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]]>After five amazing years of taking over nooks, crannies, businesses and empty spaces in downtown Kitchener with pop-up art, weird live performances and random programming on the evening of the fall time change, Night\Shift Placehacking Festival is retiring. Zero funds have been raised to put on a sixth festival in early November 2018, and there are no plans or resources to produce another one.
The reason is pretty straightforward and relatable. Developing and delivering an offbeat, unpredictable and many, many-headed undertaking like Night\Shift requires an awful lot of time, money and organizational effort. And while the festival’s collaborations with mostly local artists have been a blast to produce, Night\Shift’s board of directors has been unable to develop a succession plan to overcome the fact that the side-hustle required to make this festival is no longer sustainable alongside the demands of other full-time gigs and waking/sleeping life. So 2017’s festival was, unfortunately, the end.
It does sting a little to say farewell to Night\Shift, but it’s also a huge relief — and incredibly satisfying to reflect on. I’m so proud of and completely floored by what Night\Shift has done. Over the course of five elaborate instalments, Night\Shift paid more than 400 artists to create more than 125 pieces of original programming, helping flip the idea that Kitchener’s core is a place to avoid exploring. The festival has sparked fabulous collaborations and stunning re-imaginations of many under-appreciated spaces, attracted rad experimental music acts to play Kitchener, and orchestrated a whole lotta lovely moments. A huge thank you to everyone who shared in Night\Shift’s vision and supported it with your eyeballs, ears, hands, hearts, minds, money and moves.
To give the festival a proper goodbye, the board is currently making plans for a farewell party. We’ll host this event on Wednesday, May 30th at the Kitchener Market . It’ll include food and drink, live music and a small collection of past Night\Shift projects brought back out to play.
As party plans congeal, we’ll update the fazeboog event on the festival’s page (details added below for those who don’t boog) and do some half-assed promo. Stay tuned for more details about Night\Shift’s last placehack!
— Eric Rumble, Night\Shift founder & festival director, March 10th\\11th 2018
NIGHT\SHIFT Farewell Party
WED MAY 30th \\ 6-10pm \\ Kitchener Market (300 King St. E.)
Help put a DTK darling to bed as some amazing festival alumni bring out their past projects, including:
Agnes Niewiadomski’s BIG LIGHT BRIGHT \\ agnesmakes.com/big-games (unveiled at Night\Shift 2014)
Bernie Rohde & Mike Robertson’s INFINITY MIRROR \\ nightshiftwr.ca/infinimirror (2015)
A few lanterns from Haneen Dalla-Ali & Paniz Moayeri’s BRIGHT WHISPERS \\ nightshiftwr.ca/bright-whispers (2015)
A reinterpretation of Allie Brenner & Laura Snider’s CONVERSATIONAL PARTNER \\ nightshiftwr.ca/conversational-partner (2015)
nik harron’s VRLENS MONITORS \\ nightshiftwr.ca/vrlens-monitors (2017)
One recreated room outta Agnes Niewiadomski & Michelle Purchase’s FIBRE FUNHOUSE \\ nightshiftwr.ca/fibre-funhouse (2017)
Ellie Anglin’s RESIST PSYCHIC DEATH \\ nightshiftwr.ca/resist-psychic-death (2017)
+ + + +
LIVE MUSICAL performances by d/dt ( ddtetc.bandcamp.com ), Eiyn Sof ( springskull.bandcamp.com ), Ziibiwan ᓯᐱᐘᐣ ( ziibiwan.bandcamp.com ) & Bonnie Trash ( bonnietrash.bandcamp.com )
FOOD & DRINK (served up by TWB Co-operative Brewing) details coming soon!
Programming and production costs of the Night\Shift farewell party are funded by the Downtown Kitchener BIA + this event is part of the #TrueNorthDTK culture crawl on Wed May 30th
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+ ICYMI, details about why the festival is retiring:
makebright.com/2018/03/sustaining-community-jams
communityedition.ca/from-nightshift-to-cafka-how-we-celebrate-public-art
cbc.ca/news/canada/kitchener-waterloo/kitchener-night-shift-art-festival-cancelled-eric-rumble-1.4572554
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But this particular pile of words is for those who made Night\Shift 2017 happen—and as it goes with each instalment, I’m amazed and humbled by the wave of communal support that creates this oddball festival. The crowd that comes out to Night\Shift every year is appreciative, open-minded, respectful and demographically all over the map (which makes for fabulous people watching). Thank you for being witnesses and instigators of your downtown core’s reimagining!
Thanks also for sharing your experiences while exploring #NightShift17 in downtown Kitchener. For all its endless offerings, every now and then our social media streams manage to hone in on the exact impact you aim to make on festival-goers:
‘Am I dreaming?’ asks the 6 yr old. ‘I think so’, I reply. @NightShiftWR #nightshift17 pic.twitter.com/9bWSvucJQP
— Andrew Trant (@ajtrant) November 5, 2017
Scope the Instagram tag #nightshift17 for more
As for those who turned the core’s nooks and crannies into a temporarily dream-induced landscape: the 2017 festival’s incredible contributing artists & performers did a magnificent job of recasting a seasonal shift into darkness as a time of illumination, celebration and connection. Each year of Night\Shift welcomes a new wave of experimental visions, and this year’s artist lineup had a fabulous mix of veteran placehackers, fresh faces and exciting out-of-towners.
Our kickoff collage party with Catherine Mellinger at Open Sesame was a warm blast on a quiet, wet Thursday night thanks to our fabulous hosts. Thanks also to local drone wizard d/dt for recording his amazing set (listen above — he even layered in field recordings of flags flapping and cars passing from Carl Zehr Square!); thanks to Castle If for bussing in from Toronto to slay our ears; and thanks to Branko Vranic for priming the minds and hands of dozens of lovely folks who showed up to make something and enjoy some ambient tunes. One more thank you to the amazing Susan Coolen for sharing a sprinkling of her P.U.D.D.L.E.S. project with the opening nighters (plus coming out on Friday & Saturday too), and for sticking around to make a dope collage .
A double dose of appreciation goes out to Dylan Reibling—the brains and brawn behind last year’s 24-Hour Dolly , an interactive installation endurance project that took over the Kitchener City Hall rotunda and exquisitely filmed the faces of a wide cast of local characters—for putting together a 12-hour, non-stop cut of the project’s footage and presenting it all day long at KWAG on Nov 3rd. Thanks KWAG for hosting our Friday evening festivities, and for always being open to the festival’s impulse to play with your space. And thanks to the artists who braved the 401 to be at KWAG to layer in their transportive music and therapy: M. Mucci from Guelph for christening the crowd; Clara Engel and North Atlantic Drift ’s Brad and Mike from Toronto for rounding out the sweet sounds; and the crew behind LUCID , Aaron, Gabriella & Kelsey (also from the big smoke).
Each version of Night\Shift has strived to attract incredible experimental musicians, and 2017’s showcase at Apollo Cinema featured the festival’s biggest and most exciting weirdo lineup yet. Thanks to respectfulchild for flying in from Saskatoon to play! Thanks to Anna of ANAMAI , Chuck of You’ll Never Get To Heaven , and Rollie (aka Cadence Weapon ) for saying yes and then killing it like I knew you would! Thanks to Brad Weber (aka Coy Haste ) for reaching out and asking to play—and for closing out the night. And thanks to New Fries for coming on board to give us a six-pack of rad acts!
Thanks also to all of the projection artists who truly stepped up to the dubious task of tapping into the Apollo’s projection system and live-creating visual complements to such a wide, accomplished spectrum of music. Jamie, nik, Bryce, Monika, Alex and Jackie — you all did fantastic things with that huge canvas, and we appreciate how well all of you rolled with the technical challenges along the way.
Thanks to Torin Langen for reaching out of his comfort zone (and luring others out of theirs too) by conjuring Offerings , and to Daniel MacPherson for also stretching his legs into a new realm with Duet . And thanks to you both for animating an otherwise empty and unseen space with your completely unalike ideas.
Thanks as well to Night\Shift’s other first-time contributors in 2017: Shawn DeSouza-Coelho for temporarily planting your PoeTree on a patch of DTK concrete; Kevin Henriques for building the multi-dimensional beast of a project that was Space Mother ; Tee Kundu for funnelling your community appreciation into Ok Sure ; and to Claire Binnie & Ean Kools for collaborating on a wicked capstone mural to complement all the other street art added to Goudies Lane this year.
Thanks to Ian Newton, a true local beacon of trailblazing creative instigation, whose Selectively Selective pop-up gallery turned festival-goers into art-makers with an experiment designed to secretly get us all thinking about being present and paying more attention.
Muchos gracias to other repeat Night\Shifters who again knit their craftiness and ingenuity into the 2017 festival landscape. Katherine Road Quartet, we are all in awe of your ever-rain-readiness and your uncanny ability to pack small spaces and fill them beautifully with your voices. VERSA , your projection work is enthralling and it was great to see you treat J&P’s clean walls as a screen for your strange impulses. Gary Kirkham, thank you for your epic, projection-mapped echo of childhood on a patch of concrete! And Ellie Anglin , your smile-inducing and highly resonant provocation could not have been delivered in a better form! (Plus that was probably one of the most fun low-tech redneck installs ever…)
Then there’s the project that was easily Night\Shift 2017’s most ambitious and elaborate—an immeasurably pleasing collaboration between a handful of locals who have already done tons to make this festival what it is. Michelle Purchase & Agnes Niewiadomski ’s Fibre Funhouse , on which they worked closely with Green Light Arts to develop intertwining theatrical threads to spool out of it, was a marvel. The Funhouse fabulously extended the festival’s tradition of reimagining Goudies Lane, and this dynamic duo harnessed efforts from many communities of locals to make it real. It seems impossible that Michelle & Agnes be dethroned as DTK’s champion fort-builders anytime soon!
Last but certainly not least, a special thank you to nik harron . Nik’s VR lenses were a total hit at Night\Shift 2017, as expected. The local painter, maker, gamer, creative director, VJer and tinkerer also designed all the festival’s branded materials—and has since day one.
That includes the animations he made so that Night\Shift’s social media appreciation for its sponsors need not bore our followers with logo stacks and white space.
Night\Shift wouldn’t exist without the ever-present and ever-willing-and-able support of the City of Kitchener. Beyond boosting the festival through its Tier 2 community grants program , there are a bunch of particular folks at the City whose extra efforts were about as essential as it gets. Thanks to Hilary Abel for helping run this year’s show, and for lighting a fire under this festival concept five years ago! Thanks to Greg Osborn, whose eagle-eared expertise, easy-going demeanour and all around kick-assery made sure a dozen musical acts sounded amazing over three late nights. Thanks to Aaron, Chloe & Dave for handling setup and teardown; to Tim & Steve for the stellar, lightning-quick printing of posters, handbills and festival maps; and to a bunch of City departments that made sure we were good to go in so many ways, including operations, bylaw, parking and security, plus Sandy & Monika on the downtown development team.
Thanks to the Downtown Kitchener BIA for being so thrilled by our festival plans again this year, and for giving us the financial capacity to pay 10 musical acts and seven installation artists to share their ephemeral brilliance here in DTK. Thanks to Canadian Heritage’s Local Festivals program, which granted the festival with funds to cover another six artistic contributions, as well as our volunteer recruitment, organizing and appreciation efforts.
Thank you to Musagetes for supporting the festival, to the Kitchener-Waterloo Community Foundation for administering those funds, and to ArtsBuild Ontario for the charitable status assist that made that money happen. Thanks to the Walper Hotel for generously inviting us to remake a pair of unused spaces on your block, and for pampering the hell out of a few out-of-town artists who needed places to crash. Thanks to the handful of downtown development companies that added to the artist-paying pot — Andrin Homes , Momentum Developments , Zehr Group and Perimeter Development . Thanks to Communitech for being both a festival partner and a programming contributor in 2017 with the True North Waterloo mural in Goudies Lane.
Another round of thanks to the proprietors and staff at a handful of can’t-miss downtown Kitchener spots for opening your spaces to the festival and helping us to deliver three really great nights of multidisciplinary, many-headed, feel-good moments—in particular: J&P Grocery , Apollo Cinema & Mercury Cafe , Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery , and Open Sesame . And one last gulp of appreciation for Together We’re Bitter Co-operative Brewery , who leapt at the chance to name a strange brew after us: the dangerously delicious Night\Shift Black Pale Ale.
Last but most certainly not least, a deep bow of thanks to everyone who made time in their lives to volunteer for Night\Shift 2017. There are too many overlapping tasks and efforts to articulate, but this list is packed with folks whose middle names could very well all be Supportosaurus: Allie Gingerich, Amanda Garbe, Bernie Rohde, Cary Earnest, Daniel Rolf, Elissa Den Hoed, Emily Traichel, Emma Dines, Faryal Diwan, Fig Lettah, James Mallari, Jen van Overbeeke, John Kavanagh, John Schanck, Julia Orlowska, Julia Spiegl, Keren Carr, Lauren Kaita, Mavis Ma, Max, Michele Siep, Mishell Mohsin, Monica Chamberland, Neha Ravella, Nick Fooks, Parker Spender, Paul McDonald, Peter Brown, Peter Levi Schiopu, Reese Hart, Riley Webb, Ronnie Bee, Ryan Boggs, Ryan Toman, Sarah Goldrup, Sean Fullerton, Sophie Spiegl, Sue Nally, Thomas Vicario, Tiffany Howes, Tom Tonner, Victoria Kent, Zoe Janzen.
And a final flourish of gratitude to Night\Shift’s board of directors. Allie Brenner, Marc Lecompte, Mars Orlowska, Sam Trieu and Shirley Madill: your many individual and collective efforts brought this sometimes ridiculous puzzle together, and your enthusiasm, instincts, humour and critical thinking made sure everything fit well and the messes were manageable. Without your guidance, confidence and energy, I wouldn’t have been able to thank all the amazing folks name-checked above.
Ok, just one last thing: if you’ve read this far, and you had a blast at Night\Shift 2017, please PWYC to support the festival’s programming and organization at fundrazr.com/nightshift17 . There are some rad perks still to give in our 2017 crowdfund campaign, which closes on November 30th, including the original artwork of Ryan Dodgson’s illustration for the festival.
—Eric Rumble, November 16th, 2017
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So so soon, the clocks will roll back, and the darkness will creep further.
Before the urge to hibernate grabs hold, take these things…
Thursday Nov 2nd \\ 7pmish
Look for
Susan Coolen’s P.U.D.D.L.E.S.
outside Open Sesame, in City Hall’s west wing. This’ll be the first piece of Night\Shift 2017 that anyone sees. Their stoic and a-little-silly loveliness will also help you find spots on the festival landscape for the next three days.
Catherine Mellinger’s festival-kickoff collage party starts around 7, and #NightShift17’s inaugural special guest contributor—Toronto’s Castle If—will helm the mezzanine from 7:30-8:30-ish, fuelling the room’s creative juices with sweet, sweet drones like these . Branko Vranic will spin records before and after, then from 9-10-ish, Kitchener’s own wizard of deep tones d/dt will keep the collage-making flow going through your finishing touches.
Friday Nov 3rd
10am \\ 24-Hour Dolly screening begins
Can work wait today? No Friday brunch plans? Break your placehacking fast and be at Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery ’s Community Access Space (101 Queen St. N.) to catch the beginning of Dylan Reibling’s exclusive 12-hour screening of footage from the installation film experiment/endurance test that he and his team created for Night\Shift 2016 in the Kitchener City Hall rotunda. Let’s let your faces do the convincing on why you shouldn’t miss seeing at least some of what he saw in us on the same night last year…
Reibling’s 12-hour director’s cut will continue showing throughout the day, alongside KWAG’s Carry Forward , so consider this an unbeatable coffee/escape spot or day date destination on Friday.
5pmish \\ Go dome
Let the insides of your head craft the sound and colour of your own personal escape zone (for a few minutes, anyway) and be one of the first locals to get inside LUCID. Sessions will be first come, first served and it’ll certainly be easier to get a spot than when this piece pops up at the Mercury cafe on Saturday night.
6pmish \\ Drone zone v2
M. Mucci revs up the live music component of Friday’s NIGHT\SHIFT placehacks KWAG event with an hour of his head-tripping, heart-punching instrumentals. On his heels, hour-long sets by fellow Polars Seas Recordings label-mates Clara Engel and North Atlantic Drift will happen at 7:20ish & 8;45ish.
10pmish \\ Early risers
On your way downtown for a late bite or a drink after the show, go get a sneak peek at the two newest (temporary) visual additions to Ontario St. Both Ellie Anglin’s fabulously elaborate Resist Psychic Death and Tee Kundu’s Ok Sure are being installed on Friday afternoon, so those in the know can get their peepers on ‘em early.
Saturday Nov 4th
7pmish \\ Words + otherworlds
As festival installations begin, start your nocturnal adventure with a pile of randomly encountered but potentially potent words at
The PoeTree
, in the small park you hardly ever notice at the corner of Duke and Ontario. From there, go up Ontario to the giant Cinema sign and head inside to the darkened hallway that leads to the Mercury Cafe, where you’ll find eye-boggling wonders — the kaleidoscopic lands of the
VRlens monitors
and a holographic messenger called
Space Mother
.
7:45 \\ Sounds + lights
The #NightShift17 music show at Apollo Cinema begins with a bang: respectfulchild ’s spookily looped and totally gorgeous songs, hauled all the way to DTK from Saskatoon! They’ll be accompanied by projection artwork on the big screen created live by James Anthony Usas , and that pattern of musical and visual collabs will keep echoing—so scope out which musical acts you don’t wanna miss and plan your night around those.
You’ll Never Get To Heaven + visuals assembled by the band @9pm \\ New Fries + visuals by nik harron @10pm \\ ANAMAI + visuals by Bryce Kushnier @11pm \\ Cadence Weapon + visuals by VERSA @ 12am + Coy Haste + visuals by Jax A Muse @ 1am (clock roll back @2)
And to keep you quenched during all that lovely racket,
Together We’re Bitter
’s specially brewed (and decidedly shifty) Night\Shift Black Pale Ale should be on tap at Apollo’s bar (unless movie-goers drank it all already).
8:30 \\ Forbidden Mass
Make your way to DTK’s best semi-secret spot in plain sight—inside the lime green helix-shaped Duke St. parking garage ramp—where Katherine Road Quartet will reprise the transportive vocal harmonies they brandished in the rain at Gaol Garden during Night\Shift 2015.
8:55ish \\ Ready… draw!
Let the ingenious mind of Ian James Newton cultivate your memories of the mundane and turn our hive mind’s raw drawing skills into an ephemeral gallery of plain (and thereby not plain at all) imagery. Find Selectively Selective behind the spot where they usually hang up your coats at TWH Social (below ground in the Walper Hotel building).
9:20ish \\ Ghouls + phantom drums
Right next to TWH Social’s entrance on King St., in an unoccupied space that was most recently a dollar store, two local newcomers to the festival (and to creating their own installations) will fill the emptiness with reinvented parts of their other artistic pursuits. Otherwise, Daniel MacPherson’s Duet and Torin Langen’s Offerings could be from completely different planets.
9:45ish \\ Goudies playground
Hit Goudies Lane from Queen St. and scope out the 6th mural being added to this pocket of downtown in 2017, courtesy of Communitech’s True North project. Stop to gawk (and flash back to latent childhood fantasies) at Gary Kirkham’s low-tech illusion, Marble Alley . Dive deeper into adolescence as you enter Michelle Purchase & Agnes Niewiadomski’s Fibre Funhouse —essentially a giant fort with six themed rooms, all hand-crafted using different materials and fibre arts disciplines. Layered into that wonderful wackiness is a theatrical intervention led by Green Light Arts called The House of Fun —catch the 2nd or final hour-long performance of the night at 10 or 11:30pm.
Before leaving Goudies to retrace the #NightShift17 pieces that grabbed you, head up to the J&P Grocery mezzanine for a drink or a snack and to let your voice make shapes on the hardwoood by lending it to VERSA’s
Megaphonic
.
And if you’ve been having a blast exploring all of this weird, experimental art in downtown Kitchener, please consider giving to the Night\Shift 2017 Festival Crowdfund , which features some kick-ass perks from local artists and businesses.
Also, please holler into the internet about your #placehacking adventures at #NightShift17!
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YOU MAY KNOW IAN NEWTON BETTER AS HIS ALIASES. The visionary visual artist, musician and cultural curator is one part of the Blue Dot series, an art and music experience, and records music under the moniker Spool Oops.
We asked Newton to tell us more about what’s in store with his 2017 participatory exhibit.
Ian, what does your piece SELECTIVELY SELECTIVE offer Night\Shift festival goers this year?
Selectively Selective is a simple interactive drawing exercise, where the Night Shift community recalls and draws everyday objects from memory. Fourteen groups of twelve people will draw a given object, which will then be hung on completion creating a community gallery. It will be fun and fascinating to see how able we are to recall the ordinary things which support our daily lives.
How does your background in experiential music impact this particular festival piece?
I use art and music used as a medium to encourage meaningful, shared experiences not easily accessed in ordinary social spaces. I do this because we need new ways of interacting with each other, ourselves, and our environments. Selectively Selective, while fun, engaging, and collaborative, will also act as a lens reflecting how well we are able to recollect simple objects that support our modern life. As the drawings go are mounted on the walls, and the room becomes an immersive community art gallery, a generalized view of our level of awareness will be revealed.
How has the landscape of Downtown Kitchener inspired this piece, if at all?
Kitchener is changing rapidly and at this point, is still socially evolving. The diversity of backgrounds and people coming into the city should provide a great group for this experiment.
What’s with your love of dance?
Haha; I’m actually more interested in certain kinds of non-commercial dance music and how it relates to long-standing underground communities. Dancing, with good sound, is physical and non-passive, which can have a democratizing effect on groups of people and encourages positive, culturally under-represented parts our nature to come forward. It reminds us of other ways of being.
Find Ian’s work on Saturday’s NIGHT\SHIFT agenda. It starts at 7pm behind the coat check at TWH Social (in the basement of 1 King St. W.) Check out all of this year’s NIGHT\SHIFT programming on the 2017 events listing page.
Selectively Selective
Aiming to explore how the brain filters basic information in the modern age, SELECTIVELY SELECTIVE is a participatory art exhibit where festival-goers will be encouraged to contribute to a series of simple, timed drawing sessions of everyday objects from memory. Drawings will be collected and displayed for the duration of the night on Saturday, November 4th, gradually forming a makeshift gallery. As the rollback of our clock approaches, the gallery grows! More >>
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Night\Shift and its patrons help reimagine private & public spaces after dark. Help keep Night\Shift 2017 in the black and show your appreciation for experimental art & performance!
In addition to the warm glow of satisfaction that comes from supporting a super local festival, each donation level comes with rad perks.
Perks range from vocal incantations of your name while we do magical festival stuff (like pay for web hosting), to curated record stashes, to BRFC x TWB swag packs, to sweet Ellie Anglin magnets, to #livelocal goodies from Apollo Cinema and Cheeses Murphy and Legacy Greens …
NO $?
If you can’t contribute to the campaign (PWYC), you can still help us reach our target by sharing our crowdfunding campaign. You can also follow our
Instagram
,
Facebook
and
Twitter
feeds and help spread the word about the festival and it’s 2017 contributing artists. Thanks for supporting Night\Shift.
Find Night\Shift on Fundrazr
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]]>Previous Night\Shift festivals have showcased amazing experimental and independent musicians and bands from the region and beyond, including Jennifer Castle, Cousins, Lido Pimienta, Petra Glynt, Rich Aucoin, Eiyn Sof, Ziibiwan, VERSA, Misha Marks, Bjorn Borg Collective, Nick Storring, Esther Grey, WHOOP-Szo, IC/JC/VC, Man Made Hill, GlassEYElashes, Absolutely Free, Spoke & Mirror, and Spooloops.
The 2017 festival features another stellar lineup of live music acts. Our kickoff collage party at Open Sesame will be soundtracked by two incredible solo drone-zoners, one local and the other from down the 401.
On Friday, November 3rd from 5-10pm, Night\Shift Placehacks KWAG with a film screening, a few installations and a trio of killer ambient music acts — all of whom form branches on the Polar Seas Recordings family tree.
The 5th annual festival’s marquee music showcase takes over the Apollo Cinema on Saturday, November 4th and boasts a half-dozen rad acts.
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Susan Coolen, “GROOVY” (2015)
SUSAN COOLEN IS NO STRANGER TO NIGHT\SHIFT. The multi-disciplinary artist presented psychedelic, 1960s-styled circles in 2015 with GROOVY, and the colourful ceiling installation of NEON/WOOD in 2014, both in collaboration with her friends at Bread Heads . Coolen has explored materials and ideas that run the gamut from roadkill to tree stumps to litter.
We asked her to tell us more about this year’s offering, P(athways) U(undulate) D(elightedly so that) D(owntown) L(anes are) E(nergized) S(upremely).
Susan! What does your piece P.U.D.D.L.E.S. offer Night\Shift festival goers this year?
My P.U.D.D.L.E.S are, at their simplest level, an offering of visual delight. At first glance some of the pieces are colourful soft-sculpture objects, plopped within and around the urban spaces of the Night\Shift events. You could say they sit blithely unaware of their own incongruous nature as stuffed puddles. Throughout the same urban landscape are other colourful puddle forms. These flattened, coloured surfaces are what I call puddle pathways, and they are meant to connect the dots for festival-goers… provide a visual wayfinding path to various venues.
Why do you do what you do?
As a contemporary visual artist and previously a graphic designer, I am constantly responding to a kind of interface between the world as I experience it, what catches and sparks my interest, and how to visually express my responses.
As I often say, “I am looking, always looking.” But I am also thinking and percolating and making connections in myriads of ways. I do what I do because it completely engages me visually and intellectually. One’s thinking never stops, and new observations shift previous thinking. The visual work that is constantly produced just barely scratches the surface of all the ponderings and research that goes on in my mind and in my studio, and so it creates a vital drive to not only visually explore, but to find new challenging ways to make that visual work.
Often the work itself seems simply made but this belies the true thought process and activity involved. So in a way, I am delightedly never satisfied and at the same time, find that something unexpected happens and leads me on to more explorations.
How does your background in photography and graphic design impact your process in making sculptures?
My backgrounds in photography and in graphic design have a way of circling around and around what I do. Darkroom photography has disappeared as I know it, and in a way, this has allowed me to bring new materials and methods to my art practice. So in my studio, I may work with any material at all: paper, cardboard, clay, inks, house paint, video-animation or sound.
I often use the scanner as a ‘surrogate camera’ to make images of objects or surfaces that I am graphically intrigued by. And I document my many walks, both as a reminder of something I respond to or to record something that is visually compelling.
In the case of the P.U.D.D.L.E.S., early photographic work on them came somewhat out of a re sponse to the graphic surfaces of pooling water. Photography allows me to record, document and build up a resource of images that I can return to and reinterpret in some other medium. And I often make book works from photographic documentation, as I find is useful to have my own library-archive on the hidden underpinnings of my interests and works. They can be very interesting book works on their own but they are also the invisible threads that link many seemingly disparate bodies of work together in unexpected ways.
How has the landscape of Downtown Kitchener inspired this piece?
The landscape of downtown Kitchener has definitely inspired this piece. Initially it was my 2013 artist-in-residence project ‘ The LITTER-ARTI Project ’ with the City of Kitchener that led to extensive traipsing in likely and unlikely areas of urban space. That project fed my litter-collecting collecting urges and introduced me to new zones, such as the snow-dumping grounds on desolate city lands. It was here that I began a new (and as yet unseen) project documenting the snow pile meltdowns and the leftover debris.
Within the last year and a half I have also worked as a Downtown Ambassador (for the BIA ) in Kitchener, during the height of the LRT construction phase. This job at that time entailed a lot of attention to monitoring pedestrian traffic throughways during the major digging up of city streets. And the laneways were often used as alternate routes, opening up a whole new realm of walkways and also hidden little spaces. As an artist I absorbed the temporary physical transformation of normally paved city streets and made note of the ravages of back lanes, laneways and unused zones.
Those were introductions to some of the ephemeral pooling of water that I am now drawn to work with. I have been working on a growing photographic documentation of what I call ‘interventions,’ where I now go out into these urban landscapes and photograph an event. In the case of P.U.D.D.L.E.S., I have been visiting and revisiting small accumulations of pooling water in the city’s laneways and industrial lands. Here I will, for example, float colourful items on the water surfaces, or pour colourful liquids into water, then photograph them for book works. I return to those abandoned areas again and again, after most rainfalls, and I return to see what happens to my interventions when the puddles evaporate. I am both fascinated by the various way water gathers, and also by the freedom to just play in some way, take an impression and then return to the studio with artistic energy and urges.
It is important to me that I follow the same responsive and exploratory process back in the studio. It is here that I can take the puddles project in new directions: casting clay puddles as objects and then painting them with graphic surface colours, or making sewn puddle soft-sculpture objects out of canvas.
This is where I ask myself: Well, what IS a puddle, and how can I make it, or visualize it?
What happens when I make many puddles and put them in urban spaces? Where does the notion of a graphic iconography of puddle begin? How do I make that puddle ‘come alive’ in an art event such as Night\Shift?
What I love about being an artist is that I am actually unsure as to how a particular piece will evolve, but I am interested in just bringing my ideas about it to fruition. Night\Shift becomes a wonderful opportunity to place my ideas about puddles into a public art context. It is a place to see what a piece(s) looks like and it provides that spirit of artistic connectivity in that my work is able to float and fluctuate with all of the other artistic and creative events that are going on, as a kind of engaged organic group entity infused by the energies of the people who have come to participate in Night\Shift.”
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Susan Coolen’s NIGHT\SHIFT playful installations can be found on opening night Thursday starting at 7pm @ Open Sesame \\ Friday starting at 5pm @ KWAG \\ and Saturday at a shower of DTK locations. Check out all of this year’s NIGHT\SHIFT programming on the 2017 events listing page.
P.U.D.D.L.E.S.
These trails, clusters and outbursts of psychedelic soft sculpture are breadcrumbs from a long-term project by artist Susan Coolen, which aims to recast natural, urban and industrial puddles found in downtown laneways, city lands and other properties. P.U.D.D.L.E.S. blends grit with beauty as it explores the biomorphic shapes of pooling water and the myriad surface colours and reflections. More >>
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1 \\ Night\Shift 2017 collage party
In partnership with Open Sesame ‘s exhibition of local artist Catherine Mellinger ’s collages from the book “Deep Salt Water” (BookThug, 2017), NIGHT\SHIFT kicks off its 5th anniversary instalment with a FREE & fun collage party on Thursday, November 2nd!
2 \\ Night\Shift placehacks KWAG
On the evening before Night\\Shift 2017’s main event (Friday, Nov 3rd), help the festival invade Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery ‘s space and pack your eyes & ears with with music, film, mixed-media + beer & popcorn.
3 \\ Night\Shift 2017 live music showcase
An all-over-the-map lineup of performers, from spooky looped violin and vocals to heavy duty flow to an off-the-beaten-track four-on-the-floor trip to dance into the wee hours with:
respectfulchild
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You’ll Never Get to Heaven
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ANAMAI
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Cadence Weapon
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Coy Haste
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4 \\ VRLENS monitors
Unleash your eyeballs on a kaleidoscopic, psychedelic peep show. Viewers are invited to a futuristic fantasy land while also harkening back to the golden era of circus sideshow peep boxes.
5 \\ Space Mother
Night\Shifters will find SPACE MOTHER suspended in mid-air, a holographic alien head with music and effects to flesh out the otherworld she invites us to inhabit.
6 \\ LUCID
A therapeutic universe of sound and light driven by brainwaves. LUCID is an immersive sensory environment which uses a mind-machine interface to algorithmically create a personalized palliative experience for users in real-time. Each combination of light and sound is engineered and modulated in response to the brain activity being monitored.
7 \\ The PoeTree
Branch out and connect with strangers through the act of writing. Shawn DeSouza-Coelho’s artificial willow tree explores the power of words shared between strangers.
8 \\ Forbidden Mass
A spooky, sombre song sung by four voices in a semi-secret spot. As an encore to their rain-soaked Night\Shift 2015 performances in Gaol Garden , the Katherine Road Quartet returns to unleash even more Renaissance polyphony on the downtown core!
9 \\ Resist Psychic Death
The ever-inventive Ellie Anglin is crafting a huge banner out of felt, tassels and sequins! The work — an homage to the title of a 1992 song by feminist punk band Bikini Kill — riffs on the use of banners as protest art while elevating traditionally feminine creative disciplines and perceived tacky, cheap or kitschy materials to fine-art status.
10 \\ OK Sure
A visual celebration of the joy in community, friendship and companionship. Artist Tee Kundu moved to Waterloo more than four years ago. While finding a sense of community has proven a fleeting pursuit, they continues to say yes and make friends with neighbours, colleagues and familiar faces.
11 \\ Fibre Funhouse
A gigantic, fractured-personality fort made out of fibre arts magic!
12 \\ The House of Fun
Inside and around the FIBRE FUNHOUSE, get swept away by Green Light Arts . Listen to stories, learn songs, watch and contribute to the unfolding of a roaming, improvisational theatrical trip. Characters you encounter will be inspired by the layers of the FUNHOUSE, and animate it with their instincts and your interaction.
13 \\ Marble Alley
Be mesmerized by huge marbles that turn a DTK cranny aglow. Here’s something you never find in downtown Kitchener’s forgotten pockets: three-foot marbles that come alive, coaxed by the magic of traditional lighting effects.
14 \\ True North Mural
A live painting experience in Goudie’s Lane, presented as part of Communitech’s True North Waterloo conference.
15 \\ Megaphonic
Make noise to trigger the movement of projected geometric patterns. Step up to the speaking tube and let the sound of your voice be seen, not heard. Whatever vocals go into the tube will appear as projected animations, with variations in pitch and amplitude altering their geometric patterns.
16 \\ Duet
8-bit proof that rhythm is a basic unit of communication. There are two drums in a space, but they make no noise. Instead, they register the action of festival-goers hitting their skins through simple projected animations. In DUET, Daniel MacPherson poses the question: If we swap sound for light, can we still communicate as strangers pass in the night?
17 \\ Offerings
A looping, horror-film triptych installation amped up by live drone music. This distillation of folk-horror filmmaking lets go of formal narrative structure and instead focuses on fetishizing texture, atmosphere and ambiance. Torin Langen’s aim is to hypnotize viewers, enlisting them as participants in the surreal on-screen performances.
18 \\ Selectively Selective
Aiming to explore how the brain filters basic information in the modern age, SELECTIVELY SELECTIVE is a participatory art exhibit created and conducted by Spool Oops. Festival-goers will be encouraged to contribute to a series of simple, timed drawing sessions of everyday objects from memory.
19 \\ P.U.D.D.L.E.S
These trails, clusters and outbursts of psychedelic soft sculpture are breadcrumbs from a long-term project by artist Susan Coolen, which aims to recast natural, urban and industrial puddles found in downtown laneways, city lands and other properties. P.U.D.D.L.E.S. blends grit with beauty as it explores the biomorphic shapes of pooling water and the myriad surface colours and reflections.
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We can’t wait to share these 2017 artist programming with you. In the meantime, why not add #NightShiftWR on Twitter , Instagram or RSVP on Facebook .
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TORIN LANGEN KNOWS FEAR. The filmmaker spends his time invoking skin-crawling terror in music videos and movies as the mind behind the lens. A Kitchener-Waterloo native, Torin’s first full length film 3 Dead Trick or Treaters is currently enjoying screenings on the film festival circuit, with upcoming shows at Toronto Indie Horror Fest and Freakshow Film Festival in Florida. We sent Torin some questions while he was on the road (at a film festival, obviously) to find out what drives him, about the local creative scene and to give viewers a glimpse of his Night\Shift video installation, Offerings .
Hi Torin! Thanks for agreeing to do this. Firstly, how is it being a filmmaker in Kitchener Waterloo (KW)?
What does your piece offer Night\Shift festival-goers?
Why do you do what you do?
And you’ve mentioned a tight-knit community of creatives, but where else do you find inspiration to create?
The work of Jan Svankmajer, given his practice of emphasizing textures and non-dialogue storytelling. While I’m not terribly familiar with his filmography, John Waters is a constant source inspiration for his DIY methods of film production and distribution, especially near the start of his career. As of late I’ve been very enamoured with the art direction that a number of bands have adopted, such as King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, Thee Oh Sees, Wand. These bands place great emphasis on their discography’s accompanying artwork, music videos and stage projections, often pulling double duty as both songwriters and filmmakers.
All my inspiration comes from creatives of various disciplines who aren’t afraid to pursue offbeat, singular visions — something I aim to stay true to throughout my career.
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Torin Langen’s full body of work can be found over at Candle Flame Productions and his NIGHT\SHIFT installation can be found the evening of Saturday November 4th at a TBA downtown Kitchener location. Check out all the artist contributions to #NightShift17 on this events listing .
Offerings
OFFERINGS presents three simultaneously looping experimental black-and-white horror visuals, all of them fragments from Langen’s 3 Dead Trick Or Treaters anthology. The films depict heavily costumed characters performing mysterious rituals in caves, forests and dilapidated structures, their strange movements accentuated by a live instrumental noise soundtrack that hinges on tribal drums, distortion and reverb. More >>
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These trails, clusters and outbursts of psychedelic soft sculpture are breadcrumbs from a long-term project by artist Susan Coolen, which aims to recast natural, urban and industrial puddles found in downtown laneways, city lands and other properties. P.U.D.D.L.E.S. blends grit with beauty as it explores the biomorphic shapes of pooling water and the myriad surface colours and reflections.
For #NightShift17 multiple large-scale 3D puddles will appear on roadways and sidewalks around the festival programming landscape in downtown Kitchener. Puddle pathways will also guide festival-goers to and from other artistic attractions, tickling the concrete with their interesting forms and brightly coloured surfaces.
Susan Coolen is a contemporary visual artist and has exhibited in Canada, the US and Europe. Coolen holds a BDes in graphic design from NSCAD, a BFA in photography from Concordia University and an MFA in photography from Columbia College in Chicago. Coolen’s 2013 City of Kitchener Artist-in-Residence piece, ‘The Litter-Arti Project’ evolved into a set of 50 graphic artist books now held in four regional public institutions. Coolen was also the 2016 Artist-in-Residence for the Region of Waterloo’s Ayr Library with her project ‘A Companion Library’ for ‘(an incomplete) Museum (of categories) for the Future’.
susancoolen.com
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Aiming to explore how the brain filters basic information in the modern age, SELECTIVELY SELECTIVE is a participatory art exhibit created and conducted by Ian James Newton.
Festival-goers will be encouraged to contribute to a series of simple, timed drawing sessions of everyday objects from memory. Drawings will be collected and displayed for the duration of the night on Saturday, November 4th, gradually forming a makeshift gallery. As the rollback of our clock approaches, the gallery grows.
Newton, aka Spool Oops , is a visionary visual artist, musician and cultural curator. He is the driving force behind the long-standing Blue Dot series, a multifaceted art and music experience, and he loves to make people dance.
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This distillation of folk-horror filmmaking lets go of formal narrative structure and instead focuses on fetishizing texture, atmosphere and ambiance. Torin Langen’s aim is to hypnotize viewers, enlisting them as participants in the surreal on-screen performances.
OFFERINGS presents three simultaneously looping experimental black-and-white horror visuals, all of them fragments from Langen’s 3 Dead Trick Or Treaters anthology. The films depict heavily costumed characters performing mysterious rituals in caves, forests and dilapidated structures, their strange movements accentuated by a live instrumental noise soundtrack that hinges on tribal drums, distortion and reverb.
Torin Langen is a Canadian feature film and music video director specializing in dark themes and atmosphere. Carrying out most aspects of the creative process himself, from storyboarding to art direction, Langen’s highly-textured work is charged with a surreal, haunting energy.
candleflamefilms.com
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There are two drums in a space, but they make no noise. Instead, they register the action of festival-goers hitting their skins through simple projected animations.
In DUET, Daniel MacPherson poses the question: If we swap sound for light, can we still communicate as strangers pass in the night?
MacPherson has a Bachelor of Music from Wilfred Laurier University with a specialization in composition. DUET is his debut art installation, melding together his passions for percussion and video.
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Step up to the speaking tube and let the sound of your voice be seen, not heard. Whatever vocals go into the tube will appear as projected animations, with variations in pitch and amplitude altering their geometric patterns.
MEGAPHONIC captures the power we can harness using our voices. The project is inspired by changing conventions around civic engagement, collective discourse and the voices of individuals who share communities. Raising one’s voice in public becomes increasingly important in times of instability, polarization and disinterest. A singular voice can reverberate to spur significant change, and many voices in turn form the basis for a robust and diverse society.
VERSA is an audio-visual collaboration between musician Alex Ricci and artist Monika Hauck. Their multidisciplinary practice explores the physical properties of sound to trigger responsive visualizations. Through installation and performance, VERSA creates innovative and accessible multimedia presentations, repurposing outmoded analog equipment and exploring cutting edge sound and visual technology.
versavisuals.com
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We often treat the creative and tech communities as separate entities, but they share the same driving goals—to form a statement, create an experience, elicit a reaction, and form a connection with their audience. True North’s contribution to Night\Shift is a live-painted mural that will add another layer of creativity to that shared downtown space, and a teaser to the True North Waterloo conference next May 29-31, 2018.
TRUE NORTH will bring together 2000+ visionaries, leading influencers, hackers & hustlers to take part in an honest and critical conversation. It will be a place for startups, scale-ups, groundbreaking creatives and innovative brands to share, learn and have those serendipitous moments that bring great ideas to fruition.
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Here’s something you never find in downtown Kitchener’s forgotten pockets: three-foot marbles that come alive, coaxed by the magic of traditional lighting effects.
MARBLE ALLEY is based on work produced by Gary Kirkham during his “PROject proJECT” residency at the Idea Exchange this past summer, in which he experimented with established film techniques to create 3D video effects. In a nutshell, it’s projection mapping without the mapping, instead using forced perspective, analog video, small marbles and white-screened exercise balls to build an amazing optical illusion.
Gary Kirkham is a video designer, playwright, actor and filmmaker. He has created video designs for UnSilent Night, MT Space, Randolph Academy, Canadian Arab Theatre, Cactusbloem (Belgium) Summerworks and others, and he has written several plays, including Falling: A Wake, Pearl Gidley and Queen Milli of Galt .
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Inside and around the FIBRE FUNHOUSE, get swept away by Green Light Arts . Listen to stories, learn songs, watch and contribute to the unfolding of a roaming, improvisational theatrical trip. Characters you encounter will be inspired by the layers of the FUNHOUSE, and animate it with their instincts and your interaction.
There will be five different plays, each about 20 minutes long. They will be on a three performance continuous loop and then a half hour break. Audiences will be able to then step into different rooms throughout that time and see/hear different stories over the hour and then come back and catch different stories throughout the night.
Green Light Arts is a brave and inventive regional theatre arts company that develops and presents live productions, arts education programming and community building happenings. GLA has offered impactful experiences that probe ideas, themes and challenges of contemporary society since 2014.
greenlight-arts.com
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Imagine an oversized modular blanket fort with walls, doors, windows and ceilings constructed using various fibre arts techniques and materials. Think: Grannies Gone Wild (with crochet needles) + T-shirt tent-building + tie-dyed dreamland!
In the FUNHOUSE you’ll find a strange range of rooms full of whimsy, activities and wonder — spaces to play, relax, connect and explore. This project also threads together ideas rooted in city-building, teamwork, DIY craft culture, mixed-use development, green architecture and housing (un)availability.
The FUNHOUSE is a collaborative imagineering effort between multidisciplinary artist and maker Agnes Niewiadomski , and landscape architect and visual artist Michelle Purchase . Both have contributed great pieces to past Night\Shift festivals, and they’re excited to join forces with other hand-makers to bring you this year’s oddball takeover of Goudies Lane.
agnesmakes.com
michellepurchase.com
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Artist Tee Kundu moved to Waterloo more than four years ago. While finding a sense of community has proven a fleeting pursuit, they continue to say yes and make friends with neighbours, colleagues and familiar faces.
“For a long time, I looked for the kind of heartwarming and wholesome friendships that are supportive and up-lifting,” Tee explains. “Ok Sure is a response to tentative plans, a sign of effort and bonding. As a mural, it is meant to convey the quirky ways we work together as a community to help each other grow.”
Tee is an illustrator and designer. They look for humour and honesty in everyday anecdotes, mostly their own.
teekundu.com
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The ever-inventive Ellie Anglin is crafting a huge banner out of felt, tassels and sequins! The work — an homage to the title of a 1992 song by feminist punk band Bikini Kill — riffs on the use of banners as protest art while elevating traditionally feminine creative disciplines and perceived tacky, cheap or kitschy materials to fine-art status.
It’s also
a clarion call for continued critical thought, resistance and outrage in the face of the Drumpf administration and Canada 150.
Ellie Anglin is a multimedia artist and writer. Her work addresses themes of gender, sexuality, nature, folk art and pop culture. RESIST PSYCHIC DEATH is inspired by the many women-identified artists who inform her on-going work, including her mother (a master quilter), textile artist Allyson Mitchell, and Kathleen Hannah — front-woman of Bikini Kill and Le Tigre, and a pioneer of Riot Grrrrl and feminist zine culture.
ellieanglin.blogspot.ca
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As an encore to their rain-soaked Night\Shift 2015 performances in Gaol Garden , the Katherine Road Quartet returns to unleash even more Renaissance polyphony on the downtown core! This pop-up a cappella performance features music written during the English Reformation, when to practice Catholicism was considered treason. It is music that speaks to the exiled soul, drawing on longing and beauty that transcend modern times.
Gather together in one of DTK’s best in-plain-sight secret spaces to experience William Byrd’s Mass for Four Voices. Three 20-minute sets will be performed; times & location TBA.
The Katherine Road Quartet are Sheila Dietrich, Rich Hryztak, Sarah Pearson and Joel Vanderzee.
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Shawn DeSouza-Coelho’s artificial willow tree explores the power of words shared between strangers.
poetreefoundation.com
Shawn DeSouza-Coelho is a writer, actor, musician, magician and associate director of the Informal Upright Theatre Collective. He is currently editing his third book, a biography of retired Stratford Festival stage manager Nora Polley (forthcoming in May 2018, ECW Press).
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This immersive sensory environment uses a mind-machine interface to algorithmically create a personalized palliative experience for users in real-time. Those who enter the LUCID geodesic dome (one at a time) are given an EEG reader and sound isolating earphones, and their brainwaves influence a customized blend of experimental music and patterns of coloured light that fills the space. Each combination of light and sound is engineered and modulated in response to the brain activity being monitored.
With a reported 20 per cent of Canadians living with suboptimal mental health, including 50 per cent of them less than 40 years old, LUCID was created in response to the growing need for mental health awareness in our communities. The immersive space provides a momentary escape from the waking mind and aims to foster the growth of a lasting mindfulness practice, inducing a “dream-like” meditative state.
LUCID is currently a participant project in an innovative storytelling and media incubator at Ryerson University called the Transmedia Zone. The residency provides mentorship, studio space, in kind equipment rentals and volunteers/interns for the project’s development and public practice.
thelucidproject.ca
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Her cosmic, peaceful presence serves as both a reminder and an affirmation, an intersection of old and new that is equal parts portal and reflection pool. Night\Shifters will find SPACE MOTHER suspended in mid-air, a holographic alien head with music and effects to flesh out the otherworld she invites us to inhabit.
Local artist Kevin Henriques works predominantly in the digital space and with 3D digital animation. He is interested in investigating the future and how it relates to the accelerated times we find ourselves in.
enj-y.com
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The latest incarnation of landscape painter and gaming guru nik harron ’s VRLENS project aims to transport viewers to a futuristic fantasy land while also harkening back to the golden era of circus sideshow peep boxes.
Festival-goers will be invited to peer into a series of four small viewing boxes. Inside each are video loops reimagined by kaleidoscopic analogue filters, creating more than 50 completely unique visual environments. Constructed from laser-cut acrylic and discarded computer monitors, VRLENS MONITORS produce their virtual spaces by drawing on aspects of computer graphics, maker culture, history and art.
Harron’s paintings has two decades of exhibition experience in public and private galleries and is a member of the Art District Gallery co-operative. His interactive side projects – including the oversized “King Pong” video game controller and “InfiniScope” kaleidoscope – have delighted audiences of all ages at previous Night\Shift festivals and other local events.
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