Deep Water features works by Yen-Chao Lin (Montreal), Fraser McCallum (Toronto), Erin Siddall (Vancouver), Miguel Angel Ríos (New York/Oaxaca), Julie René de Cotret and JuJe Collective (Guelph), and Virginia Lee Montgomery (New York/Houston). Produced over the span of the last decade, these short videos and film works make use of natural elements—water, air, fire, minerals, etc.—to circle around issues such as the exploitation of environmental resources, colonial tendencies encroaching on sacred spaces and rituals, pilgrimages to locales that bear remnant traces of activism and protest, the fraught period that we call modernity, and metaphysical ways of summoning hope for the future. Blending documentary, experimental film, performance documentation, archival research, site visits, and semi-fantastic folk retellings, the works included in Deep Water are linked by a common surreal or dreamlike atmosphere, perhaps suggesting a permeability between the exterior world and psychic topographies.
Deep Water is organized by Laura Demers, and is presented as part of the plumbraiser, a fundraiser for the plumb
Many thanks to the Toronto Palestine Film Festival (TPFF) for sponsoring this virtual screening.
Vertical Frontier chronicles relationships between settler colonialism, extractive capitalism, and the making of scientific knowledge through early modern geologic surveys completed by the Canadian government. Loosely focused on Arthur P. Coleman (1852–1939) and the Geologic Survey of Canada, Vertical Frontier considers how seeing geologically constituted an epistemological shift in how lands were documented, classified, and instrumentalized.
At the forefront of this shift, this film focuses on the tools and measuring devices used to legitimize the geologic profession. Measurement is accordingly shown to be rife with slippages and gaps: hammers used for scale in specimen photographs are undermined through homogenization; tools used in metallurgical assay are rendered indecipherable; and landscapes of geologic significance are seen beyond their instrumental value. With its focus on the unusual methods and broad implications of geology within settler colonialism and extractivism, Vertical Frontier highlights the discipline’s unceremonious origins in order to better understand its ongoing implications in environmental violence.
Fraser McCallum is an interdisciplinary artist of settler Euro-Canadian ancestry based in Tkaronto. Fraser holds a Master of Visual Studies in Studio practice from the University of Toronto (2016). His work has recently been exhibited at Sheridan College, Oakville (2020), Modern Fuel, Kingston (2017), The Art Museum at the University of Toronto (2016), and Xpace Cultural Centre (2014). His video works have been screened by LIFT (2018), Hamilton Artists Inc (2018), and Trinity Square Video (2016). He has participated in residencies supported by the Salt Spring Island Arts Council (2017), and Banff Research in Culture (2015). Fraser’s writing has been published by the Blackwood Gallery, PUBLIC Journal, Gallery 44, Vtape, and Imaginations Journal of Cross-Cultural Image Studies.
- Year2019
- Runtime9:06
- CountryCanada
- DirectorFraser McCallum
Deep Water features works by Yen-Chao Lin (Montreal), Fraser McCallum (Toronto), Erin Siddall (Vancouver), Miguel Angel Ríos (New York/Oaxaca), Julie René de Cotret and JuJe Collective (Guelph), and Virginia Lee Montgomery (New York/Houston). Produced over the span of the last decade, these short videos and film works make use of natural elements—water, air, fire, minerals, etc.—to circle around issues such as the exploitation of environmental resources, colonial tendencies encroaching on sacred spaces and rituals, pilgrimages to locales that bear remnant traces of activism and protest, the fraught period that we call modernity, and metaphysical ways of summoning hope for the future. Blending documentary, experimental film, performance documentation, archival research, site visits, and semi-fantastic folk retellings, the works included in Deep Water are linked by a common surreal or dreamlike atmosphere, perhaps suggesting a permeability between the exterior world and psychic topographies.
Deep Water is organized by Laura Demers, and is presented as part of the plumbraiser, a fundraiser for the plumb
Many thanks to the Toronto Palestine Film Festival (TPFF) for sponsoring this virtual screening.
Vertical Frontier chronicles relationships between settler colonialism, extractive capitalism, and the making of scientific knowledge through early modern geologic surveys completed by the Canadian government. Loosely focused on Arthur P. Coleman (1852–1939) and the Geologic Survey of Canada, Vertical Frontier considers how seeing geologically constituted an epistemological shift in how lands were documented, classified, and instrumentalized.
At the forefront of this shift, this film focuses on the tools and measuring devices used to legitimize the geologic profession. Measurement is accordingly shown to be rife with slippages and gaps: hammers used for scale in specimen photographs are undermined through homogenization; tools used in metallurgical assay are rendered indecipherable; and landscapes of geologic significance are seen beyond their instrumental value. With its focus on the unusual methods and broad implications of geology within settler colonialism and extractivism, Vertical Frontier highlights the discipline’s unceremonious origins in order to better understand its ongoing implications in environmental violence.
Fraser McCallum is an interdisciplinary artist of settler Euro-Canadian ancestry based in Tkaronto. Fraser holds a Master of Visual Studies in Studio practice from the University of Toronto (2016). His work has recently been exhibited at Sheridan College, Oakville (2020), Modern Fuel, Kingston (2017), The Art Museum at the University of Toronto (2016), and Xpace Cultural Centre (2014). His video works have been screened by LIFT (2018), Hamilton Artists Inc (2018), and Trinity Square Video (2016). He has participated in residencies supported by the Salt Spring Island Arts Council (2017), and Banff Research in Culture (2015). Fraser’s writing has been published by the Blackwood Gallery, PUBLIC Journal, Gallery 44, Vtape, and Imaginations Journal of Cross-Cultural Image Studies.
- Year2019
- Runtime9:06
- CountryCanada
- DirectorFraser McCallum