Day With(out) Art Film Screening Friday 02 December at 7PM @ PLATFORM \ *free admission.

VisualAIDS and PLATFORM present

Untitled by Jim Hodges, Carlos Marques da Cruz and Encke King

PLATFORM observes the 22^nd Day With(out) Art, taking place on World AIDS Day, by participating in the national, simultaneous, free screenings of Untitled, a film by Jim Hodges, Encke King, and Carlos Marques da Cruz.

Day With(out) Art was launched by Visual AIDS in 1989 as a national day of action and mourning in response to the AIDS crisis. PLATFORM will be screening Untitled as part of Day With(out) Art along with over 55 major museums, arts organizations, community groups, and colleges throughout the United States.

Untitled, is a 60-minute non-linear montage of archival and pop footage recalling the passionate activism sparked by the early years of the AIDS crisis. Viewers can visit the Untitled website built for Day With(out) Art 2011 by Creative Time at www.creativetime.org/daywithoutart to watch a trailer, view the list of participating venues, access the Resource Guide, respond to the film, and engage in dialogue about the work necessary to end AIDS.

Visual AIDS utilizes art to fight AIDS by provoking dialogue, supporting HIV+ artists, and preserving a legacy, because AIDS is not over. Visual AIDS is the only contemporary arts organization fully committed to HIV prevention and AIDS awareness through producing and presenting visual art projects, while assisting artists living with HIV/AIDS. We are committed to preserving and honoring the work of artists with HIV/AIDS and the artistic contributions of the AIDS movement. www.visualaids.org.

Visual AIDS launched Day With(out) Art as a World AIDS Day initiative in 1989 to mourn those we have lost and to promote a broader awareness of the crisis. At it’s height Day With(out) Art was a collaborative project of an estimated 8,000 national and international museums, galleries, art centers, AIDS Service Organizations, libraries, high schools and colleges. In 1997 we suggested Day Without Art become a Day WITH Art, to recognize and promote increased programming of cultural events that draw attention to the continuing pandemic. Though "the name was retained as a metaphor for the chilling possibility of a future day without art or artists", we added parentheses to the program title, Day With(out) Art, to highlight the proactive programming of art projects by artists living with HIV/AIDS, and art about AIDS, that were taking place around the world. It had become clear that active interventions within the annual program were far more effective than actions to negate or reduce the programs of cultural centers. As the AIDS crisis and our understanding of it evolve, so must our actions. Visual AIDS continues to produce a year-round program of thought-provoking exhibitions, events and artist editions promoting HIV prevention and AIDS Awareness.

I Know how you feel: the video work of Aleesa Cohene

• Wednesday 29 June 2011, 8PM at MAWA [611 Main St]
• The Sobey-nominated artist will be in attendance!
• Curated by Clint Enns
• Presented in conjunction with Haven't We Been Here Before?

Aleesa Cohene is a Toronto based video artist who uses found-footage as material and editing as a tool. Through this technique, Cohene provides us with a lens under which the viewer can see and examine many of the stereotypes present in traditional narrative cinema. In essence, she is revealing the mirror in which the media uses to reflect our “beliefs” back to us.

Currently, Cohene is protected under Fair Dealings in Canada. However, given recent attempts to reform Canada’s copyright laws, Cohene could be recast as a digital outlaw. Artistically and ethically speaking, Cohene does not see these images as private property, but as “basic materials through which we have an obligation to express ourselves and define our individuality.”

Aleesa Cohene has been producing videos since 2001. Her work has shown in festivals and galleries across Canada as well as in Brazil, Germany, the Netherlands, Russia, Scandinavia, Thailand, Turkey and the United States, and she has won prizes at Utrecht’s Impakt Festival and Toronto’s Images Festival. She has participated in artist residencies in Canada, the Netherlands and Denmark. She recently completed a fellowship at the Kunsthochschule für Medien (KHM) in Cologne, Germany.

Screening Includes:

• Abscess (2001, 10 minutes)
• Absolutely (2001, 10 minutes)
• All Right (2003, 7 minutes)
• Ready to Cope (2006, 7 minutes)
• Suppose To (2006, 7 minutes)
• The Same Problem (2008, 4 minutes)
• Something Better (2008, 8 minutes)

LANGUAGE FORMED IN LIGHT > experimental screening series from May - August 2011 <

Continues Tuesday 21 June 7PM @ The Black Lodge [ARTSPACE]

PLATFORM centre for photographic + digital arts is excited to announce a new screening series to be presented over the next four months. Language Formed in Light is comprised of four different film screening nights featuring experimental films and video art by recognized artists from Canada and the United States. The works in this series were selected due to their innovative use of cinematic language. Some of the titles create an entirely new filmic language, while others focus on expanding the established cinematic vocabulary. This screening series will be the part of a serial presentation guest-curated by Clint Enns for PLATFORM and recognizes the work in film and video by note-worthy contributors to the medium.

The second screening in this series consists of the animated photography of Ben Russell. Several of the films to be shown are from Russell's Trypps series such as Black and White Trypps Number Three, which won Best Experimental Film at the 2007 Chicago Underground Film Festival and Trypps #6 (Malobi), which received an Honorable Mention at the 2009 Media City Film/Video Festival; however, a few of the films would be non-Trypps such as Workers Leaving The Factory (Dubai), Daume and Terra Incognita. Ben Russell's work explicitly expands the established filmic vocabulary since many of his works are re-makes and/or re-contextualizes of historical avant-garde films. For instance, Black and White Trypps Number Three can be seen as a re-contextualization of Standish Lawder's Necrology and Workers Leaving the Factory (Dubai) can be seen as a re-contextualization of the 1895 Lumière film Workers Leaving The Lumière Factory in Lyon. Please join us TUESDAY 21 June @ 7PM in The Black Lodge / ARTSPACE for the second screening of Language Formed in Light, guest-curated by Clint Enns. All screenings are Free and open to the public. Doors at 7:00 / Screening at 7:30

Program:

• Black and White Trypps #1 (2005, 7 minutes)
• Black and White Trypps #2 (2006, 6 minutes)
• Black and White Trypps #3 (2007, 12 minutes)
• Black and White Trypps #4 (2008, 11 minutes)
• Trypps #5 (Dubai) (2008, 3 minutes)
• Trypps #6 (2009, 12 minutes)
• Daume (2000, 6 minutes)
• Terra Incognita (2002, 10 minutes)
• Workers Leaving the Factory (Dubai) (2008, 8 minutes)

All of the works in the program will be shown on 16mm.

Ben Russell is an itinerant media artist and curator whose films and performances have been presented in spaces ranging from 14th Century Belgian monasteries to 17th Century East India Trading Co. buildings, police station basements to outdoor punk squats, Japanese cinematheques to Parisian storefronts, as well as solo screenings at the Rotterdam Film Festival and the Museum of Modern Art. A 2008 Guggenheim Fellowship and 2010 FIPRESCI award recipient, Ben began the Magic Lantern screening series in Providence, Rhode Island, is co-director of the artist-run space BEN RUSSELL in Chicago, and he currently teaches at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Clint Enns is a video artist/filmmaker and curator from Winnipeg, Manitoba, whose work primarily deals with moving images created with broken and/or outdated technologies. His work has shown both nationally and internationally in installations, festival screenings, alternative spaces, and mircocinemas. He has recently completed a master's degree in mathematics at the University of Manitoba, and his interests include model theory of rings and modules, structuralist film, destructuralist video, and mathematics in art. Enn's past curatorial projects in experimental film and video have been presented at Video Pool Media Arts Centre (Winnipeg), and DIM Cinema / Pacific Cinematheque (Vancouver).

PLATFORM wishes to acknowledge the support of its membership, board of directors, volunteers, and staff. Language Formed in Light is made possible with funding received from Manitoba Arts Council, Winnipeg Arts Council, and Canada Council for the Arts.