Visual arts Professor Anna Hudson is currently researching the circumpolar cultural shift from the visual artwork created by generations past to feed a hungry collectors’ market in the south, to a new generation of artists who are using words, music and digital media to create work for northern audiences.

With support from the , Hudson's research project, “Breaking the Boundaries of Inuit Art: New Contexts for Cultural Influence”, addresses the gap between the established Inuit visual arts and the increasingly relevant time-based media, performance and autobiographical storytelling produced primarily for Inuit audiences.

“While there’s still a market for carvings and prints, and they’re an economic resource for the Inuit, they are also very resource-intensive,” said Hudson, who was the associate curator of Canadian art at the Art Gallery of Ontario prior to joining 91��ɫ. “In the past, many artists had access to these resources through co-ops, but such art centres are now fading away and it seems the next generation isn’t interested in continuing these market-based art practices.

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“Today, young artists in the north are working with everything from hip hop-influenced music and fashion to performance poetry, beat and throat boxing, and video. They’re disseminating their work by digital means. And they’re looking for opportunities to travel with it, to perform or create their work live – unlike the generations of visual artists whose work was shipped away while they remained at the co-op in their community.”

While the mediums these up-and-coming Inuit artists are exploring are common in the south, there is often a distinctly northern feel to what they create.

“Beat boxing has been combined with throat singing to become throat boxing,” said Hudson. “And the poetry, whether it’s written for spoken word or as lyrics to songs, is deeply connected to the artists’ personal experiences. Often, it’s very dark, reflecting on issues such as the extremely high suicide rate in the north.”

Hudson’s research award has allowed her to make several trips to communities in Nunavik and Nunavut in the Canadian north, and to bring northern artists south to Toronto and Ottawa. Most recently, she organized a four-day artists workshop and a two-day concert, co-produced by in Iqaluit, Nunavut to celebrate both National Aboriginal Day, June 21, and the end of term with School’s Out performances.

Aided by her graduate assistant Jean O'Hara, a doctoral student in theatre studies, Hudson arranged for throat singers and spoken word, rap, beat box, hip hop and folk performers from Nunavut, Greenland and Toronto to lead workshops for each other and the public, creating new collaborations and sharing the results in a free public concert.

Right: Jean O’Hara (left) and Anna Hudson soak up the scenery of the Frobisher Bay coastline

“It was a great experience and I was thoroughly impressed by the talent of all the artists,” said O’Hara. “I think 91��ɫ’s involvement was what made this collaborative approach possible. We created a space for Inuit and non-Inuit artists to inspire each other and create new works while also showcasing their own pieces. For example, we had throat singing combined with spoken word, a harmonica and beat boxing. Fusions like this allow for new imaginings and reflect northern life, which is filled with both traditional and contemporary art and music forms.”

The concert featured Greenland’s Nive Nielsen and the Deer Children, an award-winning Inuk indie band known as the “heirs to Arcade Fire”; Baker Lake rapper Shauna Seeteenak and her cousin, beat boxer Nelson Tagoona; harmonica master Mike Stevens; madeskimo DJ Geronimo Inutiq; and Toronto’s spoken word artist/rapper Ian Kamau.

Left: Harmonica master Mike Stevens (left) and beatboxer Nelson Tagoona collaborated at the “School’s Out” workshops

The entire program was documented by Philip Joamie of Inuit Communications and Jimmie Papatsie of the Inuit Broadcasting Corporation, with the intent to share it online.

“While there are similarities between producing a concert and curating an art show, this was my first time working with live performance, and I was very grateful to be collaborating with Jean,” said Hudson. “It was amazing to see the collaborations come together, watching older performers work with younger artists in front of a very intergenerational crowd.”

“Most of the research in the North centres on climate change, social sciences and ecology,” said Hudson. “But there’s also a very exciting arts revolution happening up there. I think one can facilitate positive change in communities that are struggling with massive challenges, but more importantly, non-Inuit can learn a lot from Inuit peoples about being engaged in a globalized world.”

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The film will be screened tonight in the Nat Taylor Cinema, N102 Ross tonight from 6:30 to 9:15pm. Created by New 91��ɫ filmmaker Ellen Weissbrod, this documentary film pays tribute to  and her life. It also explores public responses to a recent major exhibition, held in Rome, New 91��ɫ City and St. Louis, devoted to her work and that of her father Orazio.

The film features an interview with Elizabeth Cohen, 91��ɫ professor of history, women's studies and humanities in the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies.

"Artemisia Gentileschi painted really dramatic and gutsy stuff, and has become one of the heroines of women's history," says Cohen. "As a young woman, Artemisia was raped by a colleague of her father's and there is a trial record that documents her family situation and these events. This archival material is my research area and I speak about it in the film."

But the film is more than historical, says Cohen, because it also represents in a beguiling way the strong and moving responses of modern students and museum visitors to Gentileschi's work and story.

"The film-maker Ellen Weissbrod, from New 91��ɫ, will be present," says Cohen. Following the film, there will be a panel discussion featuring Cohen, along with professors from the Departments of Women's Studies, Film Studies, Visual Arts and History.

A Woman Like That tracks the filmmaker's journey to understand Artemisia Gentileschi in her own times and for 21st -century viewers. It features interviews with scholars and writers who brought the painters' work to North American attention. Weissbrod also travels to Italy to talk with museum curators, art dealers and collectors of Gentileschi's work.

The screening is free and open to the public.

Republished courtesy of YFile – 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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The world premiere of the 52-minute documentary KOOP: The Art of Wanda Koop will open the 8th annual on tomorrow at The Royal Conservatory, TELUS Centre for Performance & Learning, Koerner Hall, 273 Bloor St. W., in Toronto. A Q&A with Knight, the film’s director and co-producer, along with Koop and critic and urban planner Jane Perdue will follow the screening. The pre-screening reception will start at 6:30pm, the screening at 7pm and a celebration at 8:30pm. KOOP will screen again in Calgary on March 24.

Watch the documentary's trailer on .

Knight’s film looks at Koop as she prepares massive new works depicting archetypal cities and familiar yet disquieting landscapes for two 25-year retrospectives, one at the Winnipeg Art Gallery and another – Wanda Koop: On the Edge of Experience – at the National Art Gallery in Ottawa until May 15. She is an artist who questions how and what people see or notice, and in turn, shows through her art what people missed with their first glance, as well as what remains out of sight.

Right: Katherine Knight

A documentary, filming for Koop began in June as Knight, an award-winning photographer known for evocative landscapes with a strong narrative atmosphere, cinematographer and 91��ɫ alumna Marcia Connolly (MFA ’10) and embarked upon a week-long trip on a freighter along the St. Lawrence River from Quebec City to Port Cartier. Travel has often provided inspiration for Koop. This voyage along one of Canada’s most significant and fabled waterways not only provided a shared experience for the artist and the filmmakers, it also allowed the audience to share in some of the raw visual materials Koop uses to create her art.

"I was making a documentary about an artist who didn't want to be filmed painting," says Knight. So instead, she filmed Koop as she gathered inspiration. "It was about putting the audience into the framework that the artist works in. So the audience can actually travel along with the artist."

The examination of the visual continues as the film looks at the science of vision, colour and perception. It places the audience in the , where Koop has her vision tested by 91��ɫ senior research scientist Olivera Karanovic and Laurie Wilcox, graduate program director in the Department of Psychology, in the 3D Vision Research lab to take a look at how she sees – she apparently has great 3D vision.

Left: Artist Wanda Koop has her vision checked in the 91��ɫ Vision Research lab in the opening scene of the film Koop

The artist’s studio as a factory of the imagination also plays a role in the work created, and the film explores this, taking the audience into Koop’s newly renovated factory, where she makes, archives and markets her artwork. There, hundreds of paintings, thousands of sketches and tables full of the painter’s tools contribute to the visual and physical space.

"I'm really interested in making documentaries about artists that get inside the creative process," says Knight, a longtime friend of Koop and fan of her art. Koop has won several national and international awards for her artistic achievements and was made a member of the Order of Canada in 2006. In 1998, she founded Art City as a storefront art centre in Winnipeg. The goal is to bring together contemporary visual artists and inner-city youth to explore the creative process.

Right: Wanda Koop's studio

Several alumni worked on the documentary, including project editor Jared Raab (BFA Spec. Hon. ’07), who was declared one of the by the Toronto Star. Raab will begin shooting a feature in March with alumnus Matt Johnson (BFA). The score for Koop is by Montreal-based composer Sam Shalabi, who worked on Knight’s 2009 documentary Pretend Not to See Me: The Art of Colette Urban, which was awarded special mention at the Ecofilm Festival in Rhodos, Greece, in June 2010. Pretend Not to See Me will screen at 2011, Thursday, March 17, at 5pm at the Rainbow Cinemas, Market Square, 80 Front St. E. (at Jarvis) in Toronto.

Left: Wanda Koop on the freight boat

Knight co-founded Site(Media)inc. with David Craig in 2006 with a passion to make documentaries and short films. Its first film, Annie Pootoogook, was commissioned by Bravo Canada and Aboriginal Peoples Television Network. A professor in 91��ɫ’s Faculty of Fine Arts, Knight has exhibited her photographs extensively in solo and group shows across Canada and in the United States. Her works are in many public and corporate collections, including the Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography, Banff Centre and The Canada Council Art Bank. She was awarded the Canada Council's Duke and Duchess of 91��ɫ Prize in Photography in 2000 in recognition of the excellence of her work.

Tickets to the opening night of KOOP are $175 per person and can be purchased by visiting the website or calling 416-368-8854 ext. 101.

Republished courtesy of YFile – 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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This massive public art project had four separate calls for entries: two open and two invitational. In developing their proposals, artists were asked to be sensitive to the site, the location of the artwork elevated above grade and the fact that people would be viewing the works while moving past them as well as when they were stationary.

Submissions were categorized based on the media used to create the pieces: digital interlay protected by glass, specialty glass, perforated metal screen and mixed media. All the works share the same dimensions: 30 inches high and a monumental 40 feet long, made up of four 10-foot-long panels.

More than 350 entries were submitted by artists from across the Greater Toronto Area for the two open competitions. Two independent juries, each judging two competitions, selected the winning works.

“The quality of the artworks and their scale and siting are setting a new standard for transit art projects in Toronto,” said Rina Greer, the art consultant who coordinated the project with Catherine Williams for the City of Toronto.

Five 91��ɫ artists have transformed the streetscape with their unique creations.

Spadina Road features the first of two works contributed by Professor Judith Schwarz,����hair of the Department of Visual Arts. Her abstract piece Weather Sampler, made of mill-grade stainless steel sheets, is a playful representation of various kinds of weather experienced by Torontonians. Geometric shapes are organized and repeated to represent sunspots, heat rising from the pavement, overcast days, clouds moving overhead, sleet and rain.

Above: Weather Sampler by Judith Schwartz

One stop west at Tweedsmuir Avenue, commuters will encounter Professor Yam Lau’s Nearness and Distance – A Chinese Ruler. It’s a digitally printed interlay representing the traditional, but now obsolete, system of measurement that would have been used to build inspirational places like the Forbidden City in Beijing and the Great Wall of China. For Lau, systems of measurement are never simply abstract. They can embody a world that is both poetic and emotional.

Above: Nearness and Distance – A Chinese Ruler by Yam Lau decorates the Tweedsmuir Avenue stop

Moon Transit by 91��ɫ visual arts alumna (BFA ‘79) is found at Christie Street. The work is constructed of two layers of laminated tempered float glass with pigmented glass enamel accents. It depicts the phases of the moon in an arcing passage through drifting clouds. This upward view was inspired by the escarpment location of St. Clair Avenue, high on a ridge above downtown Toronto. A month of moons unfolds like successive frames of a film or a series of time-lapse photographs. The sequence is integrated into a gestural sky whose graphic conventions are drawn from historical engravings like those depicting early views of Toronto.

Above: Titled Moon Transit, this artwork can be found at Christie Street. It was created by 91��ɫ visual arts alumna Jeannie Thib

Schwarz’s second contribution, Origami Remix, is installed at Dufferin Street. It features organic shapes and patterns on a garden theme, rendered in stainless steel. The stylized profiles evoke flowers, petals, stamen, floating pollen and vines. These images expand and recur along a sinuous curve to suggest process and alteration over time. Repeated and remixed at a different scale, the shapes coalesce into designs suggestive of garden ornamentation, decorative fences and patterns that allude to retro linoleum, wallpaper and picnic oilcloth.

Above: Schwartz's Origami Remix can be seen at the Dufferin Street

Caledonia Road is the site of Sidewalk Tango by 91��ɫ alumna (MFA ’94). Nind’s digitally printed interlayer expresses the richness and cultural diversity of the street life along St. Clair West. The street’s ambience offers a cacophony of colours, odours and tactile experiences: baskets of fruits and vegetables, displays of shoes and clothing, pots overflowing with flowering plants, domestic paraphernalia of hardware and household supplies.

Above: 91��ɫ alumna Sarah Nind's Sidewalk Tango

Art / Work, by photographer (MFA ‘07), marks the stop at Silverthorne Avenue. Inspired by 1920s modernist art photography and film and the then-novel techniques of montage, collage and transitional dissolves, Art / Work draws on the archival record of construction on St. Clair Avenue in the twenties, as found in the Toronto Transit Commission files in the City of Toronto Archives. A long-time local resident, Ingelevics makes this history visible through images of labour and labourers from this earlier period.

Above: Art/Work by 91��ɫ alumnus, photograper Vid Ingelevics marks the stop at Silverthorne Avenue

The distance between Yonge Street and Keele Street is just over six kilometres. The public art installations at transit stops are the finishing touches on the dedicated right-of-way streetcar lane for the 512 St. Clair streetcar loop. As a special initiative, the TTC is offering a two-hour time-based transfer for Route 512 that allows passengers to get on and off the streetcar to enjoy the artworks as well as the shops and restaurants along the way.

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin

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The round table will take place Tuesday, Sept. 7, from 6:30 to 8pm, at the Campbell Conference Facility in the Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto, 1 Devonshire Place in Toronto.

Two books will provide the jumping off point for the speakers – 91��ɫ English Professor Julia Creet, 91��ɫ humanities Professor and English Professor of the University of Bologna in Italy – as they tackle the issue of memory in a global setting.

The first book is the forthcoming , edited by Creet and Kitzmann of the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies.

In addition to the panel discussion, the event is also the launch of Memory and Migration, which is expected out in September. This international collection of essays looks at the integral part memory plays in how individuals and societies construct identity. Memory is usually considered in the context of a stable, unchanging environment, but this collection explores the effects of immigration, forced expulsions, exile, banishment and war on individual and collective memory.

The second book is , edited by Lamberti and Vita Fortunati, also of the University of Bologna. Memories and Representations of War assesses how memories of the two World Wars have been readjusted each time in relation to the evolving international historical setting and through various mediators of memory, including cinema, literature, art and monuments. The essays help unveil a cultural panorama inhabited by contrasting memories and by divided memories and acknowledge the ethical need for a truly shared act of reconciliation.

Lamberti, who teaches American and Canadian literature, will discuss reconciliation during the round table, while Creet will talk about reconceptualizing cultural memory given the displacements and mobility of people in the 20th century. Kitzmann will present a specific case study on the expulsion of ethnic Germans after the Second World War and 91��ɫ architectural history and visual culture Professor of the Faculty of Fine Arts will act as moderator.

Creet is the producer and director of MUM, a documentary drawn from her mother’s memoirs, letters and poems, and which leads to Hungary where local memory reveals the story her mother tried to forget. (See YFile, May 6, 2008.) She also teaches memory studies and literary nonfiction at 91��ɫ.

Kitzmann has written widely on the impact of communications technology on the construction and practice of identity, electronic communities, and the influence of new media on narrative conventions. He is the author of and , and co-editor of .

Lamberti is the author of several books, including . She is currently completing the forthcoming volume, Marshall McLuhan’s Critical Writing: Probing the Literary Origins of Media Studies.

Hornstein is the co-editor of and . She is currently completing the forthcoming book, Losing Site: Architecture, Memory and Place. Hornstein is was the recipient of the 2008-2009 Walter L. Gordon Fellowship.

Anyone wishing to attend the round table should RSVP before Sept. 4 to 416-921-3802 ext. 221 or iictoronto@esteri.it. Admission to the event is free.

The round table is presented by the Italian Cultural Institute in Toronto in collaboration with the European Union Centre of Excellence at the Centre for European, Russian & Eurasian Studies at the University of Toronto, the University of Bologna and the at 91��ɫ, with the support of the European Union National Institutes for Culture.

For more information, visit the Web site.

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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Here, 91��ɫ humanities Professor , English Professor and PhD student Elena Basile offer an appreciation of Prof. Godard and her tireless work:

It is with great sadness that the Department of English at 91��ɫ announces the death of Professor Emerita Barbara Godard, a professor of English, French, social & political thought and women’s studies. A pillar of the 91��ɫ community and one of Canada’s pre-eminent literary scholars, Prof. Godard broadly influenced the fields of Canadian and Quebec studies, translation studies, feminist poetics, semiotics and cultural studies.

Right: Prof. Barbara Godard

She was a generous supervisor and mentor who trained and influenced a contemporary generation of cultural workers, including academics, writers and artists. The scope of her mentorship was fully recognized in 2002 when she became the recipient of teaching awards from 91��ɫ’s Faculty of Graduate Studies and the Northeastern Association of Graduate Schools. Prof. Godard retired from full-time teaching in 2008, but continued a full intellectual and pedagogical life until her sudden passing.

Prof. Godard was a prolific and influential intellectual. An extraordinarily sharp and encyclopedic thinker, Prof. Godard’s interests encompassed semiotics, translation, gender, textuality and the body, as well as archives, memorials, and the history and changing politics of cultural production. With a keen eye for detail and a unique capacity for breadth of vision, she catalyzed interdisciplinary connections among culture, language, gender, politics, poetics and meaning.

After completing her doctorate at the University of Bordeaux, Prof. Godard began teaching at 91��ɫ in 1971 as a visiting assistant professor and was hired into a tenure-track position in 1976. She published eight books, 80 book chapters and 115 articles and catalogue entries. She translated the major writers of Quebec feminism, including Nicole Brossard, Yolande Villemarie and Louky Bersianik. She also served as editor or on the editorial board of no less than 22 journals. She was a founding co-editor of the feminist literary periodical , a contributing editor of and , and the book review editor for Topia: A Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies. She also made long-standing contributions to , s and ECW among others.

Prof. Godard was committed to and passionate about her graduate students across the Departments of English, French Studies, Film and Visual Arts, the School of Women’s Studies and the Program in Social & Political Thought, supervising over 35 PhD candidates. She built bridges between people and modes of inquiry because of her genuine enthusiasm for ideas. She worked between and across languages which so often divide. Prof. Godard inspired her colleagues and students through her critical creativity and her unwavering commitment to interrogating and producing the conditions for full civic engagement in the University and in the public sphere. We will miss her greatly.

Funeral arrangements

A funeral service will take place at 11am on Friday, May 21, at St. James-the-Less, 635 Parliament St., Toronto. A reception for friends and family will follow at Prof. Godard’s house at 217 Major St.,Toronto.

Prof. Godard’s family has requested no flowers; in light of her earlier struggles, donations to the Canadian Cancer Society would be greatly appreciated.

As there may be other causes to which you might wish to make a memorial donation, the agency can inform Prof. Godard’s sister Elizabeth Cox at ecox27@sympatico.ca and her son Alexis at lex_o_matic@yahoo.com.

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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The Toronto art-making duo Christian Giroux and Daniel Young (CGDY) have been working in 91��ɫ’s Digital Sculpture Lab over the past few months as artists-in-residence in the Department of Visual Arts. They will present an overview of their work in a free public lecture titled "The Making of Boole", Wednesday, March 24, at 3pm in 195A Joan & Martin Goldfarb Centre for Fine Arts at 91��ɫ’s Keele campus.

During their residency, Young and Giroux have been using the lab’s pioneering rapid prototyping equipment to expand upon their 2008 series Boole, which they created “in a formal dialogue with pieces of IKEA furniture.”

Right: The sculpture "Kermit", featured in Boole, illustrates CGDY's formal dialogue with pieces of IKEA furniture

Produced using precision-fabricated sheet metal, bringing objects from the domestic realm into collision with an industrial mode of manufacturing, Boole exists in conversation with the spirit of contemporary modernism. The title is derived from the term used to describe the basic 3-D computer modelling operations of addition and subtraction of simple forms in the creation of more complex ones.

The Globe and Mail described the original exhibition of Boole at Toronto’s as “almost lasciviously pleasing and puzzling furniture-like sculptures.” CGDY will present the new additions to their series in a second show at Diaz Contemporary opening April 9.

“The resources in 91��ɫ’s Digital Sculpture Lab are really quite tremendous,” says Young. “Having access to the lab has allowed us to produce a project that otherwise would have been impossible.”

The first of its kind in Canada, 91��ɫ’s lab features a wide range of specialized digital tools and technologies. They include the Torchmate plasma cutter, which can cut metal sheets up to 4 by 8 feet in size, and the FROG Mill 4th Axis which carves 3-D forms out of wood, plastic or foam in formats up to 12 by 8 by 4 feet. Two rapid prototyping 3D printers are used to create small-scale models for art works. The Objet Eden 260V builds models out of resin, rubber or plastic in dimensions up to 12 by 8 by 8 inches, while the Solidscape T612 builds slightly smaller models out of wax (ideal for casting metal).

These production technologies are complemented by the FROG Mill 3-D Scanner, which can be used to scan existing objects to create virtual/digital copies that can subsequently be remade using one of the four manufacturing processes available in the lab. The artist can also adapt these scanned objects, or circumvent scanning and create completely new objects to be cut, carved or printed.

“One of the primary goals of 91��ɫ’s Digital Sculpture Lab is to make cutting-edge digital fabrication technology accessible to both students and leading Canadian artists and researchers,” says Visual Arts Professor Brandon Vickerd, who was awarded a major grant by the in 2005 to create the lab. “By hosting their residency we’re providing CGDY with the opportunity to advance their practice in a unique way, and at the same time, giving students the opportunity to learn by observing the process of professional artists.”

have been creating sculpture, public art and film installations together since 2002. Their work has been shown at SCOPE Miami Beach (2004), Ace Art Inc. (Winnipeg, 2004), The Power Plant (Toronto, 2006), the EXiS festival (Seoul, 2009) and the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg (2009). Following its recent premiere at Toronto’s Mercer Union, their film installation 50 Light Fixtures from Home Depot was exhibited in Forum Expanded at the Berlin International Film Festival in February 2010 and will be shown this fall at the Beyond/In Western New 91��ɫ exhibit at the Hallwalls Contemporary Art Center in Buffalo.

Giroux and Young are just the latest in a long line of artists to hold residencies in 91��ɫ’s sculpture program. Previous guests include Britain's Anthony Caro and William Tucker, American sculptor Rona Pondick, and leading Canadian artists Liz Magor, Claire Brunet and James Carl.

Republished with files courtesy of YFile – 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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