Cell Musings

Greetings and welcome to STEM Cell Musings. I’m one of a few folks who’ve been invited to share my thoughts on Edmonton’s upcoming first ever festival of non-traditional presentations of media art. Latitude 53, Metro Cinema and FAVA have collectively commandeered three days of performances, projections, installations and celebration to present a unique happening that hasn’t happened before. At least not quite like this. Not quite here.

What do you think of when you think ‘Edmonton’? ‘Festival City’? ‘Purple City’? ‘Dirt City’? ‘Gateway to the North’? ‘City of Champions’? ‘City of Mushrooms’? ‘Memorable-Murders-in-Winter City’? ‘West Edmonton MAUL’? Whatever it is, I’m betting a blue kingfisher five that it isn’t ‘City of New Media Art’. This town (and despite its growth, the city of Edmonton manages to maintain a big town feel---at least in an arts community context) is home to many cool cultural practices, yet exploration and presentation of media art hasn’t been predominant among these.

Theatre in Edmonton is huge. Literally. The big brick flagship sails on, but so do many successful and innovative independent theatre companies and collectives. Whatever you think of the selected design for the Alberta Gallery of Art, it’s exciting that the old EAG Brutalist bunker (cementalities aside) is giving way to new digs. Performance venues continue to crash and burn, yet E-town’s indie music scene is as dynamic and thriving as ever: healthy and incestuous cross band pollinations abound. Artists vs. Crafters pony up in semi-annual community hall shows and sale-offs. Poet gangs pitch boozy tents on rival syllabic territories north and south of the High Level. Readers of The Edmonton Journal debate on the editorial letters’ page whether or not our symphony conductor should shake his bum. So much. Edmonton is not a culturally apathetic city. So what about new media art?

It isn’t that media art isn’t, or hasn’t been produced in Edmonton. Tim Folkmann has been a cutting edge video artist for over twenty years. Folkmann has worked on numerous media art projects in collaboration with dancers, theatre artists, poets and musicians in addition to his own work. Alex Viszmeg has been prolific in his personal and pioneering experimental explorations of film and video. Shawn Pinchbeck’s electro acoustic compositions and performances are internationally acclaimed. When Pinchbeck isn’t in Edmonton, he’s teaching at the University of Estonia and hanging out with Arvo Part. Okay, only sometimes but still…

Having traveled a bit over the past several years, I’ve had the privilege to see work that I wouldn’t have otherwise experienced first hand. I wouldn’t have been moved by the violent and visceral projectile of Gary Hill’s weighty ‘Wall Piece’; I wouldn’t have viewed Pipilotti Rist’s fetching ‘Ever is Over All’, featuring a smiling, sundressed woman casually yet passionately smashing windshields; I wouldn’t have experienced the unsettling, erotic displacement of emotional centre refocused through the mundanely, breathtaking lens of Uta Barth; I wouldn’t have inhaled the prismatic pollen pyramids of Wolfgang Laib. And yet, immersing myself in the complex cynicism, beauty, humour and wondrous horror of our collective consciousness is as close to home as viewing one of the sublime films of FAVA’s aAron munson.



Context is not everything, yet it positions us to question and understand. At best, contextualization invites us to make our own connections, and to confront the uncertainty of primary disconnections. Musing on STEM Cell has presented me with certain anxieties. This is not fully familiar territory. I am not a new media artist. I don’t own a cell phone. And yet, the key to rethinking coded pathways of the mind and heart requires simply a willingness to begin. Openness to the exploration. A little trip made all the more inspiring through new connections, linkages and interfaces. Taking off with a noncommodified exchange of spirited ideas is a great place to start.

Now you are here: STEM Cell City.

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