Next Exhibition: In Honour of The Late James Nicholas "Afraid of What I Could Become"
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With the emergence of MTV and Much Music in the early 1980’s, a new form of escapism, and role play surfaced for young people. How youth connected with popular singers and bands changed drastically thanks to vee-jays spinning flashy music videos that provided visual narratives to follow along with popular music. In basements and bedrooms across the land, youth held brushes as microphones, envisioned themselves in music videos, and mimicked the music stars they admired…
Rockstars and Wannabes locates artists who examine the impact of the music industry on identity, using music videos, karaoke, and popular TV talent searches as catalysts. Music as an aid in escaping cross-cultural boundaries, the longing for validation or substance in one’s life, and the lengths some will go to locate and express their inner rock star is investigated.
- Cathy Mattes, Curator
Video Pool
Video
Pool
Video Pool is a nonprofit Artist-Run Centre dedicated to independent video, audio and computer integrated multimedia production, located in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.
Video Pool has affordable production resources for artists, community groups and independent producers
Visit: www.videopool.org
Rockstars and Wannabes
Dates: September 29 - November 10, 2007
Opening Reception: September 29, 2007
Curator: Cathy Mattes
Artists: Warren Arcand, Kevin Ei-ichi deForest, Skawennati Fragnito, Benny Nemerofsky Ramsay
Mediums: Video and Installation
Featured Artists:
Warren
ArcandWarren Arcand lives and works in Vancouver, where his artistic output includes performance art, film and video, theatre and text based work. His past performance pieces include “Six Gun Sufi” (cowboy ballads and sexdeath mysticism); “Surgery” (hermaphrodism as a metaphor for Abo identity); and most recently “Superchannel” (audience members received wireless headsets giving them access to 7 channels of selectable audio with which they could mix their own ‘soundtrack’ for Warren’s simple performance task of ‘making eye contact’). He is currently teaching performance art at the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design.
Kevin
Ei-ichi deForest
Kevin Ei-ichi deForest is an
internationally recognized visual artist whose
practice focuses on the representation of cultural hybridity,
specifically
with reference to his Eurasian background. Born in Winnipeg, he
was part of
the fledgling punk rock scene there in the late 70’s. In the
spirit of his hybrid outlook, his multimedia practice includes
painting, installation, video, sound art, and critical writing.
He has exhibited nationally as well as in USA, Mexico, Holland,
Germany, Italy and Japan. He recently returned to Manitoba as
Assistant Professor in the Department of Visual and Aboriginal
Art at Brandon University, Brandon Manitoba.
Skawennati
Fragnito
Skawennati Fragnito is an artist, independent
curator and occasional writer. In 1994, Skawennati co-founded
Nation to Nation, a First Nations artist collective, whose
exhibitions have included TattoNation and the very popular
Native Love, which toured Canada. From 1996 to 2005, Skawennati
was the director and primary curator for CyberPowWow
<www.CyberPowWow.net>, the pioneering Aboriginally-determined
on-line gallery and chat space. Her most recent curatorial
project is an on-line exhibition entitled Grrls, Chicks, Sisters
& Squaws: Les citoyennes du cyberspace <www.citoyennes.net>. Her
artwork has been shown across Canada and the USA, and Beijing.
Skawennati is currently Co-Investigator and Network Coordinator
of Aboriginal Territories in Cyberspace (AbTeC), a network of
Native and non-Native artists, academics and technologists who
are investigating, creating and critiquing Aboriginal virtual
environments.
Benny
Nemerofsky Ramsay
Benny Nemerofsky Ramsay is a
Montréal-born artist working predominantly in video, text and
sound. Since 2000 his work has brought together song,
self-reflexive performance and lyrics from pop music as vehicles
for examining the singing voice, the untranslatability of
emotions into language and the ways in which emotional
expression changes shape when mediated by technology and popular
culture. Nemerofsky Ramsay's work has screened in festivals and
galleries across Canada, Europe and East Asia and has won prizes
at the Hamburg Short Film Festival, the Kasseler Dokumentarfilm-
und Videofest and the Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen (all in Germany),
the Toronto Inside Out Film and Video Festival as well as First
Prize at the Globalica Media Arts Biennale in Wroclaw, Poland.
He currently divides his time between Canada and Europe.
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