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Shasha McArthur. Image courtesy of the artist.

Labour of Love: On Digital Economies in the Arts

“Nakota: The Sky People” and “Where Light Shines Through” | A lecture by Shasha McArthur of IM4 Media Lab | Friday, November 22, 2019 | 6pm

Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art | 1, 460 Portage Ave | Winnipeg MB | Canada


Plug In ICA presents a lecture by Shasha McArthur of IM4 Media Lab as part of Labour of Love: On Digital Economies in the Arts, a series of lectures, screenings, and workshops. McArthur will introduce the audience to the research and practice of IM4 Media Lab through her own passion project, a 360 Video web series. McArthur will discuss the evolving ideas, where the story began, what the challenges have been, and about rewriting a scene to fit the camera. The lecture will take place at Plug In ICA, on Friday, November 22 at 6pm.

Labour of Love, or LOL, takes the “public course” as a platform for engagement, this program highlights the various ways in which the digital is interrogated, explored, celebrated, pushed to its limit, reworked, re-invented by artists, scholars, curators, writers and others. The course encompasses a full array of events, delving into such topics as coding, circuit bending, VR, AI and AR, gaming, scanning, and 3D printing. Divided into two streams, a lecture and screening series, and workshops, Labour of Love at its most general examines the relationship between the economics of labour and the digital arts as it contends with the conditions of racial capitalism. As a research platform, we aim to build an understanding of the digital by presenting artists who invent new trajectories through various technologies.

Shasha McArthur is an Indigenous filmmaker of Nakota (Assiniboine) and Nehiyaw Paskwa (Plains Cree) descent. Shasha grew up on White Bear First Nation in southern Saskatchewan with her grandmother Bella McArthur before moving to Vancouver, BC. Her introduction to film was working on sets as a PA before attending film school at Capilano University in the Motion Picture Arts program. In 2018, Shasha graduated with a diploma from Doreen Manuel’s Indigenous Independent Digital Filmmaking program. After writing, directing and editing several of her own short narrative and documentary projects Shasha found a new way to fold her previous experience in tech within IM4’s A/R, V/R and 360 video development directive. In September 2019, Shasha was invited to attend the Oculus Connect 6 Conference in San Jose, California to discuss her concept for an Oculus Rift based game, currently in development, titled Bubble Run.

IM4 Media Lab: Envisioned and developed by Indigenous filmmaker Loretta Todd, the Indigenous Matriarch 4 Lab is a collaboration with Emily Carr University of Art and Design and Indigenous media professionals, including Doreen Manuel, Cease Wyss, and Tracey Kim Bonneau. The IM4 Lab is designed to build an ecosystem of Indigenous VR/AR/360 developers, technicians, storytellers, media professionals and artists to participate in and influence the growth of Virtual and Augmented Reality (VR/AR/360).

All lectures and screenings are free and open to the public.


Associated Programming:

Labour of Love: On Digital Economies in the Arts

October 17 to December 17, 2019

Thursday, October 17 | 7pm

Screening: Videos by Hannah Black

October 17-November 17

Screening in Plug In’s Breezeway

More, Less, About the Same (2019)

By Alyssa Bornn

Thursday, November 7 | 7pm

Lecture by Suzanne Kite

Monday, November 18 | 8pm

Presentation by Hyphen-Labs

Friday, November 22 | 6pm

Presentation by IM4 Media Lab

Friday, November 22-23

Workshop by IM4 Media Lab

Monday, December 2 | 7pm

Lecture by Ali Shamas Qadeer

Co-presentation with School of Art, Graphic Design, University of Manitoba

Monday, December 2-6

Workshop by Ali Shamas Qadeer

Thursday, December 5 | 7pm

Lecture by Morehshin Allahyari

Co-presentation with Institute for the Humanities, University of Manitoba

Tuesday, December 17 | 7pm

Keynote Address by Hannah Black

December 6, 2019 – March 6, 2020

Screening in Plug In’s Breezeway

Soft Nails ~ [ASMR] Kleincomputer Robotron KC87

By Nadja Buttendorf

For participant bios + more information on the program:

https://plugin.org/exhibitions/labour-of-love-on-digital-economies-in-the-arts/

This program is made possible through the Digital Strategy Fund: Digital and Intelligence by the Canada Council for the Arts.


Acknowledgments

Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art recognizes we are in the territories of the Anishinaabeg, Cree, Dakota, Dene, Métis, and Oji-Cree Nations. Plug In ICA is situated in Treaty 1 territory, the ancestral and traditional homeland of Anishinaabe peoples. Treaty 1 was signed in 1871, taking this territory from seven local Anishinaabe First Nations in order to make the land available for settler use and ownership (Referenced from the University of Winnipeg).

Plug In ICA extends gratitude to our artists, generous donors, valued members and dedicated volunteers, with special thanks to our Director’s Circle.

We gratefully acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Manitoba Arts Council and Winnipeg Arts Council. We could not operate without their continued financial investment and lobbying efforts.

Plug In ICA relies on community support to remain free and accessible to all, and enables us to continue to present excellent programs. Please consider becoming a member of Plug In ICA and a donor at https://plugin.org/support or by contacting Angela Forget: angela@plugin.org

For more information on this and our other education programs, contact Nasrin Himada at nasrin@plugin.org

For general information please contact: info@plugin.org or call 1.204.942.1043