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Artistic expression is one of life’s joys. Whether it’s painting, writing, or organize your underwear chromatically, aesthetic satisfaction is undeniable. Which is why Sag Mag is thrilled to let you know about On Your Mark, the Langley Fine Arts’ Alumni Exhibition.
Beginning Friday May 10th 2013, On Your Mark is an art and design exhibition taking place at the Roundhouse Community Arts and Recreation Centre.
This exhibition is a celebration of the 20th anniversary of the 1st graduating class from the Langley Fine Arts School.
Running through to Wednesday, May 22nd, the show will feature over 70 artists, from a multitude of disciplines.
It will be eclectic, inspiring and sure to thrill!
Sad Mag loves a good show-and-tell almost as much as we love independent arts and culture. In fact, if showing off could be an independent art form… well, we would be doing it, now wouldn’t we? So when Sad Mag heard about CineCoup, we thought, “What better way to strut your Canadian film-making stuff, than competing for one million dollars via social media?”
“At it’s most basic level, the CineCoup Film Accelerator is sort of like American Idol, except for indie film in Canada,” says Sean Horlor, co-founder of Steamy Windows Productions, CineCoup contestant, and organizer of the CineCoup West Coast Party at The Queen’s Republic on April 25th. “Between now and June 11, filmmakers get to showcase their filmmaking abilities every week on CineCoup.comand in June, one filmmaker will be selected for a $1M production budget and a 2014 release in Cineplex. Fans and critics will vote their favourite filmmakers to the top.”
A pretty sweet deal, and one bankrolled by J Joly, founder and CEO of OverInteractive Media and dimeRocker. Joly’s project puts the curatorial power of social media to the test, so that filmmakers who participate gain valuable audience feedback based on their film’s trailer and concept. Rather than relying on film competitions or focus groups, it’s really the team’s social media savvy and the professional online pitch package which will bolster fan support. In the end, the Top 10 projects will be optioned for development. A jury of industry professionals and a “CineCoup Superfan” will select one project for up to $1 million (CDN) in production financing and guaranteed release in Cineplex theatres in January 2014.
Is there a need for such a competition in Canada? For Horlor and his team, the answer is, “Definitely.” Says Horlor, “my team joined this year because the barriers to entry to the filmmaking industry are huge. Only 3% of the films screened in Canadian theatres are made by Canadian filmmakers.”
CineCoup gives indie filmmakers a chance to tell stories that might never make it to screen through the traditional filmmaking model in Canada. It’s a novel concept that, according to Horlor, has really changed the game: “So let’s say you’ve shot a few short films or done a ton of commercial work. You’ve got the skills to make your film. You have a great feature script, access to the best talent, and a great crew…now what? If you don’t have connections to investors or distributors or have a film that’s suitable for federal grants, your project will never find the money to get made.
CineCoup has changed that model. We’ve been connected to fans before our project has even gone to picture and they have helped crowdsource our concept and screenplay by interacting with us in realtime. CineCoup is also finding investors on our behalf and connecting us to their industry network. CineCoup will pitch the Top 10 projects this year at Cannes and the Top 5 filmmaking teams will be going to Banff to pitch industry reps themselves.”
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Horlor invites fans to come to the CineCoup West Coast Party at The Queen’s Republic April 25th. It will be a night of celebration and great drinks. Help all eight of these West Coast teams reach the Top 15! Teams in attendance are:
Our third ‘Mo-Wave interview also comes to you from the very noisy but very friendly Chop Suey greenroom. Tyler Morgenstern stole a few moments with Bryn, lead vocalist and guitarist of so-called “queermocore seagaze” four piece Wishbeard, who hours before hard charmed the room with their dreamy, heavy, driven, noirish pop.
How long have you been playing together as a band, and where are you from?
March 17th was our one-year anniversary as a band! I’m from Seattle, Brighton (bass) is from Marysville, Washington, Res (keys) is from Florida and Jude (drums) is from Maryland. And I guess I moved here from Mississippi.
What draws you to ‘Mo-Wave?
Well. Being gay for one. But also I think a lot of us recognized, around the issue of marriage equality, when we were having that conversation in Washington…there were a lot of fundraisers and benefits and shows and concerts for marriage equality, but there were no queer bands. No gay bands. Not that it’s not good to be behind a cause, and it’s important to have allies, but I think that, at least for me, I see ‘Mo-Wave as an opportunity to be queer and be with other queer musicians and be just as good as anyone else.
But also, being queer is a part of who we are, but it doesn’t define us. And I hope that even though we’re recognized as a queer band, that we’re seen as a really great band, and that people hear our music for what it is. I think all my band mates would say that.
What do you think can be done to make more stages for queer artists?
I think a lot of that is our responsibility in identifying as queer. There’s been a lot of shows we’ve played that have not been queer-oriented. And it’s funny, as a band, we joke. Because it’s always the shows where we’re playing to straight bro-ey dudes with beards (which is funny because we’re called Wishbeard), but they’re always the ones who come up and go “Oh man I love your stuff! It was so good!” And it’s funny for us, but I still think that there’s a lot of responsibility for queers to be visible.
We have to make an effort to be visible, and something like ‘Mo-Wave gives us an opportunity and a platform to do that. We all identify as queer in our bands, and it’s something that we talk about and hold close. But we still take being good musicians as something really important–practicing good musicianship and being a good band and being dedicated to that. If people connect with us for being queer, that’s awesome. But if they connect with us for being queer and for our music, that’s awesome, too.
in which paper feathers, bowler hats, and patterned collars queerily coexist
On April 12, the Sad Mag crew piled into a car and headed for Seattle to take in ‘Mo-Wave, Seattle’s brand new, all-queer music festival. In between comically oversized whiskeys and late night street meat breaks, we found some time to interview a few of the festival’s outstanding artists. We took the same (sort of) three (or so) questions to all of them to see what made this amazing celebration of queer art and culture tick.
Over a beer at The Wildrose, Tyler Morgenstern chatted with Jordan O’Jordan, a Seattle transplant with bluegrass charm and a penchant for the personal as political.
How long have you been playing as your current project and where are you from?
My name is Jordan O’ Jordan. I’m originally from Ohio, but I live in Seattle now.
What brought you to Seattle?
Originally I wanted to make the pilgrimage to the Mecca of grunge rock. Long ago, after college, I thought, “I wanna get out of Ohio, where do I wanna go? Oh. Seattle.” So many bands. Singles is one of my favorite movies of all time. And I know it’s not actually Seattle. It’s like falling in love with LA from movies like LA Story or like…watching Joan Crawford in LA. It’s not real LA, just as watching Singles is not real Seattle, but I still really liked it.
This project (Jordan O’Jordan) started in 2002. So I’ve been doing that for about 11 years now.
How do you go from making a cross-country migration to the city of grunge and end up playing blue grass and doing slam poetry?
I grew up in southern Ohio—in Appalachia—so I grew up listening to a lot of blue grass music. But I played in a bunch of punk bands in high school, then went to college. And it’s hard to play solo punk drums in your dorm room. So I thought “I’ll pick up a string instrument. I’ll pick up the banjo so I can take my culture wherever I go.”
What do you like about ‘Mo-Wave?
One, it’s a bunch of friends of mine who put it together. And it’s always nice when your buddies do something really cool. And I think it’s awesome to have a queer music festival in Seattle. There’s a ton of queer artists around here and we’re all playing music, so just to have a space that’s specific for a moment is awesome. To just say “hey, we’re integrated most all of our lives. But every once in a while we just want it to be us. This specific, tiny, discrete moment–for just a moment–where we can feel completely comfortable.”
As an artist, how do you think we go about creating more queer stages?
Sometimes I think it’s about making specific choices. Touring according to specific choices, about who we listen to, who we are around. It’s so easy to go into a town when you’re on or booking a tour and be like “Who’s gonna draw the most people? Who’s the popular band I wanna play with so lots of people will be at my show? I don’t care if it’s straight people.”
But then sometimes you think, “You know what? No.” Let’s contact our friends who are the queers and the gays in town and let’s play the dive gay bar, rather than the cool, hip joint. Let’s take these spaces, where we’d be anyway and then let’s make them into show spaces or let’s do guerilla art stuff. Some of my favorite shows have been in non-traditional venue spaces like queer houses, parks, galleries, or in tattoo parlors, or on top of a building. People put it together just for a moment.
And it builds community, too. Those spaces are more close-knit. And at the risk of sounding preachy, it’s not about selling booze. When you play a bar or a venue, the goal of why you’re there is to sell booze. Let’s call a spade a spade. You need to pay all the bartenders, you need to pay the door people. You need to sell a lot of booze.
Which, thank God. Everybody likes to get fucked up. But every once in a while, it’s important to make specific choices about the things we’re saying with our careers…that maybe aren’t the things we want to say.
If you’re only playing venues or only playing with straight people…take a minute. Get a little political. Get a little meta.
Seattle's First Annual Queer Music & Arts Festival
The Sad Mag crew is thick into production of our next issue, MadMadWorld, and we’ve picked a great city to go over our copy in! We are going to Seattle baby! (We are. For realsies. Like today.) The Seattle Queer Music and Arts Festival, and Sad Mag is taking a road trip!
From Mo-Wave’s Website: “We live in an age where pride parades are ubiquitous and queer culture is portrayed across all media outlets. Yet for some, televised and marketed gay culture is a vapid and self-deprecating representation of queerness. In our efforts to matriculate into mainstream American culture, we queers sometimes forget what makes us powerful: our ability to challenge the status quo, to push cultural boundaries, to redefine and set global definitions of art and music. Uninspired by mockeries of reinforced stereotypes, ‘Mo-Wave is an attempt to showcase queers as tastemakers and rule breakers in modern society. Additionally, ‘Mo-Wave aims to highlight the particular flavor that Seattle and the Pacific Northwest offers the rest of American queer culture, both historically and today. The inauguration is coming. April 7-14: Seattle, WA!”
Positive Negative, an artist-run gallery on Chinatown’s Columbia block, packs the room (and often the sidewalk out front) every month with clever shows that highlight local and international art and design talent—tonight’s opening will be no exception.
Lost in the City is a collection of photographs that portray the experience of navigating life in Canadian cities. Curated by Ben Knight, creator of DontLook printshop, with the help of local photographer Lauren Zbarsky, the show features ten artists from Vancouver and Victoria who explore issues of identity, control, knowledge, and reality within the chaos of a metropolis.
For Knight, it’s all in the details. He screen-printed each piece by hand onto a custom panel of sealed mahogany wood; each will be available for only $60.
Lost in the City opens tonight, Thursday, March 21, with a party at 7:00 PM (all are welcome), and runs until April 6.
Lost in the City Positive Negative (436 Columbia) March 21st-April 6 Opening party March 21st, 7PM-11PM RSVP here
Never fear, you didn’t miss ANYTHING YET. The Laugh/Cry Comedy show is March 16th, and we’re all getting real excited/weepy thinking about laugh-hyperventilating through our tears. THIS WEEK, on this website, right here, we will be celebrating our comic line-up with a series of interviews so STAY TUNED. For today’s special, check out the wildchild whimsy of our host, Tegan Verheul.
On March 16th, come celebrate shamrocks and Irish charm through the lucky rainbows of your tear-filled eyes at the Laugh/Cry Comedy Show at Toast Collective. Sample the Laugh/Cry Photo booth, ginger themed cocktails + Beerz (“Ginger” Ale) and all the cry-your-face-off funny stuff you can handle.
Laugh/Cry: designed for optimal facial contortions by your friends at Sad Mag, and hosted with tender sarcasm by Vancouver’s very own Tegan Verheul.
Mieke Matzke of She She Pop and her father, Manfred Matzke
Bringing new meaning to the term “daddy issues,” She She Pop explores William Shakespeare’s King Lear in a modern way in Testament.
On stage with their actual fathers, three members of this Berlin-based performance collective explore the trials and tribulations, not only of the child-parent relationship, but the struggle of power that can occur as one generation steps down and the other steps in. One lonesome performer, sans father, then explores the idea of an absent parent.
Delving into issues that are seldom spoken about, let alone performed on stage, Testament is not for the thin-skinned. Melding funny, raw, and frank scenes, She She Pop doesn’t hold back in terms of familial stresses, much like the intensity of Shakespeare’s original work.
Bringing up issues that you probably only discuss with your closest relatives in hushed whispers in the kitchen after Christmas dinner, the most powerful scenes in Testament explore disappointment, love, the act of caring for a loved one, and more importantly, forgiveness. These blunt scenes will make you laugh, think, and cry.
Poignant comments about life, success, love, and giving are made light while maintaining and edge of sincerity confirming the realness, and rawness, of emotions that came up during the rehearsal process for these performers and their kin.
Mixing contemporary music with projections, a German version of the King Lear script, and some dancing, She She Pop delivers a veritable feast for the eyes. This includes the subtitles that run across the top of the stage translating their quips. Utilizing the whole stage in innovative ways, She She Pop definitely delivers a full-blown performance, breaking the fourth wall and divulging to the audience their behind the scenes work and process.
Testament also translates Shakespeare into relatable terms. Cutting through the heavy language and antiquated examples, the members of the group get to the key issues of the story through game-show like examples they illustrate on a flipchart that is projected on a screen. From physics formulas explaining Lear’s predicament to creating lists of wants the children express, the use of multimedia is seamlessly integrated into an already multifaceted play.
Utterly charming, at the end of the piece, you feel connected not only to the performers and their aging fathers, but to your own family as well. Taking a moment to consider your own familial situation, there is definitely something about this piece, barring the language difference that is sure to hit home.
And that’s where Testament’s success is born.
Relatable, charming, hilarious at times, raw, and blunt, this piece is more than a translation and adaptation of Shakespeare, but rather a work of art, a performance that incorporates all you could want in a piece of theatre. Including three men dancing in boots to Dolly Parton. Really, you don’t want to miss this.
Testament is on as a part of PuSh Festival until January 26th. In partnership with SFU Woodward’s Cultural Programs, it plays in the Fei & Milton Wong Experimental Theatre at SFU’s Goldcorp Centre for the Arts. More information and ticket details can be found online.
Amy Fox, Michele Tolosa and Dan Dumsha as Some of The Rogues
Queer comedy comes sharper and sweeter when improv rules the night. Between the 2nd and the 12th of January 2013, catch Queer Arts Society’sThe Gay Mafia at the Jericho Arts Centre.
When “The Don” of the Gay Mafia decides to step down, the members of the mob vie for a chance to replace him. Through improv games designed to put his potential replacement’s strategy, wit and theatrical mettle to the test, The Don will name his successor nightly. The Don, who will alternately be played by Pearce Visser and director David C. Jones, will pick the winner rather than the traditional audience vote.
Positive Negative, an artist-run gallery on Chinatown’s Columbia block, packs the room (and often the sidewalk out front) every month with clever shows that highlight local and international art and design talent—tonight’s opening will be no exception.
