Scenofest Activities for Community Engagement

TOUR DESCRIPTION:

Join us for a tour of Arts Commons, the largest performing arts centre in Western Canada.

When it opened in 1985, Arts Commons put Calgary on the map as home to one of the largest performing arts centres in North America. For over 35 years, Arts Commons has contributed to the social, economic, cultural, and intellectual life and well-being of Calgarians.

Arts Commons is home to six resident companies: Alberta Theatre Projects, Arts Commons Presents, Calgary Philharmonic, Downstage, One Yellow Rabbit, and Theatre Calgary, and approximately 200 community groups that use the facility annually.

The venues within Arts Commons are: Jack Singer Concert Hall, Max Bell Theatre, Martha Cohen Theatre, Big Secret Theatre, Motel Theatre and Engineered Air Theatre.

ACTIVITY DESCRIPTION:

INTERSECTIONS is a collaborative creative process open to artists from different fields of Visual Arts, Theatre Design and Performance. Inviting experimentation in creating, performing and exhibiting non-textual narratives, through integrated and interdisciplinary creative process.

Building on the experience of its previous editions – in Brazil, Wales, Scotland and the Czech Republic – at WSD2022 in Calgary, the WORKSHOP aims to share the collaborative creation process with participants and invite them to experiment with it.

PANEL DESCRIPTION:

As a PANEL, INTERSECTIONS will present and share the collaborative process and its outcomes with a broad audience; the panel will include in person participants of this edition, and the online participation of the artists of the previous editions.

The INTERSECTIONS workshop culminates in this 90 minute Panel Presentation and is open to WSD attendees.

PRESENTERS:

• Aby Cohen
• Erika Schwarz

ACTIVITY DESCRIPTION:

L U M I N A L LAB explores new ways of working with light in a performative space. It focuses on how coloured light affects the perception and experience of the spectator. Is it scientifically clear how light works on the (sub)conscious mind of the spectator and is it possible to go beyond the subjective ‘feeling’ of colour?

Within the framework of a PhD in the arts, a two-pronged approach is being pursued: on the one hand, the research attempts to scientifically clarify how coloured light affects the perception process and what this effect entails within a performative setting. On the other hand, the artistic approach aims to create an immersive installation that functions both as a laboratory and as an experiential space for the intended spectators.

This installation is called luminal lab. The name is a play on words between lumen and liminality and is exactly that; a play of light that reflects on the very specific nature of light itself. Liminality, because it operates at a crossroads between the conscious and the unconscious, between science and art, but above all, because it draws the viewer’s attention to the change of colours and their intensity.

COMPANY:

Caroline Mathieu :: L I G H T matters / RITCS / VUB

PRESENTER:

Caroline Mathieu

ACTIVITY DESCRIPTION:

“MISTURA” is a Magic Door into an imagined space. Composed of reusable, found, recycled and/or recyclable materials and using imaginative and interesting lighting techniques that require very little (if any) electricity and sound that relies primarily on foley techniques, it is a place of discovery: interactive, immersive, manipulable, flexible, sculptural, and transformable by anyone who uses it . Come play with us in our “Do It Yourself” scenic, lighting, and sound workshops. Join us in telling a story in a space that is limited only by your imagination!

PRESENTERS/ CAST:

• Ellen Doyle Mizener
• Soledad Sanchez Valdez
• Joe Pino
• Psyche Chui
• Chai
• Ko Man Kit
• Wong Fai
• Amy Chan

WORKSHOP DESCRIPTION:

How is the extinction of urban green spaces perceived around the world? Can we do something as a community to take responsibility and get involved?

PROYECTO TEJIDOS is a site-specific method for artistic-social-intervention, that seeks to turn urban green spaces into “inclusive meeting places” to foster global community reflection and restoration.

The Calgary process began in June with a workshop, where a group of artists-students created collectively three “ecoscenographic participatory actions”: Urban-knitting, Neighbourhood-wayfarer, and More-than-human Memorial-atlas. During WSD2022 containR will contain these actions, where stories and experiences from diverse green spaces and their inhabitants around the world will be knitted.

PERFORMANCE DESCRIPTION:

How is the extinction of urban green spaces perceived around the world?

Can we do something as a community to stop it?

How do we all take responsibility? How do we get involved?

Be part of this site-specific process, which proposes three participatory ecoscenographic actions, carried out with and for the community.

ACTION 1: URBAN KNITTING
Are green urban spaces important? Chat with us while knitting with your hands disused clothes into small mats that will be part of a collective-progressive installation. TRAVEL through the visual traces, FEEL the thread’s texture, PERCEIVE the temperature of the space and SMELL the odours of the city.

As a part of this action, the following questions are going to be discussed:

• Are green urban spaces important?
• Who inhabits them?
• Are memories and traces erased by the inertia of the big cities?

These discussions will take place:
August 12th: 12:00 & 13:00
August 13th: 16:30 & 17:30
August 14th: 17:30 & 18:30

ACTION 2: NEIGHBOURHOOD WANDERERS
Which kind of living beings are part of these environments? READ the QRcode, PREPARE your headphones, LISTEN to the audio guide and REVEAL, by walking, the stories of non-human beings that inhabit diverse green spaces around the world.

ACTION 3: NON. HUMAN ATLAS
Are urban green spaces and their inhabitants erased by the inertia of the big cities? FOLLOW the map, INTERACT with the micro landscapes route, CONNECT with the testimony of the absences around the space, and PROJECT other possibilities of inhabiting, interacting, and coexisting as human beings with the otherness in urban green spaces.

Experience these actions of resistance to regenerate the community fabric and cope with social-environmental problems that are happening in different territories.

COMPANY:

LasRedRaincoats.LAB

PRESENTERS:

• Aris Pretelin-Estéves. Original Idea & Artistic Director.
• Pamela Eliecer. Original Idea & General Production
• Ana Hernández. General Assistant
• Isabel Yáñez. General Assistant

Special collaboration: Olga De Santiago and Jimena Vega 

Special thanks to PROYECTO TEJIDOS, Calgary WSD community, that knitted with us from August 8th to 14th of 2022 at ContainR Site, Calgary: Reer, James, Morgan, Sydney, Qi Xuan, Clara, Lauren, Charlotte, Aiwad, Regan, Katelyn, Christina, Jerry, Graeme, Sabrena, Anna, Johnny, Marianne, Julie, Mona, Xiao Ting, Tanja, Ingvill, Karolína, Beth, Ping, Wei-Ping, Galen, Rebecca, Angela, Samantha, Natálie, Eden.