The Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies is now accepting applications for the Undergraduate Research Award. This award provides undergraduate students support to engage in research and creation activities over the summer months. The deadline for this award for a research project over the summer of 2016 is March 15th at 4pm.

scene from 22 Sins to Salvation

In 2013, Dean Krawchuk (Interdisciplinary Performance major) used the award to create a theatre piece based on the life of the Russian monk, Grigori Rasputin. “My purpose in creating 22 Sins to Salvation was to give myself the opportunity to devise my own show enabling me to enter my fourth year of University with a more refined set of skills that I can apply to my graduation work.” says Dean.

Jessica Bonney

With this award from FCCS in 2014, Jessica Bonney (Creative Writing major) worked with Briar Craig in the print studio learning to use the letter press, and creating a chapbook called Genesis. The final book is a collection of 12 poems that explore change and the human experience, using fish as a metaphor for the complexity and fecundity of life, abundance, and coming of age. The project was an exercise in creating a book that was cohesive in its visual elements as well as the text within it.

Brandon Taylor

Brandon Taylor (English major) was a recipient in 2014. His research project involved a critical investigation of how contemporary American commercial television programming creates empathetic routes toward sociopaths and what this relationship implies. He immersed himself in the relevant literature of Television Studies (Fiske, Mittel, Kellner, Feuer, etc.) and on Breaking Bad, exploring how it shifts the white male psychopath paradigm (Martin’s Difficult Men, Sepinwall’s The Revolution was Televised).

Meghan Hunter

Megan Hunter (Creative Writing major) worked on an interactive performance in 2015. Meghan created a script and invited and worked with performers (vocalists or soundmakers in the community) as well as current and graduated BFA students in Interdisciplinary Performance. The performance was called Murmurations and it was presented at the Brent’s Grist Mill Heritage Park. The performance was one of four artist presentations at the site in the summer of 2015 organized under the umbrella of a community public art initiative called Bee Central.

Trystan Carter

Trystan Carter (Creative Writing/English major) proposed to go stay at the Best Western in Osoyoos in 2015, where the movie Gunslinger was shot, and write “The Best Western.” The final novel is a funny, endearing, self-reflexive, critically-minded Western. The account starts out reading like non-fiction; there is a narrator named Trystan, who has won this grant from UBCO to go the Best Western in Osoyoos and write “The Best Western.”
He gets himself a cowboy hat and heads on down to Osoyoos.

The award is meant to encourage undergraduate students who are enrolled in a major in FCCS B.A. or B.F.A. programs (English, Cultural Studies, Art History and Visual Culture, French, Spanish, Creative Writing, Visual Arts and Interdisciplinary Performance, or Combined Majors) to pursue innovative and original research under the supervision of one or more FCCS faculty members.

Two $2500 awards will be given out this year. The deadline for this award for a research project over the summer of 2016 is March 15th at 4pm. For more information on this award and the application process, visit fccs.ok.ubc.ca/students.html (under the Funding and Awards heading).

It’s that time of year! Let the Public Art Pollinator Pasture Project at UBC and the Okanagan Regional Library help you plot and plan your garden so that it is a local haven for pollinators. A trio of talks will be held on Monday February 29, Thursday March 3, and Monday March 7 to help both experienced and new gardeners learn how to create pollinator habitats to support the irreplaceable role played by bees and other pollinating insects.

Brian Campbell, seeding

On February 29th, Brian Campbell, the seed master of West Coast Seeds of Delta BC will talk about “The Relationship Between Bees and Plants: Stresses, Problems, and Solutions.” Campbell is a member of the Master Gardener Association of BC, a Certified Bee Master, and has an International Certificate in Permaculture Design. He teaches traditional farm-based skills and sustainable garden design. Immensely knowledgeable about native pollinators, Brian is passionate about sharing his knowledge and skills with others.

Gwen Steele

On March 3rd, local gardener and xeriscape expert Gwen Steele will talk about “Tips and Plants for Creating a Water-Wise Pollinator Garden.” Steele, a life-long Kelowna gardener, is co-founder and executive director of the Okanagan Xeriscape Association (OXA). For over 20 years she has studied, practiced and taught xeriscaping. She was instrumental in the creation of the UnH2O Demonstration Garden on Gordon Road.

Tracey Kim Bonneau

On March 7th, Tracey Kim Bonneau, President of Of the Land Productions Inc., will give a talk called “Traditional Ecological Knowledge – Local Plant Foods and Bees.” Bonneau, a Syilx woman born and raised on the Penticton Indian Reserve, is on a pursuit to love and care for wild food knowledge systems. Her vision to share stories came to fruition as a 13-part television documentary series, Quest OutWest Wild Food which aired on prime-time on the Aboriginal People’s Television Network in the fall of 2015.

And if that’s not enough inspiration for the upcoming spring, Brian Campbell will be back on Sunday March 13th to hold an afternoon workshop on how to grow native plants. This workshop will be held at the Woodhaven Eco Culture Centre. All the other talks take place at 7 PM at the downtown Kelowna branch of the Okanagan Regional Library, 1380 Ellis St. Kelowna. Admission is free but people are encouraged to pre-register. Go onto this website to register: blogs.ubc.ca/theecoartincubator/the-pollinizing-sessions/

This series is part of “The Pollinizing Sessions: A Series of Talks and Workshops to Learn About Pollinators in Our Community.” The Pollinizing Sessions is a partnership with Okanagan Regional Library and UBC Okanagan’s research project, the Public Art Pollinator Pasture. UBC Okanagan and Emily Carr University have teamed up for a three-year partnership project with the City of Kelowna and the City Richmond to create community and public art projects around bees. The Pollinizing Sessions will host a series of eight talks and three workshops in 2016. Find out more information by contacting Nancy Holmes at 250-764-9666.

The Okanagan International Film Festival, which runs throughout the month of March, tackles the topical theme of migration.

The festival, co-sponsored by UBC’s Okanagan campus and Okanagan College presents “Takes on Migration,” a series of films that showcase the stories of immigrants in different countries and their struggles to make sense of their new lives.

“For the millions who face fresh lives, they experience the trials of coming to terms with their new environments, the perils of negotiating across cultures, and the anxieties of living the uncertain, many times having to make sacrifices and confront the past even as they embrace the new,” says UBC Assoc. Prof. Bernard Schulz-Cruz.

The festival runs four concurrent Tuesdays from March 1 to March 22 and features films from France, Germany, Japan, and Mexico/United States. All films will have English subtitles and be introduced by UBC Okanagan Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies professors Jean-Jacques Defert, Martin Blum, Schulz-Cruz, and Nina Langton.

The film festival is free and open to the public. The four films will be shown at Okanagan College Theatre, 1000 KLO Road, at 7 p.m. The festival is sponsored by UBC Okanagan’s French, German, Japanese, and Spanish Programs, along with the Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies and Okanagan College’s Modern Languages department and International Education department. Be advised that these movies may contain adult subject matter including nudity, sex, violence, and coarse language.

Tuesday, March 1: Inch’allah Dimanche (France), introduced by Jean-Jacques Defert

This is the story of an immigrant woman struggling against old world traditions. Zouina leaves her homeland with her three children to join her husband in France, where he’s been living for the past 10 years. In a land and culture foreign to her, Zouina struggles against her mother-in-law’s tyrannical hand and her husband’s distrustful bitterness in an attempt to adjust to her life in exile.

Tuesday, March 8: Kebab Connection (Germany), introduced by Assoc. Prof. Martin Blum

In Hamburg, Ibrahim “Ibo” Secmez, of Turkish descent, wants to direct the first German kung-fu movie. For now, he makes commercials for his uncle’s kebab restaurant. Titzie, an aspiring actress and Ibo’s German girlfriend, finds out she’s pregnant. Ibo is uncertain about fatherhood — compounded by his father disowning him for getting a German girl pregnant — so Titzie sends him packing. He makes attempts at getting it right, but as the birth approaches, he’s still not ready. In the background are three thugs in search of good tripe soup and a Capulet-Montegue feud between the kebab joint and a Greek taverna across the street. Can Ibo be the glove upon that hand?

Tuesday, March 15: La Misma Luna (Mexico/USA), introduced by Assoc. Prof. Bernard Schulz-Cruz

This movie tells the parallel stories of nine-year-old Carlitos and his mother, Rosario. In the hopes of providing a better life for her son, Rosario works illegally in the U.S. while her mother cares for Carlitos back in Mexico. Unexpected circumstances drive both Rosario and Carlitos to embark on their own journeys in a desperate attempt to reunite. Along the way, mother and son face challenges and obstacles but never lose hope that they will one day be together again.

Tuesday, March 22: Kabukicho Love Hotel (Japan), introduced by Assoc. Prof. Nina Langton

Toru, a young man from the countryside, comes to Tokyo with dreams of running a five-star hotel, but works as the manager of a short stay “love hotel” in Kabukicho. This film follows the lives of various people connected to him and the hotel. Toru’s girlfriend, Saya, struggles to become a famous musician; the cleaning woman hides her husband from the police; a Korean migrant, acting as an escort, brings her clients to the hotel. Everyone has secrets and dreams in this shady world of pleasure and pain

For more details about the film festival, contact Bernard Schulz-Cruz at 250-807-9379, bernard.schulz-cruz@ubc.ca or from Cynthia Hernández 250-762-5445, ext: 4930, CGarcia@okanagan.bc.ca.

What: Ursula Kabis: Prints
Exhibition: February 22 – 26, 2016;
Artist Reception: 3 – 5 PM Wednesday February 24
Where: Fina Gallery, UBC Okanagan Campus, Kelowna BC
Gallery Hours 9 AM – 4 PM

The Department of Creative Studies at UBC Okanagan Campus is proud to present this short-run exhibition of Ursula Kabis prints. The artist grew up in the southern part of Germany, and later achieved a Masters degree in Dressmaking, Pattern-making and Design in Baden-Baden, Germany. She worked as a pattern-maker and designer in Zurich, Stuttgart, and in St. Gallen, Switzerland before immigrating to Canada in 1967.

Intaglio print, Ursula Kabis

Ursula Kabis and her family moved to Kelowna in 1977, and she took her first Visual Art courses at UBC Okanagan in the academic year 2008-09. Specializing in Printmaking Kabis has continued to distinguish herself for the quality and prodigious volume of print works in her portfolio. She is a consummate drawer and has turned this ability to print productions in Etching, Dry-point, Aquatint, Linoleum & Woodcuts, Mono-prints and Collagraphs. Her primary subject matter includes animals, landscapes, and architecture, with images and compositions sourced in the Okanagan region.

The public is welcome to visit this comprehensive presentation by one of the leading printmakers in the Okanagan.

For more information about the Visual Arts Program, visit our web site.

The Reichwald Germanic Studies Visiting Teaching Fellowship enhances instruction and learning in German language and promotion of intercultural exchanges with German colleagues by supporting the appointment of a pedagogue who works within the German language program at UBC’s Okanagan Campus.

2015 Reichwald Germanic Studies Visiting Teaching Fellow

Johannes Engelhardt, the 2015 Reichwald Germanic Studies Visiting Teaching Fellow, graduated from the University of Marburg with a degree in Education. His specialization is in DaF (teaching German as a foreign language). He hails from the state of Hessia (Hessen in German), and his hometown of Erbach lies half-way between Frankfurt a.Main (the book and bank capital of Germany) and Heidelberg (famed for its castle, its university, and the vineyards that surround it).

“Having spent the last few months in Kelowna, I really appreciate my time here at UBCO and being part of the FCCS family. Everyone has been very helpful and supportive. Right from the first day I felt that people wanted me to get the most out of my experience.” Says Johannes Englehardt. “I am so grateful to be here at UBCO for the entire academic year, and I hope everyone can profit from my presence here. I know I am as the many discussions about pedagogy with colleagues help prepare me for my career as a teacher in Germany.”

Johannes has been assisting in German classes, mainly by being a further initiator of student “output,” that is, getting students to produce language, a key part of language learning. He has been fostering conversations with students, thus helping them put into practice what they have learned in the classroom.

“Johannes brings a great and friendly disposition, and great insight into German culture to the classes he is part of.” Says Claude Desmarais, Assistant Professor, German. “Students and professors alike are happy to have someone as interested in teaching as Johannes to be part of the team thanks to the Reichwald Fund.”

Johannes will also act as the “real Germany now” part of the German courses in FCCS, and his interests in sports, music, and culture will allow him to assist in such things as the German Culture projects students will be undertaking, and presenting to the larger community. Outside of classes, Johannes will be tutoring students, helping them to find information for their culture projects, and establishing one or the other of the following: German Stammtisch (a pre-set meeting to talk about German, and life (in Germany)), and/or a film/cultural programming showing.

“As the first German Visiting Teacher Fellow via the Reichwald Fund, I love working with the students in the German classes and am honored to work alongside my two supervisors Prof. Dr. Martin Blum and Prof. Dr. Claude Desmarais. I enjoy preparing classes, helping to mark papers, and most of all being there to talk with and advice students in and outside of class, in order to give them yet another German speaker from whom to learn the language and about German culture.” Says Johannes.

It is well known that when students are learning a foreign-language, the number of native/near-native speakers they hear impacts their learning. Increasing students’ contact with such speakers will have an immediate positive impact on their learning, while the presence of a young person from Germany, whose specialization is in teaching German and who has travelled all the way to Canada as his first choice, promotes intercultural exchange and makes Germany a real, living place. Finally, meeting a German language assistant will help students to realize that studying and working abroad is not just a dream, but a very real possibility. It is a great achievement of the Reichwald Germanic Studies Endowment Fund that it is able to foster interest in German language and culture in this way.

For All Is For Yourself is an art installation of 10,000 paper bumblebees and the public is invited to help to make the seed-embedded paper to create this beautiful project.

On Thursday, February 4th, between 6 and 9 PM at the Kelowna Art Gallery, community members can help make sheets of handmade paper embedded with Gaillardia seed. Once made, the seed paper will be laser-cut into thousands of stylized western bumblebees to be installed on the walls of the Kelowna Art Gallery in June 2016. While people of all ages can just drop in, we do encourage advance registration for this event: public-papermaking-workshop.eventbrite.ca

Paper-making workshops are the first phase of For All is For Yourself, a community art project and gallery exhibition being held at the Kelowna Art Gallery from June 24 to October 14th 2016. Part of the exhibition is a wall of laser-cut bumblebees made of paper that has been created by members of the community. In October, members of the community and those who helped to make the paper will be encouraged to take some of the paper bees home to plant in their garden for local pollinators. Gaillardia is a drought-resistant flower that bees visit in the Okanagan’s hot summer months.

For All Is For Yourself: A Poetic Expression of the Labour of Bees is a work created by Cameron Cartiere and the chART collective of Richmond BC with the support of Kelowna’s Public Art Pollinator Pasture Project. The installation is composed of 10,000 bumblebees made from the seed paper, half of these coming from Richmond and half being made here in Kelowna. The installation at the gallery will then be the focus of several community engagement projects from June till October. In the final stage of the exhibition, participants and visitors will be encouraged to take the bees away to plant in their own gardens – creating new bee friendly habitats and allowing the hive to literally “swarm” out of the gallery.

For more information about the project, see borderfreebees.com or contact Nancy Holmes of the Public Art Pollinator Project nancy.holmes@ubc.ca or 250-764-9666.

What: Vu presented by FCCS Performance Series (Theatre26)
Who: Created and performed by Étienne Manceau of Compagnie Sacékripa, France
When: Friday, January 29 at 7 p.m. and 9 p.m., and Saturday, January 30 at 3 p.m. and 8 p.m.
Where: Black Box Theatre, 1375 Water Street, Kelowna

The world of circus artist Etienne Manceau is a strange, funny, scary place. It’s a place where newspapers can become claws; where small obsessions can make you crazy; where everyday objects appear in a new light as they’re touched, moved, transformed. Manceau’s performance is wordless, a blend of Object Theatre, clowning and what the artist calls “miniature circus.” It’s a mix that could only come from the mind of an eccentric. One thing this show is not is conventional.

Manceau worked for years as a juggler, and has had deep involvement in circus culture. This show, in which he performs alone, applies the comical ethos of the circus milieu to a work comprised of one man and his collection of everyday objects. It’s about a sensitive, meticulous man and his relationship with those objects—how he transforms them, and how in turn they affect him. The creator shows wit, wonderful dexterity and small-scale ingenuity in creating art out of the quotidian. In his comic mugging, his precise physical feats and sheer wackiness he calls upon the tradition of old-fashioned physical comedy. You’ll be amused, impressed and maybe a little spooked; the show is a lot of fun but, like all the most creative art, it reaches well beyond entertainment.

Ingenious…The effect of this minimalist show, a jewel polished to the highest detail, is for the audience to realise how maniacally they act each day of their life.
—Scena.ro Magazine

Created in Toulouse, France, Vu is an internationally celebrated, non-verbal performance to be featured at the Vancouver International Children’s Festival as part of Vancouver’s PuSh International Performing Arts Festival.

The Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies at UBC Okanagan, presents Vu for audiences ages seven and up at the Black Box Theatre (1375 Water Street, Kelowna) on Friday, January 29 (7 p.m. and 9 p.m.) and Saturday, January 30 (3 p.m. and 8 p.m.).

All shows are $25; $15 for students and seniors. Tickets can be purchased at the door and online at theatre26.ok.ubc.ca.

Also coming up in the 2015-16 FCCS Performance Series are The Unfortunate Ruth, February 19 and 20 at UBC’s University Theatre (tickets online or at the door), and huff on March 11 and 12 at the Mary Irwin Theatre (tickets online and at the RCA box office).

Manceau is part of the company Sacékripa, which was founded in 2003 by five circus artists from different backgrounds. Together they create performances on the border of several disciplines, exploring circus, juggling, dance, and object manipulation with poetry and humour. The company performs at street festivals and in theaters across Europe.

The FCCS Performance Series is made possible through the generous support of the Central Okanagan Foundation and UBC Okanagan’s Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Principal’s Office.