XChange

Through enmeshing musical and visual art on stage, the curatorial aim is to have a ‘relational tension’ created, one that offers a unique interpretation based on the blending of art mediums. In colour theory – as used by the Pointillists in the 1880’s for example – two distinct pure colours placed side by side can create the image of a third colour. The eye ‘blends’ the colours. The technique relies on the ability of the eye and mind of the viewer to blend the colour spots into a fuller range of tones.

We are attempting a conceptual ‘blending’ on-stage of music and visual art, aiming to deepen our understanding of what is possible in performance. The viewer, in this case the audience, will blend the mediums.

The work is experimental and undefined as expressed within outcomes. The structure of the performances (5 in total) is intentionally set up to not have predictable results, nor to overly pre-plan or compose the two parallel forms as presented.

Tickets: $10 Streaming Admission for each event, or get all five streams for $40! (+applicable taxes & fees)

Part 1 features Anh Le and Marina Hasselberg

Anh Le

Anh Le regards tattoos as personal symbols of meaning and memory, marking and attributing the essence of the imagery onto the individual. She loves client collaborations – when a client brings ideas, images, stories or memories to weave into their body – as well as creating her own designs to offer.

Multi-disciplinary in her earlier visual art practice, she has chosen to focus on drawing since 2015, researching and amalgamating elements from the worlds of graffiti, calligraphy, biology, geometry, psychedelic art, tribal and contemporary tattooing.

Tattooing mainly in an ornamental style of black line work, Le’s designs are reminiscent of mandalas, yet are often abstracted into a vertically symmetrical shape. She thinks of her designs as insignia; evocative of a blotchy Rorschach test, these biomorphic forms use various weights of tightly woven lines and dot-work to create calligraphic images of plants, animals and ocean life. These insignia could function as personal symbols of meaning and virtue, selected to mark and attribute the wearer with the essence of defined and implied illustrated elements.

Le has tattooed since 2018, trained by several professional tattoo artists. Before arriving at tattooing, she had a career in various areas of art gallery administration, exhibition production and curatorial work from 2007-2018. She studied visual arts at North Island College and Emily Carr University, completing a BFA in 2007. She has a private studio on Salt Spring Island, BC.

Marina Hasselberg

Boundless inquisitiveness sits at the very heart of award-winning cellist Marina Hasselberg’s rich artistic practice. Over the past decade, she has traveled a distinctive route that has variously led her through early music, free improvisation, the fringes of pop songcraft, electronics, contemporary chamber music, and an array of interdisciplinary collaborations that resist classification.

She’s a powerful player that’s nourished by her immersion in classical training, but by no means limited by it. Her relationship with the cello was ignited at age 11 during her studies at the musical academy of Évora, in her native Portugal. She later completed a Bachelor’s degree in Lisbon, and in 2008, she came to Canada to pursue a Masters degree in Literature and Performance from the University of Western Ontario.

Georgia Straight journalist Janet Smith wrote of Hasselberg that she “has become a standout presence on Vancouver’s music scene.” Meanwhile, speaking to her imagination and versatility, veteran writer Alexander Varty describes her as “a spark plug in two very different musical worlds.”

Part 2 features Elise Boulanger & Andrea Routley

Elise Boulanger

Elise Boulanger is a sweet darkness wrapped in orchestral instrumentation. Hailing from Nanaimo, Canada, this Indie-Folk artist completely captivates audiences with her haunting avalanche of a voice.Deemed as “definitely one to watch” by the Times Colonist, Boulanger is influenced by nature and is sonically reminiscent of Kate Bush. In 2022 Boulanger released EP ‘The Blooming.’ She is played on national community/college radio, CBC and has made TV appearances on CKPG’s Today Show. Performing for over 15 years, she has toured Western Canada, opened for Carmanah, played the JUNO celebrations, Arts Wells, Robson Valley, Woodstove and The Port Theatre.

Andrea Routley

Andrea Routley is the 2023/23 Haig-Brown House Writer-in-Residence. Her work has appeared in literary magazines such as Geist and The Fiddlehead Review. In 2020, the title story of her new collection, This Unlikely Soil (Caitlin Press, 2022) was shortlisted for the Malahat Review Novella Prize, while her debut collection, Jane and the Whales, was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in 2014. She holds an MFA in creative writing from UBC (Okanagan) and is currently at work on her third book of fiction, a novel entitled Field Guide to Bats and Other Damage.

Part 3 features Blaine Weldbauer, Liam Barber, and Samuel Decter

Liam Barber

Liam Barber has been dancing since he was 5 years old and for the past 12 years, he has been specializing in Ballet, Jazz, Musical Theatre, tap, lyrical, and Hip hop. He Has been competing against top-level dancers and has been doing different dance classes around North America in places such as New York, California, and Las Vegas, Nevada. Liam is now expanding his dance education and experience to different places in the world like South Africa, this past summer. Liam brings a deep passion, strong performance, and full-body expression to the stage, every time he dances. The Performance, “Xchange”, is the first time that Liam has collaborated with another artist and the results were phenomenal!  We know this is the first of many new performances that He will be a part of as he continues to pursue his dance career.

Samuel Decter

Dog Dad Posse is the brainchild of Samuel Mdwara Decter, raised in the wilds of Winnipeg from his birth in 1981. Of rich South African/Jewish/Irish descent, Dog Daddy is now based in Campbell River, and can be described as making hip hop and jazz music, realized through the aesthetic lenses of early electronica, trip-hop, soul, psychedelic blues, spoken word and pop.

Part 4 features Nadine Bariteau, Shawn Decaire, and the Laxwaxdax’w Youth and Elders Dance Group

Nadine Bariteau

Born and raised in Montreal (Tiohtià:ke) Nadine Bariteau is an interdisciplinary artist whose practice is rooted in printmaking, sculpture, installation and video/sound. Her works are studies of permanence and ephemerality, and the interplay between human-made and natural environments. Bariteau has exhibited her work extensively, both nationally and internationally in China, Belgium, Argentina, Australia, United States, Russia and Japan. She was also a visiting artist in the Department of Art and Design at the National Taipei University of Education in Taiwan where she exhibited her work. Nadine Bariteau has obtained several grants and awards and her work can be seen in private and public collections including Foreign Affairs Canada, Shengshi Art Centre, Bejing, China, Frans Masereel Center, Belgium and the National Library of Québec. Nadine presently lives on Vancouver Island on the traditional and unceded territory of the Snuneymuxw First Nation.

Shawn Decaire

Yaxawidi (Shawn Decaire) is a member of the Laxwaxdax’w people, the southernmost tribe of the Kwakwakawakwe Nation,born in Campbell River in 1981. Shawn’s family was not involved with anything cultural due to the impacts of residential schools, but in 2001 he was invited by the people of Kingcome Inlet to join them on a traditional gathering of canoes.

Known as a Tribal Journey, this lifechanging experience took him from his village in Cape Mudge to the final landing place in Ambleside, West Vancouver. Over those two and a half weeks, Shawn was inspired in every cultural way from traditional singing to art and carving. During the journey Shawn met inspirational people who became role models to him, including the late Chief Frank Nelson, and the man who inspired him to be a traditional singer, Chief William Wasden Jr.

After returning home with all this inspiration, Shawn dedicated much time to learning the culture of his ancestors and the reasons why so much was lost. Near the end of 2002, Shawn made the greatest dedication of change in his life – he surrendered his addictions of street drugs and alcohol. He worked harder on his arts of singing, carving, and helping people. And for 20 years Shawn taught himself and learned from many great cultural teachers to become established in the cultural and artistic world.

Most of the traditional crafts Shawn creates are for ceremonies, such as potlatches and feasts. He does not sell much of his art. He said, “It is not the value of cash you carry that makes you rich. It is the love in your heart.”

Part 5 features Pravin Pillay, Naomi Jason, Ruby Singh, and John Desnoyers

Pravin Pillay

Pravin Pillay is a seasoned media and performance artist as well as a dedicated practitioner of Yoga, bringing decades of experience in both artistic and spiritual disciplines to his creative practice. Pravin also serves as the Creative Director of MOVE37XR – a networked-based collective of transmedia and performing artists.

Naomi Jason

A visionary, community leader and mentor, Naomi is the founder of Dance Temple on Salt Spring Island and the Imaginelle Mystery School for Embodied Transformation.  She is a dance artist, movement facilitator, dj/music curator, qigong therapist, council facilitator and land steward.  Dedicated to cultural resiliency and empowering embodied community leaders, Naomi’s work combines the creative process, embodied rites of passage and the authentic exploration of self through collective and individual mythos.

Ruby Singh

Ruby Singh is a multi award winning performer, composer and producer residing on the unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷ̓m, Sḵwx̱wúmesh, and sə̓íwətaʔ/Selilwitulh Nations (Vancouver BC.). His creativity crosses the boundaries of music, poetry, photography and film engaging with mythos, memory, justice and fantasy. Singh is an artist whose work is informed by sound found all around us, from the whirling planets and stars of distant galaxies to percussion of an umbrella under coastal rains, to the perpetual moving birdsong of the dawn chorus, constantly circling the globe. The richly imaginative visual textures to his sound design have found kinship in the theatre, film and dance worlds, where he has been celebrated by multiple Jessie and Leo award nominations. His distinct approach uses traditional and emergent sonic practices to create compositions that express the vast spectrum of the human experience. Singh’ artistic impulses gravitate in many directions, in 2022 he received the Lieutenant Governor’ Jubilee Award for excellence in art and music. In 2023 was nominated for a Juno award for best Global Music Album of the Year and was awarded Artist of the Year by the BC touring council.

John Desnoyers-Stewart

John Desnoyers-Stewart is an interdisciplinary artist-researcher who creates immersive installations and performances to encourage new perspectives on immersive technology and to better understand its true potential. Combining his background in engineering and art he is investigating and altering how technology shapes the body and its place in the physical and social world. His multi-user installations transform real bodies into ethereal forms and incorporate physical touch into the virtual world, encouraging immersants to see and experience each other in a new light. His artwork has been exhibited in over 30 galleries and festivals from Vancouver’s H.R. MacMillan Space Centre to Tanzahoi Hamburg. Through his current PhD research he hopes to encourage social connection and collaborative creativity by exploring positive social applications of abstract embodiment in virtual reality.

Tickets: $10 Streaming Admission for each event, or get all five streams for $40! (+applicable taxes & fees)