Join us for a free multi-disciplinary art event on Wednesday, August 7th, 6:00 pm-8:30 pm. This three-part evening of hyperlocal programming features an aerial performance by Erika Lui, a community mural unveiling by Jackie Bradshaw and Nadine Badran, and a documentary film screening by Ben Gorodetsky.

We will begin the evening at Inter Arts Matrix (Globe Studios, 141 Whitney Place, Kitchener) at 6:00 p.m. and move as a group to Erika Lui’s performance, Refractions, located next to Schneider Creek. Following the performance, Jackie Bradshaw and Nadine Badran will formally unveil The Creek Collective Community Mural and invite attendees to look closely. As a group, we will return to Inter Arts Matrix for the second-ever screening of Ben Gorodetsky’s documentary, A Hole in the Ground. The film screening will be a hybrid event; you can join us at our studio or online.

Event Registration: seating is limited for the in-person portion of the film screening, please register in advance.

This event is presented in collaboration with the Creek Collective.

Refractions is a devised aerial performance piece by Erika Liu that animates the words and reflections captured in Geoff Martin’s surface/tension audio-walk about Schneider Creek. ‘Refraction’ is the shift in the pathway of light as it travels through a medium. Refractions seeks to explore and embody, from the perspective of the creek, the shifting feelings of tension, entanglement, compression and release that follow the history of the creek and the life flows through it.  

ERIKA LUI (she/they) is an emerging aerialist, acrobatic movement artist and scientist currently based within the Haldimand Tract in Kitchener, Ontario. After completing a full-time training program at Aloft Circus Arts in Chicago, Erika began exploring movement through a lyrical, yet dynamic lens by combining aerial and acrobatic arts on aerial silks, in duo partner trapeze, and partner hand acrobatics, and on wall trampoline. They are interested in exploring how to manipulate different aerial apparatuses to create impactful visual effects for performative storytelling.

Inter Arts Matrix and CAFKA are co-presenting Uncovering Barriers, on Wednesday July 17th from 7:00pm - 8:30pm at Inter Arts Matrix (Globe Studios, 141 Whitney Place, Kitchener). This evening is dedicated to exploring and discussing a recently published report about barriers visual artists face in the Waterloo Region and recommendations to reduce those barriers.

About the report: In June 2024, local artists Brenda Mabel Reid, Sharl G. Smith, and Julie Hall published “Uncovering Barriers: Identifying Gaps in Opportunities and Resources Causing Barriers for Visual Artists in Waterloo Region with Recommendations to Reduce these Barriers.”  The report can be found here. The study aims to identify the gaps in the opportunities and resources causing barriers to the establishment, maintenance, and growth of the individual art practices of regional visual artists.

Julie Hall, who analyzed the data and wrote the report, will give a synopsis presentation pertaining to the data collected in the report and will facilitate the community discussion about its findings.

Event Registration: Event seating is limited, please register in advance.

When? Tuesday, June 25, 2024 | talk begins at 12:00pm
Where? Hybrid: bring your lunch and join us at Inter Arts Matrix’s studio (Globe Studios, Studio 38, 141 Whitney Place, Kitchener, ON N2G 2X8) or online

REGISTER HERE.  

Inter Arts Matrix is very happy to virtually welcome Vid Simoniti, who will present his book, Artists Remake the World: A Contemporary Art Manifesto (Yale UP, 2023), which puts forward a new account of art’s political potential. As the artworld increasingly comes to expect political themes in art, the book asks the foundational questions about aesthetics and politics: What difference can art make? Does political engagement exclude a concern for beauty? What is the difference between artists and activists? 

Vid Simoniti is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Liverpool, where he also runs MA Art, Philosophy and Cultural Institutions.

This event marks the culmination of the initial stage of Inter Arts Matrix’s Art Manifesto Research Group.

In the early days of the pandemic, Inter Arts Matrix’s leadership attempted to answer some difficult questions. With mortality and loss exceedingly palpable, how do we continue to create and move forward? How do we respond artistically to this moment in time in a public way and engage a larger community? How does an organization founded on and committed to collaboration among disciplines create an environment in which collaboration can still happen?

Our experimental outdoor residency called "A Hole in the Ground" was initially conceptualized by Isabella Stefanescu and developed in collaboration with Sheila McMath. Conceived in response to Linda Duvall's short-term residency located in an earthen hole on Treaty 6 territory in rural Saskatchewan, as well as to Tony Urquhart's "Thresholds," a series of large paintings created in the 1980s, we dug a six-by-four-foot hole in Sandhills Park and invited ten artists to respond to it.

While the artists were responding to the hole, we invited the writer Emily Urquhart and the artist and filmmaker Ben Gorodetsky to respond to the artists. Ben visited each artist on site during their residencies, documenting their work, as well as their understanding of their work in the context of the larger "A Hole in the Ground" project. On Friday, May 24, we will be screening Ben's documentary for the first time and invite the public to join us.

Doors open at 6:30pm. Film screening to begin at 7:00pm. Talk back with the filmmaker will take place just after screening. Please note that the film screening will take place in the theatre of the Central KPL (85 Queen St N, Kitchener, ON N2H 2H1), located on the lower level of the library. This event is free.

This horizon line is bent at the waist,

1) A thing usually far away dips towards you, lessening the distance between here and there.

2) Now we know that the farthest thing is more like us than we thought.

3) Near and far are not 2 ends of a spectrum. Instead, they spin on a wheel that lets you touch both ends and what’s in between.

4) What if the thing separating up from down fell away too?

5) More like: A consistently straight thing folds in on itself and becomes curved.

6) More like: Something we rely on is not as reliable as we once thought.

7) Could this line called horizon slouch even further? What else rigid might be willing to bend?

Works by Megan Arnold, Joel Becker, Julie Hall & Jacob Irish, Maddie Lychek, Abisola Oni, Lauren Prousky and Jordyn Stewart. Curated by Lauren Prousky.

This workshop is for creators working with interdisciplinary interactive experiences. Each interactive experience requires a different balance of tools and strategies to make it work. "Making it work" doesn't just mean pleasing an audience or gaining critical acclaim. It can also mean making something reproducible without the presence of the original creators, making something that doesn't drain facilitators or performers and offloads some work onto technology instead, or any other number of goals.

In this hands-on, intimate, and practice-based workshop, we will explore what tools and modes you can leverage to think about and improve your experiences. Specifically, we will start with a short overview of strategies and challenges around using digital technology and automated solutions, physical design (of spaces, objects and set design), and having humans as both facilitators and participants in a live experience. From there, we will turn to hearing ideas from participants and workshop them.

Participants are asked to come with an idea for an interactive piece that they would like to explore and share with the group in order to obtain feedback. This could be a performance or theatre piece, a game, an installation, or any other kind of interactive piece that participants can imagine. Participants can arrive with an idea that they have already been working on, or they can bring an idea based on the prompt "Small but Purposeful".

You can use the following questions to organize your thoughts:

• What kinds of digital tech and automated solutions do you envision using for your idea?

• What kind of physical objects and set design do you have in mind? Is there a specific location or setting you need?

• What kind of involvement are you asking of your facilitators and players for this experience?