From the director:
It’s with pleasure and excitement that I welcome you to the At Home Festival. It has taken several years to bring it to this point and we intend that this pilot program is the beginning of ongoing Across Oceans' programs in Toronto that investigate the myriad facets of contemporary art-making within the new global ecology.
People have commented that the name of the festival is very revealing and I agree. The festival crosses many oceans. Bringing together artists from far afield crosses geographical boundaries. The collaborations cross art discipline divides. And we are being "age blind" crossing generation gaps
The phrase "At Home" is personally revealing. I have been on the road for fourteen years now. Many other Canadians follow similar career paths. I felt that it is time to bring our work and our experiences back home. The Toronto cultural community and our public are fantastically diverse. "At home" implies an open house ready to receive old friends and new guests. With studio visits, workshops and forums, the festival opens a platform for exchange, discovery and discussion about how we work together, and how we can work in the always-evolving future.
This year’s interdisciplinary focus is on how dance integrates other arts, how it is integrated into other arts, and the ways that that creative work happens. Our lineup of artists-in-residence and festival partners all have been working with these concerns throughout their careers. They come from Toronto, across Canada, Europe, India, Indonesia, New Zealand and the USA. Events take place at various venues in the city.
Art is never created within a vacuum. Nor is it experienced within a vacuum. When I opened my email this morning, a message from Erik Parker included this quote:
"The spectacle is not a collection of images but a social relation among people, mediated by images." …….(Guy Debord, Society of the Spectacle)
We look forward to seeing you "at home". The doors open May 28.
…towards a Canadian centre for international collaborations and exchange in the contemporary arts…
RATIONALE
Over the past decade Across Oceans has been involved in a wide range of international projects. Maxine Heppner, an artist, educator and producer, brings 23 years of experience to this endeavour. The network of associations with contemporary artists of all disciplines is a wide one including professional companies, festivals and also educational institutes around the world.
Individual artists have always been curious about work beyond their own borders. In the past few years even the arts establishments from around the world have broadened their regional perspectives. Globalization and international exchange are realities, creating an environment where inspiration from diversity and pluralism is running side-by-side with homogenization, assimilation, apropriation.
Although frequently stimulating, the inherent riskiness of creation multiplies when working internationally. Personalities, pre-conceptions, working methods, aesthetic preferences all have to be balanced in the process. This is tricky enough when the individuals involved are from a similar background. When working on cross-cultural projects the relationships are even more complicated.
It takes time for working relationships to move beyond initial revelations to the trust and understanding necessary for deep exploration and profound work. It takes courage, most often based on trust, to go beyond show-and-tell. Established artists at least bring experience to these realities; emerging artists often have only their talent and enthusiasm to see their ways through the dilemmas of cross-creation.
Of course there are extraordinary works that are created through the stimulation of these complex collaborations. These are what we aspire to. However we have all seen, some of us have been involved in, the often shallow nature of one-off international projects. Tight time-frames pushing creation of product can result in, at best, artists pulling out all their tricks to create a glorious pastiche, and, at worst, a relinquishing of individual strengths and an embarrassing dumbing-down of original inspirations.
We are now recognizing that to create profound work within the new globalization we must come to terms with its inherent issues, recognize and find our place within the diverse working methods and milieux, and develop flexibility of mind along with clarity of vision in the midst of massive waves of stimulation. We need opportunities to go beyond initial show-and-tell to deeper dialogue.
Canada has many exceptional international festivals and also ongoing visits by foreign artists to individual companies, schools and centres, yet there are few
opportunities in our country for established Canadian and international contemporary artists to further long-term collaborative commitments in an urban environment specifically geared to international, inter-cultural exchange.
Canadians working as guest artists abroad often have few resources to reciprocate and bring partners to Canada to work on our own home turf. It is also an unfortunate fact that most foreign artists have few resources enabling them to come in contact with our world-class Canadian contemporary arts community. There are also few opportunities for our youth to have similar exposures, short of going on personal odysseys abroad. The Canadian public also has few chances to participate in some extraordinary work.
Through mentor-ships, hosting and daily one-to-one interactions; through performance, exhibits, workshops, symposia/forums; in the studios and in the general communities, the proposed centre aims at providing some of these opportunities.
As we are being thrust into a globalized 21st century, it is Across Oceans' hope that the Festival is an appropriate launch of an initiative that may thrust us with not only open and inquiring hearts, but also with informed and inquisitive minds.
