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.
This short untitled film documents a performance in which the artist, Julie René de Cotret, uses her body and a bicycle to drag a flaming tree across an empty intersection in a small town in rural Ontario. Living and practicing on the parcel of land she inhabits, René de Cotret's work often consists of absurd, disruptive gestures that challenge our idealized conception of bucolic living and agricultural landscapes. She highlights the environmental and sensorial turbulence that humans enact upon their natural surroundings in quick, highly theatrical performances.
Julie René de Cotret is a French Canadian independent artist-curator, born in Montreal. She has exhibited and curated exhibition projects internationally: Canada, US, Sweden, Greece, Switzerland, Korea, Germany. René de Cotret co-founded the artist residency program at the School of Environmental Science, University of Guelph, Ontario in 2009, where she is currently independent curator/director. She has been an active board member in artist run centres for the last 14 years, and is currently chair of the board at GNO, Sudbury.
- Year2014
- Runtime0:45
- CountryCanada
- DirectorJulie René de Cotret
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.
This short untitled film documents a performance in which the artist, Julie René de Cotret, uses her body and a bicycle to drag a flaming tree across an empty intersection in a small town in rural Ontario. Living and practicing on the parcel of land she inhabits, René de Cotret's work often consists of absurd, disruptive gestures that challenge our idealized conception of bucolic living and agricultural landscapes. She highlights the environmental and sensorial turbulence that humans enact upon their natural surroundings in quick, highly theatrical performances.
Julie René de Cotret is a French Canadian independent artist-curator, born in Montreal. She has exhibited and curated exhibition projects internationally: Canada, US, Sweden, Greece, Switzerland, Korea, Germany. René de Cotret co-founded the artist residency program at the School of Environmental Science, University of Guelph, Ontario in 2009, where she is currently independent curator/director. She has been an active board member in artist run centres for the last 14 years, and is currently chair of the board at GNO, Sudbury.
- Year2014
- Runtime0:45
- CountryCanada
- DirectorJulie René de Cotret