Pique is back with another edition of its forward-thinking, artist-driven music and arts festival.
For the summer edition, we are joining forces with the Arts Court and its resident arts organizations to celebrate its new and improved facilities with a building-wide event like no other. Come early for the Arts Court Open House Party, and stay late to experience the largest edition of Pique yet!
Pique summer edition will feature bold and innovative live music performances, interactive art installations, DJ sets, dance and performance art on five stages and three floors, indoors and outdoors.
Entry is FREE in the daytime (2-5 pm), and PAY-WHAT-YOU-CAN in the evening (5 pm-2am).
For more info visit thisispique.com
For more info visit thisispique.com
Featuring...
PERFORMANCE:
& the Ottawa premiere presentation of Odaabaanag, composed by Melody McKiver and Beverley McKiver✴
☆ co-presented by SAW
✴ co-presented by Jumblies Theatre, Ottawa New Music Creators and No Borders Art Festival.
ART:
Olivia Johnston & Jennifer Stewart (Kodak Girls)
ART MARKET:
Dion Prints
Chinu Designs
Phantomtits
Paper Doilies Handmade
Madison Conlin
Ottawa Design Club
Richardson-Dupuis Studio
Self_Saboteur Prints
Christine Toulouse
Click here for a larger image and a list version of the Pique summer edition schedule.
PROJECT DESCRIPTIONS
Odaabaanag
Time: 3:00 pm and 7:00 pm
Location: LabO
A suite of two original musical compositions for strings, piano and voice, Odaabaanag was written by composers Melody McKiver and Beverley McKiver as a response to Steve Reich’s “Different Trains” (Odaabaanag means ‘trains’ in Anishinaabemowin), drawing from interviews conducted in the composers’ Anishinaabeg ancestral home of Obishikokaang (Lac Seul First Nation).
Performed by Beverley McKiver (piano), Maria Nenoiu (violin), Magali Gavazzi-April (violin), Kathryn Cobbler (viola), Raphael Weinroth-Browne (cello) and No Borders Community Voices
Co-produced and -presented by Ottawa New Music Creators, No Borders Art Festival and Jumblies Theatre
The Decommissioners
The Decommissioned project invites organizations, businesses and individuals to retire gender binary bathroom signs and donate them to a growing art installation of retired signage in exchange for education, consultation and training. While it tends to be a lengthy transitional process, it is facilitated by a creative team of decommissioners who resort to lively and playful strategies; moving the conversation along, subverting and disarticulating the gender binary’s regulating force, and welcoming newcomers into this emancipatory process.
The Decommissioned project has invited the City of Ottawa to retire the gender binary bathroom signs at Arts Court and donate them to a growing art installation of retired signage in exchange for education, consultation and training. During Pique, the team of decommissioners will activate the space with dialogical interventions, performance works, installation and more! Join them in this ongoing emancipatory process.
The Decommissioned Team Members are: Behc Jax-Lynx, Chloë MacLeod-Boucher, Emily Neufeld, fin xuan, Bill Staubi, & Cara Tierney.
The Decommissioners will present the following projects at Pique:
Gender Freedom Q&A
Location: Courtroom
Time: 2pm to 5 pm
This event is a conversational gathering hosted by the Decommissioners to facilitate a community dialogue on, and collective exploration of, gender and freedom.
Commode Officiants
Location: 1st floor gendered bathrooms (near SAW Gallery)
Time: 7 pm to 11 pm
The Commode Officiants are here to liven up your bathroom experience, and engage you in playful interactive exchanges! Never used a urinal? Want to use the bathroom in peace and undisturbed by the presence of others? Can you name that bathroom sound? This could be your lucky night! Bathroom regulation and personalized monitoring like you've never experienced before!
Cut-In (Work in Progress)
by fin xuan, Cara Tierney, Ashley Grenstone, Behc Jax-Lynx
Location: Courtroom
Time: 2 pm to 2 am
Cut-In (Work in Progress) is an experimental interactive video installation that consists of a projection screen made from deconstructed lab coats, a video work, and an invitation to paint your nails. The project grew out of an artist residency that saw trans artists working in a Medical School. The piece aspires to foster conversations around the failure of medicine to work, and build meaningful relationships, with trans communities, and the medical industry’s role and complicity in upholding the oppressive western, colonial, gender binary.
ASAP ~ As Slowly As Possible
by Sunna Maaret
Location: the Knot
Time: 5:00-6:30 pm
Who has the right to just be? Who has the right to be slow, vulnerable, soft, sensitive?
Combining slow electronica with visual projections of places they call home and aesthetics of a Sámi auntie born in the 90s & , dj Sunna Maaret plays soft tunes that center Indigenous voices and rhythms with varying pulses.
'ASAP ~ As Slowly As Possible' strives for holding space for a tomorrow where land and all living beings are not treated as endless resources.
ASAP is a part of and inspired by the creative collective work called Orodansadji - A Place To Be - Olemisen tila created by Sámi artists Merethe Kuhmunen, Jenni Laiti and Sunna Nousuniemi. The work Place To Be has been envisioned during Punos collective's online residency with the title Whose Climate, Whose Futures? Project.
The DJ set and visual performance for As Slowly As Possible itself is to be realised during the Debaser residency Odawa.
Timi
by Aedan Corey
Location: Nordic Lab and various
Time: 5 pm to ?
Timi is a statement on the reclamation of our bodies as Inuit—learning to love what we have been historically taught to feel shame for. Timi shows the practice of this love in acts that defy the colonial view on what is acceptable. Whereas our bodies have been commodified under the colonial gaze, these pieces seek to empower and uplift Inuit, and destigmatize pleasure as it relates to ourselves as marginalized peoples.
Kodak Girls
by Olivia Johnston and Jennifer Stewart
Location: Nordic Lab
Time: 5:00 to 11:00 pm
The automated analogue photobooth was first invented in the late 19th century and was quickly adopted by artists fascinated by the motif of the automatic portrait, including Andy Warhol, Lorna Simpson, Francis Bacon, Salvador Dalì, Walker Evans, Gerhard Richter and Richard Avedon. Stewart and Johnston’s installation Kodak Girls adopts the practices of the analogue photobooth but rather than involving artists as subjects, they become the machine itself.
During Pique’s summer edition, participants will have their portrait taken. The photograph will be developed in a temporary darkroom. Stewart and Johnston will alternate roles between capture and development, creating a real-time photobooth experience. Subject participants will receive a silver gelatin portrait of themselves and original piece of art. Viewers and participants can observe the magic of the automatic photobooth, while witnessing the labour-intensive process of image-making. This installation is both an exploration of inner and outer selves and a demonstration of analogue processes in a digital world, using the perfect imperfections of the analogue photographic image.
Interactive Dance Game
by Compagnie ODD
Location: ODD Box
Time: 7:00 pm, 8:00 pm and 9:00 pm
ODD is a space at Arts Court for dance experimentation and performance. The interactive game will be random and chance based. Instigated by curious movement tasks, floor mapping, with musical suggestions by Phillippe Charbonneau of Scattered Clouds. Taking place on the hour starting at 7pm in three loops. Anyone welcome to join.
Pique is produced in partnership with the Arts Court, the Ottawa Art Gallery, the University of Ottawa Theatre Dept., SAW, Digital Arts Resource Centre, Jumblies Theatre, Ottawa New Music Creators, No Borders Community Voices, Artengine, Ottawa Fringe, the Canadian Film Institute, and Ottawa Dance Directive, with support from Kilam Media, Firegrove Studio, Wall Sound, Le Seltzer, Dominion City Brewing Co, Also Cool, CKCU FM, CHUO FM, and Apt613, and is funded by the Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council, Canadian Heritage, City of Ottawa and the SOCAN Foundation.
The Arts Court open house party is produced in partnership with the Arts Court, the Ottawa Art Gallery, SAW, Digital Arts Resource Centre, Artengine, Ottawa Fringe, the Canadian Film Institute, and Ottawa Dance Directive.
LAND ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
Pique takes place on the stolen land of the Algonquin Anishinaabeg people. If you support our programming, please consider also donating to a local Indigenous organization or fundraiser. Learn more about this land acknowledgement and find educational resources and ways to support at www.debaser.ca/land-acknowledgement
COVID-19 POLICY
Before attending the event, complete a COVID-19 self-screening. If you do not pass the self-screening, please STAY AT HOME.
The following are strongly recommended for attendees of this event to reduce the risk of COVID-19 transmission:
take an at-home antigen test before arriving on site. Antigen tests are currently available for free from many pharmacy and grocery store locations (find out more here).
take two doses of approved COVID-19 vaccinations received at least two weeks prior to the event
wear a KN95 face mask over the mouth and nose at all times while at the event (we will have a limited number of free masks available for audience members)
wash your hands or use the provided hand sanitizer often
COVID-19 policy is subject to change based on government and venue regulations and guidelines.
ACCESSIBILITY
Entrances are accessible by ramp, and indoor spaces are accessible by automated doors and elevator to all floors. Wheelchair accessible, gender neutral washrooms are available throughout the building.
Click the following links for accessibility and visitor information for:
https://artscourt.ca/visitor-info-en
https://oaggao.ca/visit/plan-your-visit/
SAFETY
Attendees are expected to respect one another. Violence, aggression, oppressive behaviour or language, or bullying will not be tolerated. If you are currently implicated in an accountability process, please ensure you are respecting the space and well-being of those your actions have affected before joining this space virtually or in-person. If Debaser's staff and/or Board are made aware of any behaviour that violates our safety policy, the person(s) perpetuating this behaviour will be asked to leave immediately. We reserve the right to intervene and/or remove ANY person(s) in the space who are creating or contributing to an unsafe environment.
Haley Fohr is a vocalist, composer and singer-songwriter based in Chicago, Illinois. Her musical endeavors focus around our human condition, and her 15 year career as Circuit des Yeux has grown into one of America’s most successful efforts to connect the personal to the universal. She is most distinctly identified by her 4-octave voice and unique style of 12-string guitar.
Her recent works include an Original Soundtrack for Charles Bryant’s silent film Salomé (1923), commissioned by Opera North, her critically acclaimed 2021 album -io, and two LPs under the mysterious moniker of Jackie Lynn.
✶ OBUXUM ✶
OBUXUM is a Toronto based, Somali-Canadian producer and beatmaker, whose lush and characteristic sound celebrates storytelling. She has made her presence known with notable festival performances at Wavelength Festival (Toronto), Kazoo! Fest (Guelph, Ontario), Electric Eclectics (Big Head Valley, Ontario) and Venus Fest (Toronto). In 2018, NOW Magazine listed her as one of Toronto’s “electronic musicians to watch.” Recently, OBUXUM’s project Re-Birth was longlisted for the 2020 Polaris Music Prize.
✶ Uyarakq ✶
photo credit: Nick Tulinen
Aqqalu Berthelsen, also known as Uyarakq, was born in Nuuk, Greenland in the mid 80s. He is a self taught music producer/composer and DJ with a background in metal music.
Growing up in Uummannaq, Northern Greenland and Nuuk, the capital, has played a large role in shaping him to be a versatile musician between two worlds. He is currently doing a lot of work in the Indigenous circumpolar hip hop and rap scene with a foot in two continents, the North American arctic and the European arctic.
He won a Greenlandic Koda Award in 2015 for his solo album Raatiu Nukik (2014) and got nominated for Nordic Councils Music Prize in 2016 for the collaborative work Kunngiitsuuffik (2015) alongside the Greenlandic rapper Peand-eL.
He is now living in Inari, Northern Finland/Sápmi.
photo credit: Stacy Lee
Eve Parker Finley is a noted Montreal multi-instrumentalist, comedian, and upcoming Indie Pop Superstar. Braiding a dense and deliberate web of string arrangements and classical naturalism into a former raver’s penchant for programmed beats and four on the floor grooves, Finley has been a mainstay in the Montreal independent scene for nearly a decade.
✶ R. Flex ✶
photo by Josh Rille
Get to know the future of R&B: R. Flex. Named as Now Toronto’s Artist to Watch in 2022, R. Flex is scrupulously revealing their vision for 2022. Having just released their incredible second EP FLEX WITH BENEFITS, R. Flex is ready to rock the world. Simply put, R. Flex is an underground star in the making. They were one of the first artists to perform on Club Quarantine: one of the world’s biggest online dance parties to emerge at the beginning of the pandemic. Their new EP FLEX WITH BENEFITS was named one of the best soul releases of April by Bandcamp and an album you can't miss by Exclaim Magazine. Their showstopping performances have caught the eyes of Lido Pimienta, Shad, & LAL. It’s time for you to CHECK THE FLEX.
✶ Sunna Maaret ✶
Sunna Maaret is a Sámi-Finnish storyteller, organiser and dj, sometimes a memelord, from Anár, Sápmi. She is one of the founding members of the dj collective Article 3 that indigenizes the dance floors with Sámi and global Indigenous party tunes combined with visual projections. Under the artist name Sunna Maaret, she explores the possibilities of dj performances to create spaces for resting and daydreaming.
✶ Kee Avil ✶
photo credit: Lawrence Fafard
Led by Montréal producer Vicky Mettler, Kee Avil combines guitar, voice,and electronic production to create songs that teeter on the edge of collapse while oozing forward, like sticky wax picking up and shedding disparate elements along the way. Kee Avil evolved from playing guitar with broken cymbals and drumsticks to forging askew tempos and templates glued together by samples of screws dropped into crystal bowls.
Her self-titled debut EP, released in 2018 on Black Bough Records, harnessed her improvised music and prepared guitar background toward a newfound structural sensibility and arresting vocal/lyrical experimentation; she has been immersed in the exploration of distinctive compositional architectures ever since, expanding her sonic palette with increasing and intensive detail, where twitchy, finely wrought postpunk avant-pop songs are meticulously assembled to resemble disassembly.
Kee Avil’s emerging body of work signals a vital, viscous, virtuosic new voice in experimental songcraft–where touchstones include Juana Molina, Scott Walker, Fiona Apple and Eartheater; where PJ Harvey meets Pan Daijing or Grouper melds with Autechre. Kee Avil released her debut album ‘Crease’ in early 2022 (Constellation Records). 2022 festival appearances include: Suoni Per Il Popolo (Montreal), Pique (Ottawa), TONE (TO), Vancouver Jazz Festival, À l’arme (Berlin), FME (QC), Guelph Jazz Festival, Le Guess Who.
✶ Slash Need ✶
photo by: Kirk Lisag
SLASH NEED (Toronto) The sounds of electro-punk, industrial and new wave all converge on the dance floor as a confrontational, camp and seductive dramaturge, Slash Need has earned a reputation for putting on high-energy theatrical live performances made for the late spot on any lineup. With strong roots in the DIY community in Toronto, Slash Need has performed in abandoned buildings, skateparks, legion halls, at drag shows. Moving online during lockdown, they have been featured in Club Quarantine, Pride Toronto, Long Winter Festival, and Eternal.TV.
Having released their music online with three EP’s, Thankful React (2019), SPIT LIP (2020) and Bordertown (2022) we are currently in the works of recording a full album to be released 2023. See it to believe it.
✶ Qattuu ✶
Emerging and embracing her new career path in the arts, Qattuu is a self taught professional throatsinger and vocalist. In addition to performing with multi-JUNO nominated band, Silla and Rise, Qattuu has now decided to follow her other dreams of becoming a full time freelance solo artist.
✶ Aedan Corey ✶
Writer, traditional Inuit tattooist, and emerging visual artist, Aedan Corey is the author and illustrator of chapbook Inuujunga (Coven Editions, 2021) and short story Unikkaannguaq (Nipiit Magazine, 2020). Raised in Iqaluktuuttiaq, Nunavut, a town of approximately 1,800 people, Aedan began creating art at a young age. Their work is heavily inspired by their lived experiences as a queer, neurodivergent Inuk. Aedan’s goal is always to inspire and advocate for those within their communities through their artistic practices, letting others know that they are not alone. Aedan currently resides in Ottawa.
✶ Jessy Lindsay ✶
Singer/songwriter Jessy Lindsay explores an indie-pop style intertwined with jazz sonorities to create liberating music. Using catchy melodies coupled with honest lyrics, the young musician shares her truth. She discovered her passion for music during her youth after playing her grandparent’s piano. She made the most of every opportunity presented to her as a young artist, paving her path in the music industry. Participating in events such as, Camp en chanson de Petite-Vallée, International Songwriting Competition, Jeux de la francophonie canadienne, Jamais Trop Tôt and Rond Point, has made her into the artist she is today. Balancing between city and country lifestyles has allowed Jessy to inspire herself with a captivating duality to offer us a refuge between the calm and chaos of her art. Today, the artist is reinforcing her reflections on the challenges of being a young woman to nourish the creation of her first EP.
✶ IDTE ✶
IDTE is a dance collective co-directed by Halima Meyers and Carolina Lopez. Our mission is to express BIPOC and 2SLGBTQ+ identities through a street dance showcase. We train in both freestyle and choreography of the following styles: hip hop, afro, popping, and whacking.
✶ Bucko & Eliza Niemi ✶
Bucko is a multidisciplinary artist based in Ottawa, Canada. With his musical project, Bucko Art Machine, he performs synth-based electronic music using an iPhone and a custom sound system mounted on his power wheelchair. His main collaborators in the Bucko Art Machine are Nick Schofield and Eliza Niemi. For this Pique performance, Bucko is joined by Eliza Niemi on cello to create ambient Satie-esque sounds to permeate the Arts Court space. As a painter, Bucko creates abstract digital paintings with poetic titles that he shares on Instagram. Bucko aka Chris Binkowski has Duchenne’s muscular dystrophy and uses a ventilator to help him breathe. He believes musical performance and art are important venues for disability representation and inclusion
Eliza Niemi is a multi-instrumentalist, composer, singer-songwriter and prolific collaborator. With a background in classical cello and piano, Eliza studied musicology in Halifax where she jointly formed acclaimed indie rock band Mauno. After touring internationally opening for Laetitia Sadier of Stereolab and Chad VanGaalen, she landed back in her hometown of Toronto where she launched her label Vain Mina Records. Since her debut solo release Vinegar in 2019, Niemi has released 10 projects on Vain Mina, including her critically acclaimed sophomore EP Glass. Her upcoming debut full length album Staying Mellow Blows features Le Ren, Cedric Noel, Maryam Said (Poolblood), Evan Cartwright (US Girls, Weather Station, Andy Shauf), Matthew Cardinal (nêhiyawak), Yolande Laroche (Orchidae) and more, coming out August 5th on Vain Mina Records and Tin Angel Records.
✶ JOYFULTALK ✶
photo credit: Johanna Hayes
Following two laser-focused, trance inducing albums, JOYFULTALK returns with a stunning collection of smudged jazz burners. Combining influences from late 80s M-base music, Ornette Coleman’s harmolodic funk years and his own histories as an outré improviser, Familiar Science warps expectations by inextricably fusing together flipped sampler jamz and live-combo heat. The album spans a vast and varied terrain yet hangs together in a stunning array thanks to composer Jay Crocker’s intricate wormhole production. Add to that his own skewed guitar lines, plus a series of absolutely zoned contributions of scorched earth drumming, elevated flute moods and rarefied sax work, and you’ve got a deep well of rhythm-twisted contemporary jazz.
✶ Dead Dog ✶
✶ Mossy Mugler ✶
Mossy Mugler is a Trans Palestinian artist currently working out of the underground scene in Montreal and New York City. They run @hauterageous_worldwide , a bipoc community event scrutinizing the importance of safety and visibility in nightlife. Born and raised Qatar, they hope to showcase their sense of identity and upbringing through the art of sound. With an array of different genres Mossy hopes to bring forward music mixes you’ve never heard before — yet still feel so connected to.
✶ The Decommissioners ✶
Tired of having to choose a gender when all you want to do is pee? So are we! Join the Decommissioned project in conversation as we amplify the conversation around degendering public space.
The Decommissioned project invites organizations, businesses and individuals to retire gender binary bathroom signs and donate them to a growing art installation of retired signage in exchange for education, consultation and training. While it tends to be a lengthy transitional process, it is facilitated by a creative team of decommissioners who resort to lively and playful strategies; moving the conversation along, subverting and disarticulating the gender binary’s regulating force, and welcoming newcomers into this emancipatory process.
The Decommissioned project has invited the City of Ottawa to retire the gender binary bathroom signs at Arts Court and donate them to a growing art installation of retired signage in exchange for education, consultation and training. During Pique, the team of decommissioners will activate the space with dialogical interventions, performance works, installation and more! Join them in this ongoing emancipatory process.
The Decommissioned Team Members are: Behc Jax-Lynx, Chloë MacLeod-Boucher, Emily Neufeld, fin xuan, Bill Staubi, & Cara Tierney.
✶ Linsey Wellman ✶
"An active member of the Ottawa music scene, Linsey Wellman is known as a creative and spontaneous improvisor. In addition to being a soloist on the alto and baritone saxophones, he is a member of 2019 Polaris Prize shortlisted art-punk ensemble Fet Nat and JUNO award winning calypso outfit Kobo Town, while taking part in countless improvised music and jazz ensembles. In his latest work, he has been exploring the use of pedals and electronics with the baritone saxophone using a setup that includes a diy microphone and a number of other homemade gadgets.
He is co-founder and co-curator of the Improvising Musicians of Ottawa/Outaouais (IMOO) concert series."
✶ MILKBAG ✶
Formed in 2013 between Anne Dahl and Elizabeth Johnson; the spirit of Milkbag lives in atmospheric hormonal drones created by analogue noise. Milkbag is ethereal, mercurial and slightly devastated. Guided by feeling and relational synergy, Milkbag accesses somatic portals through rhythmic sound.
✶ Bagowji ✶
Bagowji (Christopher Wong) is an artist from Nawash Unceded First Nation and based out of Ottawa, unceded Algonquin Territory, Canada. A producer/director with the Indigenous Canadian artist union Bawaadan Collective and the Asinabka Festival, he is an active volunteer in the Ottawa arts and cultural community, including the Odawa Native Friendship Centre, DARC (formerly SAW Video) and Gallery 101. Bagowji enjoys making mixtapes and playing DJ sets of Wigwam Nagamowin, Anishnabe blended house music.
Ginnifer Menominee is Anishnawbe (Pottawatomi/Ojibway) from Wasauksing First Nation. A self taught artist. A interdisciplinary artist who explores various topics such as their Indigeneity, being 2 Spirit, liminal spaces and relationships. On their journeys across Turtle Island Ginnifer has been able to explore their identity as Anishnawbe 2 Spirit, in relation to land, language, familial history, water protection, food sovereignty , plant medicine and spirit. Having returned to visual arts and photography after a hiatus, Ginnifer has used photography along with other forms of arts for their own personal growth and development.
✶ Twinkle Banerjee ✶
Twinkle Banerjee (She/Her) is an Indian-Canadian visual artist, who works with alternative and digital photographic processes. Her practice covers a wide variety of topics, ranging from social commentary to conceptual storytelling rooted in activism.
She has exhibited in the USA, Canada, the UK, has been published in Berlin, and featured on CBC. In 2021 her work "Characters of Memorial Park" was part of an exhibition and publication at the ICP-New York.
She hopes to soon document parts of India, that are diminishing due to globalization while trying to decolonize the narrative surrounding photography in the country.
✶ Lonely Boy ✶
Lonely Boy is an emerging artist out of Ottawa, Canada who effortlessly combines a unique, sultry and nostalgic R&B sound with a variation of soul and pop influences, carried with great energy. The Canadian crooner sets the mood and adorns the listeners with his lush, powerhouse vocals. Online arts and culture publication SHIFTER Magazine recently named the crooner one of the “Top 10 Most Slept on Canadian Hip-Hop and R&B Artists” describing his debut EP as a “throwback to smooth vocals and production”. Confident and transparent, his brand is all about him being the quintessential lover boy reminiscent of the early 90's and 2000's R&B, where men were more genuine about their love and heartbreak. Lonely Boy has released his EP titled “Lonely Ppl: Volume 1” & “Volume 2” and is looking to introduce his artistry to the rest of the world.
OLIVIA JOHNSTON and JENNIFER STEWART are photo-based artists who live and work in Ottawa, Canada. Collaborators and friends for over a decade, Stewart and Johnston’s work in photographic media attempts to expand upon and explore ideas around what constitutes the image, the self, and/or memory. Graduates of SPAO’s diploma program, both artists make use of traditional photographic processes as part of their practices
Kodak Girls
The automated analogue photobooth was first invented in the late 19th century and was quickly adopted by artists fascinated by the motif of the automatic portrait, including Andy Warhol, Lorna Simpson, Francis Bacon, Salvador Dalì, Walker Evans, Gerhard Richter and Richard Avedon. Stewart and Johnston’s installation Kodak Girls adopts the practices of the analogue photobooth but rather than involving artists as subjects, they become the machine itself.
During Pique’s summer edition, participants will have their portrait taken. The photograph will be developed in a temporary darkroom. Stewart and Johnston will alternate roles between capture and development, creating a real-time photobooth experience. Subject participants will receive a silver gelatin portrait of themselves and original piece of art. Viewers and participants can observe the magic of the automatic photobooth, while witnessing the labour-intensive process of image-making. This installation is both an exploration of inner and outer selves and a demonstration of analogue processes in a digital world, using the perfect imperfections of the analogue photographic image.
✶ Melody McKiver ✶
photo credit: Pati Tyrell
Melody McKiver’s (they/them) musical work integrates electronics with Western classical music to shape a new genre of Anishinaabe compositions. They are the current recipient of the Canada Council's Robert Flaming Prize awarded annually to an exceptionally talented young Canadian composer, and a recurring invited participant in the Banff Centre for the Arts’ Indigenous Classical Music gatherings. A frequent performer across Turtle Island, Melody has performed at the National Arts Centre, Luminato Festival, Vancouver’s Western Front, and the Toronto International Film Festival. They have shared stages with Polaris Prize winners Lido Pimienta, Tanya Tagaq, and Jeremy Dutcher, and performed with acclaimed filmmaker and musician Alanis Obomsawin. As a composer, Melody was commissioned by Soundstreams and Jumblies Theatre to compose Odaabaanag, a string quartet responding to Steve Reich’s Different Trains, drawing on interviews conducted with Anishinaabe elders.
Melody has scored several films and was invited to the Berlinale Talents Sound Studio as a music and composition mentor for the 2020 Berlin International Film Festival. Additional commissions have included Cluster Festival, Marina Thibeault, Duo AIRS, Carnegie Mellon University, TORQ Percussion, and the Elora Singers.
A proud member of Obishikokaang Lac Seul First Nation, Melody is currently Assistant Professor of Music Composition at the Brandon University School of Music and a member of the Mizi'iwe Aana Kwat (LGBTQ2S+ Council) within the Anishinaabe Nation of Treaty #3. Upcoming projects include a setting of Métis author Katherena Vermette’s poem river woman for SATB choir and percussion quartet, and a full-length album in late 2022. Melody holds an MA in Ethnomusicology from Memorial University and a BFA in Music and Indigenous Studies from York University.
✶ Beverley McKiver ✶
Beverley McKiver is an Ottawa-based composer, pianist and teacher.
Beverley began composing after a lengthy career in information technology. She explores themes of connection to the land, identity and recovery of Indigenous knowledge.
Her “Boozhoo Manoomin” suite for instrumental ensemble expresses the importance of manoomin to the Anishinaabeg.
Jumblies Theatre and Soundstreams commissioned Beverley to write the “Odaabaanag” song cycle for community choir based on stories by three elders about residential school.
Her “Canadian Floral Emblems Suite” for solo piano was funded by the Canada Council and performed by Beverley in an online concert series and at Ottawa’s Shenkman Arts Centre. Six of these pieces were arranged and performed by Dominion Carillonneur Dr. Andrea McCrady for the Peace Tower Carillon.
“Timelines” is a collaboration with Ottawa pianist/composer Debra Grass for two pianos.
“River Tales – One Day Forever” is an art song cycle setting of poetry by Ottawa writer Wendy Duschenes.