As part of the Winnipeg New Music Festival, Plug In ICA will contribute to three programs:
January 20 – February 28 | Suzie Smith | Centennial Concert Hall
Suzie Smith’s site-specific installation, Quiet Forms is new work commissioned by Plug In ICA for the Centennial Concert Hall (555 Main Street) on the Piano Nobile Wall. For this project, Smith uses musical notations, which she bends, twists and folds to create meandering sculptural forms. The artist then scanned, enlarged and printed the collaged assemblages to create a unified mural that flows as a continued pattern.
Embodying strategies used by many of the musicians included in the Winnipeg New Music Festival, Smith takes on the structural elements of her material — in this case blank music notation sheets. Quiet Formsinvents a new language for the musical sheets, redefining their intended function by identifying a new possibility for them as a visual field.
Suzie Smith is a Winnipeg based interdisciplinary artist who works primarily with print media. She graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree from Concordia University in 2004 and a Master of Fine Arts from The Glasgow School of Art in 2011. She has shown her work both nationally and internationally and has had solo exhibitions at Arprim (Montréal), Open Studio (Toronto), Malaspina Printmakers (Vancouver) and Ace Art (Winnipeg). She is represented by Lisa Kehler Art + Projects in Winnipeg where she had her most recent solo exhibition. In addition to her artwork she is a founding member of Parameter Press, a quarterly Risograph-printed art subscription. Smith is known for her meticulous and labour intensive silk-screened prints. Her work is built from a process of repetition in mass reproduction, which she undermines by making unique prints that change in image and colour from one to the next.
February 2 | 10:30pm | Ben Shemie | Plug In ICA
Shemie, who is based in Montreal will perform Music for Two Radios throughout Plug In ICA including the halls and foyer of our building. Bring a transistor radio to enhance this performance that engages two local radio stations 101.5 FM and 95.9 FM in a synchronized soundscape.
Ben Shemie lives and works in Montreal, Quebec. His musical interests are founded in the blending of classical and popular music genres. Special attention is put on the reconciliation of contemporary classical music and popular electronica. A consummate composer with forays into rock, jazz, techno and experimental music. His recent works have also taken shape in multi-channel electronic composition with a focus on alternative spaces.
February 4 | 12:00am-12:00pm | Doreen Girard, Spectral Repair | Duncan Sportsplex Arena
Doreen Girard will be engaging with expanded cinema as part of 12-HOUR DRONE. She will build a visual field as part this immersive event, which focuses on drone sounds and music defined by their sustained tones shaped by both voice or instrumentation. This event is a satellite of 24-HOUR DRONE, a roving, transatlantic series created and presented by Basilica Hudson, New York and Le Guess Who?, Utrecht, NL and will take over Duncan Sportsplex Arena, 55 Duncan Street, Winnipeg.
Doreen Girard is a musician and filmmaker living in Winnipeg, MB. Working in the realm of sound art and expanded cinema, Girard pushes the mediums she works with to their limits. Materially, she incorporates a variety of elements and approaches, often drawing from archives and using experimental methods, including analog technologies, and performance. Girard is a founding member of the Bent Light and Negative Space artist’s collectives; she performs with the electro-acoustic piano trio, Burden, as well as performing expanded cinema, operating hand-built and repurposed projectors. She has collaborated with many artists and performed at various festivals, such as Vancouver Swarm 15, WNDX, Suoni Per Il Popolo, send+receive, Sounds Like, the Winnipeg New Music Festival and Pop Montreal.