FOA Sabbatical Presentations: Barbara Astman, Richard Fung, Luke Painter & b.h. Yael

Tuesday, November 28, 2017 - 12:30pm to 2:30pm

Faculty of Art Sabbatical Presentations by Barbara Astman, Richard Fung, Luke Painter and b.h. Yael

Tuesday November 28, 12:30 – 2:30pm

 

BARBARA ASTMAN, PROFESSOR, PHOTOGRAPHY:  Professor Barbara Astman’s sabbatical objectives were based on furthering and expanding her practice based research. One of her objectives was to spend time in the darkroom to examine abstraction though the photogram process. The darkroom is her research laboratory and the methodology includes an examination of the material and tools available to create with hand made negatives in the darkroom. The negatives used for this research were clear glass, mainly figural vessels.   This methodology allowed for a greater questioning and reassessment of the potential of the photogram in image making, as well as allow for the art to thrive and progress.  This exploration also incorporated digital intervention as part of the study. The darkroom was our research laboratory and the methodology included an examination of the materials and tools available and or invented to fully utilize hand made negatives, using glass figural objects in both the colour and black and white darkrooms at OCAD U. 

RICHARD FUNG, PROFESSOR, INTEGRATED MEDIA/ART & SOCIAL CHANGE:  In 2013, Professor Richard Fung received a four-year SSHRC Insight research-creation grant, the principal deliverable of which was a feature length documentary, Re:Orientations, which revisits participants from my 1984 video Orientations: Lesbian and Gay Asians three decades later. The film considers the shifts and continuities in identities, politics and conditions facing people at that particular intersection of race, gender, sexuality and class. The fourth year of the project was designed for what SSHRC describes as knowledge mobilization, and that was the principal activity for my sabbatical year. In short, this involved organizing screenings and discussions of the resulting documentary film Re:Orientations at festivals, universities and community groups in Canada and internationally. During the year he also wrote a number of texts and realized another documentary film Nang by Nang. 
Luke

LUKE PAINTER, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR, DRAWING & PAINTING/ DIGITAL PAINTING & EXPANDED ANIMATION:  Luke Painter’s presentation will discuss two different but connected works created during his sabbatical: Modern Wand and The Teasers and the Tormenters. The Teasers and the Tormentors is a 3D animation that references and continuously transforms set designs from 20th century theatre, film and   illusion shows.  The work travels across different time periods, exploring the tensions between competing movements and making tangential, formal and narrative connections between references.  Through the use of mirrors in the animation, the viewer’s perspective shows the action outside of the camera frame which becomes a reflexive technique that allows the viewer a sense of awareness of the space beyond the set. Modern Wand is a number of sculptures that are amalgams and translations of historical design objects and furniture. They are fabricated in glass and wood through traditional and laser cut techniques and rest on a series of interconnecting and raised carpeted platforms. These sculptures convey organic, ornamental and anthropomorphic sensibilities with the appearance of holding the body and also physically suggesting the body at the same time.  The work offers a space for the viewer to imagine the often-contrasting themes of functionality and fantasy that played out in the 20th century in relation to art and design practices.  

b.h. YAEL, PROFESSOR, INTEGRATED MEDIA/ART & SOCIAL CHANGE: In her report of activities during her half-sabbatical, b.h. Yael will reference a number of projects, some completed and culminating over a few years of work, and others initiated and still in process of research and development. One work follows up on previous work around the politics of Israel/ Palestine, this time a consideration of images of witness and how these are perceived; the majority of the work is autobiographical in various media forms: documentation through a completed website, experimental animation, memoire writing, and photography.
Sze

Venue & Address: 
OCAD U 100 McCaul St., RM. 460, Toronto, ON
red hand on red background
photo of male dance in pose on the floor
image of colourful doors
illustration of woman reading

Lessons for Polygamists by b.h. Yael premieres at the Images Film Festival

illustration of young woman writing
Sunday, April 23, 2017 - 7:00pm

Lessons for Polygamists premieres at the Images Film Festival.
If you are planning to go it is advisable to get tickets sooner rather than later.

Premiere
April 23, 7 pm, Innis Town Hall, 2 Sussex Ave. (St George and Bloor)
Hangout after the screening: District Oven, 842 College Street (at Ossington)

Lessons for Polygamists

Employing animation and collage, Lessons for Polygamists takes place inside the diary of an adolescent girl growing up in a polygamous household. She lists the lessons she would convey to Dad, if only she could.

Lessons for Polygamists reflects the righteous voice of adolescence as the young narrator attempts to make sense of her family dynamics, and more so her Dad’s behaviour. Through animated playfulness and bits of family stories she extracts directives, lessons she would like to impart to Dad, the polygamist. While drawing on stories, photographs and documentation from her own family context, the filmmaker broadens the lessons to a much wider audience.

No Lies, a one minute short and silent version, won the “Most Original Film by a Local Female Director” award at the 2016 Toronto Urban Film Festival.

B.h. Yael is a Toronto based filmmaker, video and installation artist, whose work has shown nationally and internationally. She has been an instructor at OCAD since 1989. She also served as Assistant Dean in the Faculty of Art between 1997 and 1999.

 

Venue & Address: 
Innis Town Hall, 2 Sussex Ave. (St George and Bloor) Toronto, ON
Website: 
http://www.bhyael.ca
illustration of three young children and text

VERBATIM Film Festival

Verbatim
Friday, November 23, 2007 - 5:00am to Friday, November 30, 2007 - 5:00am

VERBATIM Film Festival presents collaborative works by Toronto-based artists and educators, Johanna Householder and b.h.Yael. Approximations: parts 1 ' 3, is a project series which takes an ironic and critical look at Hollywood films and their over-articulations of male power. The series includes The Mission, (4min 21sec) December 31, 2000 (7min 22sec) and Next to Last Tango (7min). The films referenced include Apocalypse Now, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and Last Tango in Paris. With much wit and wisdom, the gendered apocalyptic vision of Mel Gibson's Passion of the Christ is taken up in VERBATIM (7min 45sec).
When Gibson released the film in time for the Easter screenings of 2004, it had received an enormous amount of pre-publicity around Gibson's vaunted goal of verisimilitude, which included the cast speaking in Aramaic and Latin, but didn't exclude the studio set for the garden of Gesthemene, flooded with smoke and blue light, or the previously unreported presence of the Devil (herself) on the Via Dolorosa.
'Our strategy is to open up the question about accuracy versus interpretation, a tactic that Gibson used to ensure that the conservative Christian audiences, for whom it was made, would approach The Passion with proper, uncritical reverence. But then Pope John Paul II agreed: 'It is as it was,' he was reported as saying in the Wall Street Journal. This version just is.'
Biographies
Both b.h.Yael, and Johanna Householder are professors of Integrated Media Program in the Faculty of Art at the Ontario College of Art and Design.
Johanna Householder has been making performances and other artwork in Canada since the late 1970s. She was a member of the notorious, satirical feminist performance ensemble, The Clichettes, who performed under variable circumstances, throughout the 1980s. Householder has maintained a unique performance practice, often collaborating with other artists. She is one of the founders of the 7a*11d International Festival of Performance Art, and with Tanya Mars, she co-edited Caught in the Act: an anthology of performance by Canadian women, YYZ Books, 2004.
b.h.Yael is a Toronto based filmmaker, video and installation artist. Yael's work has exhibited nationally and internationally and has shown in various settings, from festivals to galleries to various educational venues. Her works have been purchased by several universities. These include Fresh Blood, A Consideration of Belonging, In the Middle of the Street, and Trisk-aidekaphobia. In 2006, Yael premiered Palestine Trilogy, three videos that focus on activist initiatives, addressing the politics of Palestine and Israel in sites of solidarity. Yael has just completed Trading the Future, a video essay questioning the ways in which secular culture has embraced apocalypse as inevitable.

Venue & Address: 
Fleishman Gallery at WonderWorks 79a Harbord Street, Toronto, Ontario
Email: 
rochelle@gowonderworks.com
Cost: 
Free

Work by b.h. Yael, Faculty of Art, in "No Lies", showing at the Toronto Urban Film Festival

Multimedia artwork with children and bubbles
Multimedia artwork with children
Multimedia artwork with cutout of a family portrait
Saturday, September 10, 2016 - 4:00am to Sunday, September 18, 2016 - 4:00am

Work by b.h. Yael in "No Lies", showing at the Toronto Urban Film Festival, an exhibition that takes place on TTC screens from Sept 10 - 18

North America's largest subway film festival, the Toronto Urban Film Festival (TUFF), features silent, 60-second film video and animation. The festival reaches well over one million daily commuters on subway platform screens across the Toronto transit system every September. The 2016 Guest Judge is Zaib Shaikh, City of Toronto’s Film Commissioner & Director of Entertainment Industries.  

Venue & Address: 
An exhibition that takes place on TTC screens
Website: 
http://torontourbanfilmfestival.com/

Faculty Sabbatical Presentations: Francis LeBouthillier & b.h. Yael

 Faculty Sabbatical Presentations: Francis LeBouthillier & b.h. Yael
Thursday, November 21, 2013 - 5:00pm

Presented by the Faculty of Art

Associate Professor Francis LeBouthillier is a multi-disciplinary artist and researcher who uses traditional approaches to figurative sculpture along with new technologies to build training devices for the medical industry. Since 1989, Francis has been a Professor at OCAD University. He chaired the Sculpture/Installation Program from 2007 to 2012. His research work was selected by the Ontario Council of University’s to be included in their province wide Research Matters Campaign. LeBouthillier’s sabbatical presentation will include his exploration in developing highly accurate fetal models that have been created from MR, CT scans and 3D printing. LeBouthillier will also present new installation works produced during his sabbatical.

b.h. Yael is a Toronto based video and installation artist. She is Professor of Integrated Media at the OCAD University. Yael’s work has exhibited nationally and internationally and has shown in various settings, from festivals to galleries to community and activist groups and various educational venues. Her work has been purchased by many universities and she is a recipient of numerous arts grants including the Chalmers Fellowship award.

Yael's work has dealt with the many intersections of identity; it has focused on activist initiatives in Palestine/Israel; and more recently addressed apocalypse and environmental issues. Works include: Fresh Blood, A Consideration of Belonging; In the Middle of the Street; Palestine Trilogy; and Trading the Future, which won the ‘Audience Award’ at the Ecofilms festival in Rhodes, Greece.

 

Free

 

Venue & Address: 
Rm 544 100 McCaul St. Toronto, Ontario