Northern Ontario Media Artist Gathering
As part of Cold Waters N2M2L and MANO are welcoming an incredible range of media artists from across Northern Ontario for three days of learning and collaboration. This artists’ lab will culminate on Saturday June 15 with an afternoon of artist-talks and presentations in the Monastery Hall at Nipissing University. This is a unique opportunity for the public and cultural workers to meet artists from across the region and learn about their engagements with media and technology.
For more information contact: symposium@mano-ramo.ca
Public Talks and Exhibitions: Saturday, June 15, 2:00-6:00pm
Monastery Hall, Nipissing University, North Bay
Cold Waters 2019 Remote Studio Fellows:
Casha Adams
Thunder Bay
Casha Adams is an emerging indigenous filmmaker and blogger living in Thunder Bay. Her home community is Couchiching First Nation. She is a founding member of Biizidun, a collective that uses media to create space and address issues for and by indigenous youth.
Imogen Clendinning
Windsor via North Bay
Imogen Clendinning is a settler video artist who hails from the traditional territory of the Three Fires Confederacy of First Nations, comprised of the Ojibway, the Odawa, and the Potawatomie, what is now referred to, in a colonial context, as Windsor, ON. Clendinning identifies as a cisgender femme maker whose found-footage videos deconstruct tropes and signifers used in cult cinema. Her research uses sexploitation films and antiquated technologies to investigate how media images can shape identities and an individual relationship to the lived world. Clendinning’s video-works incorporate themes such as sexuality, violence, femininity, and the inherent anti-capitalism of degraded images. Clendinning recently completed an MFA in Visual Arts from the University of Windsor. Within the year Clendinning participated in the University of Windsor’s Noiseborder festival, and worked collaboratively with the IN/TERMINUS Research Group. Clendinning is currently the Programming Coordinator at Artcite Inc., an artist-run centre focused on community building and bringing contemporary arts to the Windsor-Essex region.
Anyse Ducharme
Sturgeon Falls
Anyse Ducharme is a francophone media artist from northeastern ontario.
Her aesthetic production is engaged with the circulation of digital imagery and the malleability of data. She has exhibited nationally and internationally; notable shows include Proof 23 at Gallery 44 (Toronto), Arti/fiction Realities at la Galerie du Nouvel Ontario (Sudbury), Digital Alterities at InterAccess Electronic Media Arts Centre (Toronto) and as part of the Flash Forward festival for emergent photography (Boston, Portland, Toronto). She has a Masters of Fine Arts in Studio Arts from The University of British Columbia, a Baccalauréat en Arts Visuels from The University of Ottawa (BFA) and a college diploma in 3D Animation from La Cité collégiale (C.A.A.T.)
Shelby Gagnon
Thunder Bay
Shelby Gagnon is an Anishinaabekwe artist from Aroland First Nation, currently living in Thunder Bay. Shelby is a graduate of Lakehead University of the Honours Bachelor of Fine Arts program where she explored culture and traditions of being an Indigenous woman in Canada. Through involvement with community engaged organizations and projects, she uses multi-disciplinary mediums to express and share her holistic feelings. Through working with youth and other artists in Ontario, Shelby is dedicated to expanding her knowledge and contemporary take on traditional methods of art.
Kathryn Huckson
Sault Ste Marie
Huckson graduated with a BFA from Algoma University in 2013 and received her MFA from the University of Windsor in 2017. She has exhibited across Canada and abroad, and has participated in residencies in Paonia, Colorado and in Hue, Vietnam. She has a forthcoming residency and performance project in Varese, Italy in 2019. Huckson is currently sessional faculty at Algoma University and is Program Lead for Digital Creator North in Sault Ste. Marie.
Taylor Jolin
Sault Ste Marie
Taylor Jolin is a print and media artist of Ojibwe heritage living and working in Sault Ste. Marie, ON. Her work often explores themes of non-verbal communication, banality, and surveillance. She currently uses digital media and surveillance technologies in an ongoing process of collecting, analyzing and archiving visual data.
Martin King
Thunder Bay
Martin King is an Artist and Movie Director from Thunder Bay, Ontario. Martin had art in exhibits in the Definitely Superior Art Gallery and the Thunder Bay Art Gallery. Martin King has been selling art as a Commission Artist since 2011. He is also a Broadcasting and Film graduate of Confederation College. As for Martin King Movie Director career, he made his first film “Wake Up” in 2017. The movie took two years to make. Martin King’s most popular short film he made so far is God’s Park in 2018. Wapikoni produced the film for him and Martin King directed it. Mr. King also did some acting for community theater such as Death of a Salesman in 2016 and Mamma Mia in 2019.
Kim Kitchen
North Bay
Kim Kitchen is a multi-disciplinary artist living and working in North Bay, Ontario. In 2003 Kim graduated from White Mountain Academy of the Arts in Elliot Lake. Prior to art education she worked on the front lines in anti-violence throughout Canada. Kim’s experience of serving women and children in women’s shelters, rape crisis centres, facilitating public education and freelancing as a consultant internationally has greatly informed and propelled her artistic practice. Kim explores the nuances between femininity and the body as it finds itself in nature, and collective cultural understandings thereof. Her community activism is inclusive, celebratory, and exuberant. In contrast, her artistic work is introspective, thoughtful, and prompts quiet reflection.
Formerly Kim’s practice was largely tactile focusing on painting, sculpture and installation. In 2014 Rheumatoid Disease came to her with severity and for the next three years she was challenged with mobility and bed ridden much of that time. The search for treatment resulted in positive outcomes and she returned with a practice that adapted and flourished under new circumstances. Specifically, sound art perfectly lends itself to her critical inquisitions of body-land relations, and the self-reflexive relationship between ability and artistic and cultural production as seen through collaboration and community engagement. Though not tactile, this visceral medium allows Kim to return to her beautiful connection to the land within her working limits. For Kim, the personal is political, the personal is powerful; the collective influential.
Chris Kosloski
Callander
Chris Kosloski is a video artist, college professor and filmmaker. A graduate of the Confederation College film program in Thunder Bay, Ontario (1996), he has worked in the film industry for over 12 years as a technician and editor and is now a professor of Digital Cinematography at Canadore College in North Bay. Chris has exhibited a number video art and projection pieces including; “Your Sadness Means Everything to Us” at the Definitely Superior Art Gallery Juried Show 2008, “All Diesels are Turbo” was featured on the video art blog Niche LA in 2013. “Lyceum Projection” was a large scale projection mapping project which Chris co-created for the City of Thunder Bay in 2014. Chris was named a finalist for the 2016 KM Hunter Artist Award. “Proxyscope”, a multi-channel projection/sculpture was featured at the 2017 Bay Street Film Festival. His latest media art installation, “Embodied Terrains,” was a collaboration with visual artist and sculptor Andrew Ackerman for the 2018 Ice Follies exhibit in North Bay — a biennial festival of contemporary and community art on lake Nipissing.
Kristen Kosloski
Callander
Kirsten Kosloski is a documentary filmmaker, media artist and educator. Originally from Thunder Bay, Ontario, she turned a passion for pop culture into a career, and has spent most of her adult life writing and obsessing about music and film. In Thunder Bay she founded the artist-run media arts collective, North Light Media Collective, and has directed and produced two documentaries about the Northwestern Ontario region — Save the Drama (2012) and The Dozen (2014). She won the Bay Street Film Festival People’s Choice Award for Save the Drama. Kirsten has been awarded grants from the Ontario Arts Council (Regional Media Artist’s Collectives, 2013/Northern Arts, 2011, Media Arts Emerging, 2009) and Canada Council of the Arts (Explore and Create, 2018). Kirsten has taught media writing in the film and television broadcast programs at both Confederation College and Canadore College before accepting a position as Digital Creator North Program Coordinator at the Near North Mobile Media Lab in North Bay, Ontario. Kirsten is currently in production on her latest film, Crocks N Rolls: A Documentary, about the legendary Thunder Bay independent music venue. She has been accused of dressing like Neil Young on more than one occasion. Kirsten lives in Callander, Ontario with her husband and daughter.
Tejhler Leadbeater
Sioux Lookout
Tejhler Leadbeater is a 21 year old, 2-spirit performance artist from Sioux Lookout, Ontario. Often mediated by interactive digital media, their practice considers the disconnect between IRL and URL and the interplay between fashion, assimilation, communicating emotions, and mental health. Recent work includes ongoing collaborations with Sault Ste Marie based artist Rihkee Strapp’s project, Pawatamihk, where Leadbeater plays the role of a ‘blissfully naive colonized native person’ asking viewers pointed and uncomfortable questions regarding their knowledge of colonial assimilation in Canadian Indigenous communities.
Tyler Levesque
North Bay
Tyler Levesque is a media artist and filmmaker from North Bay, Ontario. He is a graduate of the Digital Cinematography program at Canadore College, from which he holds an advanced diploma. As a director of short films, Tyler’s work has screened at festivals internationally. As a media artist, his work has been featured in two group exhibitions in Northern Ontario, and often involves the manipulation of found footage, employing experimental editing styles, and discovering new narratives hidden in recovered or forgotten film. Beyond his creative practices, Tyler has often lent himself as an educator and facilitator, particularly to youth, having instructed several (often week-long) film and video workshops across multiple Northern communities over the past four years, his longest engagement of this kind being his time as a Program Lead for Digital Creator North, where he facilitated structured and unstructured media arts and digital literacy programming for teens aged 14 to 19 in Timmins, Ontario from 2017 to 2018. Tyler also has more than four years of experience in the Northern Ontario film industry, where he assisted productions primarily as a data management technician, editing assistant, and at times, on-set film colourist.
Amanda Lindenbach
Toronto via Sudbury
A is a queer, fat, Mad, (dis)abled, spoonie, francophone, interdisciplinary artist; committed to pleasure activism, neuro-inclusivity, sex-positivity and the expansion of video with electronics. Currently working towards the completion of a BFA in Integrated Media at OCADu her work is based in video, installation, physical computing and performance. She is team member at the Images Festival, Onsite Gallery, the Toronto Queer Film Festival and Sex School Berlin. Her practice is broad but can be categorized into two categories: physical computing for the expansion of video experience & post-porn feminist pornography.
Andrea Pinheiro
Sault Ste Marie
Andrea Pinheiro works in photography, print, paint, film, and installation. She has exhibited across Canada and internationally, at Polygon Gallery, the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Art Gallery of Vancouver, the Art Gallery of Alberta, the Novosibirsk Graphic Triennial, Kyoto Museum of Art, and Or Gallery, Berlin. She has completed residencies at the Banff Centre for the Arts, Montello Foundation, Nevada, and SIMReykjavik, Iceland. Her work is represented by Cooper Cole Gallery in Toronto and Republic Gallery in Vancouver. She is an Associate Professor at Algoma University in Sault Ste. Marie, ON and is also the founder of 180 Projects.
Chelsea Reid
North Bay
Chelsea Reid is an artist, author, curator, and filmmaker from Northern Ontario. She is a member of Atikameksheng Anishnawbek, and her work highlights the fractal geometry of nature, photography/film history, and mass communication. She is currently working on completing a thesis through the University of Guelph as part of the Master of Art History and Visual Culture program. Her research is centered around digital networking, Indigenous arts and culture organizations.
Chelsea is also currently the Project Coordinator at the Near North Mobile Media Lab in North Bay, working to develop a series of week-long virtual reality film workshops across Northern Ontario and Arctic communities that will take place in the Spring and Summer of 2019.
Eric Robillard
North Bay
Eric Robillard is a filmmaker born in 1988 in Sudbury, Ontario. Growing up bilingual in a small town outside of Sudbury, he often dreamt of seeing the world. Having had a passion for world history since a young age, Eric enrolled at Laurentian University in Sudbury, with a major in History. He graduated film school in 2018, and has since been working steady within the film & television industry in both Northern Ontario and Toronto. Furthermore, two of the five short films he wrote and directed during his studies have gone to become official selections at various festivals in Canada, and internationally. Eric has recently been nominated for Best Director at the NOMFA (Northern Ontario Music and Film Awards) for the short film he wrote POST SCRIPT, one of three major projects created by his graduating class. The film is also in nomination for Best Short at NOMFA.
Jeremy Saya
Toronto via Sudbury
Jeremy Saya is a Toronto-based queer francophone interdisciplinary artist studying Integrated Media at OCAD University who works in performance, installation, sound, video, electronics, wearables, sociology and philosophy. Jeremy holds a BA in Sociology from Laurentian University, worked as Programming Assistant at Vtape and currently holds the positions of Festival Assistant and Box Office Manager at the Images Festival. Jeremy has curated film programs for both the Toronto Queer Film Festival and the Images Festival. His work deals with queer identity, the body, shame, vulnerability, authenticity, ephemerality, perception and interactivity.
Cole Stevens-Goulais
Toronto via Nipissing First Nation
Cole Stevens-Goulais is an Ojibwe artist based in Toronto, Ontario. Originally from Nipissing First Nation, Cole strives for compassion and acceptance within the arts. Cole trained and honed his craft at the “Big Medicine Studio” while working with the group Aanmitaagzi. Cole has written, directed, and acted in various student/ independent short films, theatre pieces, and a musical. Cole’s films have been screened at various film festivals including ImagineNATIVE and Toronto Queer Film Festival. Cole is a recipient of the Ken and Ann Watts Memorial Scholarship and of the James Bartleman Indigenous Youth Creative Writing Award. He is the current recipient of the ImagineNATIVE + LIFT Film Mentorship. Currently, Cole works with the Coalition for Music Education in Canada as an ambassador for their Youth4Music Program and leads their Indigenous initiative, Ngamwag Shkinweg. As a film student, Cole continues to write, direct, and create, while attending George Brown College for their Video Design and Production Program. Cole Forrest is regarded as an emerging cultural leader of Northern Ontario. He is proficient in movement, theater, media, music, and most notably, writing.
Rebecca Watson
Ottawa via North Bay
Rebecca Watson is an artist and art history student utilizing a feminist and queer perspective to explore the intersection of themes such as sexuality, religion, and the concept of digital realities.
Her work — both written and in within her arts practice — aims to challenge oppressive, patriarchal systems and hopes to contribute to the dismantlement of these structures through education and awareness. Rebecca is currently a Masters of Art History candidate at Carleton University and is a recent graduate from Nipissing University where she received her Bachelor of Fine Arts.
Youth Delegation
Jordan Fiddler
Sandy Lake First Nation & Sioux Lookout
I’m Jordan Fiddler from Sandy Lake Ontario, and I’ve been living in Sioux Lookout for the past 2 years. Ever since I moved here, I’ve been regularly going to the library and I found different things that I find interesting. Photography and filmmaking are things that I love working on and acting is something I would like to pursue in a career. I’m planning to go to college for acting, and go into stage and film.
Talon Sauve
Temiskaming Shores, ON
Talon Sauve is a multidisciplinary artist born and working in Temiskaming Shores. Their experimental practice includes writing, animation, and youtubeing. Specifically, their practice is interested in queerness, mental health advocacy, and intersections thereof. Through experimentation, Talon is interested in traditional fine arts; works on paper, watercolours, pencil drawings, and digital mediums and the poetics of storytelling.