Alternative Energies – Sound and Sustainability Events in the Community
Taking place throughout September and October 2014, Alternative Energies offers a series of events that explore the intersection of art and sustainability presented by an exciting variety of arts, educational, and community organizations in Vancouver.
Canadian Music Centre – BC Region and Vancouver New Music present
At the Edge of Wilderness
A video installation about ghost towns in British Columbia created by composer Hildegard Westerkamp and photographer Florence Debeugny
Opening reception September 26, 2014; 5-7PM; special performance by Peggy Lee
September 29 – October 17, 2014; Monday to Friday 9AM to 5PM
Canadian Music Centre (837 Davie Street)
Free
When resource industry moves into British Columbia’s landscapes, industrial sites and company towns are cut into the wilderness. The edge between wilderness and such a new place is traditionally knife sharp like the edge between life and a stabbing death. Natural rhythms and movements eventually soften the edges, transforming an abandoned industrial site into mysterious rusty shapes and collapsed wooden structures overgrown by moss, weeds, shrubs, and trees. Through images and sounds gathered in various ghost towns of the Canadian province British Columbia during Spring and Summer of 2000, At the Edge of Wilderness explores a strange moment of excitement and magic, discovery and adventure, the moment when the contemporary visitor encounters an abandoned industrial site.
For the opening reception, cellist Peggy Lee will perform excerpts of Hildegard Westerkamp’s Liebes-Lied/Love Song.
Originally commissioned by the Western Front Society in Vancouver for the group show Industrial Ear, September 8-16, 2000.
Vancouver New Music presents
Vancouver Electronic Ensemble plays music by David Dunn
Saturdays, October 4 and 11, 2014; 8PM
Vancouver Community College Atrium (1155 East Broadway, entrance on BC Parkway just east of Glen Drive) [map]
By donation
Members of the Vancouver Electronic Ensemble (VEE) perform works based on the music of composer and sound ecologist David Dunn. Currently based in New Mexico, Dunn’s music and sound work uses environmental and field recordings to explore intersections of art and nature.
www.davidddunn.com
The Contemporary Art Gallery presents
Vancouver Electronic Ensemble at the CAG
Monday, October 6, 2014; 7PM
Contemporary Art Gallery (555 Nelson Street)
Free
An sound performance inspired by the recent works of German artist Jürgen Partenheimer whose exhibition, The Archive – The Raven Diaries, runs from September 12 to November 9, 2014 at the CAG.
www.contemporaryartgallery.ca
Vancouver New Music presents
Sound and Sustainability Soundwalks
Sundays, October 5 & 12, 2014; 2PM
Free
Take some time to listen to the underlying sounds and rhythms of the city on a soundwalk. Members of the Vancouver Soundwalk Collective lead two, free guided walks through the urban environment.
Old Stream Soundwalk
Sunday October 5, 2014; 2PM
Led by David Leith
Meeting location: Sasamat and 4th Avenue by the #4 bus stop
A soundwalk is a way to listen to the environment and experience the world of sound in an often extraordinary and meditative way. This soundwalk will follow what was the path of an old stream that was buried over 100 years ago. The stream ran through what are now urban areas, past what is now Aberthau mansion, through Jericho Park, ending in Jerry’s Cove. Special guest performances by Yuuko Konishi and Victor Manuel Del Castillo.
Music-as-Environment ⇄ Environment-as-Music
Sunday, October 12, 2014; 2PM
Created by Elisa Ferrari, Igor Santizo and Hildegard Westerkamp
Meeting location: Playground in Emory Barnes Park (downtown at Davie, between Seymour and Richards)
Soundwalks – like silence – are ‘useless’ in a profit-driven world. They are a listening practice, which reveals the environment to our ears and opens inner space for noticing. Beyond exploring the use of music in downtown Vancouver, this soundwalk offers an opportunity for participant listeners to sense the moments when music is perceived as environmental sound and the soundscape is experienced as music.
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DOXA and The Cinematheque present
A selection of films by Bill Morrison
Tuesday, October 14, 2014; 7PM
The Cinematheque (1131 Howe Street)
Bill Morrison’s collaborations with composers and musicians as diverse and varied as Bill Frisell (The Great Flood), Jóhann Jóhannsson (Miner’s Hymns), and Simon Christensen (Tributes: Pulse — conceived as a tribute to Charles Ives, Conlon Nancarrow, Steve Reich, and Trent Reznor) have explored the marriage of sound and image in entirely new ways.Decasia, a collaboration with composer Michael Gordon, was described by the Village Voice as “the most widely acclaimed American avant-garde film of the fin-de-siècle.” Director Errol Morris puts it more succinctly, stating: “this may be the greatest movie ever made.” The first film from the 21st century to be selected for preservation by the U.S. Library of Congress’s National Film Registry, Decasia is raw and bubbling with scratches, damage, and acidulous drips, but possessive of a singular and melancholy beauty. DOXA is extremely proud to present Bill Morrison’s masterwork, in partnership with Vancouver New Music and The Cinematheque. Decasia will be preceded by Morrison’s The Film of Her, a docu-dramatic retelling of the fight to preserve film history and the world it contains.
www.doxafestival.ca
www.thecinematheque.ca
Screened as part of Motion Pictures, DOXA’s monthly film series.
Emily Carr University of Art + Design and Vancouver New Music present
Raven Chacon: Artist Talk
Thursday October 16, 2014; 11:30AM
Aboriginal Gathering Place, Emily Carr University (1399 Johnston Street)
This event is free and open to the public. Please note space is limited.
Join us for a talk by composer, experimental noise musician, and installation artist Raven Chacon. Chacon’s work explores sounds of acoustic handmade instruments overdriven through electric systems and the direct and indirect audio feedback responses from their interactions. Recent and ongoing collaborations include projects with Bob Bellerue (Kilt), William Fowler Collins (Mesa Ritual), John Dieterich (Summer Assassins), Robert Henke, Thollem McDonas, and the ETHEL quartet (Native American Composers Apprenticeship Project). Chacon has presented his work in different contexts at Vancouver Art Gallery, ABC No Rio, REDCAT, Biennale of Sydney, Canyon DeChelly, Adelaide Festival, Ende Tymes Festival and The Kennedy Center.
www.ecuad.ca
Vancouver New Music Festival 2014
Sonic Topographies
Sound, music, and sustainability
October 16 – 19, 2014
Orpheum Annex (823 Seymour Street, 2nd Floor) and Centre for Interactive Research on Sustainability at UBC (2260 West Mall, UBC, Point Grey Campus)
Composers and sound artists all over the world are turning their ears to the music of the earth and its people to reconsider what artistic creation means in a context that fosters sustainable ideas about creativity, culture, and tradition. The festival showcases composers, musicians and sound artists who are fostering new, sound-based explorations of ideas that emerge from natural, interlocking cycles and alternative systems of thought.
John Luther Adams • Raven Chacon • Leslie García • GF Haas • Annea Lockwood • Tristan Murail • Michael O’Neill • Akio Suzuki • Hildegard Westerkamp
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Centre for Interactive Research on Sustainability (CIRS) and Vancouver New Music present
Panel discussion on Arts and Sustainability
Sunday, October 19, 2014; 2PM
Centre for Interactive Research on Sustainability at UBC (2260 West Mall)
Free
Join UBC’s Associate Provost, Sustainability John Robinson, the Suzuki Foundation’s Jay Ritchlin, and artists Leslie García, Annea Lockwood, David Maggs, and Hildegard Westerkamp for a discussion about intersections of art and sustainability. Moderated by Giorgio Magnanensi.
cirs.ubc.ca
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SFU Woodwards presents
Art Music’s Indigenous Inclusions and the Politics of Form
With Dylan Robinson
Monday, October 20, 2014; 7PM
Djavad Mowafaghian World Art Centre, Goldcorp Centre for the Arts, 149 West Hastings
Free
Concerti for throat singers, operas on Indigenous subjects, and powwow symphonies. Despite an increasing number of collaborations between Indigenous artists and classical music ensembles, the political exigencies of First Nations communities across Canada are scarcely referenced in such work. As Cherokee scholar Craig Womack has noted, while “America loves Native American Culture[,] America is much less enthusiastic about Native American land claims”. This talk examines the space between classical and Indigenous musical forms, and the attendant politics of recognition in such collaborative processes that often celebrate Indigenous inclusion at the cost of political engagement.
sfuwoodwards.ca
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Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery in collaboration with the UBC School of Music present
Soundwalk with Tyler Kinnear
Wednesday, October 22, 2014; 2 – 3:30PM
Meet at Belkin Art Gallery (1825 Main Mall, UBC Point Grey Campus)
Free
Join Tyler Kinnear for a guided soundwalk on the campus of the University of British Columbia. During this excursion we will give our ears priority, paying attention to the sounds around us as well as to our own listening. In what ways do we interpret the sonic environment? In what ways do we contribute to its composition?
This event will happen rain or shine. Participants should wear appropriate footwear and clothing.
Workshop series – Pauline Oliveros’ “Sonic Meditations” with David Metzer and Hedy Law – POSTPONED!
POSTPONED! – DATES TBD
Belkin Art Gallery (1825 Main Mall, UBC Point Grey Campus)
Free – registration required. For more information visit belkin.ubc.ca.
UBC Professors of Musicology David Metzer and Hedy Law will be leading a workshop exploring the pioneering work of Pauline Oliveros. In her seminal 1974 Sonic Meditations Oliveros expanded the characteristics of the “new sensibility” by bringing her fascination with long continuous sounds (motors, fluorescent lights, freeway noise) to bear on her deep involvement with meditations. We will revisit this revolutionary exploration of expanded consciousness through practice and discussion.
Alternative Energies takes place in conjunction with Sonic Topographies, the Vancouver New Music 2014 Festival.
