Orion Series presents Atom Egoyan

by | Oct 2, 2024 | Art History & Visual Studies, Events, Orion Series in Fine Arts, Research, Theatre, Visual Arts, Writing

The Orion
Lecture Series in Fine Arts

Through the generous support of the Orion Fund in Fine Arts, the Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Victoria, is pleased to present:

Atom Egoyan

Writer, Director, Producer

In Conversation with Atom Egoyan (Q & A)

Moderator: Mitch Parry, AHVS film studies professor
7pm Wednesday, October 9

 

UVic’s Sngequ House, Room 133
(by the SUB, near parking lot 5 off Sinclair Road)

Free & open to all • Evening parking rates in effect

 

Presented by UVic’s Department of Art History & Visual Studies with the participation of the Department of Writing

For more information, please email  arthistory@uvic.ca

About Atom Egoyan

Atom Egoyan is one of the most celebrated contemporary filmmakers on the international scene. His body of work — which includes theatre, music, and art installations — delves into issues of memory, displacement, and the impact of technology and media on modern life.

Egoyan has won numerous prizes at international film festivals including the Grand Prix and International Critics Awards from the Cannes Film Festival, two Academy Award nominations and numerous other honours. His films have won 25 Genies — including three Best Film Awards — and a prize for Best International Film Adaptation from the Frankfurt Book Fair. Egoyan’s films have been presented in numerous retrospectives across the world, including a complete career overview at the Pompidou Centre in Paris, followed by similar events at the Filmoteca Espagnol in Madrid, the Museum of The Moving Image in New York, and the Royal Cinematek in Brussels.

Some of his many films include Seven Veils, The Sweet Hereafter and Chloe.

About the Orion Fund

Established through the generous gift of an anonymous donor, the Orion Fund in Fine Arts is designed to bring distinguished visitors from other parts of Canada—and the world—to the University of Victoria’s Faculty of Fine Arts, and to make their talents and achievements available to faculty, students, staff and the wider Greater Victoria community who might otherwise not be able to experience their work.

The Orion Fund also exists to encourage institutions outside Canada to invite regular faculty members from our Faculty of Fine Arts to be visiting  artists/scholars at their institutions; and to make it possible for Fine Arts faculty members to travel outside Canada to participate in the academic life of foreign institutions and establish connections and relationships with them in order to encourage and foster future exchanges.

Visit our online events calendar at www.events.uvic.ca

Welcoming Lauren McCall to Music

by | Sep 23, 2024 | Faculty, Research, School of Music

The School of Music is thrilled to welcome Dr. Lauren McCall as assistant research professor in composition and music technology. Dr. McCall will join our school on Jan. 1, 2025.

A composer and music educator from Atlanta, Georgia, McCall received her PhD in Music Technology from the Georgia Institute of Technology and her MFA in Music Composition from the Vermont College of Fine Arts. Her compositions have been performed around North America and Europe, including her piece for chamber ensemble and mobile phone orchestra, Contour Unveiled, and her composition Rain Musicfor baritone and piano. Along with composing, McCall plays classical music and jazz on woodwind instruments and piano.

With specializations in music and computer science education platforms, extended reality interactive systems for music, as well as graphic and digital music notation, McCall will bring exciting new and creative energy to the School, with the skills to make pedagogical and research contributions across disciplines. “Dr. McCall will enrich our programming with her creative compositional work, her research in virtual and augmented reality, her inclusive approaches to pedagogy, as well as her commitment to making music technology more accessible,” says UVic Music Director Alexis Luko. “Lauren is an exciting addition to our faculty.”

McCall is looking forward to working with students in UVic’s community and fostering new collaborative relationships with colleagues. With her diverse background, she hopes to help “spur on new forms of creativity within each discipline for the students and UVic’s program.” In her practice and teachings of how these different areas connect in interesting ways, McCall strives to “encourage exploration of the research, methods, and interconnectivity between these areas and how we can continue growing in knowledge and creativity with them.”

Current projects include a short opera with collaborator, Catherine Yu. The opera adapts Cate’s play Lizard for a variety of formats, from two vocalists and one pianist to two vocalists and a small chamber ensemble, so that it can be promoted to opera organizations with varying instrumentations.

We look forward to welcoming Dr. McCall in 2025!

Writing Faculty Reading Night returns

by | Sep 19, 2024 | Events, Faculty, Research, Writing

There’s only one chance this year to hear UVic’s top authors reading on the same night: don’t miss the Department of Writing‘s annual Faculty Reading Night, running 7pm Wed Sept 25 in room A102 of UVic’s Turpin building.

 

In addition to the first on-campus appearance by new faculty member Wayde Compton, you can hear the award-winning likes of writers Deborah Campbell, Marita Dachsel, Kevin Kerr, Kathryn Mockler, Sean Holman, David Leach, Lee Henderson and Gregory Scofield as they read new and current work in poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, journalism, playwriting and more.

 

Please note: this event will not be recorded, so live is the only way to see it!

World premiere of climate disaster play at Phoenix Theatre

by | Sep 9, 2024 | Alumni, climate, donor, Faculty, Research, Theatre, Writing

People across Canada came together to help one another during recent climate disasters, and now Neworld Theatre and the Climate Disaster Project are bringing those true-life stories to the stage. Eyes of the Beast: Climate Disaster Survivor Stories is the first full-length documentary theatre production based upon on-the-ground climate disaster reporting and will have its world premiere at the Phoenix Theatre from September 16-21.

“British Columbians have experienced so much loss because of the heat, fire, smoke and floods that have afflicted us,” says Alen Dominguez, Neworld managing director.

“But what stood out to our playwrights was how people supported one another through those disasters—and the need for more support from people in power.”

“Climate change is happening in the here and now,” says Climate Disaster Project founder Sean Holman, also the Wayne Crookes Professor in Environmental & Climate Journalism with the Department of Writing.

“People know that, regardless of what they think is the cause — and they want to talk about the impacts it’s having on their day-to-day lives, and what can be done about them. This is an opportunity to bring those conversations into the community.” 

 

Lytton residents Patsy Gessey & Owen survey the townsite, which was devastated during the 2021 Lytton Creek Fire. Gessey’s testimony, co-created by Climate Disaster Project co-founder Francesca Fionda, is one of more than 30 featured in Eyes of the Beast. (CDP Photo/Jen Osborne)

Audience reflections & leadership solidarity

Every performance is followed by a facilitated talkback, giving audiences a chance to reflect on the stories they’ve heard and share their own experiences of climate disaster. A Vancouver Island political leader will also be present to listen to the performance, as well as the audience, and reflect on how we can help communities impacted by those disasters. Those voices are:

  • former BC Liberal cabinet minister George Abbott (Sept. 16)
  • Minister of Tourism Arts, Culture Lana Popham (Sept. 17)
  • BC Conservative Nanaimo-Lantzville candidate and former NDP MLA Gwen O’Mahony (Sept. 18)
  • BC Green Leader Sonia Furstenau (Sept. 20)
  • BC Conservative Oak Bay-Gordon Head candidate and former Victoria city councillor Stephen Andrew (Sept. 21, matinee)
  • Mayor Saanich Dean Murdock (Sept. 21)
 Alumni created, student inspired, media engaged

Working with interview transcripts from hundreds of British Columbians on the frontlines of climate change, Vancouver’s internationally renowned Neworld Theatre has painted a portrait of 30 ordinary people living in extraordinary times — and a province under pressure from the impacts of climate change.

 

Featuring survivor testimonies taken by over a dozen UVic Writing students, the show’s creative team also features the talents of UVic Theatre alumni, including director Chelsea Haberlin and co-writer Sebastien Archibald. 

Listen to this Sept 10 interview with Holman and director Chelsea Haberlin with CBC Radio’s On The Island host Gregor Craigie, who will be one of the media facilitators during the show.

Read this Sept 13 interview from The Tyee with Neworld Theatre’s Haberlin and Alen Dominguez.  

Read this Sept 15 article from Victoria’s Times Colonist newspaper. 

A fishing guide who took his boat into flooded farmland to rescue an alligator. An actor rushed to the hospital for heat stroke after performing in front of the legislature. A mother figuring out how to prepare her child for the future after fire flattened their town.

Climate disaster is not far away, not happening to someone else. It is here now, happening to us. Eyes of the Beast shows how we still have each other during those disasters, creating community amidst catastrophe.

 

About the Climate Disaster Project

Founded in 2021, the Climate Disaster Project has trained hundreds of students at 13 post-secondary institutions to work on the frontlines of this ongoing humanitarian crisis by creating an extensive archive of eyewitness accounts. Nearly 300 testimonies have been collected from disaster survivors and shared in local, national and international publications, as well as national radio and television broadcasts.

Tickets range from $18-$34 and are available now via the Phoenix Theatre box office at 250-721-8000 for 7:30pm Monday-Saturday performances running September 16-21, plus a 2pm matinee on Saturday, September 21.  

 

Professional fishing guide Jordi Williams shows one of the photos he took while rescuing animals trapped on the Sumas Prairie during the 2021 Southern British Columbia floods. Williams’s testimony, co-created by UVic writing student Paul Voll, was included in Eyes of the Beast by Neworld Theatre’s playwrights. (CDP Photo/Phil McLachlan)

The cast of Eyes of the Beast: (from left) Jessica Wong, Danica Charlie, Sarah Conway, Vuk Prodanovic

Students & seniors work towards wellness

by | Aug 3, 2024 | Research, Theatre, Undergraduate

Over the past several decades, Applied Theatre artists have been developing activities that help communities access joy and connection with others. This spring, a group of third-year Applied Theatre students learned how to facilitate interactive, creative workshops with Victoria seniors at the James Bay New Horizons Activity Centre. 

Working under the guidance of Theatre professor Yasmine Kandil, students explored how creative functions can make a difference in the lives of the elderly or their caregivers. Through a series of short workshops, seniors were able to reflect on their backgrounds, celebrate their identities and find community through active creativity; these workshops then culminated in a pair of student performances, each featuring a topic of importance to the seniors with whom they had worked.

Student Lauren Fisher facilitated a workshop surrounding “teenagehood” in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. “We wanted to compare the parallels of teenagers then versus teenagers now,” she explains. “We asked the seniors to remember how they felt when they were younger, and what adversities or external factors may have been in play — like economic hardships or family pressures. For those who were teens in the ’50s, there were things like the aftermath of WWII, the Cold War and clearly defined gender roles.”

One of the creative projects was to ask the seniors to draw a place where they felt safe as teens — their bedroom, say, or backyard. Another project involved the seniors offering advice to Fisher while she role-played a 2024 teenager. 

“What was most valuable for me was having such open dialogue between such different generations,” says Fisher, who has no living grandparents. “I think a lot of seniors feel like they’re so separate from people today, so this was like involving them in a conversation with modern society. It was very cool because we got to learn from them while they learned from us. It was all very beneficial!”

Snapshot of a year

by | Jul 19, 2024 | Alumni, Art History & Visual Studies, climate, donor, Faculty, Graduate, indigenous, News, Research, School of Music, Theatre, Visual Arts, Writing

We’re excited to share with you the latest edition of the Faculty of Fine Arts Annual Review. While it’s always difficult to encapsulate an entire year’s worth of activity into a single 36-page magazine, we do enjoy the creative challenge of sharing our top stories with you!

“This past year, colleagues continued to reconceptualize the contours of arts education, creative expression and scholarly knowledge,” writes Dr. Allana Lindgren in her introduction. “The arts continue to be essential for cultivating dexterity through creative thinking and fostering the empathy needed to navigate our increasingly complex world.”

Dean Lindgren also notes the ongoing inspiration Fine Arts students provide. “Their commitment to creativity continues to inspire me and gives me confidence that the next generation of arts leaders has the temerity to transform life’s challenges into opportunities for intellectual reflection and artistic innovation.”

Inside, you’ll find a variety of stories about the recent activity of our faculty, students, staff, donors and community partners.

Education equates with action here in Fine Arts: we are committed to helping our students cultivate the skills needed to become innovative artists and engaged leaders.

Our curriculum, artistic practices, research and creative activities are rooted in our belief in the power of creativity, experimentation and the efficacy of the arts to help us to understand and address today’s most urgent and vexing issues.

If you missed a previous Annual Review, issues dating back to 2017 are archived here.