MY LEFT-HAND IS TALKING AND MY RIGHT-HAND IS NURTURING
Jessica Field

The collection of poetry and drawings in My left-hand is talking and my right-hand is nurturing, explores the experience of moving past survival mode to let go of false perceptions of self, building the capacity to reclaim a truer sense of identity. It is about the experience of living with inexplicable illness and pain, loss of memory, abuse, love, and loss. It celebrates the beauty of imagination’s power to heal the body, rejuvenate our sense of self, and teach better ways of living.

Everything Jessica Field makes is biased to her lived experience. She creates AI drawings to explore new configurations on what drawing about pure emotion can be about in relation to the greater concept of the human condition. The artist’s drawings act as material that is reinterpreted by an “other”, to compose hundreds of variations as a way of seeing greater possibilities outside the limits of her lived experience. This “other” remains anchored by the artist’s genuine inner emotional life exploring how feelings, unconscious memory and experience is embodied in the gesture of line, in how the exploration into the self can lead to visual expressions that are universally relatable and authentic to lived experience.

The objective of these drawings is to illustrate the complicated space in dealing with the human bias, ignorance, and still manage to connect and understand a divergent perspective. This project shows how empathy and perspective taking bridges these gaps by putting the discussion into the space of universal human experience where we all can relate to each other.

Jessica Field works with installation, video and performance to create AI systems to show the impact of our environment on mental health and how individual histories and temperaments influence the ways that we live our lives. Jessica has exhibited in Sweden, Switzerland, Austria and Canada. She has shown in Electrohype 2008, the Montreal Museum of Fine Art, Oboro, Optica, the Museum Tingely and at Kunsthaus Graz. 

Jessica teaches as a full-time sessional at Toronto Metropolitan University; she received her AOCAD at the Ontario College of Art and Design, Toronto, Ontario and her MFA at Concordia University in Montreal, Quebec.

Artist website:  jessicafield.ca

Credits

Coding Visual Layout Algorithm: Meera Balendran
Book Designer: Lisa Kiss Design
Video and Editing: Empty Cup Media
Images, Poetry, and Artificial Life Algorithms: Jessica Field

Content Warnings

This artwork contains content that may be triggering to some individuals.

Keywords: Anxiety | Grief | Psychiatry | Trauma

#RWMFest #MoreThanRebellion

HOW WE CARED
Saroja Ponnambalam & Rupali Morzaria

How can we create our own architectures of liberation? How we cared (3-channel video installation) is a return to Pandi Kumaraswamy’s archives, reinterpreting the multiple systems of care in his life, over which he had varying levels of autonomy. This expanded schematic of forced care, natural forms of care and creative care. The three sites operate within a fluid and undetermined ecosystem spanning the healthcare/medical world to the spiritual/natural based on family experiences. The schematic attempts to move away from finite solutions to healing medically diagnosed disorders. It prompts viewers to take a step back from conventional architectural practices that use speculative methods to conjure up imaginary built environments for those receiving mental health care.

Saroja Ponnambalam is an Ontario-based filmmaker. Her art practice involves working with a variety of documentary mediums – animation, photographs, family video archives and interviews. Her more recent work explores intergenerational mental health experiences through an intersectional lens.

Rupali Morzaria is a designer and film programmer currently based in Tiohti:áke/ Montreal. She is moved by storytelling and movement—in film, dance, and advertising—and uses design as a way to indulge in this fascination. Her work is based in traditional forms of print media and finding new forms of expression within contemporary media arts.

Keywords: BIPOC Experience | Bipolar Disorder(s)| Depression | Family | Psychiatry

Made with funding support from Toronto Arts Council and Ontario Arts Council

a note from Oliver Jane, Creator of Jo Don’t Go There

Sometimes the “show must not go on” and that’s ok.

When I made the decision to not move forward with my piece Jo Don’t Go There in Rendezvous with Madness 2020, I was encouraged by my friend and contact at Workman Arts to write a short reflection for all of you in lieu of the show. Here you will find some rambling, musing, and reflecting. Thank you for taking a brief moment to reflect with me.

When I agreed to move forward with the project several months ago, I was excited by the challenge of transferring my live performance pieces to video web content. Unfortunately, I found that meeting the demands of a precarious/always changing pandemic environment made completing the project difficult. I am an artist that lives with chronic pain, Rheumatoid Arthritis, PTSD symptoms, and OCD symptoms. The greatest lesson I have learned from managing all of these is that I should not go beyond my limits. Unfortunately, working in solo-isolation and not having funding to adequately compensate others to do the much-needed-tasks to make this project show-ready was bringing me close to my limits.

Since I made the choice to pause the show, the phrase “the show must go on” has been echoing through my mind. Upon reflecting on the nagging presence of this phrase within my mind, I recall that I have, almost exclusively, operated within creative environments where that sentence is espoused. I have worked in so many creative environments where the expectation to see a show to its completion is demanded of artists, producers, and production teams: no matter the cost. My years training to be an artist and working professionally have been colored by watching many friends and colleagues sacrifice their physical and mental health to see work to its completion. For many years I have wondered if creative communities should let go of the phrase “the show much go on” and refrain from normalizing the practice of sacrificing physical and mental wellness amongst artists. What I have witnessed in theatre schools and amongst theatre makers has made me consciously attempt to avoid working myself beyond my limits so that I do not worsen my already-sometimes-very-challenging health.

So I say once again, to comfort myself and to encourage those who find themselves also facing projects, businesses, and plans that need to be put on pause, closed, or canceled as a result of the pandemic: “the show must not go on” and that’s ok.

I’d like to offer gratitude to the team who has assisted me during this process. Though the show will not be viewed in this festival, I am continuing the reflect on and develop the body of work I have made thus far. I feel I must offer my deep gratitude to all those who gave me their time and talents.

• I am grateful for the opportunity to collaborate with my older brother, a very skilled video editor, who has been a cherished peer, mentor, and teacher (of art and life) for these last several months.
• I am grateful to the handful of talented musician friends who were willing to do some work on this project for free, for very low fees, or for barter.
• I am grateful to Workman Arts for supporting me as I adjusted the show to the changes brought about by the pandemic. This is my second experience working with Workman Arts, and I cannot emphasize enough how much I appreciate the work Kelly, Scott, Cara, Paulina, and the rest of the team working behind the scenes at Workman Arts do to make this really special festival happen. And during a pandemic, no less!
• Finally, I am grateful for organizations like Workman Arts that are actively striving to foster greater diversity of representation within the Ontario and Toronto creative community. I hope you all will continue to support and patronize Workman Arts even after the festival has passed.

I hope you enjoy the rest of the festival, you remember to stay safe, you do what you can to support and aid the most vulnerable in our communities, you donate to groups and organizations that are trying to address the already existing racial and economic inequality within North America that has been exacerbated by the pandemic, and you all focus your energies on taking care of your immunity and your mental health while the world faces global crisis. I know I will!

I send love and gratitude to you all.

-Oliver Jane

Enter the mind of Jo, a nonbinary trauma survivor, video artist and clown. Meet Jo’s consciousness embodied: their performative imaginary friend Oli Oli Ennui, a snarky clown who doesn’t take all this modern art stuff too seriously. If you know Jo’s personal story (hailing from NYC, navigating OCD and PTSD while occupying space in Toronto during the pandemic), do you know Jo? If you hear Oli sing punk-injected cabaret, do you know their soul? Experience Jo’s multimedia happening: a video series, music playlists, Instagram uploads, photo exhibition and a live installation performance at 651 Dufferin Street. This collection of fragments resonates in permanent refrain: Do you know me now?

Founded by Maria Wodzinska and Oliver Jane in 2017, goat(h)owl generates collaboratively devised experiences. Grounded in the body, at the core of every piece is a question. We take flight through our investigation of the thematic territory, of our position to the question, and of our will-to-know. We attempt to affirm the unknowable with proposals — playing in-front-of/with/around an audience. We want to shake up sedimented modalities of meaning and truth-telling with our moving ensemble. We point the eye to the kaleidoscope of forms created. Do we invite the audience to make meaning? Yes. Do we make meaning? Come and see.

CONTENT WARNINGS

Loud Sounds, Mature Language, Nudity, Rape and/or Sexual Violence, Sexual Content, Suicide

Neuroelastic is a self-activated artistic performance. Taking a cue from the well-known concept of Dr. Norman Doidge’s neuroplasticity, it is inspiring that the mind can adapt in new ways. The artist imagined an idea; by wrapping oneself in streams of coloured synaptic “bandages” this symbolic act can allow thoughts and feelings to show on the outside. Using photography as documentation, a capture of the moment reveals what is hidden. This artwork of self-permission reflects on not only the unseen being seen, but that it can be changed. This collection of images I hope can read as a zany family album of the mind. Neuroelastic is an interior selfie and an invitation to an altered way of being.

Laura Shintani is a Toronto-based multimedia artist who creates work in order to provoke questions in artistic forms. Shintani represents a hybrid of work, art making, study and teaching. She is interested in seeing people embrace the cycle of creativity: playing, problem solving and reflecting. Raised in small-town Ontario, Shintani later studied fashion design at Ryerson University and received a degree from the University of Toronto. After personal discovery she made art a vocation and earned a Master of Fine Art from the University of Windsor. Shintani’s most significant exhibition was at the Royal Ontario Museum in 2019.

This artist has interactive materials which will be provided in the RWM swag bag in order to interact with their virtual content. All ticket holders will be invited to receive RWM swag bags available for free curbside pickup during festival hours.

Images of the Neuroelastic installation in Re:Building Resilience:

Photos by Henry Chang

Ectoplasm would leak from psychic mediums during photography sessions as a manifestation of the spirit entering the physical world. Expulsion often caused great pain to the psychic mediums creating it. At times the substance was solid and would take the shape of a face or body parts, while at other times it was fluid and contained imagery of spirits or memories. Ectoplasms is a multi-channel video installation that depicts the decay and dripping of photographs. The images initially seem static, but they begin to move around the viewer in ways that defy gravity and orientation. As the viewer tries to place the imagery, they grapple with its disappearance.

Megan Moore is a Montreal-based media artist. Through the manipulation of personal and public archives, her immersive photo and video installations offer reflections on memory, grief and the photographic medium. Megan has exhibited in Canada (FOFA Gallery, Orillia Museum of Art and History, Toronto Media Arts Centre) and Europe (Maison de la Photographie, France, Ulster Museum, UK.) In 2015 she won the Montreal Emerging Photographer award. Megan holds a BFA in Photography from Concordia University and an MFA in Studio Arts from the University of Guelph.

Images of the Ectoplasms installation in Re:Building Resilience:

Photos by Henry Chang

Intolerance of Uncertainty is an installation that combines a single-channel video, Instruction to the Ball Measure and the Ball in a fictional setting that resembles the interior of a psychiatrist therapy session. This participatory work asks an audience to sit as “a testee” to assess the levels of their own anxiety. The audience can grab the red ball placed on the table, which also appears in the video, and follow each gesture of the hands interacting with the ball. It is to measure an individual’s anxiety, especially their intolerance of uncertain future events. The Ball physically channels its participant to the imagined realm of psychiatry, unfolding in the video through its tactility.

Ivetta Sunyoung Kang is an interdisciplinary visual and video artist and writer, currently based in Montreal. She studied film directing in South Korea and earned her MFA in Film Production at Concordia University. She has presented short films and videos at film festivals and galleries around the world, including in South Korea, Canada, Germany and the United States. In 2016, Kang was shortlisted for the Simon Blais Award in Canada. She recently published a poetry book entitled Absent Seats and is a co-founding member of the artist collective Quite Ourselves, and the A/V duo CCVX?.

This artist has interactive materials which will be provided in the first 50 RWM swag bag in order to interact with their virtual content. All ticket holders will be invited to receive RWM swag bags available for free curbside pickup during festival hours.

To purchase this work, please visit our online store. To purchase only the interactive item, click here.

Images of the Intolerance of Uncertainty installation in Re:Building Resilience:

Photos by Henry Chang

Breathe expresses a journey from spark to growth to breakdown to acceptance. The piece includes a mix of Breakin’, Popping and House dance styles with a focus on Breakin’. This piece is inspired by Breakin’ culture, the artist’s power-infused dance style and his experience battling with anxiety. Breathe is a journey into the height of success and the depth of anxiety. We live in a world filled with high expectations from self and others. Breathe lets audiences know that it’s okay not to feel okay. Breathe highlights Breakin’ as an art form with depth, character and history stemming from the roots of lived experience. Accepting who we are. One day at a time. One breath after another. BREATHE.

Michael ‘Piecez’ Prosserman has been Breakin’ since 1999. Piecez has taught, competed, judged and performed for hundreds of audiences from Asia to Europe to the Canadian Arctic. By high school, he was accepted into Cirque Du Soleil and featured in the motion picture Honey. Piecez is the founder of a grassroots movement that uses hip hop to improve youth mental health called Unity Charity. Piecez is a best-selling author of the new book Building Unity, a university instructor and a mental health advocate. In his solo Breathe, Piecez shares his experiences with mental illness in a leadership role.

CONTENT WARNINGS

Strobe Light

Michael ‘Piecez’ Prosserman and guests will be participating in two virtual Q&A’s:

Saturday, October 17, 8 PM
“Breathe: a dance production + conversation on Mental Health + Community” 

Wednesday, October 21, 6 PM
“Breathe: a dance production + conversation on Mental Health + Work” 

This film adaptation of the award-winning, self-mythologized facade of a rock show incorporates life-sized video projection, original music, gestural choreography and on-the-go stage props to coalesce into a black-box style theatrical spectacle meets dirty diary, exploring the elusive and dichotomous nature of queer identity. With a reliance on the grimy mustard-coloured lights and sequins of 70s glam rock aesthetics, the protagonist travels the mental collapse of a dark night of the soul, searching for purpose in a world that doesn’t care to be purposeful. Themes include rejection, broken promises, wishes on a star, deals with the devil and packing up to leave with no intention of return… leaving behind the ghost of glitter’s past.

James Knott is an emerging, Toronto-based artist, having received a Bachelors of Fine Arts in Integrated Media from OCAD University. Their performance-based practice combines theatre, video and audio art to create immersive and emotionally resonant experiences for the viewer. Explored themes include: paradoxical and queer identity, inner dialogue, mental illness and camp theatrics. Currently their practice looks to house personal narratives and queer experience through poetic re-tellings, self-mythologizing, and auto-iconographic aestheticism.

CONTENT WARNINGS

Strobe Light, Loud Sounds, Nudity, Sexual Content, Self-Harm

James Knott will be participating in a virtual Q&A moderated by Francisco-Fernando Granados on Saturday, October 17, at 7 PM.

Queen Latifah Give Me Strength centers around a woman’s struggle with her identity and her expectations of being disregarded and ignored by the medical industry. Queen Latifah Give Me Strength depicts the frustration, isolation and raving madness that comes with being a Black woman who must rely on medical professionals to stay alive. After an anxiety-filled evening watching the classic 90s film, Set It Off, featuring Queen Latifah, the main character is faced with her strange connection to the celebrity. In a search for answers about her health, she turns to the icon she had once forsaken. Previous version partially developed during Emerging Creators Unit 2020 at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre.

Rochelle R (She/They) is a Canadian-Caribbean multidisciplinary theatre artist, writer, producer and advocate for Black, Queer, Mentally Ill/Disabled communities. Rochelle is passionate about promoting and developing opportunities for Black Artists and encouraging difficult conversations about intersectionality. Rochelle holds a BA in English and Theatre Studies from the University of Guelph and continues to pursue additional training within the GTA and Peel regions. Select companies and programs include b current (Playwriting) bcHUB, Buddies in Bad Times (Play Creation) Emerging Creator’s Unit, Nightwood’s Young Innovator’s Program (Arts Administration/Producing), PIECE OF MINE Arts, dance immersion’s Legacy Leaders Program and more.

CONTENT WARNING

Mature Language, Violence, Loud Sound