Poster design by Mouth of Tiger.
Pique is a quarterly event series that celebrates forward-thinking artists. The Pique winter edition, happening in-person at the Arts Court and Ottawa Art Gallery on December 4, will include live audio/visual and dance performances, installations, screenings, and more.
Music/Sound
Art / Installation:
dahan, dahan (careful, slowly) by April Aliermo
with projections by Kat Estacio and sculpture by Kristina Guison
dahan, dahan (careful, slowly) is a meditative sound installation created by discs of ice melting onto amplified metal sculptures. The sculptures are made from brass, copper and steel, producing varying textures of sound. Percussive rhythms change overtime as ice melts. Projected generative visuals respond and react to the sound of each water drop. A hypnotic wash of colour, light and sound bring one to consider the ways and speed at which we move through our days.
Ingesting Home by Jude Abu Zaineh
Curated by Amin Alsaden
In this intervention, Jude Abu Zaineh explores the soft power of food, especially for diasporic communities with a precarious connection to ancestral homelands. Comprising a performance, screening, and dinner gathering hosted by the artist, Ingesting Home convenes guests around Palestinian food, poetry, and folk stories. A strong sense of community is often formed around meals in Palestine and the Arab world, while hunger strikes are routinely used as potent forms of protest. Food is also a great equalizer, transcending social divides and national borders, providing a taste of home even when home might be inaccessible. The intervention offers a moment of reflection around a dinner table, on the meanings of food here and there, and its potential as a site of learning, exchange, and growth.
Registration is required for Ingesting Home dinner performance. Register here.
Bathed in that twilight gold by Kosisochukwu Nnebe
Curated by Amin Alsaden
This installation plays on the perceptual, emotive, and oneiric properties of light. Kosisochukwu Nnebe interjects into an existing space through a simple, singular gesture: a monochromatic lightbulb. And yet the effect is transformative, bathing the space and everyone who enters it in a warm, yellow light. The artist’s intervention is partly informed by Audre Lorde’s conceptualization of the erotic, seen not through the restricted lens of sexual desire, but as a way of feeling deeply and intimately, a portal into an ever emergent and internalized sense of power, one of knowing and feeling, which can be experienced in isolation and also in the company of others. Just like an amber twilight, with its soft and yet intense light emanating from the sky, marking the beginning or end of another day, the golden glow in the space is an invitation to engage more acutely with the senses—to see, move, and experience things differently, to cross over an unknown threshold.
Mutant Histories by Pansee Atta
Curated by Amin Alsaden
In this collaboration, Pansee Atta and Nadah El Shazly present a joint-performance that catalyzes shared interests across their artistic practices. Specifically, while employing new media and experimental methodologies, both artists examine the history of their familial homeland, Egypt, invigorating the past through layered processes of reclamation, remixing, and reimagination. Taking a deep dive into collections and archives that purport to capture the history of Egypt and its cultures, Atta’s work explores how otherized bodies have been instrumentalized over time, and uses animations to morph art objects and museological artefacts into unrecognizable new forms, thus asking how existing modes of representation and classification reflect problematic colonial legacies. Using field recordings, instruments, and voices, El Shazly’s work excavates nineteenth century popular Egyptian music, reinventing familiar or obscured melodies by creating dynamic compositions that raise questions about contemporary perceptions of time. By aligning their practices in this collaboration, the artists challenge the uses and abuses of history, and present original, enigmatic, and mutant forms that propel cultural traditions into captivating future visions.
Video synth visuals by Hard Science for Phèdre and Korea Town Acid
Movement:
innerspace beings by amelia rose griffin
with movement by Katherine NG, Slynks, and Klassic
In innerspace beings hyper-real characters land at the venue from their innership. With movement and presence these innerbeings find a common home; space turns into play, interaction amplifies their expressions, and joypeace intensifies. Their connection with earthpeople amplify their innerways, exploding in a physical celebration before the innership returns to the Great Retreat.
Special thanks to the Ottawa Dance Directive
Video Concerts:
Transmissions of pandemic-produced video concert programming from partners in the national creative music presenter network
Lafawnduh presented by EVERYSEEKER (Halifax)
Amy Nelson presented by Sled Island (Calgary)
KMRU presented by Suoni Per Il Popolo (Montreal)
Mas Aya presented by Long Winter (Toronto)
Silla and Rise co-presented by SAW (Ottawa)
With video installation co-produced by MAVN (Lesley Marshall), Mikayla Gordon, and Howard Adler. Special thanks to Asinabka Festival.
Featured videos to be announced!
Guest curator:
Click here for schedule in list format
COVID-19 Policy
By purchasing a ticket and attending Pique, attendees agree to follow our current COVID-19 policy.
All attendees must be fully vaccinated and provide proof of vaccination (showing two doses plus a minimum of 14 days) and photo identification.
Face masks must be worn over the mouth and nose when attendees are not seated, for example:
when attendees are using the washroom facilities
when attendees are ordering or paying for food and beverages
when attendees are entering and exiting the location
Face masks can ONLY be removed when seated, in order to consume food and beverages.
Dancing indoors is NOT permitted.
Wash hands or use the provided hand sanitizer often.
Contact tracing information collected in Eventbrite and/or at the box office.
Accessibility
In-person programming will be happening in and around the Arts Court and Ottawa Art Gallery buildings. 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.
For accessibility and visitor information for the Arts Court building and the OAG go to:
https://artscourt.ca/visitor-info-en
https://oaggao.ca/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 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.
Land Acknowledgement
We acknowledge and pay respect to the Algonquin Anishinaabeg people on whose land we operate. If you support our programming, please consider supporting a local Indigenous organization or fundraiser. Learn more about this land acknowledgement and find educational resources and ways to support at
Graphic design & web development by Mouth of Tiger. Original wordmark typeface created by Moritz Esch.
Pique is produced in partnership with Arts Court, Ottawa Art Gallery, Ottawa Fringe, SAW, Digital Arts Resource Centre, Ottawa Dance Directive, MAVN, Asinabka Festival, Artengine, DAÏMÔN, EVERYSEEKER, Suoni Per Il Popolo, Long Winter, and Sled Island
With support from Wall Sound, Firegrove Studio, Le Seltzer, Dominion City Brewing Co, Also Cool, CKCU FM, CHUO FM, and Apt613
And is funded in part by the Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council, Canadian Heritage, City of Ottawa, SOCAN Foundation, and FACTOR.
About the artists
Jerusalem in my Heart
Jerusalem In My Heart (JIMH) is a live audio-visual performance project,with Lebanese producer and musician Radwan Ghazi Moumneh and Montréal based filmmaker Erin Weisgerber at its core.
JIMH is an immersive sonic and visual live experience, with an evolving effort to forge a modern experimental Arabic music wed to hand-made visuals using analog 16mm film at site-specific screen installations.
Weisgerber manipulates the photographic, chemical, and material properties of 16mm film to transform the world framed through her camera; rendering rhythmic images that exist between figuration and abstraction, external vision and internal landscape. She performs 16mm film and audio loops live on multiple projectors.
Nadah El Shazly
Nadah el Shazly is a producer, vocalist and sound artist from Cairo, Egypt. Her debut album “Ahwar” radically reinvents the popular music of her homeland from the early 19th century and explores new sonic and harmonic frontiers. Using voice, field recordings and instruments, she creates haunting sound pieces and songforms that hijack the perception of time with their complex layers and dynamic structure.
Backing up her release with extensive worldwide touring through a solo set and a four-piece band, El Shazly has been featured in local and international festivals including Irtijal, Le Guess Who?, REWIRE, Best Kept Secret, Nusasonic, Marfa Myths, amongst others. She continues to compose for film and visual art and has been featured on compilations including Nashazphone's This is Cairo Not the Screamers and C.A.N.V.A.S.' s Apocope.
Most recently El Shazly curated the Egyptian Leather Pavillion for Nyege Nyege Festival 2020. She currently hosts a monthly show on Cashmere Radio, Live from Viper Mountain, where she deep-dives into music that fascinates her.
Korea Town Acid
Korea Town Acid is a classically trained pianist and multidisciplinary musician/artist from South Korea, currently based in Toronto. She is an alumni of the 2018 Redbull Music Academy and was one of four invitees to participate in a master class with Suzanne Cianni at the National Music Centre in 2019. As a beat-producer, she contributed to the track "Play No Games" on Cadence Weapon's 2021 Polaris Prize winning album Parallel World. When it comes to DJing she is eclectic, currently host of a monthly radio show in Brooklyn's The Lot Radio. Her unique improvisational Live PA experience is free-form, genre-bending, composing intricately unpredictable soundscapes utilizing hardware synth, sampler and drum machines. Her formidable skills have brought her to global stages like her home town of Seoul, Helsinki, London, Berlin, New York, Athens and all over Canada. Her most notable showcases were Mutek, Pop Montreal and Boiler Room, shared stages with globally renowned artists including Floating Points, Objeckt, Pelada, Machinedrum, MoMa Ready, Kyle Hall, Leon Vynehall, Yeaji to name a few. Her latest LP "Metamorphosis"(URBNET) (funded by FACTOR) has received positive press from Resident Advisor, Excliam.ca and Now Toronto, her forth-coming self-release record "Cosmos" is supported by Canada Art Council.
Mother Tongues
Mother Tongues harks back to a time when music and mysticism were entwined, carrying on the canon of psychedelic music that came before them, taking things somewhere new and unexplored. A link to the past, a glimpse into the future.
The group has been a prominent part of the Toronto music scene for the last 8 years. Members Charise Aragoza (Luna Li, Hooded Fang, Maylee Todd) Lukas Cheung ( Zoon, Matthew “Doc” Dunn”, Lane Halley (Hooded Fang), Kvesche Ebacher Bijons (Lido Pimienta) and Nick Kervin (Mimico, Andre Ethier, Witchrot) were brought together through a mutual love of everything from 60s french pop, to break beats, kraut rock, shoegaze and film scores. With an equal embrace of pop sensibilities and the experimental, the group has come into an inventive new sound reflective of their eclectic palette.
Comparisons have been made to Stereolab, Broadcast, CAN, and The Flaming Lips.
shn shn
shn shn(she/her) is a queer Black electronic producer, singer-songwriter and creator based in Toronto, Canada. Her music is an ever-changing experience, bending genres as she brings experimental elements from electronic, ambient, world music, folk and pop into her practice. Her work allows exploration, contemplation, reckoning with duality and the spaces in between.
shn shn’s e.strange.d EP, follows her debut 2020 self-produced and released EP structura. e.strange.d is about being untethered and the full gamut of emotions that encompasses (the strangeness, liberation and the fear of the unknown). This album sounds like otherworldly electronic soundscapes, layered guitar riffs, pulsing percussion, spoken word poetry and stacked harmonies from her lush folksy voice. It features singles "maladaptive daydreams”, “taking time” and “divine".
April Aliermo
For the last 10 years, playing bass, synths and samplers, April Aliermo has extensively toured North America, Europe and Asia with her rock and electronic bands, Hooded Fang and Phèdre. In 2018, she begun her solo foray into sound art. She mentored under pioneering sound artist Christina Kubisch at the Darmstadt Summer Course New Music Festival, studying and recording "hidden" electromagnetic sounds as well as learning about site specific, immersive sound installations. There she presented her first sound installation, "Happy Meal?" focused on electromagnetic sounds recorded in Darmstadt. Since then, she has presented her sound art at the Music Gallery's Emergent Series and at the Gladstone Hotel for TSG and Long Winter. As a Filipinx-Canadian artist, April attempts to create sonic works that gently ask one to question socio-political systems and reality in an immersive and meditative way. She is a strong believer in empowering others with knowledge and strives to build conscious communities.
Kat Estacio
Kat Estacio is a Tkaronto-based creative working with sound and visuals, often focusing on collaborative and exploratory projects. They blend analog and acoustic elements with digital and electronic as a palette for self-expression. Informed by their lived experience as a diasporic queer woman of colour, Kat centres intentional and embodied remembering in creating for the senses. They are also a member of Pantayo, an all-women Filipino kulintang gong ensemble.
Phèdre
PHÈDRE is an electronic duo from Tkaronto composed of Daniel Lee and April Aliermo. Originating in experimental-pop realms, their richly-textured compositions have grown into instrumental sets of high-bpm rhythmic soundscapes, performed live using sequencers and synthesizers. The ever-changing bass-heavy sets pay tribute to club, breakbeat, jungle and techno, while maintaining Phèdre’s own unique sense of musical beat exploration. Phèdre has toured in Can/USA, Mexico, EU/UK, Japan/Korea/Taiwan, Philippines, Russia, and Lebanon. Recent shows include support slots for Marie Davidson, Molly Nilsson, Anika and Simo Cell.
Pony Girl
Pony Girl is an art-pop band from Ottawa, originally formed in 2012 as an outlet to explore pop music through experimental means of orchestration and electronic production. The band has sculpted its sound over the course of two full-length records, Show Me Your Fears (“Cinematic and intense,” Ottawa Magazine) and Foreign Life (“Generously rewards multiple spins,” CBC Music); by touring Canada from coast to coast (“Quite astonishing to experience in person,” Exclaim!); and plans to release new material in 2022.
The collective has been lauded for their “evocative soundscapes” (CBC Radio), “ability to push the boundaries that define pop-rock” (Mixtape Magazine), and were awarded Le Prix FEQ emerging artist prize in 2016. To this day, songs from Foreign Life have been in rotation on CBC Radio 2 (The Signal and Afterdark programs) since its 2015 release.
Morgan-Paige
Morgan-Paige Melbourne is a Tkarón:to-based pianist, composer and singer who has competed and won numerous classes in the Kiwanis Music Festivals, (OMFA – Ontario Music Festival Association), including placing third in the national Canadian Music Competition 2017 for under-23 category. Morgan has performed extensively in Tkarón:to (Toronto), GTA, Guelph, Bahamas, Tiohtià:ke (Montreal) and France. She performed at Koerner Hall during Culture Days celebrations, the 21C Music Festival, Burdock Piano Fest, Château d’Orquevaux Artist Residency, the Cinéclub Film Society silent film festivals, Alexina Louie’s award ceremony at the Arts and Letters Club and has been added to Toronto Silent Film Festival’s and Opéra Queens performance roster. Her work and story has been featured in Musicworks Magazine Winter 2020-2021 Issue 138, The WholeNote Magazine, Ludwig van Toronto and Toronto Guardian. Past projects include Bin Chicken film collaboration with Toronto Dance Theatre and Alyssa Martin, The Magic Wallet short film, Mission Sankofa short film, Hillside Inside’s “The Sound of Light”, “Where Do I Go?” short film with Tapestry Opera and Rock Bottom Movement, 21C Music Festival’s “New Music In A New World”, and a commissioned work/performance for Suoni Per Il Popolo. Upcoming projects include a sound art installation at the Museum of Contemporary Art Toronto, Debaser Pique, and the 21C Music Festival in January 2022.
Liliane Chlela
With her distinct sound treatment and signature improvised performances, Liliane Chlela has been pushing forward the boundaries of ‘Experimental and Electronic Music’ in Lebanon and the Middle East/West Asia and North Africa for over a decade both as a solo artist and via her various local and international collective projects.
She constructs a characteristic sound both as a composer/producer and as a live musician. She further explores the connections between improvisation and sound treatment by approaching numerous musical genres with her signature techniques. Liliane has also further developed her know-how by working with moving images, film, interactive installations, performance art, contemporary dance, fashion shows and film. Resulting in that is a wide sound palette, making Chlela one of the most versatile female producers/musicians in the Middle East/West Asia and North Africa.
ISØBEL
Canadian electropop artist ISØBEL began producing music in 2020 — with gritty synthesizers, pulsing drum machines, electric guitar and soft vocals, she delivers brooding alternative pop anthems that explore feelings of self-doubt and egotism, relationships, and challenges faced by women. This self-taught artist writes, performs, records and produces all of her tracks in her home studio in Ottawa, Ontario.
ISØBEL’s second single, “Infinity Pools” aired on LiVE 88.5’s Big Money Shot Spotlight and was featured on the City of Ottawa’s City Sounds playlist. Her single “Time Bomb” was placed on CKDJ 107.9 FM’s regular rotation, and was aired on CKCU 93.1 FM’s “Indie City Madness” program for their 2021 International Women’s Day Special. ISØBEL was recently announced as one of the winners of an Ottawa Music Development Fund grant and continues to pick up steam as she gears up to release her debut EP in early 2022.
amelia rose griffin
amelia rose griffin is a British-Canadian contemporary dance artist. She has performed in, and choreographed works presented locally, nationally, and internationally since 2006; both solo, and with a variety of companies and collectives. Her movement-based artworks centre innovation through inclusive practice and lived experience, with an emphasis on collaboration. She creates fantastical, immersive worlds from her perspective as a mad artist juxtaposing the surreal/real, humorous/sobered, pointed/subtle, disruptive/soothing.
Stephen Eckert
Stephen Eckert (b.1997) is a pianist-composer-sound artist from Kippens, Newfoundland, who holds an M.Mus. in Piano Performance from uOttawa where they studied with David Jalbert and a B.Mus. (Hons) in Piano Performance and Composition from Memorial University of Newfoundland where they studied with Dr. Kristina Szutor and Dr. Andrew Staniland. Currently they are pursuing a Graduate Diploma in Performance from uOttawa. Some of their career honours include winning the 2021 Nicole Senécal Emerging Artist Prize, lecturing and performing at 2018/19 Gros Morne Summer Music and the 2019 Wintertide Festival, acting as the music director and pianist for the 2019 MUN Opera Roadshow Tour, and co-founding the both the Nova Collective in Newfoundland in 2018 and Ottawa-based new music ensemble, Ensemble Allure (formerly Phase Ensemble), in 2020.
Jude Abu Zaineh
Jude Abu Zaineh is a Palestinian-Canadian interdisciplinary artist and cultural worker. Her practice relies on the use of art, food, and technology to investigate meanings of culture, displacement, diaspora, and belonging. She examines ideals of home and community while working to develop aesthetics rooted in her childhood and upbringing in the Middle East. Abu Zaineh is the recipient of the 2020 William and Meredith Saunderson Prizes for Emerging Artists, and was one of the first selected artists to participate in a collaborative residency with the Ontario Science Centre and MOCA Toronto (Canada). She has presented her work nationally and internationally including Cultivamos Cultura, São Luis, Portugal; Museu de Arte, Arquitetura e Tecnologia, Lisbon, Portugal; Centro de Cultura Digital, Mexico City, Mexico; SVA, NYC, USA; Forest City Gallery, London, Canada; Art Gallery of Windsor, Canada; with forthcoming exhibitions at Centre Culturel Canadien, Paris, France; and the Visual Arts Centre of Clarington, Canada. Abu Zaineh received an MFA from the University of Windsor (Canada) and is currently pursuing her PhD in Electronic Arts at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (NY, USA) as a SSHRC Doctoral Fellow. She maintains an active studio practice between upstate NY, USA and Windsor-Essex, Canada.
Kosisochukwu Nnebe
Kosisochukwu Nnebe is a Nigerian-Canadian visual artist. Her practice aims to engage viewers, and heighten an awareness of complicity in a variety of structural issues, from the private to the collective. Her work vacillates between that which is opaque (illegible, undecipherable, hidden), and apparently transparent (clear, vivid, hyper-visible), both literally, in terms of materiality, and metaphorically, as a way of exploring the interplay between questions of interiority and publicness, agency and domination, self and other. At its core, her work seeks a glimpse into other ways of seeing, knowing, and being, including those yet to be fully understood by the artist herself. Nnebe’s work has been shown at galleries in Ottawa, Hull, Montreal, Toronto, and Mountain View, California. She is currently based in Ottawa, Canada.
Amin Alsaden
Amin Alsaden is a curator, scholar, and educator whose work focuses on transnational exchanges of ideas and expertise across cultural boundaries. His curatorial practice is committed to advancing social justice through the arts, and to the dissemination of inclusive narratives that expand existing canons and challenge hegemonic knowledge and power structures. He is particularly interested in how artists and architects ponder collective experiences in the public realm, level political and institutional critique, and envision novel spatial responses to questions of displacement, exile, and belonging. His research explores modern and contemporary art and architecture in the Global South, and often involves documenting endangered heritage and examining how precarious archives and scarce resources shape lopsided global narratives. He teaches at several institutions, and has published and lectured widely.
Pansee Atta
Pansee Atta is an Egyptian-Canadian artist, curator, and researcher living and working on the unceded territory of the Algonquin Anishnaabe nation in Ottawa, Canada. Using a variety of new media including animation, video, installation, sculpture, and painting, her work examines themes of representation, migration, archives, and political struggle. Previous residencies include the Impressions Residency Award at the Montréal Museum of Fine Arts, the SparkBox Studio Award, and at the Atelier of Alexandria. Previous exhibitions have taken place in collaboration with SAW Video in Ottawa, at Galerie La Centrale Powerhouse and Z Art Space in Montréal, the Art Gallery of Mississauga, and other contemporary Canadian arts spaces. Her curatorial projects include UTOPIAS, a community-based performance art festival in Kingston, Ontario, and Home/Making, an exhibition at the Canada Council Art Bank. Her ongoing research and activist practice centers community-based responses to colonial projects of collection, display, study.
Osita
Osita is an Artist/DJ based in Ottawa, Ontario. Starting in 2015 on a cracked version of ableton live, Osita has been steadily working towards honing is craft and skills. He began his journey in DJing in 2017, eventually starting the event "It's A Vibe" and starting "New Low Radio" with his friends and fellow Ottawa DJs: Sacha Foster, So Durand, and Loungeworth. Osita is a free-form DJ and producer bouncing between Genre's and styles, with intricate rhythms and booming bass.
Hard Science
Processing and synthesizing videos with a small arsenal of analog machines, Hard Science invites you to experience what it’s like to be trapped inside the circuits of a CRT TV. Your stage will come to life with hazy, psychedelic video that’s reminiscent of an 80s dream.