Edgardo Moreno, Nisidotan (Understand by Hearing), 2016

Presented by Zakide

Working as Curator, Clayton Windatt of Zakide is recruiting the aid of Edgardo Moreno as Composer and Eddie Jeanveau as Audio Technician to create a series of stand alone audio installations entitled “” or “Understand by Hearing” responding to the theme of Ojichaagobiishin for Ice Follies 2016. In the creation of Nisidotan, a team of audio technicians will document the sounds of Lake Nipissing over the course of several months. The sounds under the ice as it shifts and cracks over time will be captured making environmental audio from Lake Nipissing. This will give an organic voice to water. Moreno will then process these into a sound-scape installation utilizing sounds from community intertwined. This mixing of sounds and tones will form a faint melody-like immersive piece installed on-site. With the temporary and fragile nature of water as a resource, Moreno will explore the calming effect of water sound and the drastic affect of a threatened environment.

Artist Bio:

Edgardo Moreno was born in Santiago Chile and is Toronto based composer who specialises in film scores as well as contemporary dance and theatre. He has traveled as an artist in residence to Sweden, Argentina, Banff Arts Centre as well as Chile, Trinidad, Puerto Rico, Venezuela to study local musical traditions. He has worked extensively with choreographers Allen Kaeja, Karen Kaeja, Alejandro Ronceria, Penny Couchi, Susan Lee. He traveled to Sweden in September1999, 2001 to create music for choreographer Allen Kaeja. In his collaborations with Allen Kaeja he has scored music for commisssions from London England, Norway, Mexico, Israel. He has compsosed music for Allen Kaeja’s films ‘Sarah’, ‘Witnessed’, ‘Zummel’, ‘Resistance’, ‘Old Country’, ‘Asylum of Spoons’. Dramas include Headhunter, Gummy, The Letter. He has written three seasons for television travel show ‘Exploring Horizons’ (Outdoor and Life Network). He has also created and produced music for CBC, CITY TV, BRAVO, and a feature length documentaries ‘El Contrato’and ‘Six Miles Deep’ NFB, ‘Doctors With Borders’, ‘Shift Focus’ OMNI, Hitler’s Canadians (History Channel), Chichester’s Choice (TVO), Under Rich Earth. As a freelance commercial composer he has created music for clients that include IBM, Loblaws, Bravo’s Freedom Series. His music has been licensed world wide to clients such as Fossil Watches, Relic Hunter, Current TV U.S.A. Fashion Television, Flash Press Poland, Blue Rabbit Films, Haemimont Games, Karina Garcia Spain, Kobalt Music New York and many more. He has worked extensively as an educator in schools through the Ontario Arts Council Artists In Education and Residency grants. Has led workshops for the Toronto Symphony musicians for Adopt A Players program. He has worked for the Ontario Arts Education Institute as an Artist Leader instructing teachers in music pedagogy. National Ballet project ‘Creating Dances’ 1994-2005. Distillary Arts Outreach project as artist and director 2005, 2006, 2007.

Aanmitaagzi, Serpent People (Installations and Performance), 2016

This year, Aanmitaagzi’s project, Serpent People, will engage with Ice Follies. Serpent People is a unique multi year community engaged project.  Artists of Aanmitaagzi and community have been researching, developing and creating art in and around historic Indigenous serpent stories and figures. Aanmitaagzi will be presenting works from Serpent People and holding Open Studio workshops throughout the festival.

This is the first year of this multi-platform project. Over three years the project will include partnerships / collaborations, community-engaged workshops, intensives and site-specificart events. These workshops and events will culminate in a full-scale community engaged dance theatre production in 2018.

Serpent People is inspired by an historic Anishinaabe story, The Black Sturgeon, from this area shared by Aanmitaagzi artist, Perry Mcleod-Shabogeesic. Like many of our stories, this project provides an opportunity to gather, reflect and express our stories and imaginings through art-making. During the festival Aanmitaagzi will present works from Serpent People:

• A performance at the festival opening
• Installations
• Open Studio: Community-engaged workshops @ Big Medicine Studio
• Story Telling Event

Aanmitaagzi Storymakers

Penny Couchie / Co-AD– Choreography, direction, performer and installation

Penny Couchie is a dancer, actor, teacher and choreographer of Ojibway ancestry from Nipissing First Nation. She holds an Honors BA in Aboriginal Studies and Drama from the University of Toronto and is a graduate of The School of Toronto Dance Theatre. Penny has performed as a dancer and theatre artist in principal roles both nationally and internationally. She has guest taught at universities and colleges throughout Canada and the US, including the Centre for Indigenous Theatre, where she has been a faculty member since 1998. From 1998 to 2003 she participated in the Aboriginal Dance Project at the Banff Centre for the Arts as a student, choreographer and teacher. Her most recent choreography includes the premiere of Dances of Resistance, a three year community engaged dance theatre work produced by her company Aanmitaagzi in Nipissing First Nation, a full-length dance theatre work, When Will You Rage? at the Capitol Centre, North Bay, The Port Key and You Promised, I Lied, directed by Muriel Miguel for the Centre for Indigenous Theatre, Like An Old Tale for Jumblies Theatre, Toronto, Outta The Woods, directed by Muriel Miguel for the Centre For Indigenous Theatre performed at Factory Theatre, Toronto Ontario, Manaabekwe, a co-choreography with Christine Friday O’Leary performed for the Temagami Gathering in Bear Island, Ontario, Red Romance, directed by Muriel Miguel for the Centre For Indigenous Theatre performed at Factory Theatre, Toronto Ontario and A Bridge of One Hair for Jumblies Theatre performed at Harbourfront Centre. In 2001, she co-founded Earth in Motion World Indigenous Dance with Alejandro Ronceria, a Toronto-based collective committed to the creation of compelling and innovative new dance works. In 2007 she co-founded Aanmitaagzi, in her home of Nipissing First Nation.

Sid Bobb / Co-AD – Story-telling, direction, performer and installation.

Sid Bobb is a Gemini award-winning actor from Salish territory in British Columbia. Combining his cultural knowledge and experience as an actor and teacher, Sid has been committed to helping bring Aboriginal stories and culture to the forefront. He firmly believes that this necessary endeavor will strengthen our Aboriginal communities and help create a healthier relationship with our Canadian neighbours. He is a graduate of the University of Toronto’s sociology and drama programs, attended the Second City school of training, the Banff Centre for the Art’s Aboriginal Dance Project and the Native Theatre School (presently known as the Centre for Indigenous Theatre. He has been a professional actor since 1993. He is trained in traditional performance, including storytelling, song and dance, contemporary and classical theatre, and comedic improvisation. Sid has performed in Canada’s largest theatres across the country; story-telling, in plays, and dancing. For 3 seasons, he was co- host of the internationally broadcast, Canadian Geographic Kids and is in his 6th season as host for Kid’s CBC’s nationally broadcast Kid’s Canada. He has also been an acting instructor and teacher for the past nine years. He was a Teaching Assistant at the University of Toronto, has been an instructor for the Centre for Indigenous Theatre as well as having facilitated workshops in numerous community and professional environments. He currently resides on Nipissing First Nation, in northern Ontario. While Sid continues to work nationally in television and on stage, he is actively contributing to the arts in the Nipissing community. For the past seven years, as a founding member and one of the current Co-Artistic Directors of Aanmitaagzi, he has been working with Nipissing First Nation’s youth, elders and community; engaging the youth within the arts and assisting in carrying forward the traditional and life stories of Nipissing.

Cristina Lella – Installation, performer.

Cristina Lella’s art practice is focused in process-oriented movement with developing interests in installation, sound and textiles. She has danced and choreographed in Montreal and San Francisco with independent groups and individuals, including the site-specific improvisational group The Body Cartography Project. She particularly loves dancing spontaneous choreography in an ensemble for its lessons in openness and humility. She’s earned a certificate in dance and choreography from Les ateliers de danse moderne de Montreal (now Ecole de danse contemporaine de Montreal), a bachelor of arts in social and cultural anthropology and film studies from the University of Western Ontario, and a master of arts in dance ethnology from York University. Cristina co-owns Vinyasa Yoga Studio in North Bay with her husband Rob Joanisse, and works with the multi-disciplinary community-engaged arts company Aanmitaagzi Storymakers in Nipissing First Nation.

Meg Paulin – Installation, and performer.

Megan Lozicki Paulin is a Visual Artist and performer.  She was born in North Bay and is from Micmac, French, and Polish descent. She works predominantly in the medium of sculpture, but also incorporates mixed medium collage with printmaking, painting and drawing.  She has currently been experimenting with site-specific art and community based performance art.  She is completing her final term towards a Bachelor of Arts in Fine Arts and Native Studies at Nipissing University.  She has apprenticed with Master Tsimshian Carver Victor Reece and Anishinabek fabric artist, filmmaker, and writer Sharon Jinkerson-Brass, previously working under their theater company Big Sky Multi-Media Storytelling Society. She has been a part of many community arts projects and performances such as ‘Copper Woman’, ‘Ice Follies’, a biennial site-specific exhibition, and Aanmitaagzi’s ‘Dances of Resistance’.  She has also travelled extensively engaging youth in visual art workshops in First Nation Communities among the Nishnawbe-Aski Nations, as well as in South Asia.  She is currently focusing on themes surrounding ‘Landscape as Identity’ and ways in which storytelling can mend a broken history.

Darren Nakogee – Singer, performer, and installation.

Darren Nakogee is a James Bay Cree multi-award winning Powwow singer, drummer, and songwriter from Attawapiskat First Nation. Since 1995, he has been an active community member of the North Bay and Nipissing First Nation area. Although a young singer, Darren credits his level of artistry to a strong dedication to his craft as well as from a community of accomplished singers who continued to support and nurtured his craft. Locally, nationally, and internationally, he has sung with a number of renowned drum groups including White Tail Cree, Crazy Spirit, andPoplar.  In 2014, Darren produced a 13 songround dance compilation album entitledBoys From Bay featuring singers from the Nipissing region. As an emerging community engaged arts practitioner, Darren has had the opportunity to train and participate in many community-engaged projects over the past three years includingArts 4 All Esssentials, several Composing Communities Workshops with Jumblies Theatre, and as a youth mentor and member of the core ensemble of Aanmitaagzi’s Dances of Resistance which premiered in August of 2014. Throughsinging and theatre arts, Darren has been taught a sense of maturity, discipline, and respect, and has been able to learn his culture. Darren wants to help provide youth with this same opportunity as he facilitates weekly theatre arts and singing and drumming workshops for

Tasheena Sarazin – Singer / Performer

Tasheena Sarazingrew up singing and dancing in Pow Wows and very active in her native community: a low income neighbourhood of North Bay. Her mother did her best to instill traditional values and teach her how to be resourceful and to succeed at anything she wanted. During high school, Tasheena did modeling and participated actively in the student council for youth groups across Ontario. Now a single mother of 3 young boys, Tasheena works as a dance and cultural teacher within the Nipissing public school system and as an artist at Big Medicine Studio. Between business and mothering life, she is also working on beadwork, sewing and a couple of music albums. Looking to help set an example for her peers as unstoppable, she is a woman of many talents and ambitions.

Clayton Windatt – Multi-media, performer and installation.

Born in St. Catherines, Clayton Windatthas lived in the Northeastern region of Ontario for most of his life and is a Métis Multi-artist. After previously working as Director of the White Water Gallery Artist-Run for 7 years he now works as Interim Director of the Aboriginal Curatorial Collective and as an independent curator. Clayton holds a BA in Fine Art from Nipissing University and received his Graphic Design certification from Canadore College. He works actively with several arts organizations locally, provincially and nationally on committees and boards of directors including working with the National Arts Service Organization planning committee, Visual Arts Alliance and CARFAC Ontario. Clayton maintains contracted positions with various theatre programs and works as a writer for North Bay Nipissing News, Muskrat magazine and Dispatch magazine. He works with the ON THE EDGE fringe festival, is a founding member of Zakide Artist-Run, is a mentor member of the Future In Safe Hands Collective and currently works with Business for the Arts as a Mentor for their ArtsVest program. Clayton aids Aanmitaagzi with their different community arts events and contributes actively as a writer, designer, curator, performer, theatre technician, consultant and is an active visual and media artist.

Learn more about Serpent People HERE

The Trappers Cabin

Lead by Meg Paulin, The Trapper’s Cabin is an interactive installation consisting of a collection of local stories, both old and new, of land use, local knowledge, and Nipissing creation stories regarding both the changing landscape and cultural identity as Western ideologies and pressures often create tension, conflict, and division between land use practices. A trapper lives intimately with the land and the animals, they speak their language, and are keepers of traditional ecological knowledge. Historical maps and articles regarding the area can be viewed in collaboration with audio recordings of oral history. This is a work in progress and viewers will have the chance to contribute written, drawn, and audio stories while exploring concepts of personal land use, consumption, transformation, the supernatural, and familial memories. Megan has gathered much of the historical data while performing archeological projects in the area with Kinnickinick Consulting and the Nipissing First Nation Band, as well as community engaged workshops in response to Aanmitaagzi’s The Serpent People.

Opening Night Performance: February 13th at 6:00pm

During the Ice Follies Festival Opening, (5:30-7:30pm) at the Waterfront Marina, Memorial Drive, Components from weekly community engaged workshops lead by Aanmitaagzi artists will feed into the performance. In a collaborative creation process, Aanmitaagzi artists and community will perform these works together. Serpent / Black Sturgeon Puppets. Aanmitaagzi will be creating two giant puppets. Installation will also be created in collaboration with Aanmitaagzi artists and community.

Performance Gallery

Video Gallery:

Darren Copeland, Fishing for Sounds, 2016

Presented by White Water Gallery

“Fishing for sounds” is a transmission art installation that transforms the gallery into an immersive underwater soundscape, composed of sounds ‘caught’ on, under, and through frozen Lake Nipissing.  This two-part project features a nationally and internationally recognized experimental sound artist and curator, Darren Copeland.

Part one is a community sound and radio workshop (Feb 13-15, 2016); this workshop has been scheduled to coincide with the New Adventures in Sound Art’s “Deep Wireless” festival.  Ten community members will go “fishing for sounds” with the artist on frozen Lake Nipissing (about 3 blocks from the gallery, where they will have access to a couple of ice fishing huts that will be installed about 500 meters off shore as part of the Ice Follies festival); learn how to edit those sounds using computers from the Near North Mobile Media Lab; and use their sound art pieces to experiment with creating a transmission installation in the White Water Gallery. The micro-radio transmitters and contact microphones used in this workshop will be constructed by participants on day one, under the guidance of a technician from New Adventures in Sound Art.  Interested participants will have the opportunity to contribute sounds, gear, or installation support to the artist’s exhibition.

In part two, the artist will create, present and exhibit a transmission art installation at White Water Gallery (Feb 20-Mar 12, 2016).  Using sounds ‘caught’ using contact microphones, zoom recorders and a hydrophone on Lake Nipissing, Darren Copeland will compose sound art pieces at his studio in South River (using his computer and software).  Meanwhile, an installation technician will have turned the gallery into a black box, by constructing a false wall to block out ambient lighting from the storefront window, and will have installed a stage light on the ceiling.  So at the centre of the dark gallery a circular column of light will shine down, as though from a fishing hole in the ice above.

Working with a qualified sound technician (and any interested workshop participants), the artist will create a series of sound sculptures with radio receivers and transmitters hanging from components related to ice fishing (e.g. fishing line on small rods) – which will be suspended from the ceiling around the perimeter of the light. These mobiles will naturally swing in and out of the light, and as they swirl the sounds will shift from directly reflecting the sounds recorded, to being noisy (as the transmissions interact with one another).

This variable transmission underwater sound mobile will be heard in the gallery, where audience members can experiment with moving around the space to experience the soundscape in different ways (e.g. more or less in the dark, where audial faculties tend to become heightened); and it will also be heard on the street outside the gallery – where a portable radio will be hanging off an old fishing pole.

The gallery storefront window will look onto a sound fishing ‘trophy’ wall.  Polaroids of audience members holding a sign with a word identifying a sound they ‘caught’ (e.g. with an onomatopoeia) will be displayed on a false wall made of faux wood panelling. This visual ‘trophy’ reference will provoke the audience to think more about what makes a sound compelling.

The Artist Talk will take place at the opening reception of “Fishing for sounds” on February 20th (planned to follow on a community-based theatre presentation on Lake Nipissing, to provide audiences a place to warm up, and continue to imbibe arts together). All phases of the project will be video documented (because this process driven installation lends itself to time based media), so as to create a short documentary for the WWG online archives and for the artist’s use (no more than 8 minutes).

Artist Bio:

Darren Copeland is a Canadian sound artist active in Toronto since 1985. He is also the founding and current Artistic Director of New Adventures in Sound Art (NAISA). Key interests of his work include multichannel spatialization for live performance, fixed media composition, soundscape studies, radio art and sound installations.

Copeland’s fixed media compositions have explored both abstract and referential sound materials. Many of these works are published on the empreintes DIGITALes label and have received mentions from Vancouver New Music, Phonurgia Nova, Luigi Russolo and other competitions. His radio art works engage in the associative qualities of environmental sounds in relation to spoken text and have been commissioned and presented by Deutschlandradio Kultur, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, WBEZ Chicago Public Radio, and Kunstradio (ORF). His sound installations include gallery and sited works which examine the relationship of sound and place. Activity in that area includes projects with Andreas Kahre as Copeland+Kahre, which includes a permanent installation in Edmonton, Canada.

Photo Gallery:

Caitlind r.c. Brown & Wayne Garret, Deep Dark: Crossing, 2016

Presented by Near North Mobile Media Lab

The Deep Dark is a series of site-specific light installations intended to illuminate the interspaces between our sacred (and natural) environments and cultural constructs of darkness. Initially developed as an experimental intervention in the midnight forest surrounding The Banff Centre, the artists propose developing a second edition of The Deep Dark series for Ice Follies, subtitled Crossing. Aesthetically, this installation will elaborate on earlier designs, taking the form of a sequence of mono-directional light gateways and audio interludes, drawing viewers out onto the frozen landscape of Lake Nipissing in North Bay, guided by voices in the ice. Comprised of speakers and mirrored doorways lined in bright LED strip lights, during the day each gate will reflect the snowy landscape, throwing reflections from the sun across the ice. As the sun sets, the doorways will illuminate, transforming into a hallway of brilliant thresholds. In scale, each gate will directly correspond to the average measurements of a North American household doorframe, emphasizing the disconnect between the unfathomably massive size of nature, and the relative smallness of human spaces.

Meditative, iconic, and evocative, Crossing will invite each viewer to participate in a 1500 ft solo night hike across the frozen lake, alone in communion with the water, voices in the ice, and their own thoughts. As viewers pass through the nighttime gates, the brightness of the passage will temporarily overwhelm their vision, night-blinding them. The installation imposes artificial light into the wild darkness, emphasizing the deep dark of the surrounding landscape – light by which the darkness grows darker and disillusions the night.

Artist Bio:

Caitlind R.C. Brown & Wayne Garrett (Calgary, Canada) work with diverse mediums and materials, ranging from artificial light to re-appropriated architectural debris. Their practice combines divergent aesthetic and industrial backgrounds, often resulting in transformative public sculptures and installations. Beckoning viewers with interactive contexts and novel materials, their projects invite strangers to share in experiential moments, prompting collaborative viewership. Using mass-produced objects as a reference to cities as an immeasurable mass of materials, people, and situations, Brown & Garrett’s practice evokes the possibility of renewed understanding through a critical shift in perspective.

Previous works have appeared at festivals, galleries, and museums internationally, including: Garage Museum of Contemporary Art (Moscow, Russia), Pera Museum (Istanbul, Turkey), Whanki Museum (Seoul, South Korea), Illingworth Kerr Gallery (Calgary, Canada), I Light Marina Bay (Singapore), GLOW Forum of Light + Architecture (Eindhoven, Netherlands), and elsewhere. Their sculpture, CLOUD, was short-listed for an Innovation by Design Award in 2013 by Fast Company (NYC).

Jihee Min, A Humble Trawling, 2016

Presented by Gallery 44

For A Humble Trawling, Jihee Min intervenes a giant fishing net referencing the controversies of the fishing industry and the negative environmental impact caused when humans take natural resources for economic gain. Through a laborious process, the artist translates a photographic image onto the net by sewing by hand a grayscale image of hands. Each square of the net translates into a pixel to form an image, referencing digital photography.

The image drawn onto the net is of two hands coming together to create a cup inside the palms. This hand gesture is a very instinctive way of accepting water, suggesting openness to receive nature gracefully.

This installation gives homage to Mother Nature reminding viewers to protect what is visible on the surface as well as what is at the core of the earth. While water supplies diminish around the world, threatening human’s existence, industries continue to pollute our waterways to satisfy human greed.
During the course of the festival, the net is exposed to unpredictable weather conditions and is expected catch snow and ice to transform with the elements of nature.

Artist Bio:

Jihee Min’s practice employs narrative strategies and autobiographical experiences in a wide range of media, such as sculpture, installation, performance, photography and drawing. Based on her personal experiences of Korean Diaspora in both Quebecois and English-Canadian environments, Min’s interest is to transcend stereotypical issues of culture, language, memory and geography into a unique enviroment where artist, work, and viewers have no boundaries. Jihee Min obtained MFA in Studio Arts at Concordia University (2008) and BFA with Honours in Sculpture & Installation at Ontario College of Art & Design (2005). Min has presented several solo exhibitions in galleries across Canada, and her work has been featured internationally in group exhibitions and festivals. She has received various grants from Canada Council for the Arts and Ontario Arts Council, as well as numerous awards and scholarships including Concordia University’s MFA Studio Arts Award and the Sir Edmund Walker Scholarship from Ontario College of Art & Design. Her work is part of various public collections such as the city of Toronto, St-Bruno, and Rauma (Finland). Her work can be seen at www.jiheemin.com

The Student Temporary Art Gallery (STAG), 2016

The Student Temporary Art Gallery is a site-specific installation and exhibition project initiated and curated by 4th year Fine Arts students at Nipissing University in North Bay, Ontario. This mini-Gallery in an ice-fishing shack will be included as an unofficial component of Ice Follies 2016.

Off  the edge of  the town dock, beyond the installation site, ice-shing huts are strewn as though each were erected where a stone once skipped—randomly and yet with a visual rhythm of  sorts. But these temporary communities actually follow the contours of  the lake bottom (above the slopes where walleye/pickerel and others are thought to linger), and so looking at these scatterings of  huts is to look at a mirror of  the slopes of  the lake. There is one hut, though, in the shallows of the Ice Follies site that stands alone. Approaching it, you notice that the wall closest to you is covered in a minimalist, whimsical drawing of a young woman. Peering in the window, you see a salon style exhibition of  drawing, painting and print work, along similar minimalist and whimsical lines. As you walk back toward the dock, you wonder if there was indeed crocheted lace on the windowsill, or if your imagination has worked that object out of a lingering sense of  the micro exhibition as informed by retrospection and care for the work of hands.

The following is a formal list of those who will be exhibited in participation with the STAG 2016:

• Marcus Fessler
• Brianna Hachez-Lagace
• Joelle Myre
• Mya Halbgebauer
• Chelsea Anne Bourget
• Katie Roberts
• Laura Ozoria
• Melanie Webdale