Welcome to ReIssue Digestif, a bi-weekly-ish round-up of events on our radar. All times in PST.
If you are BC- or AB-based and have an exhibition, event or job posting to submit for consideration in the next Digestif, email details to admin@reissue.pub
Twilight Hour with Christian Vistan
Sculpture Studio D1357, Emily Carr University, 520 E 1st Ave, Vancouver BC
Wednesday, February 15, 6pm
Free
Twilight Hour artist talk with Christian Vistan, whose artistic, writing, and curatorial practice translate experiences of distance and diaspora into hybrid forms that fold together various elements, including memory, place, poetry, and abstraction among others. They are particularly interested in thinking about and working with water as a material in painting and in personal, familial and migrant histories. They run and co-curate dreams comma delta, a room for artist projects and exhibitions located inside their family home in Delta, BC with Aubin Soo K, featured in In dreams: liquidity, art, and business in the real estate meat machine.
DIM Cinema: I Snuck Off the Slave Ship
The Cinematheque, 1181 Howe St, Vancouver BC
Wednesday, February 15, 7pm
Tickets here
The program’s title is artist and musician Lonnie Holley’s metaphor for Black transcendence of ’America,’ in the eponymous track on his album MITH. “I Snuck Off the Slave Ship” captures Holley doing “his best to transgress reality with his imagination,” using handmade technology to liberate himself and the people he encounters. In DIM’s program, Alice Coltrane’s piano solo is the siren song guiding Cauleen Smith across America to sites of visionary experience that have inspired her. Humming along to the spiritual sung by Mahalia Jackson at the end of Douglas Sirk’s Imitation of Life, Deanna Bowen sinks layers of appropriated audio, video, and graphics into the the sonic matrix of her semi-autobiographical short on intergenerational trauma. Bert Williams’s Lime Kiln Club Field Day, the earliest surviving all-Black feature, is the inspiration for Garrett Bradley’s America, a series of vignettes scored by Trevor Mathison that reimagines the history of Black cinema as a “continuous thread of achievement.” Introduction by multidisciplinary artist and musician Tonye Aganaba.
Out of the Sun: On Black History and Storytelling
Hermann’s Upstairs, 753 View St, Victoria BC
Thursday February 16, 5pm
In-person tickets here, livestream free
BC Black History Awareness Society presents an evening of conversation with Victoria-based author and Giller prize winner Esi Edugyan.
SFU Galleries Presents: Kota Ezawa Artist Talk
Djavad Mowafaghian World Art Centre, SFU Goldcorp Centre for the Arts, 149 W Hastings St, Vancouver BC
Thursday February 16, 6pm
Free
Cologne-based artist Kota Ezawa produces animated videos, slide projections, lightboxes, collages, and prints that recreate images and events from recent history and popular culture. Through a labour-intensive process that involves the production of hundreds of drawings, Ezawa translates charged historical and news events into simplified animations, what he considers as ‘moving paintings.’ Ezawa received a SECA Art Award from SFMOMA in 2006 and a Eureka Fellowship in 2010, and has participated in the the Whitney Biennial 2019 and the Shanghai Biennale 2004.
Workshop: Intro to Taxes for Artists with Gillian Cofsky
Vines Festival (Online)
Thursday February 23, 2–4pm
Free, register here
This is the critical real-world information that art schools should actually teach! Gillian Cofsky will demystify tax season for independent artists, and provide spreadsheet templates for record-keeping, tracking income, GST, and all that other number stuff we loathe to do.
Love in a Time of Fentanyl
VIFF Centre, 1181 Seymour St, Vancouver BC
Thursday February 23, 5pm
Tickets here
When the opioid crisis in BC escalated to the heights of a public emergency in 2016, folks at the Overdose Prevention Society (OPS) set up a tent in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside as a critical frontline response. Technically illegal despite its necessity, the OPS was — and continues to be — a site rooted in harm reduction, where people are able to use drugs safely with supervision. An intimate observation of the OPS over a number of years, Love in the Time of Fentanyl witnesses the exhausting but essential work required to keep the site running and the people dedicated to its continuance. Panel discussion/Q&A following the film.
As We Rise: Photography from the Black Atlantic
Polygon Gallery, 101 Carrie Cates Ct, North Vancouver BC
February 24–May 14, Wednesday–Sunday 12–5pm
Opening: Thursday February 23, 7pm
RSVP here
Curated by Elliott Ramsey, the exhibition is organized by Aperture and features more than 100 photographs from the Wedge Collection — Canada’s largest privately owned collection committed to championing Black artists. Highlight works include images by iconic civil rights photographer Gordon Parks, Hasselblad Award-winner Malick Sidibé, influential portraitist Carrie Mae Weems, contemporary photographer and rising star Texas Isaiah (the first trans photographer to shoot a Vogue cover), and more.
Sook-Yin Lee, Ora Cogan, Pesewa
Centennial United Church, E Gorge Road, Victoria BC
Friday February 24, doors 6pm
Tickets here
The Action Index, Audio Osmosis & the fifty fifty present a night of ethereal, experimental, and lofi work from Sook-Yin Lee and Victoria’s own Ora Cogan and Pesewa; sure to be a night of dreamy escape featuring forays into both folk and afrofuturism.
Qaleidoscope: Queer Film on Tour
Open Space (2nd floor), 510 Fort St, Victoria BC
Saturday February 24 & Sunday February 25, 7:30pm
Tickets here
Queer City Cinema is bringing two individual screening programs to Victoria as part of their 2023 nation-wide tour. Featuring work from TJ Cuthand, Vivek Shraya, and Kenya-Jade Pinto, among a host of others, this is a rare chance to catch queer & trans experimental work you will not see elsewhere!
Jobs / Calls
Indigenous Engagement Coordinator, Nanaimo Art Gallery (Nanaimo), apply by 02/17
Collection Manager, SFU Galleries (Burnaby), apply by 02/19
Manager, Marketing, Communications and Brand, The ACT Arts Centre/Maple Ridge Pitt Meadows Art Council (Maple Ridge), until filled
Shop Technician (Wood Shop Manager), SFU School for the Contemporary Arts (Vancouver), apply by 02/27
Museum Assistant, Chinese Canadian Museum (Vancouver), until filled
Associate Curator, Chinese Canadian Museum (Vancouver), until filled