the Canadian art world, Cheryl Sourkes grew up in Montreal and studied psychology and biology at McGill University before moving to Vancouver in 1967 where she became involved with Intermedia, a Dadaist collective that helped spawn the Canadian artist run movement. Following a spell back in Montreal in the late eighties, Sourkes has lived and worked in Toronto where she has been on several boards, curated a not-for-profit gallery and edited visuals for a feminist literary journal. Her exhibition of sampled web cameras, Public Camera recently toured the country stopping for a run at The National Gallery of Canada.In 1996, Sourkes acted as curator for the touring exhibition, Found Missing: Archival photographs and the new historicity, which PLATFORM presented (then known as The Floating Gallery). http://www.cherylsourkes.com/

Rachel Zolf’s writing practice explores interrelated materialist questions concerning memory, history, knowledge, subjectivity, and the conceptual limits of language and meaning. Her fourth book of poetry is Neighbour Procedure (Coach House, 2010). Human Resources (Coach House, 2007) won the 2008 Trillium Book Award for Poetry. She was the founding poetry editor of The Walrus magazine, and her poetry has been translated into French, Spanish, Portuguese, and video art form. Zolf recently wrote the screenplay for New York artist Josiah McElheny’s film, The Light Club of Vizcaya: A Women’s Picture, which will premiere at Art Basel Miami Beach this December. She is an assistant professor in English and Creative Writing at the University of Calgary. She is also a PhD Student at the European Graduate School, under the supervision of Judith Butler. Here is how Butler supervises Zolf: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C50MjBN7a5A

PLATFORM wishes to thank Manitoba Arts Council, Winnipeg Arts Council, and W.H. & S.E. Loewen Foundation for their continued support of our programming; as well as our colleagues at Martha Street Studio, and  University of Manitoba School of Art, in addition to the following individuals for their assistance in this project:  Shawna Dempsey,  Larry Glawson, Mary Reid, and Dominique Rey for their sponsorship and assistance with this exhibition.

22 November 2012

again+again screening

For Immediate Release

again + again


PLATFORM: Off-site projects continues with our next and final event programmed in conjunction with our palimpsest year of research. PLATFORM is please to present an evening of film + video.


    Friday 30 November @ 8:30pm

Guest curated by Tom Kohut with the PLATFORM programming committee
Screening is free and all may attend
Doors open 8
Screening begins at 8:30
Black Lodge [3rd Floor Artspace Building, 100 Arthur St.]


This program, specifically prepared for PLATFORM Centre for Photographic + Digital Arts' year-long investigation of the palimpsest, explores how this concept is deployed in contemporary experimental film and video in Canada. All of the work presented here explores the dialectic of erasure and recovery that animates theories of the palimpsest: film is over-exposed or otherwise treated by hand as though it were itself a surface for inscription; found images and footage restores the otherwise forgotten and ignored; replication and imitation are explored as mnemotechnic; media archeological explorations ask whether what we can bring back to the surface can be apprehended separately from the specificity of their mode of dissolution. Showcasing the work of emerging and established Canadian film and video artists (e.g. Maddin, Phillips, Araneda), this program covers a wide-range of affects, techniques and experiences. No, actually, its really a lot of fun!

 Image: Kelsey Braun,  Explorations of Surface and Decay, 2011 (still).

____________________________
again+again 
PROGRAM:

Prologue

1) Guy Maddin – Workbooks (Audition 1), 2005 | 5:00



Into Appearance

2) Kelsey Braun -  Explorations of Surface and Decay, 2011 | 8:00

3) Cecilia Araneda – What Comes Between, 2009 | 5:37

4) Isiah Medina – Semi-Auto Colours, 2011 | 6:10

5) aubriand (Carol O'Brien) – Time Away, 2007 | 7:00



Over Appearance

6) Heidi Phillips – Skydive, 2011 | 5:00

7) Mike Maryniuk – Asleep at the Wheel,  2005 | 3:00



To Erase, To Overwrite, To Return

8) Sabrina Ratté – Transit, 2011 |4:00

9) Kandis Friesen + Nahed Mansour – Tape #158: Document 2B, 2011 | 7:03

10) Vincent Chevalier – So...when did you figure out you had AIDS?, 2010 |  5:45


30 October 2012

 For Immediate Release


Exhibition
    02 November - 08 December 2012

Artist Talk
    01 November @ 12PM, School of Art, University of Manitoba | ARTlab 364

Opening Reception
   Friday 02 November    7PM



  CHERYL SOURKES
             

*Best*Amateur*Webcams*

PLATFORM centre for photographic + digital arts is pleased to present the solo exhibition, *Best*Amateur*Webcams*, by Toronto-based artist Cheryl Sourkes.

Featuring a new interactive data projection and a selection of digital prints,  *Best*Amateur*Webcams* is the final exhibition in PLATFORM's thematic year where the Centre has presented research stemming from the idea of the palimpsest. This research has attempted to correlate the ancient palimpsest (ie: re-writable history) as a contemporary metaphor for photographic practices.

Sourkes' exhibition explores weighty topics such as voyeurism, connectivity, and the ongoing power-dynamics in image taking  / broadcasting. Her art practice draws on the webcam-o-sphere for inspiration and for material. Over the past decade, webcams have changed from an obscure feature of computer hardware to standard equipment. These cameras provide access to formerly inaccessible or else neglected sites and subjects. Their presence on the Internet clocks quotidian reality and more nearly mirrors everyday life than does any other visual modality. Sourkes re/presents imagery generated by these cameras, while considering their theoretical implications. On the technical level, her production investigates the possibilities of low-resolution images. Typically low-res signals immediacy and urgency. It references Internet communication. Webcams along with cell phones and other wireless mobile devices operate in an ever-expanding zone of distributed consciousness. So on the level of technique, as well as on the level of content, webcam-generated material enacts a noteworthy paradigm shift taking place in visual culture.

Artist Statement

    Webcams automatically produce viral images that disseminate widely at great speed; their output however is completely fugitive. As each manifestation is quickly replaced by the next, these photographs disappear almost as soon as they come into existence. Webcam images are virtual refuse that participate in economies of the discard. They are portals to inaccessible places. Gathered together however, webcam photographs constitute a portrait of contemporary culture, one that interrogates the more readily available, popular media versions. The images in this exhibition have been culled from personal webcams. They show computer and television screens, people sleeping, gamers in Internet cafes, etc. This work embodies absence, delay, substitution, deferral, displacement, distribution, dissociation, dissolution, that sort of thing.



As part of our commitment to critical discourse,  PLATFORM has commissioned a new text by award-winning poet, Rachel Zolf,  to accompany this exhibition. This response takes the form of a one-act play, however the allusions and illusions to online chatter are unmistakable.

PLATFORM is very pleased to be partnering with community organizations, including the Martha Street Studio / Manitoba Printmakers Association, who is hosting Sourkes in a brief residency where she will print new work for her exhibition at PLATFORM; as well as the University of Manitoba School of Art, who are hosting an artist lecture by Sourkes prior to the exhibition opening.

Please join us for the opening reception Friday 02 November beginning at 7PM.  Refreshments will be served.


For more information about this exhibition, please contact the Centre directly:
PLATFORM | 121-100 Arthur Street | Winnipeg, Manitoba | R3B 1H3 | 204.942.8183 | www.platformgallery.org


Bios:

Veteran of the Canadian art world, Cheryl Sourkes grew up in Montreal and studied psychology and biology at McGill University before moving to Vancouver in 1967 where she became involved with Intermedia, a Dadaist collective that helped spawn the Canadian artist run movement. Following a spell back in Montreal in the late eighties, Sourkes has lived and worked in Toronto where she has been on several boards, curated a not-for-profit gallery and edited visuals for a feminist literary journal. Her exhibition of sampled web cameras, Public Camera recently toured the country stopping for a run at The National Gallery of Canada.In 1996, Sourkes acted as curator for the touring exhibition, Found Missing: Archival photographs and the new historicity, which PLATFORM presented (then known as The Floating Gallery). http://www.cherylsourkes.com/

Rachel Zolf’s writing practice explores interrelated materialist questions concerning memory, history, knowledge, subjectivity, and the conceptual limits of language and meaning. Her fourth book of poetry is Neighbour Procedure (Coach House, 2010). Human Resources (Coach House, 2007) won the 2008 Trillium Book Award for Poetry. She was the founding poetry editor of The Walrus magazine, and her poetry has been translated into French, Spanish, Portuguese, and video art form. Zolf recently wrote the screenplay for New York artist Josiah McElheny’s film, The Light Club of Vizcaya: A Women’s Picture, which will premiere at Art Basel Miami Beach this December. She is an assistant professor in English and Creative Writing at the University of Calgary. She is also a PhD Student at the European Graduate School, under the supervision of Judith Butler. Here is how Butler supervises Zolf: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C50MjBN7a5A

PLATFORM wishes to thank Manitoba Arts Council, Winnipeg Arts Council, and W.H. & S.E. Loewen Foundation for their continued support of our programming; as well as our colleagues at Martha Street Studio, and  University of Manitoba School of Art, in addition to the following individuals for their assistance in this project:  Shawna Dempsey,  Larry Glawson, Mary Reid, and Dominique Rey for their sponsorship and assistance with this exhibition.

24 October 2012

PLATFORM Off-Site Projects continue 
with Tracy Peters' SHED II


Friday 26 October 2012 from 5PM - 8PM 
@ the artist's studio: 63 Albert Street, suite 409

** This building has an elevator and is accessible, five steps maximum from the street**
location shot, SHED research

PLATFORM is excited to announce the continuation of the series of off-site projects programmed in conjunction with our palimpsest year of research.


We understand the palimpsest as a re-writable scroll that is erased only to make room for more information on a continuous basis. The palimpsest, by nature, is both performance and a document – it is an action and a record. The artists we are currently working with conceive of the palimpsest as the collapsing of time (and space), and understand photography and video as the contemporary medium for exploring this concept. The artists whose work we are programming deal with time, record keeping, and collections, in order to problematize easy readings of history, authority, and even consciousness through photography and video.

This month PLATFORM will present the second part to Tracy Peters' site-specific research that took place at a 100 year old shed in Charleswood earlier this summer. Peters has collected data, and gathered material from her four months working in the shed and transposed the findings into an installation in her Exchange District studio comprised of various photographic techniques, including lumen prints,  altered digital prints, as well as video projection.


JOIN US FOR TRACY PETERS OPEN STUDIO. REFRESHMENTS WILL BE SERVED; ALL ARE WELCOME. THIS IS A ONE-NIGHT ONLY EVENT.

Tracy Peters, lumen print 2012



About the project:

Tracy Peters  began a four-month site-specific installation in an abandoned shed near her house in Charleswood. For Peters, the shed is a contentious site as it represents a turning point in her neighbourhood (an established community near the edge of the city that is now rife with corporate interest, facing certain deforestation, wild-life displacement, and unappealing suburban housing development). Peters spent the summer months documenting this 100-year old shed as a living palimpsest. The water stained floorboards and broken windows, the clumps of foxtails (a pollen-like loose burr that blankets the floor of the nearby forest, and is sharp to the touch) were all photographed and filmed in order to have the images processed and printed so that she was able to  reconstruct aspects of the shed in her urban studio using experimental three-dimensional photo collage as well as short video loops. This displacement [from the shed to the studio] offers a mirroring or parallel understanding for the deforestation taking place in the shed’s vicinity.

About the artist:

Tracy Peters is a Winnipeg-based artist who uses photography, sculpture and installation to explore connections between lived-in structures, the natural environment and the human body. Many years of darkroom practice initiated her research into fragile materials and the emotive power of surfaces, but her 2010 site-based installation, Transience and Resistance, expanded her investigation into temporary dwellings and the ways that architecture functions as a living system. Through her photographs, Peters works to evoke an experience that moves beyond the physical boundaries of architecture.  She has exhibited at The Pavilion Gallery, Martha Street Studio’s Project Room, and in local, national and international group exhibitions. http://www.tracypeters.ca/

28 September 2012

again + again



PLATFORM is very excited to announce the successful candidates to our palimpsest call for film + video. We received over 50 submissions from applicants across Canada and Internationally. The submissions were thoughtful and responded to the theme is many unexpected ways. We look forward to an exciting and dynamic evening of film +video titled: again + again. Thank you to everyone who submitted. The screening will take place on November 30th, 2012. The 10 successful projects are:



Guy Maddin, Workbooks (Audition 1), 2005 | 5:00

Cecilia Araneda, What Comes Between, 2009 | 5:37

Mike Maryniuk, Asleep at the Wheel, 2005 | 3:00

Carole O’Brien, Time Away, 2007 | 7:00

Kandis Friesen + Nahed Mansour, Tape #158: Document 2B, 2011 | 7:03

Heidi Phillips, Skydive, 2011 | 5:00

Kelsey Braun, Explorations of Surface and Decay, 8:00

Sabrina Ratte, Transit, 4:00

Isiah Medina, Semi-auto Colours, 2011 | 6:10

Vincent Chevalier, So…when did you figure out that you had AIDS?, 2010 | 5:45

29 August 2012

LAMENT: 07 September - 20 October 2012


LAMENT: for altered, erased, and lost histories
Exhibition
    07 September - 20 October 2012

Opening Reception + Artist Conversation with Jason Lazarus + Evergon
   Friday 07 September   7PM

Curator's Tour
    Saturday 20 October   3PM
PLATFORM  centre for photographic + digital arts is pleased to present the cornerstone exhibition in our thematic programming year, where we are exploring artists use of collections and archiving with an idea toward to palimpsest or re-writable text as a way to discuss photography. LAMENT : for altered, erased, and lost histories is curated by J.J. Kegan McFadden and  features film, photography, installation, and video by artists from Canada, the United States of America, and the United Kingdom, including: Evergon (Montreal, PQ), Chris Curreri (Toronto, ON), Shawna Dempsey + Lorri Millan (Winnipeg, MB),  Jenna Edwards (Toronto, ON), Tess Hurrell (London, UK), Jason Lazarus (Chicago, IL), and Cody Trepte (Los Angeles, CA).



        The photograph, the image burned onto the paper surface as a means to keep forever a document for our collective memory is fallible. Employing a series of minimalist as well as fantastical strategies, the artists in LAMENT play with the supposed infallibility of the archived image from various perspectives. When considered together, the work in this exhibition suggest alternate strategies of how a photograph may offer information, and conversely how such information contained in the image may be presented as well as altered, erased, and perhaps lost.

    As the banner exhibit for PLATFORM’s palimpsest year, LAMENT questions the failure of photography as a record of things remembered. Through provocative and poetic gestures, the work in this exhibit forces a re-reading of how we understand history and historical accuracy (if such a concept even exists), and ultimately privileges the experiential over the record.

                                                           - McFadden, curatorial synopsis
   
  

Please join us for the opening reception + Conversation with the Artists: Friday 07 September, beginning at 7PM. Refreshments will be served.
PLATFORM wishes to acknowledge the support of its membership, board of directors, volunteers, and staff. Operating support for The Centre is provided by Manitoba Arts Council and Winnipeg Arts Council. Project Assistance for LAMENT has been provided by the Canada Council for the Arts. The work in LAMENT is provided courtesy of the artists and their respective representatives:  Galerie Trois Points and Video Pool Media Arts Centre.


For more information about this exhibition or other PLATFORM programming, please contact the Centre directly:
PLATFORM | 121-100 Arthur Street [Artspace Building] | Winnipeg, Manitoba | R3B 1H3 | 204.942.8183 | www.platformgallery.org

14 June 2012


Reset: post-consumer gamer culture

Exhibition
    21 June - 28 July 2012

Opening Reception + Curator's Tour
   Thursday 21 June   7PM 


                                                     M. Ashmore, DS Poem [detail]



    PLATFORM  centre for photographic + digital arts is pleased to present the fourth exhibition in our thematic programming year, where we are exploring artists use of collections and archiving with an idea toward to palimpsest or re-writable text as a way to discuss photography. Reset : post-consumer gamer culture is curated by mrghosty for PLATFORM and will feature new media work in print, projection, and hand-held interactive form by  six well-known artists in the field machinima, game culture, and video: Party Time! Hexcellent!, Clint Enns, Ian Bogost, Max Capacity, Myfanwy Ashmore, Haydi Rocket.


        Video games as a medium is still very much a young one. Still less than fifty years old, gamer culture  and technology has grown exponentially over that time. What began as simple pixels creating  primitive representations of much grander ideas, has grown to become a multi-billion dollar industry with countless iconic brands, ‘worlds’, and affiliations. In the above board world of the game industry, a consumer economic model is the primary thrust behind the release of mainstream video games. However, as the medium has grown (much like it's cinematic counterparts), contemporary gaming culture now embodies and intersects with a variety of independent creative practices including game design, game art, hacker culture, fan-generated artwork and more.

        Reset is an exhibition that encompasses the varied artistic practices of media artists who have embraced the technology, culture, and aesthetics of gaming as their chosen medium.   From those who use the aesthetics of heritage gaming to create digital drawings and short animated loops, to those who use the technology as a filmmaking tool (commonly known as ‘machinima’). Where others create their own interactive software applications (“games”), modify game controllers and interfaces.  

        This exhibition seeks to give an overview of of these varying practices within the medium, while also highlighting the history of home gaming technology, through the devices that these works are viewed on, “played” on, and interacted with. The works represented in Reset recontextualize the notion of gamer culture as consumer culture;  by taking the spirit of play that gamer culture capitalizes on and transforming this notion of play into new forms of media art creation and interaction.                        - mrghosty, curatorial synopsis



Please join us for the opening reception + Curatorial tour Thursday, June 21st beginning at 7PM. Refreshments will be served.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Myfanwy Ashmore is a Canadian artist who has been involved in information art, new media art, video art, interactive art, internet art since 1995. She studied at the Emily Carr College of Art and Design, graduated from the Sculpture/Installation department at the Ontario College of Art & Design in 1996, and received her MFA from York University in 1998. As well as being an international exhibiting artist, she currently teaches New Media in the Image Arts Program at Ryerson University in Toronto. She has received numerous grants as well as awards from various councils and artist-run centres. Ashmore is known for her soma/somo project, a series of networked decaying grapefruits that communicate with the viewer and vice versa — for which she received a grant from the Canada Council for the Arts, which promptly ended up in debate in Canadian Parliament and inevitably the media. She is also known for the software art work "mario battle no.1" which was made in 2000, distributed by Year01.com and runme.org and was distributed with ROM and emulator on floppies across North America, generally outside the gallery system. These works, based on Super Mario Brothers, play on typical "rescue the princess" themes.


Dr. Ian Bogost is an award-winning designer and media philosopher whose work focuses on videogames and computational media. He is Associate Professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology (where he is also Director of the Graduate Program in Digital Media) and Founding Partner at Persuasive Games LLC. His research and writing considers videogames as an expressive medium, and his creative practice focuses on political games and artgames. Bogost's videogames about social and political issues cover topics as varied as airport security, consumer debt, disaffected workers, the petroleum industry, suburban errands, pandemic flu, and tort reform. His games have been played by millions of people and exhibited internationally at venues including Laboral Centro de Arte (Madrid), Fournos Centre for Digital Culture (Athens), Eyebeam Center (New York), Slamdance Guerilla Game Festival (Park City), the Israeli Center for Digital Art (Holon) and The Australian Centre for the Moving Image (Melbourne). Bogost holds a Bachelors degree in Philosophy and Comparative Literature from the University of Southern California, and a Masters and Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from UCLA. He lives in Atlanta. He is a popular academic and industry speaker and considered an influential thinker and doer in both the game industry and research community.

Max Capacity is a media and technology artist from Santa Cruz, CA, whose work revolves around the aesthetic of “glitch”.   His glitch work is derived from a variety of dead media, including vintage video games, antiquated and malfuncting VHS machines, circuit bent toys and electronics, and more.   His work has been featured in various publications and exhibitions. 

Clint Enns is a video artist and filmmaker from Winnipeg, Manitoba, whose work primarily deals with moving images created with broken and/or outdated technologies. His work has shown both nationally and internationally in installations, festival screenings, alternative spaces and mircocinemas. He has recently completed a master's degree in mathematics at the University of Manitoba, and his interests include model theory of rings and modules, structuralist film, destructuralist video, and mathematics in art.       

Party Time! Hexcellent! (Rachel Weil)  creates interactive, glitchable visual art for the Nintendo Entertainment System. Her custom software, written in 6502 assembly language, is inspired by Japanese and American animation and comics, demoscene culture, and video games of the 1990s. She employs ultra-feminine design elements in her work as an allo-historical counterpart to the gendered digital play cultures of the past and present while evoking feelings of nostalgia and friendship with blocky, colorful animations. Party Time! Hexcellent!'s art and video installations have appeared internationally at events such as Blip Festival and gli.tc/h. Weil is also the curator of FEMICOM, the feminine computer museum. 


Haydi Roket (Mert Keskin) is an indipendent graphic designer and emerging media artist from Istanbul, TR.   His work is preoccupied with the aesthetics of 8 bit computer and gaming technology, made from vintage video game consoles and computers such as the Nintendo Entertainment System, Sega Genesis and various Commodore computers including the C64 and the Commodore Amiga.  Recently he began an 8 bit music project known as MIDI ROCKET, named for the classic MIDI sound files that predated our contemporary digital audio formats.    

ABOUT THE CURATOR

mrghosty (skot deeming) is a media artist, curator, and writer whose practice seeks to challenge consumer models of ludic play associated with video games and gaming culture. He does so by modifying game consoles, vintage video technology, and vintage video game interfaces such as joysticks, and gamepads: recontextualizng gaming devices as creative tools and interfaces for installations, and live audio visual performance . mrghosty's curatorial practice is preoccupied with  'post-consumer play' cultures: works that feature hacking, modding and other modes of creative play revolving around various digital platforms. http://www.ghostynet.wordpress.com


PLATFORM wishes to acknowledge the support of its membership, board of directors, volunteers, and staff. Operating support for The Centre is provided by Manitoba Arts Council and Winnipeg Arts Council.

For more information about this exhibition or other PLATFORM programming, please contact the Centre directly:
PLATFORM | 121-100 Arthur Street [Artspace Building] | Winnipeg, Manitoba | R3B 1H3 | 204.942.8183 | www.platformgallery.org


25 April 2012

PIONEER LADIES [of the Evening]

For Immediate Release

    Exhibition
        04 May - 09 June 2012

    Curatorial Lecture
           Shadow archives and ladies of the evening: Commemoration, incarceration and self-fashioning in Winnipeg mugshots, 1878-1916
        Friday 04 May   12PM @ Mentoring Artists for Women's Art [611 Main Street]

    Opening Reception + Curator's Tour
       Friday 04 May   7PM


Panel Discussion
        Histories and Futures of the Sex Trade in Western Canada
         Thursday 17 May  7:30PM


 Pioneer Ladies [of the Evening]


        ___________________________________________________________________
    Winnipeg Madam, ca. 1904. Courtesy of Winnipeg Police Archive

    

PLATFORM centre for photographic + digital arts is pleased to present the third exhibition in our thematic programming year, where we are exploring artists use of collections and archiving with an idea toward the palimpsest or re-writable text as a way to discuss photography. Pioneer Ladies [of the Evening] is curated by Dr. Laurie K. Bertram for PLATFORM and will use archival mugshots and additional museum objects to reconsider the lives of sex trade workers in Winnipeg more than one hundred years ago.


        Drawing from the Winnipeg Police Museum Archive, this project uses turn-of-the-century mug shots of Winnipeg women arrested for a variety of offenses to investigate linkages between commemoration and incarceration. In response to the unveiling of the “Famous Five” statue on the grounds of the Manitoba Legislature in 2009 amid ongoing attempts to secure attention for missing sex trade workers in the West, this project asks: “what challenges does the sex trade pose to Canada’s commemorative landscape?” “How can carceral images be redeployed in the construction of radical gender histories?”



        The exhibit will feature original mug shots of Western Canadian women alongside panels of text that imagine an alternate commemorative landscape dedicated to their lives. Panels will feature archival research on each woman, including the details surrounding her arrest, but will resituate this information in a new commemorative landscape for the Canadian West, where honours are still usually reserved for often White male officials, planners, soldiers and judges.


        By transforming these shots of captivity into portraits of “pioneer ladies,” this exhibit tests the sexualized and gendered boundaries of Canadian commemoration while imagining new histories that acknowledge the remarkable pasts of marginalized and incarcerated women.

                                                                 - Dr. Bertram, curatorial synopsis



    Please join us for the opening reception + Curatorial tour Friday, May 4th beginning at 7PM. Refreshments will be served.


About the Curator:

Laurie K. Bertram is a specialist in immigration, material culture, trauma, and memory in Canadian history. She completed her PhD in the Department of History at the University of Toronto in August 2010. Using the often understated and private cultural terrains of the Icelandic-Canadian community, her dissertation examines the contributions of ‘inauthentic’ and undervalued forms of cultural expression, including ghost stories, fibre, landscape, souvenirs and family history narratives, to complex, innovative, and compelling strategies in the enduring definition of ethnic cultures on the prairies.


PLATFORM wishes to acknowledge the support of its membership, board of directors, volunteers, and staff. Pioneer Ladies [of the Evening] is made possible with funding and additional support received from Manitoba Arts Council, Winnipeg Arts Council, núna (now), and Mentoring Artists for Women's Art. Special mention is owed to the Manitoba Museum, the Winnipeg Police Archive, Dalnavert Museum & Visitors’ Centre, and the Strathclair Museum their generous loans to the exhibit.

For more information about this exhibition or other PLATFORM programming, please contact the Centre directly:

PLATFORM | 121-100 Arthur Street [Artspace Building] | Winnipeg, Manitoba | R3B 1H3 | 204.942.8183

05 March 2012

Suspicious Futures: Selected Video Works by Susan Britton Exhibition Friday 09 March - Saturday 21 April 2012 Opening Reception Friday 09 March, 7PM Panel Discussion Saturday 10 March, 3PM A communiqué from the past in the form of a multi-channel installation. Performed persona: sex, love, loss, mystery, and technology!
  • The work of Susan Britton, a Winnipeg native and one of Canada's important voices in video-production, will be arriving at PLATFORM this spring in the form of a survey exhibition. These works by Britton, formerly an artist and one of the original founders of Toronto's Vtape (a leading Canadian distributor of independent, artist-driven video art), have been out of distribution — and subsequently out of the public eye — for more than 15 years. Recently restored, this body of work comes to us as a strong voice from a previous life of video art in Canada. Britton's work is adventurous, a mixture of sci-fi, politics, and drama with impeccable timing and sometimes synth beats. Her inquests into the future offer us skeptical inquiries into ideology, subjectivity, the meaning of art, and the feminine subject that continue to resonate. We are pleased to bring you her videos, which come to us as vignettes that can do more than just jog our memory, renewing subject positions and rhetoric from our recent past. This survey exhibition will assemble for the first time in Winnipeg a large selection of what remains of Britton’s catalogue. Britton herself will make an appearance, and we'll delve into Canada's video memory and see what stuff we are made of. This exhibition experiments with art history's loose ends, offering a survey of her work, reclaimed. This iteration of Suspicious Futures is accompanied by a previously published catalogue — fully illustrated, with a full videography.
  • Please join us Friday 09 March at 7PM for a public reception with the artist and visiting curator. PLATFORM is also pleased to present Past-Futures, Present Tense: a round table discussion with Susan Britton, Allison Collins, and Hope Peterson at 3PM, Saturday 10 March.
  • About the artist: Susan Britton is Winnipeg-born and studied Advertising Art at Red River College only to drop out early in order to move to Halifax and attend NSCAD, where she graduated with her BFA in 1976. Between 1976 and 1986 she created a body of video work in Toronto and New York which dismantles notions of media, representation and the subject-viewer relationship. Her work was a complicated contribution to media production at the time, being only indirectly focused on issues of feminism, and using violent or seductive imagery to rupture cinematic tropes.
  • About the Curator: Allison Collins is an independent curator and writer based in Vancouver, British Columbia. She was the curator of Hold Still Wild Youth: the GINA Show Archive, held at the Or Gallery and VIVO Media Arts Centre in 2010, and was chosen by Vtape to participate in the Curatorial Incubator v.8, where she researched the video program Suspicious Futures: Selected Video Works of Susan Britton, and published the monographic brochure stemming from this research. After its initial single-channel presentation in Toronto, Suspicious Futures toured to Vancouver Cinematheque's prestigious DIM cinema. In 2011 Collins produced ARCLines, a series of written profiles that document the origins of each of Vancouver's existing artist-run centres. Her current research, undertaken as a residency at VIVO Media Arts Centre, investigates formal and material qualities of time-based practices rooted in experimental media, which will be realized as an exhibition in Summer 2012. Collins has written critical texts and reviews for Fuse, C Magazine, and ARTSlant, and holds an MA in Critical and Curatorial Studies from the University of British Columbia.
  • About the panelist Hope Petterson: Hope Peterson is an interdisciplinary artist in Winnipeg. Her enthusiasm for the work of Susan Britton was sparked while she was Distribution Coordinator at Video Pool Media Arts Centre, and she included Britton's International Band in the curated program Dangerous Headbands: New Wave Videos From the Vault, presented at the Winnipeg Art Gallery in 2009. Peterson's 2011 video Threshold Economics was shown in the Plug In ICA exhibition My Winnipeg, at la Maison Rouge, France, and has since screened at the Macedonia Museum of Contemporary Arts, Skopje, and at ISEA, Istanbul.
  • PLATFORM wishes to acknowledge the support of its membership, board of directors, volunteers, and staff. Operating funding for PLATFORM exhibitions and projects is received from Manitoba Arts Council, Winnipeg Arts Council, and Canada Council for the Arts. This programme, curated by Allison Collins, originated at Vtape (January 29 - February, 26, 2011) and was titled The Curatorial Incubator v.8. Suspicious Futures: Select Video Work by Susan Britton. Special gratitude is owed to our colleagues at Vtape, in particular Lisa Steele and Wanda Vanderstoop.