Photo by Stacey Lalande, Mirth Photography

Public Lecture (in French and English): May 22, 2013, 5:30 PM
The Laughing Buddha
194 Elgin St
Sudbury, ON

Theatre Intervention: June 26, 2013 8:30 pm
Errington Street South
Chelmsford, ON

Both events are free and open to the public.

A multilingual experience that integrates theatre, sound, movement, and video, this project fastens together the colliding and competing northern Ontario communities: Aboriginal, Francophone, and Anglophone. As Canadians, we pride ourselves on the concept that we are a multicultural society, yet we often find it difficult to come together. Even working together toward a common vision can still sometimes seem like a revolutionary, cutting-edge process. In Sudbury, the concept of community is often limited to invisible cultural silos, where Aboriginal, Francophone and Anglophone groups exist side-by-side without the need for connection. What is the meaning of community in a world focused on individual gain? How do we find and define our own cultural identities in Canada? What happens when competing communities collide?

The artist behind this unique theatre project, Miriam Cusson, will speak publicly about her work in conversation with colleague Daniel Aubin at the Laughing Buddha on May 22 at 5:30 PM. Cusson will present design and costume sketches, maps, site documentation, audio journal excerpts, and share the script-writing process. The discussion will serve as an introduction to and insight into the performance, which will take place at sunset on June 26 in Chelmsford, ON. Please stay tuned to www.musagetes.ca for more details.

Miriam Cusson has been working as an actor, writer, artistic director and costume designer for more than 10 years. Her first theatre role, Judith in Violette sur la terre, was written by Carole Fréchette and coproduced by le Théâtre du Nouvel-Ontario (Sudbury, ON), le Théâtre de la Tandem (Rouyn-Noranda, QC) and le Théâtre en scène (Roubaix, France). In 2003-2004, Miriam was Artist-in-Residence at le Théâtre du Nouvel-Ontario where she participated in several productions as director, writer, designer, actor or stage manager. In 2005, Miriam directed Sudbury Blues, an homage to Sudbury’s ruggedness, poetry, and literature which featured during the 11th Festival international de la littérature in Montréal. From 2006 to 2010, Miriam was Executive and Artistic Director of le Salon du livre du Grand Sudbury where she created several literary soirées and shows, notably le Parcours littéraire and Un pays qui pousse dans le Nord. In 2011, along with her colleague Mélissa Rockburn, Miriam founded les Productions Roches brûlées (Burnt Rock Productions) a company that specializes in project development as well as artistic direction and creation. Miriam is also the literary advisor for the poetry collection at les Éditions Prise de parole in Sudbury, Associate Artistic Director of the Manitoulin Conservatory for Creation and Performance as well as a lecturer for Laurentian University’s francophone theatre program.

Daniel Aubin is Greater Sudbury’s Poet Laureate. He recently launched his second book of poems, Néologirouettes, with les Éditions Prise de parole. Daniel currently works as the communications officer for la Galerie du Nouvel-Ontario and writes about arts and culture for Le Voyageur newspaper. As an actor, he’s played in productions with le Théâtre du Nouvel-Ontario, Collectif FFF and Théâtre la catapulte. He recently appeared as Vlad in Encore Theatre’s production of Lenin’s Embalmers.

Musagetes is an international organization that strives to make the arts more central and meaningful in peoples’ lives, in our communities, and in our societies. Musagetes works in Guelph, Sudbury, Lecce (Italy), and Rijeka (Croatia) to demonstrate how art can be participatory and socially engaged, to establish a greater sense of belonging in communities.

For more information or for media interviews, contact Mélissa Rockburn, Senior Production Manager at melissarockburn@gmail.com or 705-507-4985.

Photograph appears courtesy of the Guelph Public Library Archives. St George’s Square, 1951 (F38-0-7-0-0-9)

CALL FOR INTERVENTIONS from artists, designers, architects, researchers, students, writers and community members

Release Date: Tuesday April 30, 2013
Submission Deadline: Friday June 14, 2013, 4 PM
Announcement of Selected Projects: Friday June 28, 2013

Musagetes is an international organization that strives to make the arts a more central and meaningful reality in peoples’ lives, in our communities and societies. Guelph is our home—this is where we live and work. Musagetes established its offices here in 2009 because the city has rich and nuanced cultural and socio-political conditions that make it an exciting location for cultural experimentation. We are also actively working in Rijeka on the coast of Croatia, Lecce in the south of Italy, and Sudbury, in northern Ontario to demonstrate how art can be participatory and socially engaged, to establish a greater sense of belonging in communities.
Musagetes invites proposals from the Guelph community for new artistic interventions in St. George’s Square in September and October 2013. Selected artistic interventions will receive a fee of $1500 and production budget of $3500, as well as promotion and production support from Musagetes.

The interventions in St. George’s Square might be re-situations, reminders or recognitions of this heart of the city at a time when the centre of social activities in Guelph’s downtown has recently moved to the nearby Market Square. The buses are now close to the VIA Rail/GO Transit station, and there is a new ice rink and splash pad in front of City Hall. People who previously used St. George’s Square as their favorite outdoor meeting place are attracted to these new downtown features. Is St. George’s Square still a public space for gathering or has it become just another traffic artery through the centre of the city? What makes public space useable or defunct? At its most productive, public space is democratic: a place where multiple groups, perspectives, and voices converge, discuss, disagree and learn from each other. We encourage interventions that foster conversations and critical thinking about the conflicting perspectives of public space—in Guelph in particular, and as an idea in general. Applicants are encouraged to consider experimental forms of and approaches to working in public space including but not limited to: live performance, dance, music, public debate, participatory practice and temporary sculpture.

YOUR APPLICATION SHOULD INCLUDE:

1. 5 images, video, audio of your previous work or 3 writing samples following these guidelines:

Digital images:
- Must be in .jpg format
- Maximum of 1MB file size
- Maximum resolution of 1024 x 768 pixels
- RGB or greyscale colour mode only

Video:
- Must be in .mov, .mp4 or .avi format
- Maximum 1GB file size
- Maximum resolution of 1024 x 768 pixels
Writing:

- Maximum 3 pages total

Songs or audio files:
- Maximum 10 MB file size
- Must be in .mp3 format

2. Name, Mailing Address, Telephone, Email, Website, Project Title, proposal of no more than 750 words describing what you intend to do. Please keep in mind that artistic interventions should be conceptually and physically related to the specific context of St. George’s Square.

3. Curriculum Vitae (no more than 2 pages)

4. Technical Description (250 words max): Please describe all technical requirements including electricity, lighting, equipment, services, maintenance and materials necessary for installation within St. George’s Square.

5. A budget describing all production and installation costs of your project including materials and transportation.

Unless otherwise specified, files must be submitted in .pdf format.

All submitted content must be compressed into one folder titled FirstNameLastName.zip and emailed info@musagetes.ca. Alternatively, the folder can be saved to a public file share service (i.e. Dropbox, MediaFire) with the link sent to the above address.

All applications must be received by 4 PM on Friday June 14, 2013. Incomplete or late applications may not be considered. Selected individuals will be notified on Friday, June 28, 2013.

LE FRANÇAIS SUITE

Rebecca Belmore
PRIVATE PERIMETER
Somewhere between a town, a mine, and a reserve, is a line.

Production Residency: May 1 to May 17, 2013
Opening Reception: May 15, 2013, 5 PM
Exhibition Dates: May 16 to June 1, 2013
Galerie du Nouvel-Ontario
174 Elgin St.
Sudbury, ON
gn-o.org
musagetes.ca
@musagetesf, facebook.com/musagetesfoundation
@la_GNO, facebook.com/galeriedunouvelontario

Co-presentation by La Galerie du Nouvel-Ontario and Musagetes

Taking place in the natural surroundings of Sudbury, artist Rebecca Belmore is returning to create a new work. During her September 2012 research residency, Belmore spent time tracing the roads that skirt the edges of Sudbury—the borderlands in and around the city. In May she will create a work that will consider the lines between the city, the mine, and the reserve.
During the first week of her residency, Belmore will return to explore the territory within and beyond the city with Émilio Portal, an artist based in Sudbury and Toronto. They will produce video, audio, and photographic records of their fieldwork together. From these explorations Belmore will select a site and develop a concept and plan for her project. She will then create a private performance-based work, which will be documented and shared with the public in an exhibition opening May 15th, 2013 at La Galerie du Nouvel-Ontario. Belmore’s experimental approach will draw a conceptual line through the amalgamated communities that make up Greater Sudbury, the mining territories bordering the city, and the Atikameksheng Anishnawbek (Whitefish Lake) First Nation Reserve.

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Born in Upsala, Ontario, Rebecca Belmore is an artist currently living in Winnipeg, Manitoba. She is a 2013 laureate of the Governor General’s Awards in Visual and Media Arts. She attended and received an honorary doctorate from the Ontario College of Art and Design in Toronto and is internationally recognized for her performance and installation art. Since 1987, her multi-disciplinary work has addressed history, place and identity through the media of sculpture, installation, video and performance. Belmore was Canada’s official representative at the 2005 Venice Biennale. Her work has appeared in numerous exhibitions both nationally and internationally including two solo touring exhibitions, The Named and the Unnamed, Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, Vancouver (2002); and 33 Pieces, Blackwood Gallery, University of Toronto at Mississauga (2001). Her group exhibitions include House Guests, Art Gallery of Ontario (2001); Longing and Belonging: From the Faraway Nearby, SITE Santa Fe, Santa Fe, New Mexico (1995); Land, Spirit, Power, National Gallery of Canada (1992); and Creation or Death: We Will Win, at the Havana Biennial, Havana Cuba (1991).

La Galerie du Nouvel-Ontario (GNO) is an artist-run centre that facilitates exchanges between artists, supports the development of the francophone visual arts community in Ontario and stimulates varied forms of expression in contemporary art. Its artistic mandate is to place experimental contemporary art in public view and to promote its appreciation.

Musagetes is an international organization that strives to make the arts more central and meaningful in peoples’ lives, in our communities, and in our societies. Musagetes works in Guelph, Sudbury, Lecce (Italy), and Rijeka (Croatia) to demonstrate how art can be participatory and socially engaged, to establish a greater sense of belonging in communities.

For more information or for media interviews, contact:

Danielle Tremblay
Director
La Galerie du Nouvel-Ontario
705-673-4927
direction@gn-o.org

Alissa Firth-Eagland
Program Manager
Musagetes
519-546-9662
alissa@musagetes.ca

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Rebecca Belmore
PRIVATE PERIMETER (PÉRIMETRE PRIVÉ)
Entre ville, mine, et réserve, on retrouve quelque part une ligne

Résidence de création: du 1mai au 17 mai 2013
Vernissage: le 15 mai 2013, 17 h
Dates de l’exposition: du 16 mai au 1 juin 2013
Galerie du Nouvel-Ontario
174 Elgin St.
Sudbury, ON
gn-o.org
musagetes.ca
@musagetesf, facebook.com/musagetesfoundation
@la_GNO, facebook.com/galeriedunouvelontario

Une coprésentation par la Galerie du Nouvel-Ontario et Musagetes
L’artiste Rebecca Belmore revient à Sudbury afin d’y créer une nouvelle œuvre à partir de son environnement naturel. En septembre 2012, lors d’une résidence de recherche, Belmore traça les routes qui longent les limites de Sudbury — les régions frontalières qui définissent et entourent la ville. En mai, elle créera une œuvre qui examinera ces lignes entre la ville, la mine et la réserve.

Lors de sa première semaine de résidence, Belmore explorera à nouveau le territoire à l’intérieur et au-delà de la ville avec Émilio Portal, un artiste basé à Sudbury et Toronto.

Ensemble, ils documenteront leur travail de chantier avec des enregistrements vidéographiques, photographiques et sonores. À partir de ces explorations, Belmore sélectionnera un site afin de développer un concept et planifier son projet. Elle créera ensuite une œuvre de performance privée qui sera documentée et partagée avec le public lors d’une exposition qui sera à la Galerie du Nouvel-Ontario dès le 15 mai 2013. L’approche expérimentale de Belmore tracera une ligne conceptuelle à travers les communautés amalgamées qui forment le Grand Sudbury, les territoires miniers aux frontières de la ville et la réserve d’Atikameksheng Anishnawbek (Première Nation de Whitefish Lake).

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Née à Upsala, Ontario, Rebecca Belmore est une artiste vivant présentement à Winnipeg, Manitoba. Elle est une lauréate des Prix du Gouverneur général en arts visuels et en arts médiatiques 2013. Une ancienne de l’Ontario College of Art and Design de Toronto, qui lui a décerné un doctorat honorifique, ses œuvres d’art performance et d’installation sont reconnues internationalement. Depuis 1987, son travail multidisciplinaire aborde les thèmes de l’histoire, du lieu et de l’identité par l’entremise de la sculpture, l’installation, la vidéo et la performance. Belmore représentait officiellement le Canada à l’occasion de la Biennale de Venise de 2005.

Ses œuvres ont paru dans le cadre de multiples expositions au niveau national et international, y compris deux expositions itinérantes solos, The Named and the Unnamed, Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, Vancouver (2002); et 33 Pieces, Blackwood Gallery, University of Toronto at Mississauga (2001). Parmi les expositions collectives auxquelles elle participe, on peut compter House Guests, Musée des Beaux-Arts de l’Ontario (2001); Longing and Belonging: From the Faraway Nearby, SITE Santa Fe, Santa Fe, New Mexico (1995); Terre, Esprit, Pouvoir, Musée des beaux-arts du Canada (1992); et Creation or Death : We Will Win, à la Biennale de Havane, Havana Cuba (1991).

La Galerie du Nouvel-Ontario (GNO) est un centre d’artistes autogéré qui appuie concrètement le développement du milieu de l’art actuel et ses formes d’expression en Ontario français tout en offrant des occasions ponctuelles de réflexion ou de création.

Musagetes est un organisme international qui favorise le développement d’un rôle plus central et pertinent pour les arts dans nos vies, nos communautés et nos sociétés. Musagetes travaille à Guelph, Sudbury, Lecce (Italie) et Rijeka (Croatie) afin de démontrer comment l’art est capable d’encourager la participation et l’engagement social en vue d’établir un sentiment d’appartenance plus fort dans les communautés.

Pour de plus amples renseignements:

Danielle Tremblay
Directrice
La Galerie du Nouvel-Ontario
705-673-4927
direction@gn-o.org

Alissa Firth-Eagland
Gestionnaire de projet
Musagetes
519-546-9662
alissa@musagetes.ca

As a long time member of the Guelph community, Taylor comes to Musagetes with 15 years of working and volunteering with local not for profit, community groups and organizations. Taylor also has over 18 years of music creation and exploration as a DJ, Electroacoustic performer and improviser, and as a University of Guelph music student. He has recently completed his Bachelor of Arts in Anthropology and Music at The University of Guelph. Taylor is very excited to share his experience in creation, performance, and arts and culture oriented community engagement with Musagetes.

Musagetes and the Contemporary Art Forum Kitchener and Area (CAFKA) are pleased to announce that Deirdre Logue and Allyson Mitchell will be speaking as part of the Big Ideas in Art & Culture Lecture Series. This lecture will be the first public event in Musagetes’ new home at Boarding House Arts (the former Guelph Civic Museum at 6 Dublin St. South, Guelph ON), and will take place on March 27, 2012 at 7 pm. Please join us for a reception starting at 6:30 pm to toast the start of our adventures in this vibrant neighbourhood. The lecture is wheelchair accessible, and admission is free.

Logue and Mitchell will introduce us to the Feminist Art Gallery (FAG), located in their backyard in Parkdale, Toronto ON. The gallery serves as a space for a hybrid community of queer folks, locals, feminists, neighbours and thinkers to gather. One of their best-known projects, CAN’T/WON’T, is a set of handmade banners that read, “We can’t compete,” “We won’t compete,” “We can’t keep up,” and “We won’t keep down.” With the act of brandishing these banners in art venues like the Tate Modern, Logue and Mitchell reject the patriarchal art system, which remains as impenetrable as ever in cultural structures today. Instead, they create an alternative system that opens up spaces and opportunities for communities to converge and overlap. In addition to being a gallery space, bed-and-breakfast, letter-writing organization, free school and activist group, FAG has also created a network of ‘matronage’ that ensures that artists will always be paid for exhibiting their work. In this way, FAG is sustained, not through corporate or governmental funding, but rather through the financial support of its invested communities.

Deirdre Logue holds a BFA from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design and an MFA from Kent State University. Her performance based film, video and installation works are self-portraits uniquely located between comfort and trauma, self-liberation and self-annihilation. By using domestic objects and spaces to contrary ends, her works capture gesture, duration and the body as both subject and object. Recent solo exhibitions of her award winning work have taken place at Open Space in Victoria, Oakville Galleries, the Images Festival in Toronto, the Berlin International Film Festival, Beyond/In Western New York, YYZ and at articule in Montreal. She was a founding member of Media City, the Executive Director of the Images Festival, the Executive Director of the CFMDC and is currently the Development Director at Vtape. http://deirdrelogue.com

Allyson Mitchell is a maximalist artist working predominantly in sculpture, installation and film. Since 1997, Mitchell has been melding feminism and pop culture to play with contemporary ideas about sexuality, autobiography, and the body, largely through the use of reclaimed textile and abandoned craft. Her work has exhibited in galleries and festivals across Canada, the US, Europe and East Asia. She has also performed extensively with Pretty, Porky and Pissed Off, a fat performance troupe, as well as publishing both writing and music. She is an assistant Professor in the School of Women’s Studies at York University. www.allysonmitchell.com

There will be a free shuttle departing at 6:00 PM from the Duke Street entrance at Kitchener City Hall the evening of the lecture.
You can register for the bus at cafkagoestoguelph.eventbrite.ca or contact CAFKA at cafka@cafka.org or 519 744 5123.

CAFKA gratefully acknowledges the support of the Ontario Trillium Foundation, the City of Kitchener, The Kitchener and Waterloo Community Foundation – Musagetes Fund, the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Ontario Arts Council in helping to make this lecture series possible.

To learn more about this lecture, please visit cafka.org/lectures or musagetes.ca.

Media Contact: Danica Evering (Project Assistant, Musagetes): danica@musagetes.ca, 519 836 7300 x103

Charles Stankievech, The DEW Project, 2009

Musagetes and University of Guelph, School of Fine Art and Music, co-present a lecture by Berlin-based artist Charles Stankievech on Tuesday, March 5, at 6pm at the MacDonald Stewart Art Centre. The lecture is free and open to the public.

Musagetes and the School of Fine Art and Music at the University of Guelph are excited to announce the first guest of our Visiting Artist Program, Charles Stankievech. This new collaboration will bring internationally exhibiting artists to Guelph whose artwork focuses on social engagement or participatory practices. Stankievech will present his current and upcoming projects and conduct studio visits with School of Fine Art MFA students and selected fourth-year undergraduates.

Charles Stankievech creates fieldworks, books, films, soundworks, and sculptures. He blends science with science fiction, extensive research with performative spectacle, and architecture with armament. His work shifts perceptual boundaries while critically examining the history, specificity, and geopolitics of location. He has submerged microphones at the confluence of the Yukon and Klondike rivers to broadcast sounds of river flow and shifting ice. He mimicked a rock band’s world tour by traveling around the globe, firing off model rockets at locations associated with ballistic missile development. His recent work, The Soniferous Æther of The Land Beyond The Land Beyond, is a film installation produced while he was artist-in-residence with the Canadian Armed Forces. Shot at the CFS ALERT Signals Intelligence Station—the northernmost settlement on earth—during the continuous darkness of winter, the film showcases a star-filled sky and references the confounding scale of an abandoned space station.

Charles Stankievech (born 1978, in Okotoks, Canada) has exhibited in venues such as Palais de Tokyo (Paris), International Symposium on Electronic Arts (ISEA2010, Germany), dOCUMENTA 13 (Kassel), Xth Biennale of Architecture (Venice), NGBK + HKW (Berlin), ISSUE Project Room (New York), Musee d’art Contemporain Montreal, Canadian Centre for Architecture and MASSMoCA. In 2011 he was the West Coast/Yukon finalist for the Sobey Art Award. In 2012 he was artist-in-residence at Flaggfabrikken (Norway), MARFA Fieldwork International Research Program (Marfa, Texas). He has also held residencies with the Canadian Forces Artist Program, MuseumsQuartier (Vienna, Austria), Nodar Artist Residency Center (Portugal), Waterpod (NYC), Atlantic Center for the Arts (Florida), Banff Centre for the Arts, and artLAB San Servolo Artist Residency (Venice). His writings appear in academic journals such as Leonardo Music Journal (MIT Press) and 306090 (Princeton Architectural Press), as well as experimental texts in art publications. Since 2011, he has served as co-director of the art and theory press K.

Stankievech holds an MFA in Open Media from Concordia University. He was a founding faculty member of the Yukon School of Visual Arts in Dawson City, Yukon. He currently resides in Berlin.

For more information please contact the Visiting Artist Project coordinator, Anna Cox at annacox@uoguelph.ca

Musagetes is an international organization that strives to make the arts more central and meaningful in peoples’ lives, in our communities, and in our societies. Musagetes works in Guelph, Sudbury, Lecce (IT), and Rijeka (HR) to demonstrate how art can be participatory and socially engaged, to establish a greater sense of belonging in communities.

SOFAM offers an artistically challenging and intellectually rigorous learning environment for aspiring art historians, musicians, music scholars and studio artists in a close-knit and nurturing community ideally suited for developing curiosity, critical acumen and creative drive in today’s student. In addition to being home to a highly competitive and well-respected MFA program in Studio Art, the school also provides a variety of experiential learning opportunities through a diverse range of student-centred activities, ranging from various music ensembles, the noon hour concert series and an award winning choir, to student symposia, an active visiting artist/scholar program and a vital student gallery.

In October 2012 Kevin Sutton and Musagetes presented a spoken word performance and Page-to-Stage workshop in collaboration with Transition Guelph. Participants wove together stories about the relationship we want with food, nature and each other and composed and performed spoken word poetry that reflected each participant’s perspective. The attitude and skills we need to collaborate often creatively mirror those we need to realize a sustainable community, and participants performed their collaborative texts at the end of the workshop.

Recordings of the performances were directed by Amiliah Goodrich, and can be found at her youtube channel here.

INFRACAMPUS was an interdisciplinary project initiated by SYN- that explores the social realities and spatial politics of the University of Guelph campus, and proposes the campus as a potential site for experimentation. How can we engage the campus as a place for fostering new kinds of actions, social configurations and interrelations in common spaces which questions their existing uses and perceptions?

Here’s a link to Stacey Aspinall’s excellent Ontarion article about the project:

http://www.theontarion.com/2013/01/infracampus-zine-examines-social-politics-of-campus-space/

If you’re interested in obtaining a set of zines, please contact us at danica@musagetes.ca