Anticipating exponential growth, or one brief perspective on the new media scene in Edmonton

There is something under the surface, growing, we see, or rather begin to sense its perturbations, we know it is there just beyond our reach. It is impossible to discern the source, spreading and reaching out in all directions. New media work, in structure, approach and inherent sensibilities is rooted in a similar sensibility of rhizomatic wandering. Edmonton is not disassociated from the plethora of new media work being created in other parts of the country, yet it seems that this city ought to have a much greater presence as a producer of new and intermedia work. It is not for a lack of talented or innovative practitioners, but it seems to me to be largely a matter of attracting more new media producers and connoisseurs to the city, venues such as STEM Cell will hopefully begin to bridge the space between the underground and the established scenes and aids in establishing Edmonton in the national new media scene. I have to say one of my roommates moved here from Ontario specifically because the reception and encouragement she received from FAVA as an experimental filmmaker while on a short visit. The energy and vitality that she witnessed was an enticing attraction to join the growing Edmonton community.

It is interesting for me to contemplate the state of new media in Edmonton considering that I came to here to pursue my degree in printmaking. But part of what attracted me to the printmaking program at the University of Alberta was the way in which the practice of layering and integrating multiple processes within images could be easily transposed to working in installation and other intermedia work. Amongst students at the U of A there is often an expressed desire for more access to courses in non-traditional mediums. The University was able to run an installation class for four semesters (I was able to participate in two of these classes) that was quite successful, however it was discontinued due to lack of adequate space.

Within the graduate program at the university the division of students into specific media centered disciplines is indicative to a certain degree of the trends within the city as a whole. However I believe the lack of new media work taking place at the university, is not due to a lack of interest, or respect for the possibilities of new media, but rather due to a lack of funding, space and the belief that the fundamental of traditional media must be covered first before venturing into new media. In many of the major universities and art institutions in the world one often applies to a graduate program through a specific discipline, however once accepted students are encouraged to work within and between many mediums. That said, it would be unfair to neglect the gradual shift toward accepting and encouraging a certain degree of intermedia work within the specific disciplines that is occurring at the University of Alberta.

Although I have lived in Edmonton for almost four years now it was only in the last year and a half or so that I actually left the studio once in a while and started to participate in the arts community. This was largely due to collaborating with a number of artists through FAVA to create an installation / performance piece Project/Projekt incorporating live music, dance, video mixing, overhead projections and drawing. Being that is was intended to evolve from a jam aesthetic the results were similarly to the loose and indeterminable, there were moments when there were sympathetic responses between all the activities, but the overall cacophony only occasionally reached those moments of synchronicity. Edmonton’s many art festivals offer sites where the different co-ops and artist run centers can bring together a number of practices and a range of experimentation can occur.

I do not want to neglect the many attempts within the underground / avant-garde / independent scene to rectify such disparities between media, (consciously or not) exalting the urge to create and collaborate over gaining institutionalized recognition and perhaps it is generative and healthy for these practices to gestate in a sense underground free from the imposition of traditions and institutions. There is a lot of really innovative work being produced in connection with the many festivals, the thriving music scene, and artist co-ops like i human, Arts Hab, and studio e, however to maintain these sites of interaction recognition and adequate space and funding are essential.

So even though I am currently invested in a very focused study of a traditional medium I find it incredibly inspiring and even necessary to be exposed the variety of approaches occurring within different mediums and communities throughout the country. In my own work I always feel a sense of not yet being able to reach something through any of the media I have engaged with, a sense of longing for a process or interaction that can most adequately engage with the essence of what I am trying to communicate and I realize that this searching will take some time. Is this not what so many of us are striving towards in our work, to speak to that which stirs beneath the surface of our senses, beneath the surface of our daily lives, silently, or perhaps, not so silently imploring our attention? We know it is there, just how do we go about trying to reach it? Can this festival serve as a site for exponential growth in new media as its name suggests? An undifferentiated beginning, emerging from the foundation of a larger body, stretching out creating sites for new intersections and potentialities, will STEM Cell provide a source of generative fuel, it is with considerable anticipation that I look forward to this surfacing.

See you soon,
Andrea Pinheiro