We have forgotten how to observe.
Instead…we do things
According to patterns.
–Andrei Tarkovski

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Grant Poier
Working Text
1988, Video, 10:30
(Black & White, Channel 2)

Ideas, ethics, processes of work and repetition are explored through a layered approach to performance (action) and environment (space).

Grant Poier is a Calgary based interdisciplinary artist who has worked as an arts administrator, advocate, writer, curator and educator since the early eighties. He was a cofounder in 1979 of Centre Art Video (EMMEDIA), an artist run media arts production and programming centre. He has presented video tapes, installations, performances and assemblages locally and internationally. Since 1987 he has participated in numerous artist collaborations, some long term, in Calgary and in Europe. During the nineties Poier has been integrating ideas of performance action, public sites and environments, collaboration and community, in his work as a cultural catalyst.

I have an unfinished road to walk.
–Isamu Noguchi

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Brenna George
Sleep
1995, Video, 3:00
(Colour, Mono)

Sleep is a metaphor for lack of hope, for energy that is inexplicably draining from you. Beyond caring your passive body allows others to voyeur. A restrained pallette of only black, red, white and flesh establishes a controlled interior and a formative exploration of the soul.

Brenna George is a multidisciplinary artist who works in painting, ceramics, sculpture, video, digital imagery and web creation. Besides producing her own work, she is often hired for her freelance production, post-production and web skills. She has also taught many workshops at various artist centres in Canada. As well as international and national screenings, her work has been purchased by the National Gallery of Canada.

Only in intimate communion may man find himself.

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Nida Home Doherty
Isolated
1984, Video, 3:00
(Colour, Mono)

Individual figures are silhouetted against the vastness of the prairie landscape. The camera pans back and forth from one figure to another. The rhythm of the camera’s movement parallels a voice-over of single words related to isolation.

Nida Home Doherty opened and is operating a commercial art gallery, Centracity Gallery, in London, Ontario. She was an active and founding member of Neutral Ground in Regina, Saskatchewan, both as an artist and as an administrator.

The ups and downs of it stays on my feet.
–Gary Snyder

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Ley Ward and John Morgan,
Submerged Jazz Club
2000, Video, 3:32
(Colour, Stereo)

Submerged Jazz Club is a stroll in the waves of sound.

Ley Ward and John Morgan are Saskatchewan artists working in video and music.

In the dawn of day
The colour of the sky
Has a change of clothes.
–Issa

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Jack Lauder
Porch
2002, Video, 10:00
(Colour, Stereo)

Porch is the story of a day in a neighbourhood told from the perspective of a porch window. Through the stillness of a stationary and inanimate object a gentle story is told. The porch is listening.

Jack Lauder's video art works have screened worldwide in art galleries, major festivals and on broadcast television. His unique aesthetic is expressed in his visions of deep, lush and vibrant pictures and powerful and unforgettable metaphors. Lauder's words, when included in his artworks are poetic structures blended masterfully in his visual landscapes.

listening
listening
listening
–Jean Vanier

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Marian Butler
Beneath the Earth
1998, Video, 7:20
(Colour, Stereo)

Beneath the Earth marks the first in a series of work investigating the language of dreams and the cycles of life. Following the birth of her daughter, the artist addresses her fears and anxiety as a parent with a new found sense of mortality.

Marian Butler is an interdisciplinary artist, curator and arts administrator. She holds a B.Sc. in Textiles from the University of Alberta and attended the U of M School of Art between 1992 and 1994. Marian’s links to the local and national community are widespread. Over the past twenty years she has worked in the arts including: Ring House Gallery, The Canadian Opera Company, The National Ballet of Canada, The Winnipeg Film Group, Video Pool, The Floating Gallery and the Royal Winnipeg Ballet.

Marian was also the Director of Mentoring Artists for Women’s Art, and now works for the provincial government as an officer of the Manitoba Arts Council.

(Mystery) is a whole which embraces us.
–Magdalena Abakanowicz

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Janet Hawkwood
There is a dragonfly
and there is an ant
1995, Video, 7:00
(Colour, Mono)

Sunflowers, rugged landscape and fluid motion of written Chinese characters are woven together. The camera movement mimics both the natural path of the dragonfly and the ant expressing different ways of seeing. This work was inspired by a casual conversation between two women of different cultural backgrounds. The tape is a visual understanding of learned perception and creative inspiration, exploring the relationship between traditional documentary practices and subjective imagery. This works as an expression of friendship.

Born and raised in a rural community in southern Alberta, much of her film and video work explores individual’s perceptions towards the land expressed through the medium of personal stories. She has a BFA in Geography from the University of Calgary, a BFA in film and video from Emily Carr College of Art and Design and an MFA in Video from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design.

The mountain’s daily speech is silence.
–Denise Levertov

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Terry Billings
Memory/loss
2001, Video, 11:31
(Colour, Stereo)

This experimental narrative subjectively documents the transformation of indigenous grassland into suburb. References to memory and loss frame the difficulties in reconciling the site's beauty with its role as undeveloped real estate.

Terry Billings is a visual artist with an MFA from the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon where she currently teaches studio courses. She has explored narrative, perception and consciousness in two and three dimensional work and electronic media.

I think you can only feel others
If you have some sense of your
own being.
–Barnett Newman

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Alex Poruchnyk
Dock-Watch-Bay
2002, Video, 8:00
(Colour, Stereo)

"Every wind has its weather" Francis Bacon Weather vanes can be looked at for the promise of good weather and smooth sailing or with concern, Sailor take Warning. They move because they lack balance or symmetry. A balanced weather vane doesn't know = which way to turn. Weather vanes act as our reminders of previous forecasts and real life mistakes. Should we dwell on these encumbered by a process of anticipation and fear, or check the wind and set sail accepting an uncertain future?

Alex Poruchnyk is an internationally recognized video artist who has worked and taught video for over 15 years. His last feature length video was purchased by the Museum of Modern Art in New York and has toured through the United States. Alex Poruchnyk teaches at the University of Manitoba’s School of Art.

(Contemplation) would teach us how to regard silence as a positive…
–R. Murray Schafer

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Erika MacPherson
Phantom Pains
1992, Video, 7 min
(Colour, Stereo)

Phantom Pains is an exploration of the possibility that buildings have a consciousness; that they hold memories in their walls while they watch the passage of time. A monastery, now in ruins and gutted by fire, becomes the subject. It remembers its life as a functioning place, a place of prayer and contemplation. Images of the monks over the years are woven into the stone remains of the monastery; the ruins recall the tolling of the bells.

Erika MacPherson creates video, film, installation and documentary TV Her work has screened internationally at festivals from the San Francisco Gay Lesbian to Transmediale in Berlin; Vancouver International to The Edinburgh Fringe. She works from her homes in Winnipeg, Manitoba and Galiano Island, British Columbia where she surveys the sometimes light, sometimes dark nature of being human.

Breath is the bridge between
Body and mind.
–Kazuaki Tanahashi

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Val Klassen
The Moon In June
1997, Video, 3:45
(Colour, Stereo)

The Moon in June is a video art work evoking awareness of the cyclical nature of life and of the ability of art to transcend both time and space. A mesmerizing soundtrack features the Global Stairwell Humming Choir Winnipeg/Rotterdam. This video is the second in the Humming Experiments video series, a collaboration between Val Klassen and John Coutanche.

Val Klassen is a video artist based in Winnipeg, Canada. Since 1996, she has collaborated with audio artist John Coutanche on a series of Humming Experiments, which have included studio recordings, live participatory performances, videos, and a soon-to-be-released limited edition CD. Products of the Experiments have appeared on a compilation CD entitled "Hope" published by the Audio Research Editions in Liverpool, UK in conjunction with ISEA 98, at video screenings across Canada and in Europe, on WTN's Shameless Shorts television program, and most recently as a webcast performance during send + receive: a festival of sound 2000.

O silence, golden zero.
–Thomas Merton

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Nicole Shimonek
Winter
2000, Video, 3:05
(Colour, Stereo)

Five buds from a shrub are counted and then crushed.

Nicole Shimonek has completed a Bachelor of Fine Art Honors Degree at the University of Manitoba. While in university she majored in video and minored in film studies. Nicole makes experimental animations and performance videos. She has had her work shown at fundraisers, screenings and in publications. Nicole works as an audio/video technician for artistic, corporate and educational institutions. She is a technician for the University of Manitoba and Video Pool Inc. She works independently as a videographer/editor and works with independent artist Alex Poruchnyk as a production assistant for his video installation: Any Port in the Storm.

We must be still and still moving.
–T.S. Eliot

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Lori Rogers
Inside/Out
1993, Video, 5:00
(Colour, Stereo)

Inside/out manipulates still photography with video technology to discuss issues of representation of the female form in the context of its legacy in Western Art History. The sound treatment is hypnotic and rhythmic. Whispered texts taken from the passages of 14th century mystic Julian of Norwich articulate the fusion of the sensual and the sacred.

Lori Rogers is a Winnipeg based multimedia artist. She graduated from the University of Manitoba with a Bachelors of Fine Arts (Honours) in 1988. Rogers has participated in the Mentoring Artists for Women's Art Advisory Program and her work has been exhibited in several group shows. Rogers' work is concerned with women's spirituality as a balancing principle in today's culture. She is currently experimenting with video and audio as sculptural tools in this exploration.

If you’re alert, you can hear the tide turn.
–Shunryu Suzuki

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Janet Hawkwood
This is My View
1992, Video, 9:00
(Colour, B&W, Mono)

The rich and haunting past of Writing-On-Stone is revealed through the region’s powerful landscape. Layers of time and space are woven together through sound and movement, allowing one’s imagination to take hold.

Born and raised in a rural community in southern Alberta, much of her film and video work explores individual’s perceptions towards the land expressed through the medium of personal stories. She has a BFA in Geography from the University of Calgary, a BFA in film and video from Emily Carr College of Art and Design and an MFA in Video from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design.