SIGNAL AND NOISE
APRIL 17/18/19, 2008, 8:00PM TILL LATE
SIGNALANDNOISE.CA

VIVO Media Arts Centre Presents its signature interdisciplinary arts festival - Signal and Noise - this April 17, 18 and 19, 2008.

Currently in it’s ninth-year, Signal and Noise is a blast of sonic
dissidence and video trickery: three days of provocative, innovative and challenging interdisciplinary art. Showcasing a spectrum of audio, live action performances and immersive art, Signal and Noise is Vancouver’s only alternative multi-disciplinary art event. We welcome artistry from across the gamut, slashing through tradition and highlighting the truly daring and original. Presented at VIVO Media Arts Centre (Video In/Video Out), Vancouver’s thirty-five year old backbone for media art production and support, Signal and Noise is the foremost celebration of its kind in the city.

This year’s jury selected artists based on the theme of “Media Intercourse”. From Sweden [Kent Tankred and Wenche-Sundrud-Tankred]; Austria [Daniel Lercher, Vinzenz Schwab and Richard Bruzek]; Amsterdam [Brian McKenna]; the United Kingdom [Pete Stollery]; France [Hervé Birolini]; the United States [Stephanie Loveless, Jacob Gotlib, Ryan Torchia and Molleindustria]; and across Canada [including Vancouver artists the Play of Frogs, Spectrum Interview, Cris Derksen, Claudia Medina, Velveeta Krisp, and the Ghost Taco].

Each evening consists of three elements: multi-channel audio diffusion, installation, and live performances. For program details and an online schedule, please visit www.signalandnoise.ca.

S&N would like to thank our sponsors: Matrix Professional Video Systems, Inc.; Woodhouse and Associates, Inc.; Westcoast Event Rentals; Rocky Mountain Production Services; Michael Red; Lugz Coffee Lounge, Nando's, Ultra Xpress Printing, Acropol Taverna, CITR, The Foundation, Lighta, New Forms Festival, the Canada Council for the Arts, the BC Arts Council, the Government of British Columbia and the City of Vancouver.

1965 Main St | vivomediaarts.com | 604.872.8337
April 17, 18, 19, 2008 | Thursday – Saturday, 8:00PM TILL LATE

CUE UP: THE HOSPITALITY LESSONS

TUESDAY APRIL 29 7:30PM

Hospitality Lessons is an all new format for Cue-Up and open screening at VIVO. As in the past, all video producers and artists are invited to bring up to 15 minutes of video based work or work-in-progress to screen and to discuss with the assembled audience. Each event will also include an invited guest who will present a talk or an intervention that puts hospitality into a critical context. The aim of this series is to learn about hosting both new work and old ideas.

All events begin at 7:30 with the sign-up of videos for screening from the floor (first come first serve). Video screenings will begin at 8:00. Interventions or comments by the guest will be interspersed throughout the evening (beginning at 7:30). The event will conclude at 9:30.

ARTUR ZMIJEWSKI : THEM
OPENING 6-10PM SATURDAY MARCH 8
EXHIBITION RUNS TILL MARCH 15 / TUES-SAT 12-6PM

VIVO Media Arts is happy to present the Vancouver debut of Polish video artist and
filmmaker Artur Zmijewski. THEM (2007) stages an ideological standoff between four community groups using the crude possibilities of paint and paper, scissors and tape. "None of the participants are artists… their actions are a battle of representations, a war of images, symbols and gestures, which gain their intensity from being simple, direct and most importantly – not always adequate." (Bartek Kraciuk, White Hot Magazine)

If the video works of Artur Zmijewski are unsettling and even at times difficult to watch, they are also some of the most penetrating meditations currently being produced on state violence, physical pain, individual alienation, the defective and the dysfunctional. Zmijewski's calculated, somatic provocations lend an uncanny visibility to the 'imperfect', the lacking, the abject – to all that is normally relegated to the shadows. Zmijewski has garnered attention for his recreation of the famous Stanford 'prison experiment' in Repetition (2005); here unemployed Poles replace graduate students as they improvise the roles of captors and captives in a mock jail, yet ominously a similar pattern of escalating sadism follows until the participants feel compelled to abandon the project. (Amanda Sharp, Frieze Magazine) In 2002, he made Lekcja Spiewu/The Singing Lesson with deaf-mute children in Germany, at St. Thomas Church in Leipzig, the place where Bach was cantor for more than twenty-five years. Accompanied by the organ, the deaf-mute and hearing-impaired adolescents sing Bach's cantata Herz und Mund und Tat und Leben (Heart and Lips and Deed and Life), BWV 147. Zmijewski captures, on the children's faces and in their eyes, a sensitivity and an inner strength that draw us into the true reality of his subject. None of this is exploitative, as Zmijewski's impassive, respectful lens—each video involves only rudimentary camera work and offers no authorial commentary—triggers an instinctive sympathy in the gallerygoer. (Brian Sholis, Art Forum)
For Zmijewski, "art is a hard fight for human consciousness." His radical point of view constitutes an examination of the challenge that living fully and being engaged in an active life poses for some of us. Living and working in Warsaw, he represented Poland at the 51st Venice Biennale in 2005 and Documenta 12 in 2007.

THE VIDEOS OF HITO STEYERL AND ARTUR ZMIJEWSKI WHICH WERE RECENTLY EXHIBITED AT VIVO MEDIA ARTS ARE ACCESSIBLE FOR RESEARCH PURPOSES IN THE VIDEO OUT DISTRIBUTION VIEWING ROOM.

HITO STEYERL

For those who missed her screening:

THE VIDEOS OF HITO STEYERL AND ARTUR ZMIJEWSKI WHICH WERE RECENTLY EXHIBITED AT VIVO MEDIA ARTS ARE ACCESSIBLE FOR RESEARCH PURPOSES IN THE VIDEO OUT DISTRIBUTION VIEWING ROOM.