Project Description

Project Description

Title: Matiz-Nuance Multiarts Project
Places: CineCycle and Artscape Wychwood Barns
Date: Septiembre 21 to 29 of 2010

Artist Participants:
Ruben Esguerra and Diego Marulanda [Music], Julieta Maria, Rodrigo Hernandez, [Visual arts], Guillermina Buzio and Juana Awad, (Performance), Olga Barrios [Dancer and choreographer], Pilar Gonzales [Teather], Jorge Lozano and Alvaro Giron (Film), and Diana Rodriguez Quevedo [Literature]

Curators:
Carmen Ocampo, Sandra Leon and Arlan Londono

Coordination:
Music, Diego Marulanda, Visual Arts, Julieta Maria

This is a tentative programming for the event, which might still be subject to change. We are still working on organizing a couple of additional sessions.

A- Music

Música de Gaita in Bogotá, Colombia: integration and cultural exchange by Ruben Esguerra,
This work is a study of música de gaita and its manifestations in Bogotá, Colombia. Música de gaita has roots in former maroon comunities of the Atlantic coast of Colombia and the ensemble consists of vocals, percussion and two wind instruments called gaitas (List 1983). This work also contributes to the notion that traditional music possesses unifying elements, which serve to mediate social integration (Merriam 2001) as well as social participation (Nettl 1985). The study adds to an explanation of: (i) why Bogotá is witnessing an increase of the daily practices of musics of the Atlantic-coast region of the country and; (ii) how música de gaita has brought together young musicians from different music scenes, creating a new form of cultural exchange.

Nuestra Gente / Our People, Diego Marulanda
The musical language has been and continues to be a great alternative and gives a new meaning of expression to the reality of displaced communities, particularly in the young. I am very excited and most interested in examining, analyzing, exploring and interpreting in greater detail through "Art Matiz" the encounter of tradition and technology as manifested through musical expressions in Colombia and the diaspora.

Visual Arts

Ill-formed by Julieta Maria
Video, 2010
The installation is comprised of three video projections, in which I reflect on human vulnerability and the representation of violence. I am interested in the transgressing forces that puncture us, and the violence that we are capable of exerting on others; in the faith and skepticism that guides our relationship with the world and with the other.

The New(be)comers Adult Knowledge by Rodrigo Hernandez
Video, 2010.
“The New(be)comers” is an artistic research project. The aims of the research is to investigate and reflect on the knowledge that newcomer adults bring with them when they arrive to Toronto, specifically the kind of knowledge which in light of their situation may become devalued. We employ artistic means to reconsider and document this knowledge and to disseminate this knowledge in the form of artworks, via their public presentation and circulation in cultural institutions, educational settings and publications: thus reaffirming its importance and generating interest on newcomers knowledge.

Performance

Fuga, By Juana Awad,
Performance and Sound installation, 2009
Fuga explores cruelty through the manipulation of cries. We constructed fuga strictly following the compositional rules of the baroque fugue, a type of contrapuntal technique of composition for a fixed number voices. The first step was to analyze a baby cry musically and score it. This was taken as the subject of the fugue and was then digitally sliced and altered to create second and third voices. These voices were combined digitally, to build a piece that is formally rigorous, so much so, that it becomes purely formal. Slicing a cry that is emitted spontaneously brings into the piece more meanings than the imitation of a cry. It is exactly the surgical act, the one that speaks so directly about our ability to disregard the person to achieve an aim

Intersections (work in progress) by Guillermina Buzio
Performance and video 2010
“Intersections” is an immersive multidisciplinary installation, which will include video, sound, and performance. I have become interested in using my body to explore issues of my identity as both an Argentinean and Canadian immigrant. This project is built around discourses on feminism, the female body, identity, 6. Project Description

and the notion of borderlands. Through this framework I will investigate the relationship of the body and cuts of meat while recognizing the economic, cultural and political borders that define us as being inside, outside, or in between.

Film

Salvaged by Alvaro Giron
Video, 2010
Salvaged is a collage audiovisual piece that elicits the tensions of being part of different cultures and societies in a simultaneous process of acquiring and forgetting elements of identity. The experience of human migration told as reflections on moving surfaces of memory and loss, disarray and longing.

Eye Functions by Jorge Lozano
video, 2009
Using found footage, Eye Functions touches on how the electronic visualization of silence in war and death has a double reading, a mirror reflecting multiple fields of interpretation, creating variations of perspective, inviting the viewer to participate in the creation of a meaning different from the one embedded in the initial conception. The title Eye Functions is taken from Paul Virilio’s writing on War and Cinema. The relationship between blinding and seeing has been the motivating force behind the development of war and film technologies, technologies that are complementary and have nurtured each other from its beginnings. Eye Functions is a phenomenological investigation on how violence is perceived and how digital technology is used to show it and to hide it. The use of dual screening will create a sense of “standing streaming”, a continuous flow of images in a continuous transformation adding to the discourse on art, technology and social concerns.

Dance

Behind Windows by Olga Barrios
2009
Behind windows is a piece that depicts aspects of kidnapping. In this work I recount stories of women and men from Colombia, my country of origin. Though these are not events from my own personal history, I feel they are part of my story: there is a fear in the atmosphere of a silent war.

Literature

Hibridity in La casa grande: a rhizomatic approach by Diana Rodriguez Quevedo, 2008
In the novel La casa grande by Álvaro Cepeda Samudio, hybridity occupies various planes that can be characterized through the use and variability of time, space, and voices offering multiple perspectives that rise from rhizomatic features as they are expounded by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari in the introduction of their book A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. In both the interior plane of the big house as in the exterior planes of the village of Ciénaga, where the novel takes place, two elements stand out: the paradigm of systematic, patriarchal, and rigid order, which can be associated with the figure of the fixed root represented in the paternal character, the military authorities, and the spaces they occupy in contrast with the other characters and spaces that are reflected in the concept of rhizome, without beginning or end, nor point of convergence or precise junction.

Theater

Teach2 to Learn by Pilar González
2010
Teach2Learn is a pedagogic project conceived to strengthen the youth educational skills, to improve their performances at school and lower the high percentage of dropouts within the Latin American Youth in Toronto.

For Matiz~Nuance, Multi-arts Project, one of the most important concepts is Civic (public) Participation, because people not only benefit from our programs, but they are at the core of our success. In order to guarantee excellent community participation for this project, we plan to engage people by using a wide range of activities from actual delivery of services to dissemination of information. These are:

Outreach: Usage of flyers, brochures, handouts and face to face communication to inform the people who is interacting with the target population (Artists)

Publicity: Website, newsletter
Marketing: Fundraising event.
Where: Latin American and Canadian Arts organizations, Universities, Colleges, Community Centres, Local newspapers.