Why Concordia should top your list of Nuit Blanche destinations
“Arbuse” by Kandis Friesen
This March, Concordia is launching an official partnership with Nuit Blanche, Montreal’s popular annual art extravaganza. Two of the university’s downtown sites will join dozens of galleries, museums and performance venues in remaining open into the wee hours for cultural aficionados.
From Saturday, March 1 at 6 p.m. to Sunday, March 2 at 2 a.m., the Visual Arts Building and FOFA Gallery on the Sir George Williams Campus are exhibiting handmade cinema, 16mm loop projections and live performances.
Under the banner of CRYSTALINE: the cinematic and the handmade, IITS Cinemas is presenting screenings from the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema’s Department of Film Animation, the Montreal Stop Motion Animation Film Festival, Montreal film and visual arts collective groop*index, and the Winnipeg Film Group. The FOFA and VAV galleries will also showcase interactive animation by current exhibiting artists and students.
“Untitled” by Sarah Pupo
All the activities are free of charge, and tour guides will accompany visitors from one site to another.
“The FOFA Gallery’s mission is to present work that showcases the range and quality of artistic media and concerns as practised by the current and past faculty, staff and students of the Faculty of Fine Arts,” says jake moore, the gallery’s director. “This multifaceted, or crystaline, partnership with Nuit Blanche and our Concordia colleagues represents a brilliant and natural deepening of our connection to the city’s cultural life.”
IITS Cinemas manager Katie Gilkes agrees. “The FOFA Gallery, VAV Gallery and IITS Cinemas have each organized cultural events around our incredible in-house talents,” says Gilkes. “We’re delighted this cross-departmental collaboration brings that talent to an even wider audience by partnering with such a respected and popular arts organization.”
Learn more about CRYSTALINE: the cinematic and the handmade at Nuit Blanche 2014.
Nuit Blanche at Concordia
Saturday, March 1 at 6 p.m. to Sunday, March 2 at 2 a.m.
Where
- Visual Arts (VA) Building (1355 René Lévesque Blvd. W.), VAV Gallery and room 114
- FOFA Gallery, Engineering, Computer Science and Visual Arts (EV) Complex (1515 Ste. Catherine St. W.)
VA Building
A room devoted to handmade animation will be open to the public. Visitors will be encouraged to create their own work with assistance from animation professionals including Concordia professor Erik Goulet. Traditional animation techniques such as sand, paper cut-out and drawing on 35mm film will be available. Participants receive their creations by email shortly after the event.
Screenings (VA 114)
6 p.m. Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema (child-friendly)
8 p.m. Montreal Stop Motion Animation Film Festival
10 p.m. groop*index
12 a.m. Winnipeg Film Group, curated by Matthew Rankin
VAV Gallery
The VAV Gallery will be creating an interactive film strip of wall-mounted images in which each participating artist will be given two square feet to produce works that respond to Montreal’s wintry landscape. Performances in this space will create the poetic centre of the Crystaline project, in which the inside meets the outside and artists meet pedestrians. Work from Concordia students will also be on display.
FOFA Gallery
In the FOFA Gallery’s outside courtyard, a new banner by Yulia Grebneva will be on display in the Image Grid. The diptych, selected from Grebneva’s evocative series Survivors, will greet passersby along Ste. Catherine Street.
Inside, in the York Corridor Vitrines, paperwork, a process-based installation of an animated exquisite corpse video, will be projected by artists Sarah Pupo, Kandis Friesen and Kerri Flannigan.
In the “exquisite corpse,” a classic surrealist drawing game that is both playful and transformative, a work is assembled by way of one artist adding to a previous artist’s imagery. Here, each of the artists will be animating their drawings live in three separate areas of the vitrines, and the collective image will be projected in the final space. Don’t miss this exciting exchange.
Concordia University’s participation in Nuit Blanche is the result of collaborations with the Montreal Stop Motion Animation Film Festival, groop*index, the Winnipeg Film Group and Matthew Rankin, along with its own FOFA Gallery, VAV Gallery and IITS Cinemas.