Factory Media Centre is thrilled to present our 18th Annual Members’ Screening!
Established in 2005, our Members Screening showcases the creative works of our community of Members, and highlights a selection of Hamilton’s diverse new media artwork.
Our 18th Annual Members Screening will be on view until January 31st, 2024. Thank you to all that came to our annual live watch party!
Featuring works by:
Adrienne Bazir, Andres Miramontes, BluHeron Collective (Alex MacLean & Christopher McLeod), Chris Myhr, Jessica Rodriguez, j a r s, Lisa Crawford, Meagan Byrne, Natalie Hunter, Pippa MacDonald, Roy Kohn, Tristan Branda
Program
Lisa Crawford, Ramblings Of A Middle Aged Drag Queen
Ramblings of a Middle-Aged Drag Queen is a short film set in an LGBTQ establishment – a “gay bar” in Toronto during the 1990s AIDS crisis. Miss Ogyny, a world-wearied drag queen, is interviewed by a young male college student who questions her about her career and personal history. The interview leads to a private revelation beyond her wildest dreams.
Lisa was featured in an article on CBC Hamilton which detailed her journey as a transgender film producer. Her short films, What If and Death Game, have appeared at film festivals across the globe. Other projects she has produced include RU Curious and Digging Up Dorothy. Lisa produced the short drama, Stroke of Fate, starring award-winning Canadian actress Sheila McCarthy, currently airing on CBC Gem. Lisa is also the author of Becoming Lisa: A Transgender Journey. She was nominated for Best Actress in her film What If at the Las Vegas Global Film Convention. Her team received funding from Film4Ward to produce the short film Ramblings Of A Middle Aged Drag Queen in PEI. The award-winning comedy series she Created and Produced, Pink Is In, is now airing on Bell Fibe TV1. Pink Is In has won three Film Festival Awards and was nominated for the ACTRA 2022 & 2023 Series Ensemble Award. Lisa was one of the finalists for the 2023 Cayle Chernin Awards for her project Un-Gendered.
Natalie Hunter, Between Moment and Matter
Between Moment and Matter merges stream-of-consciousness video capture and editing strategies along with immersive 360 degree projection to study the construct of the garden in relation to time, space and the body. A heavily explored subject in art history, and a metaphor for our human need to cultivate relationships with the natural world around us, gardens are sensory spaces. Impermanent, unfixed, vulnerable, ever changing living things in constant flux. Looking at the garden as a social construct, I explore immaterial concepts such as time, light, space, memory, embodiment, the senses, motion, air, and breath through imagery and sound.
Natalie Hunter was born in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada and received her MFA from the University of Waterloo. She is the recipient of many grants from the Canada Council for the Arts and Ontario Arts Council, and has shown her work in public art galleries and artist-run-centres across Canada. Recent exhibitions include: Rodman Hall Arts Centre, Smokestack Gallery, Hamilton Winterfest, University of Waterloo Art Gallery, Centre [3] for Artistic and Social Practice, Factory Media Centre, Hamilton Artists Inc., Latcham Art Centre, University of Manitoba School of Arts Gallery, The Reach Gallery Museum, Capture Photography Festival, and Niagara Artists Centre. Her work has been featured in Hamilton Arts and Letters, Femme Art Review, The Gathered Gallery, Other Peoples Pixels Blog, Canadian Journal of Culture Studies, and BlackFlash Magazine. She is a sessional instructor in Fine Arts at the University of Waterloo where she received an Excellence in Online Teaching Award. She lives and works in her home city of Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.
Meagan Byrne, A Night Call (Trailer)
Take a moment and jump 15mins into an Indigenous future to watch the moon and relax. Go through the exit whenever you are ready to leave.
Meagan (Me-Eh-Gan) Byrne is an Apihtawikosisân (Fed: Métis Nation of Ontario) interactive digital media artist, game designer, writer, and philosopher. She is the founder of and lead Narrative Mechanics Designer at Achimostawinan Games which most recently released the Indigenous cybernoir detective game “Hill Agency: PURITYdecay.” Beyond digital interactive works Meagan is also know for her philosophical articles on Indigenous digital media such as “Read-Only Sacred Spaces: Indigenous Video Games as Space Safe from Vandalism and Theft” and more recently “What Makes it Indigenous? On Readability and Forced Readability in Indigenous Media”.
Pippa MacDonald, “You’ve Grown”
This video performance piece is inspired and choreographed to Billie Eilish’s “Getting Older” which speaks to the isolation one experiences as we age and become more aware of the way others treat us. This song spoke to me for this project because of its honest and vulnerable lyrics. Dealing with mental illness and trying to understand your relationships with others can cause you to question how you are perceived and if those around you appreciate you as you are. “You’ve Grown” is a physicalization of those inner feelings and interacts with the passing of time.
Pippa MacDonald (she/her) is a queer and white settler multidisciplinary artist based in Muskoka, Ontario, the traditional territories of the Three Fires Confederacy, but is currently residing in Hamilton, the traditional territories of the Erie, Neutral, Huron-Wendat, Haudenosaunee and Mississaugas. Pippa became interested in drawing and dance at a young age and developed as an artist and choreographer into her late teens and early 20’s as she attended McMaster University. Pippa’s work is heavily portrait and performance based and explores ideas around relationships, whether they are romantic or familial, and navigating understanding oneself while coping with mental illness.
Jessica Rodríguez, encarnadas => (f.) embodiments
Collaboration performance piece with Hamiltonian fusion dancer Angela Josephine and local experimental Earth Wind and Choir (working with the whispers and breathings from Babette de Jong, Teresa Caterini, and Bailey Duff). encarnadas => (f.) embodiments is an audio-visual project in the form of a screen-dance piece mixing a dancer, live coding, and a ASMR sonic experience.
Jessica A. Rodríguez is a multimedia artist, designer, researcher. Her practice and research projects focus on audio-visual practices such as visual music, electronic literature, video experimentation, sound art, visualization/sonification, live coding, and collaborating with composers, writers, designers, and other visual artists.
Roy Kohn, Doubt’s Shadows (A Trilogy)
3 short vignettes about our personal ghosts. Created using still images and a magazine ad for sleep. Incorporating digital manipulations, found and created audio clips. This is part of a larger, ongoing project about fears, superstitions, beliefs.
Roy Kohn primarily works in various painting and drawing media but often utilizes video, installation and performance. Kohn is a graduate of (now) OCAD University with post-graduate work at the Academy of Fine Art in Rotterdam. Kohn’s videos have been screened during the Coney Island Film Festival and the Washington DC Independent Film Festival. His large-scale work, The Meeky Project was an official selection during Toronto’s 2008 Nuit Blanche. He was the co-founder and co-director of a window gallery in Toronto from its inception in 2007 until 2017. Roy Kohn now makes Hamilton his home.
Chris Myhr, “Two Rivers Crossed Landscape” Installation Documentation
Documentation of three interrelated works installed at the KCC Gallery (Ottawa) as part of a two-person exhibition with Korean artist Yeonsook Lee. The “Two Rivers Crossed Landscape” exhibition deals with themes of complex interconnectivity, and commemorates the 60th anniversary of peaceful diplomatic relations between Canada and South Korea. Media and subject matter were gathered along the Niagara and Han River systems, the Great Lakes, and various water systems in the Canadian North. Rivers, currents, and horizon lines are deployed as metaphors for diplomatic and broader human/non-human interrelations that function most effectively and sustainably when there is reciprocity and balance.
Chris Myhr is a media artist based in Hamilton whose studio practice seeks intersections between art, science, and ecology through photography, the moving image, sound, and media installation. He is particularly invested in current discourses around materiality and the environment. Since 2012, Myhr has been developing an extensive body of work titled “Point-Line-Intersection” that examines our complex interrelationships with water. The works in “Point-Line-Intersection” explore the paradoxical tension between water as life, vitality and industry, as well as a source of immense and unpredictable destructive power.
Andrés Miramontes, Social slum lard regurgitation
Random footage of mainstream social media with noise track.
Andres he/him is a Mexican born Hamilton based mix media artist. Founding member of (the now extinct) Impolites Collective and former curator of the James Street North Peephole, currently works on independent projects and collaborations with local musicians.
BluHeron Collective (Alex MacLean & Christopher McLeod), Outfalls
“Outfalls” represents our latest venture, delving into the intricate pathways of wastewater within local water basins, navigating the convergence of stormwater and sewage systems. This project orchestrates an experimental electronic composition that echoes the interconnectedness of these vital infrastructures. Through original photography skillfully manipulated by AI, a visual narrative emerges, shedding light on the often-overlooked facets of our ecosystem. The live coding performance serves as a dynamic centerpiece, symbolizing the harmonious interplay between technology and nature. “Outfalls” endeavors to initiate dialogues on the symbiotic relationship between urban infrastructure and natural water cycles, fostering contemplation on environmental interconnectedness.
BluHeron Collective, a visionary artist group, pioneers sonic art through cutting-edge technologies. Their avant-garde explorations intertwine immersive realms of augmented and virtual reality, transcending conventional boundaries. Enthralled by sonic landscapes, they craft mesmerizing experiences that redefine artistic expression. With a fusion of innovation and artistry, BluHeron pushes the boundaries of perception, inviting audiences into transformative journeys through sound and immersive mediums. Their collaborative synergy fuels a quest to redefine artistic landscapes, unveiling new dimensions within the intersection of technology and creativity.
Adrienne Bazir, In Stars and Time (Trailer)
Trailer for the time loop RPG I finished this year, In Stars and Time. Trailer was done by Trailer Squad, music done by Studio Thumpy Puppy, game and art are mine.
Adrienne Bazir, also known as insertdisc5 on the interwebs, is a French and Canadian game developer, cartoonist, and 2D animator, raised in France, who is now based in the Greater Toronto Area in Canada. Her latest project is timeloop RPG In Stars And Time, the second and final game of the START AGAIN series. Highly inspired by video games, her projects are usually about monsters, relationships, and agency, and she likes to play with metatext, foreshadowing, and your expectations.
j a r s, spider songs I & II
A couple of (educational?) songs about spiders; the things they eat and the lives they lead.
j a r s is a hairy creature born in the northern outpost of winnipeg, and resides in the industrial wastelands of the gtha. They are a multimedia artist, with a primary focus as a videogame developer as part of the queer furry gamedev team “resnijars”. Sometimes they make short films and stuff.
Tristan Branda, FMC Gallery Planner (Trailer)
A trailer for the FMC Gallery Planner, a program which will allow users to plan out an exhibition at the FMC. The planner will include real FMC resources, from our lights and TV monitors to our 360-degree projector. This program will help visualize exhibitions before we even begin installing. Coming in 2024!
Tristan Branda is a recent graduate from the Media Arts program at McMaster University, where he gained a passion for multimedia as a creative medium. Since then, Tristan has used his media skills to assist artists’ media ventures, such as editing and animating as a freelance Video Production Assistant at Re•Vision: The Centre for Arts and Social Justice, and now as a Programming Assistant for the Factory Media Centre.
Thank you to our funders for their generous support
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