Libby Leshgold Gallery

 

What does it mean to open a space to other things?

 

Artists LOSCIL, Justine A. Chambers, and Ryan Tacata, with lighting designer James Proudfoot and gallery staff, will spend six weeks exploring this question using various approaches — movement, sound, light, performance, and shared interaction — and seeing what happens. Working in two-week “mini-residencies,” each artist will produce an installation or series of events that uses the “white cube” of the gallery as a venue for sound- or body-based activations.

 

Throughout, softness inspires exploration — a drifting desire, a hazy speculation, a plush stage for gathering — and each “launch” will showcase both an idea in process and the collaborative effort that supported it.

 

FEATURED EVENTS:

 

loscil / Adrift
Installation on view: March 16 - 23, 12 - 5pm
Thursday, March 23, 6 - 9pm: Giorgio Magnanensi, Elisa Thorn, Meredith Bates, and Nick Anderson perform in the installation

 

Justine A Chambers / Zephyrs
Thursday, April 6, 7pm: Zephyrs by Justine A. Chambers, with Steph Cyr and Sophia Gamboa

 

Ryan Tacata / White Carpet
Events and Activations: April 11 - 23 - complete list of events here
Friday, April 21, 6pm: Curtain Speech by Ryan Tacata, with Justine A Chambers and Billy Marchenski

 

About the projects:

 

LOSCIL / Adrift
Residency dates: March 10 - 23
Installation on view: March 16 - 23
Performance: March 23, 6 - 9pm

 

In its original form, Adrift is a collection of four pieces of endless music, composed by LOSCIL and released as a mobile application in 2015. In this adaptation for a gallery setting, the installation uses structured random selection to continuously play discreet musical components with no beginning or end. Each of the original pieces is named after an infamous ghost ship, and conceived as a current of sound, in which the listener is encouraged to drift in and out of. The installation features a new composition named after the Alta, a merchant vessel abandoned at sea near Bermuda in 2018 and left adrift until meeting the coast of Ireland in 2020.

 

The performance on March 23rd will feature musicians Giorgio Magnanensi, Elisa Thorn, Meredith Bates, and Nick Anderson performing along with the installation.

 

Justine A. Chambers / Zephyrs
Residency: March 24 - April 6
Performance: Thursday, April 6, 7pm

 

Zephyrs works with the kinetic reach of gesture, made visible by a dense mass of theatrical haze. Working with hidden movement and visible stillness, performers Steph Cyr and Sophia Gamboa beckon and repel the air around them to create constantly shifting conditions. They are apparatuses for dispersion: a hazy weather system within the gallery.

 

Ryan Tacata / White Carpet
Residency/Activations: April 10 - 23
Curtain Speech, April 21, 6pm: Performance by Ryan Tacata, with Justine A. Chambers and Billy Marchenski

 

A scented memory of my mother vacuuming our wall-to-wall carpet; the warm aroma of exhaust, fiber and all that soaked in, fell through, settled, then lifted. White Carpet is a 400-square-foot stage in the shape of a soft island, or a drawing pad, or a resting place — a long exposure. Momentary flashes pile up over the course of the exhibition. A boy drives model cars through the dunes. Dogs roll over for belly rubs by shaky hands. Unconscious Cheezies-stains made in repose. The small dance of restless feet during a meeting.

 

We’ll end with Curtain Speech, a one-hour live performance of forewarnings cast by Ryan Tacata, Justine A. Chambers, and Billy Marchenski.

 

loscil is the electronic music project of Canadian composer and multimedia artist Scott Morgan. For over 20 years, Morgan has built a robust catalogue of work under the loscil moniker, loosely spanning the genres of ambient, classical, and electroacoustic music. Alongside numerous albums released on the esteemed American label, Kranky, Morgan has also produced special projects, remixes and collaborations with other musicians including Ryuichi Sakamoto, Murcof/Vanessa Wagner, bvdub, Sarah Neufeld, Daniel Bejar, Rachel Grimes, and Lawrence English. Morgan’s music can be found supporting film, television, theatre, and contemporary dance productions including notable work with choreographers Damien Jalet from Belgium and Vanessa Goodman from Vancouver. Morgan has also created bespoke music for games and interactive multimedia projects including Hundreds, Osmos, Lifelike, and his own generative music application, ADRIFT, released in 2015. As a touring entity, Morgan has brought his live audio-visual performances to festivals worldwide such as Mutek, Le Guess Who, LEV, Gamma Fest, Sled Island, Today’s Art, WOS, Open Frame, and Big Ears.

 

Justine A. Chambers is a dance artist and educator. Her movement-based practice considers how choreography can be an empathic practice rooted in collaborative creation, close observation, and the body as a site of a cumulative embodied archive. Privileging what is felt over what is seen, she works with dances that are already there — the social choreographies present in the everyday. Her recent choreographic projects include: Steady, Waking Hours, And then this also, One hundred more, tailfeather, for all of us, it could have been like this, ten thousand times and one hundred more, and semi-precious. Chambers is currently a Term Lecturer at the School for Contemporary Arts at Simon Fraser University. She is Max Tyler-Hite’s mother.

 

Ryan Tacata is a performance maker and writer based in Vancouver. His collaborative art practice is situated between live art and social practice, and plays critical intimacy in the key of everyday life. His work has been presented at the Asian Art Museum, Stanford University, the City of Chicago, Court Theatre, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Museum of Performance + Design, and The Momentary. He is co-artistic director of the performance group For You, and Assistant Professor of Performance at the School for the Contemporary Arts, Simon Fraser University.

 

 

Canada Council for the Arts


 
artwork

Ryan Tacata, a minor repair (work in progress), 2019. Photo by Angeliki Tsoli.

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