Interview at the Moose Cafe from N2M2L on Vimeo.

Deerhurst Inside Out from N2M2L on Vimeo.

Celebrate Water Mob Flash!

TAKE ACTION: CELEBRATE WATER

AGITPROP10

Do you want to see the whole agitprop10 exhibition? Click here if you already have your password. If you still require one, please email us at mobilemedialab@gmail.com and one will be sent to you.

Special Thanks to our Project Sponsor

A look at the G8 Security Briefing, June 6 2010 (Video)

Location of G8 Project Residency

Below is a map of the area around Deer Hurst Resort and the locations of both the G8 Project Residency at Maplewood Cottage B&B and the Designated Speech Area. Please also make note of the restricted security areas as you will not be allowed to enter them.

List of Confirmed Participating Galleries

Part of the G8 Project Artist Residency is to have the works created by the artists streamed live to galleries around the country in a web-based exhibition called Agitprop10. To date, the media works will be broadcast to seven galleries nation wide and one international gallery from New York City. Here is the list of participating galleries where you can find the Agitprop10 exhibition showing within the time frame of June 19-July 1 (please check with specific gallery to confirm their date for the exhibition).

Paved Art and New Media, Saskatoon

Thames Art Gallery, Chatham, Ontario

Em Media, Calgary, Alberta

Ed Video, Guelph, Ontario

Xpace Gallery, Toronto, Ontario

Common Ground Gallery, Windsor, Ontario

W.K.P. Kennedy Gallery, North Bay, Ontario

Notanalternative Gallery, New York, New York

Niagara Artists Company, St. Catharines, Ontario

The Factory, Hamilton, Ontario

The Change You Want to See Gallery, New York, New York

Final Huntsville Town Hall Meeting About G8 Announced

G8 Security Briefing Announced for This Sunday

Designated Speech Area in Huntsville Posted

G8 News from Moose FM: G8 Countdown

http://www.moosefm.com/cfbk/g8-countdown

Link with up to date news on issues surrounding the G8 Summit in Huntsville.

Artist Schedules

Residency Schedules for Artists

Kika Thorne & Jason Jones June 19-26th 2010

Jonathan Culp & Dick Averns June 24th-July 1st

Please note that during the conference June 24th-June 26th all 4 Artists will be in residency at the location.

Meet the Artists: Jason Jones

Jason Jones is the choice of our partner gallery for this project in New York city. According to Not an Alternative Arts Collective curator, Winnie Fung, Jones is an “activist artist” who actually follows these summits around the world gathering information for his art and trying to understand the process of global government.

Meet the Artists: Jonathan Culp

Jonathan Culp is a Toronto film and video artist who travels the country as the notorious Satan McNuggitt. His new style of documentary is humourous and fearless, absolutely truthful and yet silly. It is a subjective voice creating art from the tools of documentary film making.

Jonathan Culp (born March 22, 1971) is a Canadian underground filmmaker, whose work includes found-footage collage, Super 8, and activist documentary as well as narrative projects. Working independently out of Toronto, Canada, Culp has produced or co-produced over forty short films and videos since 1995.

Culp’s work is typified by its confrontational tone, rhythmic counterpoint of sound and image elements, and acidic references to mass media. In late 2005 Culp completed his first feature, Grilled Cheese Sandwich, a 90-minute comedy about a revolutionary high school grilled cheese sandwich club. His most recent video, It Can Happen Here (2006), is a complex and emotional fusion of documentary, collage, and personal modes.

Long active in the Liaison of Independent Filmmakers of Toronto (LIFT)[1], in 1997 Culp helped found the Toronto Video Activist Collective (TVAC) [2]; he was injured by riot police while documenting protests at the 2001 Quebec City Protests. Along with Siue Moffat, he also initiated the Satan Macnuggit Video Road Show, which has screened eclectic programs of underground video in alternative venues across Canada. He has written about film and filmmaking for Broken Pencil, Clamor and Canadian Dimension magazines.

Meet the Artists: Dick Averns

Dick Averns is well known across the country for his political performances and for his work with isolated communities (especially the military community). He will be photographing the G8 site and documenting as well as creating a new performance piece while at the trailer.

Born in London (England) in 1964, Dick Averns currently maintains his practice in Calgary, Canada. The artist is actively involved in exhibiting through public institutions, artist-run centres, public art projects and via performative events. An interdisciplinary approach invariably places audience as a central component to works that thematically engage with the commodification of space. As a teacher at the Alberta College of Art and Design, Averns teaches advanced studio and Liberal Studies subjects, including sculpture, performance and installation, drawing and First Year Studies.

Early works featured the clandestine installation of advertisements on tube trains and subtle amendments to billboards. Projects in the public domain have continued through series of conceptual text based installations and performative interventions, including the performative alter ego Armchair Terrorist. Sculpture and photography feature prominently in gallery installations. On the academic front, recent papers include The Vanguard War Art of William MacDonnell (Canadian Art) and Official Acts and Unofficial Actions - War Art Today (UAAC Conference).

Prior to establishing a career in art, the artist built a substantive record working in both private and public business administration, including stints for financial institution Bankers Trust and The Royal London Hospital. After travelling extensively, the artist attended drawing classes at the Parsons School of Art and Design in Manhattan before returning to London and studying at the City Literary Institute. Formal art training continued full-time at the Wimbledon School of Art and subsequently at Cheltenham. A Master of Fine Art (Studio) was received from the University of British Columbia in 2003.

Meet the Artists: Kika Thorne

• Kika Thorne has been an activist video artist for over a decade and has proven to be fearless in her search for truth in art. She is now creating paintings that directly address issues of globalization and global conflicts. Kika wants to create an outdoor exhibition at the site and allow the art to create dialogue between G8 participants and local residents.
Kika Thorne received her MFA from the University of Victoria, BC and has exhibited extensively including projects at Murray Guy, New York, Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver, Musee d’art contemporain, Montreal, Portikus, Frankfurt, and the Power Plant, Toronto.

Project Background

In April, 2009, Near North Mobile Media Lab Director and documentary film maker, Lieann Koivukoski attended an information meeting held by Minister Tony Clement and officials from the government with community “stakeholders” and residents. At this town meeting, Lieann undertook research for a documentary she is planning on security forces at global events. She inquired at that time if the media Lab would be allowed to document the G8 meeting if a press pass could be obtained. Lieann filmed this media event and the public interview with the Minister. We are still waiting for the press pass, but feel that this first official contact has got us in the door and, as we approach the actual event, we will be able to get more official permissions and sanctions.

At that same meeting, Lieann met the owners of Maplewood Cottages, down the road from Deerhurst Resort. After learning about the activities of the Lab and about the N2M2L Collective, the owners of this Bed and Breakfast have allowed the collective to park the Media Lab on their property. Again, we feel that this groundwork will lead to better positioning as we approach the event and will give us the “local” connections that we need to set up a residency on the site of the G8 summit.

About the G8 Project

From June 25-27, 2010 the world will be watching the Blue Sky region of northern Ontario as politicians from all over the globe attend the G8 summit conference to be held at Deerhust Lodge in Huntsville. As the closest media access centre to the conference, the Near North Mobile Media Lab Collective decided (early in 2009) to develop an “artistic” presence at the site of the conference and in nearby North Bay where security forces for the event will be assembling and staying. The G8 Residency Project involves the Media Lab moving to a site just opposite the Deerhust facility, obtaining press passes for the residing artists and commissioning four media artworks FROM the events of the G8 summit. The Media Lab will also be transforming itself into a broadband media uplink site for the residing artists and for activist documentarists who are unofficially attending the summit.

The Objective of the G8 Project is to create an artist's residency at the G8 summit in Huntsville that will focus Media and Government attention upon contemporary media arts and on the political issue that are of interest to contemporary media artists.

The project will give residents and outsiders a broadcast voice for the event and will result in the creation of multiple media artworks.

We have invited four artists from across the country and the United States to join us for up to one week and to stay on the site of the summit. We will park the Media Lab across the street from Deerhurst Lodge (site of the conference) and then plug in all of our new satellite up-linking technologies.

Once installed at the site, the invited artists will: document their activities, create new in- situ performances, set up nomadic exhibitions and simply make their presences felt at the summit.

The project is also focused on streaming video live from the site of the summit. Using new technologies purchased for this project, we will be able to transmit the artists’ works immediately to the web. We will also become a centre for other independent media artists who are visiting the summit and for the grassroots activist groups who are “surrounding” the event.

Residency Dates

Residency Week One starts on June 21st and runs until just after the Conference, June 28th. We have not yet determined which artists will participate in this first week of actions, exhibits and events.

Residency Week One starts on June 25th and runs until a week after the Conference, July 2nd. We have not yet determined which artists will participate in this first week of actions, exhibits and events.

Partners and Participants

Our “international” arts partner, the Not an Alternative Arts Collective bills itself as a cultural production company. They have a gallery space in New York but are most effective when they reach out to various communities and sub-cultures to allow art to effect change. At a conference in Ottawa, Media Lab members met with Ms. Fung and first suggested the idea of involving the American group in this residency. Although Canada Council for the Arts would NOT be asked to fund this international component, we are certain that this connection will strengthen the residency and help us to create a wider audience for the materials being uploaded from the trailer. The connection may also increase the broadcast media profile of the project and act to promote these artists across the globe.

Our grassroots partners for this project are the residents of Huntsville and Burk’s Falls and other surrounding hamlets. The Media Lab has done workshops in these areas and also has several members who come from Huntsville. We have permission to set up our broadcast venue at a bed and breakfast across the road from Deerhurst.

Our Gallery partners include:
WKP Kennedy Gallery
White Water Gallery
Ed Video Guelph
Thames Gallery at the Chatham Cultural Centre


Equipment

Our web technician, B. Sabzicot has determined that, to be able to efficiently and dependably upload images and streaming video to the net from a trailer in the woods, we will need to purchase the Skydata system. These are the only equipment costs associated to this project. All other equipment will be purchased by the Media Lab for use by the invited artists. We have high definition and three chip production packages, lights, audio gear, tripods, projection equipment, audio recorders, laptop editors, and all the software the artist will need to create works on site.