pilot residency program
Where is Here?
June 18 – July 4, 2016
Is ‘here’ different from ‘there’? Is here an actual place, an imagined or remembered place? Is here a place that only exists when you’re in it? And if you leave here, where would you go?
Canadian artists My Name Is Scot and Leannej will lead a three-week intensive series of workshops at Invizin that explore what it is to be ‘here’– Here in the moment, in this place, in the real world, in a new place, in a virtual space, in memory, or in your body.
The workshops will employ a variety of hands on approaches to collecting images, creating media, and telling stories. The workshops will encourage participants to experiment with a variety of techniques, media, and devices ranging from cell phone technology to oral history. We will be working individually and in groups to explore the symbols, structures and concepts that define our ideas of time and place.
The project will partner with the Eta Beta Cooperative Migrant Centers in Città Sant’ Angelo and Pescara to include collaborations with residents and local psychologist Dr. Antonio Iannone, ensuring a diversity of perspectives and promoting new and lasting connections. One of the outcomes of the workshop process will be the creation of a short collective video piece that can potentially be screened in cultural facilities, community centers, on the web and in other public spaces. The participants will develop creative skills, gain confidence in expressing personal ideas and discover new strategies for community engagement. Time permitting, there will be a final public presentation at Invizin where the participants can share their work with family and friends.
Participant Biographies
leannej and my name is scot
Over the past few summers, Leannej and My Name Is Scot have been travelling through Eastern Europe exploring the effects of globalization, major climate change and new social media platforms upon the meanings and beliefs associated with ideas of time and place. As geopolitical conflicts, environmental catastrophes, and the collapse of social infrastructures continue to challenge our global expectations and certainties, Leannej and My Name Is Scot have been employing journalism, performance, video and photography, collaborative theatre, Book and zine making, installation interventions and web art, as a means to unite with others to chronicle, confront and potentially redefine the current outlines and obligations of being ‘here’.
Recent activities at home include being mentoring artists working with immigrant youth for the Baobab Youth Empowerment Digital Storytelling Project, produced in association with the Surrey Art Gallery and ongoing guest lecturers for Humanities 101, an educational outreach program run by The University of British Columbia for low income residents from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.
Leanne Johnson is a text-based artist, editor, publisher, and educator. She has a BA in English Literature and an MPUB from Simon Fraser University, where she now teaches.
Her career began writing for Kinesis (Canada’s national feminist magazine). She went on to co-direct/curate the Publication program at the Western Front Society, which produced FRONT Magazine, was a director of the BC Association of Magazines, and worked as a publishing consultant to the Banff Centre Press.
Publishing as “leannej,” her work has been described as “hovering between writing and conceptual art,” and has been displayed in galleries, online, magazines, and books. Her books include, LongRange Forecast Variable (2002), Rereading the Riot Act (2011), Staying Beauty (2013), and Monument (2014). Her most recent texts explore the form of animated and interactive digital narratives.
My Name Is Scot and I’m based in Vancouver, Canada. I work with video, performance, installation and text to explore issues of class, kindness, identity and agency. I’ve exhibited across Canada and my international exhibitions include installations, performances and screenings in the United States, Norway, Bulgaria, Czech Republic,Hungary, Germany,India, the U.K. and Mexico. My texts have been published in Front Magazine, the Capilano Review and danDelion.
dr. antonio iannone
curriculum vitae (Italian)
la cooperativa sociale Eta Beta
The social cooperative Eta Beta was founded in October of 2011 to assist immigrants and disadvantaged people.