Spectral Illuminations - Brochure

EMMEDIA & Beakerhead present

SPECTRAL ILLUMINATIONS At the historic Lougheed House Wednesday, September 14, 2016 | 8 – 10PM

INTRODUCTION Local media artists illuminate the beautiful historic Lougheed House with the art of projection mapping (site-specific projections that alter the appearance of the surface on which they are projected). These projections light up and animate the walls, windows, furniture and ceilings, while interpreting the amazing history of the house, creating surprises around every corner!

ABOUT EMMEDIA EMMEDIA Gallery & Production Society is a non-profit artist-run organization that supports both the production and presentation of media arts. EMMEDIA responds to a broad community by offering affordable access to media art production tools and facilities, services, technical and educational support, an array of production programs and residencies, and a year round schedule of public exhibition programs including the PARTICLE + WAVE Media Arts Festival. Our programs strive to foster artistic dialogue and engagement through complementary activities such as artist talks and panel discussions, workshops and publications. Go to www.emmedia.ca for more information.

ABOUT BEAKERHEAD Beakerhead is a smash up of science, art and engineering happening September 14 – 18, 2016 in Calgary! For more information, go to: www.beakerhead.com

ABOUT LOUGHEED HOUSE Built in 1891 for James and Isabella Lougheed and their growing family, Lougheed House is now a National and Provincial Historic Site and Museum located on its original 2.8 acres in the Beltline of Calgary. Lougheed House is delighted to be a venue for Beakerhead and EMMEDIA, one of many cultural and community events we’re hosting in our 125th year. After tonight, come back here for Something Old, Something New: 125 Years of Wedding Fashion, until October 16. Or bring your whole family for FREE during Alberta Culture Days, October 1st and 2nd. And starting October 27th, we collaborate with Calgary Firefighters’ Museum to host an exhibition on the Calgary Fire Brigade’s history of ‘celebratory’ events and connection to the community.

Visit www.lougheedhouse.com to get more info, sign up for our newsletter, or to support us through purchasing a membership.

GUIDE MAP

INFORMATION Marjorie’s Favorite Song and Other Acknowledgements of the Unimportant Audrey Burch Room 10: Misson Room Marjorie’s Favorite Song and Other Acknowledgments of the Unimportant is a performance that tributes the young Marjorie Yolande Lougheed. The only information known about Marjorie was she was born in 1904 and died in 1917 at the age of 12. The notion behind this artwork is that history is a meritocracy. Consider the words of Napoleon Bonaparte: “ What is history but a fable agreed upon? ” Merits dictate historical importance of people and events. But the truth about the fleeting existence of various societies and culture shows us that we should not be selective but more observant.

Memorializing the Ephemeral Maria Munar Exterior – Garden side (In case of rain, project will be re-located to Room 21: Lady Lougheed’s Bedroom) Memorializing the Ephemeral features a site specific video installation that will document the current state of the historic gardens at the Lougheed House, analyzing layer by layer the vitality of their temporary existence. The work will attempt to digitize the liveliness of the gardens to demonstrate my desire to gather permanence in the ephemeral. The fleeting magnificence of these rigorously maintained gardens deepens their significance, questioning the role of beauty, time and essence.

Barriers Danielle Nicol Room 8: Main Hall (Inglenook) The Inglenook at the Lougheed house was quite intriguing to me in it’s concept. It was a place where women were to go after arriving to change from outdoor wear to indoor wear such as outdoor gloves to indoor gloves as they could not show their bare skin in public.

I found this space particularly interesting in light of recent events in the world pertaining to the control society assigns to women’s bodies and a perfect space to make a statement on oppression of women throughout history, the obstacles we still face and the weight on society that is caused by them.

Illuminating Campfire Tales Todd Rederburg Exterior – Front Entrance (In case of rain, project will be re-located to Room 13: Senator’s Study) The moving image and fire are great places to tell stories; humans have been gathering around fires and sharing stories before written history. The innovation of harnessing artificial light to project a moving image on a surface, a modern way to tell a great story, feeds the human desire to make sense of the world and find truth. In the tradition of telling great stories around campfires, Todd Rederburg, a Calgary-based artist, will illuminate stories on the exterior of the Lougheed house. Stories include a deer with a case of mistaken identity, fever dreams and why they are some of the scariest experiences, nature and the terror of being lost in it.

Untitled Paul Robert Room 18: Writing Room According to Wikipedia, “James Lougheed argued that the province rather than the federal government should have control of natural resources. This argument was carried on by his grandson, Peter Lougheed, when he was premier of Alberta in the 1970s and 1980s”. He “started the Alberta Heritage Fund as a way of ensuring that the exploitation of non-renewable resources would be of long-term benefit to Alberta”.

The idea that the revenues from natural resources should significantly benefit the place that they come from remains strong both in Alberta and within Canada. In the mid-1980s, Burkina Faso’s president Thomas Sankara (Africa’s Ché Guevara), likewise instituted policies that included the nationalization of all land and mineral wealth. His independent anti-colonial and anti foreign-aid stance led to his assassination and replacement by Blaise Compaoré, a puppet in the hands of the French government, the IMF and the World Bank. Today, Burkina Faso is dominated by foreign interests, primarily Canadian mining companies who profit handsomely while paying the country meager royalties.

This project, located in the Lougheed House’s Writing Room which boasts a bust of Peter Lougheed, seeks to establish solidarity between the the people of Alberta and Burkina Faso, rooted in the common experience of desiring compensation for their resources. Further, it calls on Canadians to consider their country’s role in implementing policies that they would not want imposed on them.

Vanishing Jordan Schinkel Room 23: Bedroom Exploring sleeplessness and nocturnal anxiety, Vanishing captures an unsettled night on the surface of a cot. The glowing suggestion of an active presence rippling and wrinkling the sheets suggests a glimpse at a history of those who occupied the room in the past.

The Precipice Anna Semenoff Room 9: Drawing Room The Precipice situates The Lougheed House in relation to notions of time: in the act of preserving the past in order to understand the future we are distracted from the precipice of time, the edge of the present moment. This piece will focus on the passing of time to draw attention to the present that we exist in. Subjects built into stained glass are usually deemed as significant, made to remember. Stained glass is activated by the sun, constructed in a way that relies on the passing of time to serve its functions. This piece is an amalgamation of the past and its interference with the present.

Smoke billows in the dining room Lindsay Sorell Room 11: Dining Room Smoke billows in the dining room. Containing the Fort Mac Fires and the previous summer’s Northern Saskatchewan forest fires to a square on a wall.

no one said Teresa Tam Room 16: Restoration Exhibit (Closet space) Not all histories are saved, some should never be. In time things move and change; things and people come and go.

Things accumulate but are forgotten.

Even if there is no direct indication of the people who once lived in the house, their actions left consequences in the space.

Exploring the lingering and seemingly irreconcilable differences between living and documenting, people can enter a closet and ponder on how and in what ways we effect spaces with or without archived history; on how in these spaces have carried unspoken wishes and dreams.

Bubble Mania Aran Wilkinson-Blanc Room 9: Drawing Room A meditation on the cyclical nature of existence and the fate of our constructs. The choices made and extrinsic values assigned to our environments and community and their part in developing our culture. Through our pattern of preservation and abandonment we shape our transitions and form our continuance.

THANKS TO OUR FUNDERS Black

CMYK