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Audience advisory: this performance uses strobe lights and water-based haze.
Vancouver New Music’s annual festival returns this year with PROPULSION, October 17-19, 2024, at VIVO Media Arts Centre. We have invited three local guest curators to each program a night of the festival that centers emerging artists with visionary sonic and musical expressions. The festival will explore themes of futurism: how do we build our future and propel ourselves as an artistic community and a general society to build something new? Curators are composer, multi instrumentalist, sound and media artist, Anju Singh; artist, writer and curator, Kendra Place; and audio-visual artist, DJ and radio host, Reylinn. The festival will feature a mix of local and visiting artists.
The story of Atsi’tsaká (Sky Woman) begins in a world of perfect balance, Karonhiá (Sky World). Karonhiá "was the most peaceful and beautiful place in the universe. It looked very similar to the natural world we live in today. There were trees, plants, mountains, and valleys, and all sorts of animals, both four-legged and winged. In the middle of Sky World grew a great celestial tree. The sacred tree shone so brightly it lit up the entire Sky World" (Smith, 2015). One day, Atsi’tsaká finds herself at a portal between two worlds created by the uprooted sacred tree. The "underworld was covered with a thick blanket of clouds, an endless sea, and complete darkness" (Smith, 2015). Some say the world cried out with tears of loneliness for Atsi’tsaká to join it. It is said that she chose to accept its call and began a great descent into the oceanic dimension. In this process, she became the catalyst and carrier of all future life on Earth. Here, she remained not as a deity of hierarchical arrangement but within the essence of every life form.
Within her project baptized.in.prison, Toni-Leah C. Yake (European; Kanien’kehá:ka, Six Nations of the Grand River Territory, Turtle Clan) engages with Haudenosaunee creation mythology through sound as an element of ceremony. In her new fixed-media and improvised electronic work, Atsi’tsaká, Yake calls to the permeability of dimensional barriers and relationships with Kanien’kehá:ka archetypes. By exploring sound's liminal and portalistic qualities she participates in world-building and sonic ritual.
Reference: Smith, C. (2015, March 2). "Skywoman: A Story Before Time."
Sound mutations and explorations of popular sounds and genres from Mexico and Latin America taken to a realm where they surface as spectral visitations, are broken down by noise and taken to the extreme.
Wasauksing Sniper explores the distorted line between harsh noise and ambience. Channeling sounds of war and static with heavy industrial and field recordings manipulated from the Western Front. A constant hypotonic hum of artillery. Chaos and battle near it's end, but at what cost?
Purchase VNM festival pass here.
baptized.in.prison (Toni-Leah C. Yake) (European; Kanyen'kehà:ka, Six Nations of the Grand River Territory, Turtle Clan) is a composer-performer residing on xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, and səlilwətaɬ territories.
Her work extends to explore the land, memories, world-building and embodied response. Informed by dream interpretation and Kanyen'kehà:ka epistemology Yake submerges into liminality through performances illuminated by archival recordings, synthesis, and noise.
Toni-Leah's practices are often influenced by kanyen’keha (Mohawk language) research, the interplay between conscious and unconscious realms, symbolism, relationships with unseen dimensions, and connections to archaic memories.
"El Ángel Exterminador” was born in 2021 as a response to the lack of bookings of Latinx artists in so-called “Vancouver". Expect haunting cumbias, crunchy perreo and sleazy tracks that might prevent you from leaving the room.
The primary artist behind this project, Max Ammo (they/them), is a non-binary latinx multidisciplinary artist from Mexico City who currently lives and works on the unceded and traditional territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations. They work primarily on illustration, animation and graphic design but in recent years have taken on producing music and DJing under the alias “Goo” and most recently under the moniker “El Ángel Exterminador”. In 2023 they opened Slime Studio, their freelance audiovisual studio, as well as online & pop up shop.
Stemming from their ethos to showcase Latinx talent in their geographical context, they have started two projects that expand this ethos: Cadena & Hechizo.
Cadena’s mission is to map, document and highlight the DJ’S/Producers/Crews playing and showcasing underground & independent Latinx dance music across “Canada”. Cadena currently consists of Elias Musiak (Jaijiu) & Max Ammo (El Ángel Exterminador). Hechizo - an esoteric party series in "Vancouver" dedicated to strengthening the sonic dialogues between Latinx underground electronic music with the broader “global south”.
Goo is an experimental thriller-electronic project, with a focus on drone, noise and latin american spectral influences. Their sound ranges from sleazy, swampy beats accompanied by haunting lyrics in Spanish to lush & soothing melodies with entrancing percussion. Goo is also a medium for exploring sound, gender and writing.
Wasauksing Sniper is a moniker of noise artist B.P., and an homage to Francis Pegahmagabow, the most highly decorated Indigenous soldier in Canadian military history and the most effective sniper of the First World War. Layers of ambient and harsh textures echo the flow of battle and the incessant rumble of artillery.
Bret Parenteau is a sound/noise artist based in Winnipeg. Under the initials B.P., Parenteau has been making his formula of noise, field recording, & tape manipulation. Most recently Bret has been working on film scores for short & feature length films.
Anju Singh is a composer, multi-instrumentalist, noise/sound artist and video/media artist exposing and interrogating texture using methods of deconstruction and reanimation to repurpose and contextualize materials in new compositional environments and to bring contrasting themes and dynamics into shared spaces.
Anju has presented and performed work across Canada, in Europe, Japan, Brazil, Mexico, and the United States.
Anju has curated and directed the Vancouver Noise Festival for 9 editions, curated Fake Jazz Wednesdays, and she has participated in a co-curating committee for the MAC Media Arts Committee Sound Art program since 2011.
