GROUP EXHIBITION

July 27 – August 20, 2022

Opening Reception: Friday, July 29 at 7 PM

white tile image with text that reads 'Latitude 53. Cross Cut. Selected works by the artists of Art From Here II Mentorship Program July 27 - August 20, 2022. Opening reception: Friday 29 July at 7:00 PM.

This summer, three mentors and four mentees have been sharing their experiences working in lens-based practices of video, film, animation, and photography in the Art From Here II program. While their collaboration continues—towards a new interview series featuring past Art From Here artists—visit Latitude 53 for a four-week presentation of recent projects by these artists and a peek at their diverse practices.

wide angle shot of the coast, where the water meets greenery during sunset. The sky is reflected in the water — *Seth Arcand, Shoreline I, Photography*, 2022

Following the online studio visit series Art From Here, Art From Here II pools the resources of Latitude 53, the Mitchell Art Gallery, Ociciwan, and SNAP to develop fundamental video shooting and editing skills in emerging artists through a series of structured workshops. By collectively creating, sharing and promoting local artists through this interview series, this project aims to pool organizational resources and knowledge to digitally adapt and transform to the future of the arts sector together.

Outdoors surrounded by trees are five black people, two masculine presenting, three feminine dressed in full white at a white table with fruits and plants. One person stands while the rest sit raising their wine glasses. . — Salem Zurch & Daliso Mwanza (pepper’d), Sister Sorrow (video still); video, 4:33 with poem by Dwennimmen, scored by Biboye Onanuga. Actors: Nasra Adem, Shima Robinson, Merlin Uwalaka, Asha, Salem Zurch. 2020

About the Artists

Dwayne Martineau is a visual artist, musician and composer. Two preoccupations dominate his work— the physicality of light, and experimental landscape photography. His work starts from an intimate interaction with nature and a reverence for the complex and sometimes frightening natural world around us that few stop to marvel at. Using optics, mirrors and multiple exposures, Martineau introduces distortions, symmetries, and animism into exhaustive studies of forests and trees. His goal, as he describes it, is to "give us a chance to see nature through a different lens, and understand that it’s got its own thing going on." Dwayne is a member of the Frog Lake First Nation, descended from early French and Scottish settlers, Plains Cree, and Métis.⁠

eryn tempest is a queer non-binary dancer and multimedia artist of settler descent currently based in amiskwaciwâskahikan (Edmonton) with ties in Tiohtià:ke (Montréal). They are drawn to technology as a way to better understand the body as material, often parsing the materiality of a transhuman body or cyborg. They are interested in the body as a builder of worlds and use digital technologies to render those worlds visible.

eryn's work has been presented across Canada. As a performer they have worked with Mile Zero Dance, K.O Dance Project, Andrea Peña, Benoît Lachambre, Project Contrabête, Camille Lacelle-Wilsey, and Nien Tzu Weng. They have received support from Circuit-est, The Edmonton Arts Council, Le Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, as well as the Canada Council for the Arts. eryn is one half of soft tooth||SFTTTH, an interdisciplinary research project that explores resonance, relationality, and ritual through sound and movement. They are one of the 2022 artists in residence at Lorganisme (QC) as part of the Linterface digital residency program

About the Work

Çås¢a∂ing €®r0r Win∂0ws,Video 20:19, 2021

Çås¢a∂ing €®r0r Win∂0ws (CEW) is a 20 minute video about human beings in digital spaces shot entirely on my computer desktop. It is an exploration of artificial intelligence, human consciousness, and embodiment that troubles deeply held convictions about what it means to be alive, to be a person, and to be in conversation with another. Taking up threads from early A.I. research, transhumanism and cognitive science, Çås¢a∂ing €®r0r Win∂0ws explores human being as a reflection in someone else’s computer screen.

CEW playfully explores desktop/file navigation as a type of choreography, the uncanny witnessing of someone else’s computer desktop and software navigation as a type of performance. The viewer sees a screen recording of video file windows of varying sizes which I manipulate – resize, minimize, drag, hide, and exit – as well as close up shots from a second camera pointed at the computer screen. By making visible the movements of the mouse and the playback windows the audience is witnessing not only the content of those windows but also the interface through which my actions disappear into digital operations.

In the future, LCD screen and Arduino controller, battery powered, 2022

In the future is a companion piece to CEW, which displays elements of text from the video on a small LCD screen. The text implies a kind of intimacy with the unseen, proposing similarities between A.I. subjects and ghostly apparitions. Using internet lingo as a reference to early chatrooms and SMS conversations, in the future reflects on presence and personhood in terms of the invisible, the felt, and the imagined.

Jamie McRae is an independent film and video artist, residing in Edmonton Alberta. His work primarily consists of shooting on celluloid 16mm film, in addition to shooting digital video. His work can be described as punk rock on sedatives, the decay of the human soul. Jamie's work attempts to explore the fallacy of mankind, the underlying depression caused by a capitalist society. ⁠

⁠Since beginning working at the Film and Video Arts Society of Alberta in 2014, he had at first focused on the tech side of the film industry working as a grip, lighting tech, camera assistant, and DIT before discovering his own passion for directing and producing. He found the experimental works, and nature of the society's members a large inspiration for his work. His first completed works relied heavily on bent circuit analog video synthesizers with video feedback looping. ⁠

⁠Jamie’s work and interests goes beyond the tech, and art side of filmmaking as well. An avid user of his hands, he creates analog paper collages under the alias known as The Crying Man. ⁠

⁠Over the course of his journey, he has learned to try to be a jack of all trades, to be able to understand as much as he can in a broad range of areas. From understanding cinema camera technologies, live streaming production, live audio recording, and more.⁠

Kev Liang is a multidisciplinary visual artist based in Edmonton, AB, Treaty 6 territory, and is originally from secluded rural Central Alberta. After graduating in June 2021 with his Bachelor of Fine Arts with Distinction in Intermedia and Printmaking at the University of Alberta, Kev tackles his queer, 2nd-generation Chinese-Canadian identity and its existential anxieties related to blood lineage and prosperity through documented photo, video, and performative processes that are encapsulated into print and mixed media. ⁠

⁠Through group exhibitions, Kev’s work has been shown at U of A’s FAB Gallery, SNAP Gallery, the “DYSCORPIA: Future Intersections of the Body and Technology” project, the Art Gallery of Alberta Sidewalk Cinema, Mile Zero Dance’s “RV There Yet?: The Horizon of being” curated by Cindy Baker and Roseanna Nay, City Centre’s About Light Gallery, and Latitude 53 for “Schmoozy 2021.” He was recently awarded the 2021 BMO 1st! Art award for Alberta, as well as a grant from the Edmonton Arts Council and will be making new work through SNAP Gallery’s Emerging Artist in Residence Program, with his first solo exhibition opening later this year. Outside of his art practice, Kev worked as a Production Assistant for The Works International Visual Arts Society and is a Gallery Associate for dc3 Art Projects.⁠

About the work

Jiā yóu! Video loop, laser engraved chop sticks, screen print on tarp, wok, wrapped chopsticks, 2021–2022

City, Inkjet on Somerset, Enhanced Velvet, 2020

Searching (II), Inkjet on Coventry Rag, 2020

Anomaly; Digest (I–II), Lasercut on Black Fabiano Tiziano, 2021

Molly Little is an animator and illustrator based in Calgary, Alberta. After graduating with a diploma in Design and Illustration from MacEwan University she worked as a designer for a variety of small studios and larger corporations; before returning to study a degree in Character Design and Animation at the Alberta University of the Arts. She has since created award winning animated shorts and music videos, and currently works at Sticks & Stones

About the work

Organical Jerk Animation, 3:19

Organical Jerk is a short animation that explores the relationship between human and machine. A character is continuously distracted from her busy work, by an energy that looms in a small mouse hole. Unable to shake her nagging desire to investigate the hole she turns to a last resort in order to remain productive.

Yo-Woes Animation, 3:05 2020

A glimpse into isolation, Yo Woes’ comical tale of a would-be yo-yo enthusiast, accentuated with whimsical mixed-media moments and mouth made sound effects.

Salem Zurch (they/them) is an amiskwaciwâskahikan-based prairie boy and co-founder of Pepper’d. Born and barely raised in small-town Alberta they have claimed Edmonton as their home and greatest muse. Their work centres their experience of establishing Edmonton as a hub for creation and community for QTBIPOC creatives. They apply their knowledge of being a practised astrologer to their work as an artist and filmmaker.⁠

About the Work

Salem Zurch & Daliso Mwanza (pepper’d), Sister Sorrow, Video, 4:33, with poem by Dwennimmen, scored by Biboye Onanuga. Actors Nasra Adem, Shima Robinson, Merlin Uwalaka, Asha.

Drawn from Sounding, a collection of poems by Dwennimmen (Shima Robinson) turned into an experimental poetry fi lm by pepper’d founders (Daliso Mwanza and Salem Clarke). This interdis ciplinary poetry fi lm fi rst premiered in Found Festival’s Story City application that allowed people to visit the precise geolocation that each poem was shot at. The project brought together elements of poetry, fi lm, and music (composed by Biboye Onanuga) to showcase Black futures and our necessary connection to the past

Seth Arcand is a Cree filmmaker and photographer from the Kipohtakaw Cree Nation (Alexander) in so-called Alberta. Seth is interested in exploring Indigenous stories in his films and photography. Seth’s hope is to make films and open up more opportunities for more Indigenous filmmakers interested in the industry, he hopes to create a space where Indigenous filmmakers are able to take risks with their craft. Seth recently finished the New Indigenous Voices program held by CBC and the National Screen Institute and graduated from the Concordia University of Edmonton with a Bachelor of Arts in English.