Thursday 8pm | OCT. 15 NEW MEDIA MASH-UP The Music Gallery
New Media Mash-Up Featuring Tanya Tagaq and Bear Witness The Music Gallery, 197 John Street Admission: $10 ($5/Music Gallery members) or FREE to Festival Pass Holders Come and experience this one-time live mash-up of video and vocals between internationally acclaimed Inuk throat singer Tanya Tagaq and video artist Bear Witness. Bear Witness will open the event using the Jawa style of rhythmic video collage, an editing style inspired by the “cut-ups/fold-ups” of video and sound. Using this unique medium of live experimentation, Bear will mash audio and video from the same source to create his own beat. Tagaq and Bear Witness were paired together for their unique approaches to their respective mediums as experimental artists. Tagaq uses the art and game of traditional throat singing to create music that seeks to push the boundaries of emotion and expression. Tagaq’s voice is often the only instrument heard in the stunning array of sounds: aggressive grunts and growls, frantic gasping rhythms and ecstatic, high-pitched wails. Tagaq’s stylings have been described as “groundbreaking,” “orchestral,” “hip-hop infused” and “primal” and are an ideal match-up for video artist Bear Witness, who will create and mash together projected images in response to the vocal work. Award-winning and groundbreaking Inuk throat singer Tanya Tagaq has brought an ancient Inuit vocal tradition to the heights of the experimental music scene. She has collaborated with Bjork, performed with the Kronos Quartet at Carnegie Hall in New York City and toured with some of the world’s leading global artists. Tagaq has garnered the attention of the international music industry and affiliated press, and always draws a crowd to hear her unreservedly unique performance of a long-established Inuit art form. World-famous experimental musician Bjork describes Tagaq as “like Edith Piaf or something… totally emotional.” CBC’s “ZED” describes her as “an outgoing, enigmatic and astounding performer, composer and improviser…revered, controversial, personable, humble, alluring, terrifying.” They add “Tanya Tagaq Gillis is possibly the most unique performer of truly traditional, Canadian music in our country.” 48
Ottawa-based media artist Bear Witness has been producing short experimental videos for over five years. Bear was recently awarded the Aboriginal International Residency Exchange in Australia by the Canada Council for the Arts and will have a solo exhibition as part of the 2010 Sydney Festival. Originally comissioned by imagineNATIVE, Bear’s video Apanatschi and Her Redheaded Wrestler was selected for the 2009 Berlin International Film Festival, as part of the Culture Shock program. In addition to an upcoming exhibit with his father, photographer Jeff Thomas, and continued work as a video artist and DJ, Bear recently co-founded A Tribe Called Red, a Native DJ collective that hosts the monthly event, Electric Pow Wow.
