A Scotiabank Nuit Blanche independent project
Marc De Pape: http://marcdepape.net
Shannon Gerard: http://carlwagan.tumblr.com/
Annyen Lam: http://annyenlam.com/
Relay Studio: http://relaystudio.com/
Christine Swintak
Curated by Marissa Neave: http://www.marissaneave.com/
Teacher and writer John Mohawk, in the book Original Instructions, describes nature as “everything that supports life on the planet.” This spacious definition of nature is a powerful statement that allows for cultural production to be considered within a broader ecology where people—and what they create—are a part of nature as well. Gather explores these conceptual possibilities by bringing together works that collapse the commonly held perception that culture somehow exists separately from nature, while emphasizing the emergent social relationships that are nurtured by various environments. Anchored by a network of sculptural, kinetic and data-driven works that invite the audience to assemble, congregate and interact, Gather playfully complicates the ways that we, as natural objects and cultural subjects, can consider our own roles in a world where the natural and the urban overlap, blend and coexist. In order to emphasize the ecological properties of cultural production, additional roving projects, responding to the real-time events of Scotiabank Nuit Blanche at OCAD University, will contribute a spontaneous, performative and durational element. Scotiabank Nuit Blanche is the perfect catalyst for the blurring, shifting and transforming of social, cultural and artistic boundaries; Gather attempts to explore these ever-changing relationships by emphasizing collaboration, experience and play.
Marc De Pape is a creative technologist, an artist/designer/thinker with a Master's in Design in Digital Futures from OCAD University and a BFA in Digital Image and Sound in the Fine Arts from Concordia University. Between his undergrad degree and his Master's, Marc worked at the Royal Ontario Museum as an audio/video producer while also freelancing as a director/editor primarily for music videos. Previously, he also played in Reverie Sound Revue, where he wrote and produced the band’s 2009 full-length release. While much of his skill set resides in media production, his greater interests lie in the realm of urbanism and situated technologies and how they relate to everyday routines. In essence, duration is his primary material, still relying heavily on media production. His studies however, infuse the work with greater meaning.
Shannon Gerard practice spans a variety of media. She writes and draws books, crochets, makes prints and produces large-scale installations incorporating stop-motion animation and wheat paste. Her work with public projects such as The Carl Wagan Bookmobile and Mountain School Bookhouse employs play as a strategy for walking the line between studio practice and pedagogy. Shannon is a principal collaborator at The Book Bakery (Publication Studio Toronto) and an Assistant Professor in Publications and Print Media at OCAD University.
Annyen Lam is a multi-disciplinary artist whose practice includes lithography, book arts and paper-cutting. Drawing inspiration from the primordial world, weather patterns and maps, her latest works have been large-scale installations using paper to create fictitious landscapes. Through her work, she addresses themes of displacement, isolation, permanence and co-existence. A recent graduate of OCAD University with a specialization in Printmaking, Lam currently resides in Toronto. She has participated in exhibitions and print exchanges in Toronto, Ottawa, Japan, Russia and Venezuela.
Relay Studio: creates software experiences for things and places to ask questions about being human. The Studio is a collaboration among Andrew Lovett-Barron, Eliot Callahan, Adam Carlucci and Nick Crampton.
Christine Swintak is a Canadian artist working in variety of media including site-responsive sculpture, installation, performance and video. Approaching the world as her studio, her projects have included moving almost an entire house by hand without the aid of machinery, creating the most banal rollercoaster ever made in the head office of an energy drink corporation, building a full-size ship through collective improvisation, running an election party campaign for the Irish underworld, transforming a city-issued dumpster into a fully-operational luxury boutique hotel and attempting to give a shed consciousness. She has exhibited at galleries, festivals and museums across Canada and internationally, including The Power Plant (Toronto), Kuandu Museum of Modern Art (Taipei), Hessel Museum (New York), HMK Mariakapel (Holland), Model Niland (Ireland), YYZ Artist’s Outlet (Toronto) and Art Gallery of Ontario (Toronto). In the past few years she has been awarded the Canada Council International Residency at La Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris, a fellowship at the Headlands Centre for the Arts, Alumni New Works Award in partnership with USA Projects and a Chalmers Fellowship from the Ontario Arts Council.
Gather is an Independent Project funded by OCAD University. The complete program for the evening is available on the Scotiabank Nuit Blanche website.
Material Sponsor – Above Ground Art Supplies
Marc De Pape, The Chime: Scoring the City, 2013
www.scotiabanknuitblanche.ca/2012/curators/
Free