GREEN GAZING
Green Gazing is an immersive multimedia installation that includes interactivity, sound, image and biofeedback. In a room of plants, the audience/participants will experience guided movement amidst ambient sound and video rooted in ecological elements. Surround sound and multi walled projections are altered through live manipulation and using bio data gathered from the plants in the room. The ambient electronic sound and videoscape becomes a co-creation between plant, participant and artist.
Funded by the Ontario Arts Council for research and creation in 2018-2019
Ashley Bowa is an emerging filmmaker, media artist, and arts educator based in Toronto. She is also trained as a yoga, pilates, and outdoor education instructor.
Lesley Marshall / LES666 is an award-winning filmmaker and intermedia artist. Projection art by Lesley has been exhibited at the National Art Centre, Montreal Jazz Fest, and Centre PHI.
Keywords: Anxiety | Community
VIRTUAL PATICIPATORY PERFORMANCE
Sun, Nov 7, 2 PM ET
CLOSING DAY
Experience a Green Gazing “Virtual Performance” where the public are invited to engage in a movement class over a virtual meeting space led by Ashley Bowa. Participants can move and see the video response the plants have to the “class”. For this presentation, please create a comfortable space to enjoy the meditation: a comfy chair or a mat on the floor. We invite you to bring nature into your space in whatever way speaks to you (e.g. a houseplant, fallen leaves, a handful of dirt, a bowl of water, etc). You will just need yourself and, if you feel like joining the movements, some space to stretch. A Q&A will follow afterword.
A “Virtual Field Guide” will be available for download to learn more about Green Gazing, investigate indigenous plants of the Toronto area, write down your ecological anxieties, and explore our changing environmental landscape.
Please RSVP below in order to participate in this performance:
Accessibility
If you require ASL interpretation, please reach out to Raine Laurent-Eugene at raine_laurenteugene@workmanarts.com, at least 48 hours before the performance in order for us to ensure that we are able to accommodate. Open captioning will be available.
ALSO OF INTEREST
SZEPTY/WHISPERS: DIALOGUE
Through the voices of various artists, this web-based experience explores the relationship between mental health, language, and lineage. Many awareness campaigns urge us to “break the silence”. But the question of whether – or how – to speak is complicated. Mental health discourses are shaped by particular histories, which reverberate in the present. By juxtaposing multiple perspectives, Szepty/Whispers: Dialogue aims to expand the possibilities for how we communicate about madness, trauma, and neurodivergence. The content is offered in the form of audio files, transcripts, and ASL videos.
The process for Szepty/Whispers: Dialogue began when artist Veronique West invited seven collaborators to make audio recordings in response to open-ended questions about mental health, language and lineage. The collaborators were: mia susan amir, Kagan Goh, Maya Jones, Constantin Lozitsky, Jivesh Parasram, Kendra Place, and Manuel Axel Strain. A digital platform was developed to host the recordings, through collaboration between the Cultch Digital Storytelling Team, Sound Designer David Mesiha, Inclusive Designer JD Derbyshire, Dramaturg Kathleen Flaherty, Deaf Interpreter Ladan Sahraei, Production Coordinator Brian Postalian and Veronique West. Szepty/Whispers: Dialogue was first presented at the 2021 rEvolver Festival.
Consultants: Amy Amantea, June Fukumura, Simran Gill, and MariFer Rios.
For a full list of the Szepty/Whispers: Dialogue team’s biographies, please follow the link below:
CREATIVE TEAM BIOGRAPHIES
Keywords: 2SLGBTQIA+ | BIPOC Experience | Community | Disability | Family
COLLABORATOR ARTISTS TALK
Recording available online Oct 28 – Nov 7
Accessibility
For Artist Talk:
ASL and Closed Captions
For work in exhibition:
ASL, Transcripts, Audio Playback
Content Warnings
Brief references to colonization, war, genocide, child abuse, suicide, and psychiatric hospitalization. Detailed description of ableism, depression, mania, trauma, and a parent’s incarceration. The content does not play automatically and can be paused or skipped.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Digital Platform Realization by: The Cultch Digital Storytelling Team
Developed at Playwrights Theatre Centre as part of the Associates program.
The project has also been supported by:
Upintheair Theatre’s rEvolver Festival
The National Theatre School of Canada’s Art Apart initiative
The parallel in-person performance has been supported by:
the Canada Council for the Arts
the BC Arts Council
the Province of British Columbia
Playwrights Theatre Centre
Rumble Theatre
Progress Lab 1422
Chimerik似不像 Collective
Boca del Lupo and Rice & Beans Theatre’s DBLSPK series
Mentorship with Boca del Lupo’s Artistic Director Sherry J. Yoon
Universal Limited’s Horizontal Help program
The Arts Club Theatre Company’s LEAP Playwriting Intensive
The Cultch Digital Storytelling Team would like to thank the Canada Council for the Arts
ALSO OF INTEREST
COAL MINES AND TREE TOPS
Dani Crosby
This body of work titled Coal Mines and Tree Tops follows the main character, a canary through different scenarios meant to represent an autistic experience. These images represent the experiences of the artist, Dani. However, they are meant to be related to by anyone who finds a connection to the work. This body of work discusses Dani’s personal experiences as an autistic person. Dani chose the canary as a visual metaphor for strength, sensitivity, vulnerability, and perceived expendability. Each piece explores a different experience and their creation has helped Dani process these experiences, some for the first time. In this series, Dani visually discusses subject matter such as: positive connection, strengths, relationships, abuse, sensory management and overwhelm, vulnerability to predatory individuals, coping mechanisms, the weight of masking and more.
“I decided to create this work about my experiences because I finally feel safe to do so. I feel it is time to remember out loud, to create visual evidence of past and present challenges and joys associated with my identity. I feel it is time to start sharing my experiences with others. This is a first step in what I hope will be an ongoing discussion in my work. This work serves to benefit me therapeutically and also possibly provide others with understanding and a sense of compassion between myself and those who have had similar experiences.” -Dani Crosby
Dani Crosby is an artist, illustrator, arts educator and community collaborator working and living in central Oshawa. Art has become many things for Dani – a service they offer and an experience to share in academic settings. But before any of these things it serves as a place to put the parts of themselves that have nowhere else to go. Dani recognizes how lucky they are to have this outlet. Dani has been making art since childhood and has never stopped. They began showing, creating illustrations, and teaching visual arts in 2004 and continue to this day.
Keywords: Alcoholism | Anxiety | Depression | Trauma
PANEL:
JOIN THE CONVERSATION: CHANGING THE NARRATIVE
AUTISTIC REELS: RECLAIMING OUR STORIES
Sun, Oct 31, 1 PM ET
Note: The link to the virtual panel is accompanied with the film ticket to “Autistic Reels: Reclaiming Our Stories”.
All films are PWYW
ACCESSIBILITY
ALSO OF INTEREST
TOURS
Watch Leena Raudvee take part of the virtual guided tour of the In(site) exhibition held on Sat, Oct 30, 12 PM ET
HYBRID PRECARITY
Leena Raudvee
Hybrid Precarity is a series of pen and ink drawings that has emerged out of a daily drawing practice from the last year of pandemic related anxieties and isolation. It is superimposed, by necessity, on ongoing issues of vulnerability, disability and the precariousness of severely limited mobility.
As internal self-portraits, these drawings respond to changes in Raudvee’s emotional and physical body, as body in process, and become records of the evolving dis-eased body. They are reflections on a strangely hybrid identity, attached to walking aids and no longer wholly human.
Hybrid Precarity is an online slideshow of black and white drawings, accompanied by a sound recording of dissonant sounds, of things creaking and broken.
Leena Raudvee is a Toronto-based visual and performance artist, who focuses on the body in relation to personal history and social interchange.
Raudvee’s drawings, which investigate the performative embodied within the drawing of a line, have been exhibited in numerous juried shows including Drawing 2021 at the John B. Aird Gallery, Drawing Unlimited at the Propeller Gallery and Unpacking Pandemic Pondering with OCADU and Gallery 1313.
In performance art, Raudvee has explored disability and aging in Teetering on an Edge for Pi*llOry in Toronto and in Making Space, as video, screened in Photophobia 2020, presented by Hamilton Artists Inc. and Hamilton Art Gallery.
Keywords: Disability | Trauma
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Recipient of the Ontario Arts Council grant for Deaf and Disability Arts Projects:
Materials for Visual Artists
UNBREAKABLE
Amplify Collective
Amplify Collective loudly and proudly presents the performance experience
UNBREAKABLE.
People in positions of power and their systems of oppression exert intense pressure on historically oppressed individuals and communities. Still we rise! We will not crumble in the face of this Intergenerational Trauma. Instead we continuously challenge racism, sexism, poverty and injustice. United we push back against these oppressive systems, the patriarchy and inequity. The strength that exists within our communities and the weight of injustice is woven within this performance through the use of symbols, body movement, music, distressed textiles and elaborate, wearable sculptures. Individually we endure, but collectively we are UNBREAKABLE.
Together we continue to heal!
Performances by Kayla Ross-Jackson, Caitlin Marzali, KJ McKnight, Matt Eldracher, Sebastian Marzali, Chy Ryan Spain, Scarlet Black, Sze-Yang Ade-Lam, Aryana Malekzadeh, Jaz Fairy J & more!
CREDITS
Curation & Costuming: Allie Amplify
Lighting Designer: Sebastian Marzali
Set Assistant: Jack Comerford
Makeup: Elene Seepe
Hair: Dmitry Komendant
Amplify Collective is a Toronto-based wearable art, performance and advocacy company. They create one-of-a-kind wearable art pieces, as well as host community classes and live experiences. Founder Allie Amplify has an extensive background in fashion, marketing and events. Her designs have lit up the stages of Fashion Art Toronto, the MMVA’s, PRIDE, the ROM and more!
Amplify Collective is a community of individuals with lived mental health and addiction experiences. Despite these challenges they have prevailed and hope to share a message of resilience and growth.
Turn up the volume with Amplify!
Keywords: 2SLGBTQIA+ | Activism | BIPOC Experience | Community
OPENING NIGHT & RECEPTION
Reception + The Meaning of Empathy (with panel) + UNBREAKABLE
Starting at 5 PM at CAMH Auditorium
IN PERSON PERFORMANCE
Thurs, Oct 28, 9:30 PM
CAMH Auditorium, 1025 Queen St W
VIRTUAL PERFORMANCE
The recorded live streamed performance is available to view in the In(site) virtual exhibition:
Content Warnings
Loud sounds
Nudity
CO-PRESENTER
ALSO OF INTEREST
A Virtual Exhibition
In-Site, Incite, & Insight
Rather than experience the festival’s exhibition on-site, this year we experience it “in-site” — in a website, in the digital world, in the virtual. The works in the festival this year have been selected with the intention of being experienced virtually.
The artists bring insight to their experiences of the world having changed, how it continues to change and what this change can offer. This includes our growing awareness around mental health, our relationships with both the physical and digital worlds, and how the works can incite us into action. The exhibiting works investigate these themes and more, providing room to engage with the arts in a time when interacting and experiencing work has been significantly impacted. Through these works, we recognize that we are in the moment, in the current, in the site.
Visit the virtual exhibition here:
insite.workmanarts.com
IN THE EXHIBITION:
SELF // ISOLATION
Chelsea Watson
UNBREAKABLE
Amplify Collective
HYBRID PRECARITY
Leena Raudvee
SZEPTY/WHISPERS: DIALOGUE
COAL MINES AND TREE TOPS
Dani Crosby
GREEN GAZING
Ashley Bowa & Lesley Marshall
HOW WE CARED
Saroja Ponnambalam & Rupali Morzaria
This year, the exhibition in the Rendezvous With Madness Festival will be presented virtually which will be accessible throughout the festival from October 28 to November 7. Work including timed events and performances will be accessible through the virtual exhibition site through the link below:
VIRTUAL GUIDED TOUR
Watch the virtual guided tour of the In(site) exhibition held on Sat, Oct 30, 12 PM ET
SPECIAL IN PERSON FEATURES
- How we cared video installation will be on the ground floor window of 1025 Queen St W, available 24/7.
- UNBREAKABLE performance will be presented live on opening night, in the CAMH Auditorium at 1025 Queen St W.
ONLINE LIVE EVENTS
- Green Gazing invites the public to engage in a movement class as a virtual participatory performance on the final day of the festival.
ARTIST TALKS
- Szepty/Whispers:Dialogue
Collaborator Artist Talk - Self Isolation – Learning to make Computational Art during a Global Pandemic
A Master Class by Chelsea Watson
ACCESSIBILITY
If either online or in-person access is a barrier, please contact Paulina Wiszowata at paulina_wiszowata@workmanarts.com.
Workman Arts will have available the In(site) virtual exhibition displayed and interactable on a monitor in their front office at 1025 Queen St W Suite 2400.
Available during Box Office hours:
Monday – Friday, 10 AM – 4 PM.
Visit the Accessibility page for further festival info.
ALSO OF INTEREST
SELF // ISOLATION
Chelsea Watson
Self // Isolation is a collection of digital pieces generated from photographs taken by the artist in her home. One portrait was taken for every month she spent alone in isolation during the COVID-19 pandemic. Using code to manipulate the photographs through a process called generative art, the images morph from everyday household objects and scenes of day-to-day life, into indiscernible blurs. Drawing from experience with anxiety and depression, the artist attempts to capture the chaos, fog and distortion, which is often experienced in times of trauma, and acutely felt by most during the pandemic. The project is a comment on the unreliability of memory and the brain’s misperception of reality, and ultimately a reflection on the artist’s progressive mental decline during the lockdown.
Chelsea Watson is an artist from Calgary, Canada currently residing in Toronto. Her unique process, known as generative or computational art, uses creative coding to make computer programs that create art. Chelsea’s work is purposefully random with an appreciation for imperfection. She draws inspiration from tactile art forms, such as paintings, ceramics and textiles to create layered and textured pieces with code as her medium.
Keywords: Addiction | Dispalcement | Harm Reduction | Healthcare | Indigenous rights | Trauma
MASTER CLASS:
SELF ISOLATION – LEARNING TO MAKE COMPUTATIONAL ART
DURING A GLOBAL PANDEMIC
In spring 2020, Chelsea Watson taught herself how to make art from code by creating 100 computational pieces in 100 days. What started as an exploration of a new artistic medium, this structured approach to creating art became a way for her to connect and cope while self-isolating for the better part of a year. Join Chelsea as she takes you through her challenge, and walks you through a hands-on workshop to explore generative art and introduce the basics of creating art using code.
Recording available online Oct 28 – Nov 7
ACCESSIBILITY
ALSO OF INTEREST
David Constantino Salazar: Forever (Bird-Botanicals) @ Gardiner Museum
- August 21 to 31, 2021
Saturday, August 21 to 31, 2021
Community Arts Space 2021
Project led by David Constantino Salazar
In collaboration with participants from Workman Arts
Established in 2016, Community Arts Space (CAS) is the Gardiner’s incubator for arts-based projects that build community through clay making. As part of CAS2021, artist David Constantino Salazar presents Forever (Bird-Botanicals) in partnership with members of Workman Arts, a Toronto-based arts organization that promotes a greater understanding of mental health and addiction.
Inspired by folk tales and allegories passed on from his grandparents in Ecuador, Salazar uses the symbol of the bird to explore themes of hope, freedom, and growth while reflecting on personal tragedy and collective trauma. Salazar asks us to meditate on the concept of human resilience, an idea especially pertinent as we begin to recover from the impact of the global pandemic.
Salazar created over 200 birds during a two-month residency at the Gardiner. While the clay was still soft, he threw the birds at a wall, evoking a physical, mental, and spiritual rupture, and at the same time preserving their beauty and energy. As the title suggests, the birds endure, albeit in a new form. Salazar encourages us all to approach traumas as opportunities for transformation, adaptation, and renewal, while remaining sensitive to how these experiences change and challenge us.
Appearing alongside Salazar’s work are birds made by participants from Workman Arts who took part in online workshops lead by the artist in July 2021. In contrast to Salazar’s birds, displayed on the gallery walls, the birds created by the Workman Arts participants gather on the ground. The space between these two groupings creates an uncomfortable tension that we are encouraged to sit with rather than ignore.
Additional birds made by community members and Gardiner visitors in a series of hands-on workshops are on view throughout the Museum.
David Constantino Salazar is a Toronto-based sculptor with a Master of Fine Arts degree from OCAD University. He has exhibited widely, including at Carnival, Rio de Janeiro (2012); the Spadina Museum, Nuit Blanche, Toronto (2015); and the first presentation of Forever (Bird-Botanicals) at the third International Biennial of Asunción in Paraguay (March 2020).
Supporting Sponsors
Susan Crocker & John Hunkin
BROWSE CURRENT EVENTS
No recommended events under this criteria
GENRE: DANCE, INTERACTIVE, MEDIA ART, MUSICAL, PERFORMANCE ART, POETRY, SHORT FILM, THEATRE, VISUAL ART
TOPIC: COMMUNITY, EDUCATION, MUSIC
Put Friday, June 25 in your calendar – we’ll be doing an end of term virtual open house to showcase the work that Workman Artists have been doing throughout the spring term. If you’d like to see what we’ve been up to, click the RSVP button to register and receive the link to join. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.
Schedule
5:00-5:10 Land Acknowledgement/Welcome
5:10-5:15 Performance Art Salon
5:15-5:35 Improv
5:35-5:50 First Person Documentary
5:50-6:10 Find your Voice
6:10- 6:20 The Exploration & Expression of Body/Space
6:20- 6:30 Bruised Years Choir – performance by Julie Crann & Ethelrida Zabala-Laxa
6:30- 7:00 Reclaiming Our Mother Tongues & Write Out of Your Comfort Zone
7:00- 8:00 Self Stories Theatre
This event is FREE and everyone is welcome. We hope you can join us to enjoy this showcase from home – wherever that may be! In case the Zoom event reaches capacity, we will also live stream this event on the Workman Arts Facebook page.
We also have a virtual Gallery on Flickr https://www.flickr.com/photos/193283975@N06/galleries/72157719479293760/
BROWSE CURRENT EVENTS
No recommended events under this criteriaThis is the Inspiration You Need Right Now - Toronto Edition
Based on a 2021 Digital Workshop Series that Lisa Anita Wegner created for Yuri Araj for KickStart Disability Art and Culture in Vancouver, Workman Arts presents the Toronto Edition. You will hear from Apanaki Temitayo M & Lisa Anita Wegner, two extraordinary artists who live with multiple invisible disabilities and have made it a priority to not let that stand in the way of achieving their creative and life goals. Join us for an hour and a half long presentation of art, films, stories and inspiration. Talks will be followed with a Q&A period.
Where: Zoom
When: Thursday, April 8, 2021, 6 PM – 7.30 PM EST
This is a free event for Workman Arts members and the general public.
ASL interpretation and live captioning will be available.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Born in Toronto and raised in Trinidad and Tobago, Apanaki Temitayo M is a single mother of three. She is an author, spoken word poet, actor, multimedia artist and teacher. Her canvas compositions are an expression of her Trinidadian heritage and spirituality. Apanaki is currently the CAMH 1st Artist in Wellness. She is currently an Art Facilitator with Workman Arts Art Cart Program and the Textile Museum of Canada, Community Voices Outreach Program. She was the Workman Arts Artist-in-Residence for 2017 – 2018. She has been featured at Workman Arts, Being Scene 18th Annual Juried Exhibition 2019 at the Toronto Media Art Gallery. She has made her international debut at the North Charleston Cultural Arts Department, 9th Annual African American Fibre Art Exhibition: Maya Angelou, with her original artwork, Mama’s Watching in South Carolina. Her New York debut at The Amazing Nina Simone Documentary Film by Jeff Lieberman, with her piece Nina Simone Fragmented.
She was honoured to be the first woman of colour to be in the Room Magazine: Woman of Color Issue for 2016 and her commissioned artwork Oshun Blooming was the face of Grow Room Feminist Literary Art Festival, 2018. Apanaki teaches her art practice at Workman Arts Encore Program for Inpatients, with experience as a facilitator CAMH, Gifts of Light, Workman Arts Art-Cart Program, Toronto East General Hospital, Mental Health Outpatient Clinic, Drop-In Art Class and at Workman Arts, CAMH. Rise Asset Development, helped to support her in becoming the Sole Proprietor of APNKI Designs. Her handcrafts and fine artwork merchandise, soft furnishings and accessories, are all made in Canada. She received an Honourable Mention in 2015, and received the Rise’s Peer Powered EnterpRISEr of the Year Award at the Dr Paul E.Garfinkel Award for Entrepreneurial Achievement, RISE Asset Development, from Rotman School of Business, University of Toronto.
To see more work please visit: https://apanaki-temitayo-m.pixels.com
Lisa Anita Wegner a MAD and disabled public artist. Lisa is a filmmaker, performer, curator, producer and art project consultant at haus of dada. Lisa is the creative producer of Mighty Brave Productions, an award-winning multi-media production company and a founding member of the Akhilanda Collaborative, Zebra Pictures Inc and Haus of Dada.
Her work has been shown at the Phoenix Art Museum, Art Gallery of Ontario, Mayworks Festival, Nuit Blanche, ReelAsian Film Festival, Long Winter, Gallery 1313, Toronto Art Fair, Buddies in Bad Times, The Black Cat Artspace, TIFF and NXNE Festival. Her ventures into large-scale performance installations include the 26-foot “Queen Of The Parade,”; a 10-foot version of The Queen was commissioned by Partners in Art, for ARTrageous In Motion. Lisa is pushing further with the Ubermarionette movement, performing in venues like Anandam’s Body Break at Theatre Passe Muraille, PROCESS at Artscape Youngplace, Buddies in Bad Times, Fringe and Rendezvous with Madness Festival. Lisa exhibited writing and photography in Yoko Ono’s ARISING exhibition at The Phi Centre in Montreal and has two photographs in a group show Shame Radiant, with East Window and Red Line Contemporary Art Centre in Denver Colorado. Lisa is proud to co-produce with Tangled Art + Disability.
Lisa has brought over 200 full-scale projects to completion over three decades, ranging from professional theatre to film & television, to large-scale art installations, immersive theatre projects and social experiments. In addition, Lisa has mentored over 30 film and art interns from various universities, colleges and art schools, many of whom are working in creative industries today.
To see more work: www.mightybraveproductions.com