The 2016 Cold Cuts Video Festival, which runs in conjunction and association with the Dawson City International Short Film Festival, kicked off today at 4 p.m. with a reception at the Yukon School of the Visual Arts (SOVA).
The program this year, Disrupting Binaries, is curated by Corinna Ghaznavi, and focuses on Canadian women working in video and animation who address the human relationship with their surrounding environment. Dr. Ghaznavi is an independent curator and freelance writer. She has curated exhibitions across Canada and the Netherlands and her writing has been published in Canadian and European art publications. Giving a talk to the gathering, she explained that one commonality for the the works was that they were not only feminist, but also absurdist, in that they endeavoured to tackle profound subjects with a sense of humour. In choosing the artists for the exhibit, Dr. Ghaznavi strove to select women who not only represented different regions of the country, but also varied in their maturity.
The exhibitors are:
Kelly Mark, 108 Lezton Avenue, 10:13, DV, 2014
Kelly Mark sets up a dialogue with herself that contemplates isolation and intention.“‘Everything’ and ‘Nothing’ are constructed as opposite but asymmetrical roles that she performs for a split-screen projection, plumbing the contradictions of her own personality to reveal the bravura and insecurity of having no one to talk to but yourself.”
– Christina Ritchie
Amanda Dawn Christie, Off Route 2, 10:30, 35mm, 2011
Amanda Dawn Christie stages a car crash to explore the trauma and the often anticlimactic aftermath of personal tragedy. It is in the peaceful quiet that follows a crash that the banal becomes beautiful and mundane monumental.
Marina Roy, The Floating Archipelago, 6:20, Animation, 2015
The Floating Archipelago is a sci-fi feminist ecological utopia arising in the wake of a cosmic cataclysm – ‘nature’ takes on a supernatural nature, and three women come to be caretakers of surviving animals.
Lisa Birke, Calendar Girls, 4:00, HDV, 2014
Lisa Birke challenges female cultural tropes by setting up uncomfortable and absurdist scenarios. The work is a humorous exploration of the societal expectations of woman as aesthetic symbol and spectacle who is intrinsically at home in nature.
Leslie Supnet, Gains & Loses, 2:39, Animation, 2014
Through animation, Leslie Supnet investigates a range of human emotion with topics
such as identity, race, and death.
Disrupting Binaries can be seen at the SOVA Gallery, Located at Third Avenue and Queen Street.
Gallery Exhibition Hours are Saturday, March 26th 12-5pm & Sunday, March 27th 12-5pm.
Admission is free.
— Dan Dowhal