v. 15 – 2013

Featuring

v15 images Photos courtesy of Charlemagne Palestine. Blind Monkey portrait by Kevin Clarke.

Design concept: crys cole

Design & layout: Paul Phillips

Statement from the Director

For our 15th edition we chose the theme transcendence to encapsulate and contextualize the work of a distinct group of artists. Though varying in approach and aesthetics, there is a unifying concept in this theme that links them all.

Most interpretations of this theme evoke thoughts of mysticism, ritual, trance and the like. Several of our guest artists have a keen interest in these ideas and explore them in their own singular ways. Forefathers of ecstatic drone based music, American artists Charlemagne Palestine and Tony Conrad bring their distinct voices to send + receive this year. We are honored to host these important artists who not only expanded music (and the language of their own instruments – Piano/Organ & Violin) but continually defy categorization with their contributions to experimental film, video, performance and visual art.

Like Conrad and Palestine, Swedish artists Leif Elggren and Kent Tankred, the Sons of God, cannot be neatly contained in a single genre. Through improvisational performances with set parameters, they push the mundane to its furthest points, attempting to elevate it into something miraculous. Visual artists, performers, and musicians both, their performances challenge artists and audience alike to expand traditional expectations.

Canadian artists Magneticring (BC) and Le Révélateur (QC) make allusions to the ‘new age’ movement of the past. Using related analog & digital technologies they create hypnotic audio/visual works, which bathe the audience in entrancing tones, shapes and colours. Adding to this repertoire, local musician Greenhouse (MB) explores similar concepts generated through the guitar with a nod to ecstatic noise music. To further celebrate the ‘new age’ in this program we are thrilled to present 2 films by the late American filmmaker Jordan Belson (US), an innovator in experimental film whose work was deeply rooted in spiritual mysticism and the exploration of visual music.

Transcending the material world brings us to Voices from the Beyond: the EVP Project. This ambitious project sees 11 Canadian artists from Montreal & Winnipeg creating new works that play with Electronic Voice Phenomenon… or in other words, communicating with the sprit world through electronic technologies.

We are thrilled to co-present American sound artist Christine Sun Kim this year in partnership with Arts & Disability Manitoba’s event Art + Body: See Me Hear. Born deaf, Sun Kim has taken this impairment and turned it on its head, playfully illustrating her own interpretations of how to hear & be heard in the world.

Whether you will have an out of body experience, ‘see God’ or change the way you interpret the world around you, I can’t guarantee, but I am certain that great things will take place at our 15th edition and perhaps at the end we’ll all be just a little blissed out.

— crys cole, Director

PHOTO GALLERIES FOR V15 

v15 PARTNERS + FUNDERS