The Department of Creative Studies and the Visual Arts Course Union are pleased to announce two Visiting Artist talks coming up next week, Sarah Burwash and Elizabeth McIntosh.

The Far Woods, book cover

Sarah Burwash, UBC Okanagan Alumna (BFA ’09), will do an illustrated public talk on Monday, February 24th at 12 noon in the Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies building in Studio (CCS) 222. Her presentation will be followed by a book launch and author signing of The Far Woods, published by Conundrum Press, 2013.

Sarah Burwash grew up in Rossland, BC, completed her Bachelor of Fine Arts at UBC Okanagan in 2009, and now lives in Nova Scotia. Over the past five years she has compiled an extensive history of solo and group exhibitions in Canada, the US, and abroad. She has participated in numerous artist residencies across Canada and in the US, and has just completed a six-week thematic residency at the Banff Centre for the Arts.

Widely recognized and admired for her extraordinary talent in narrative drawing, watercolor, and illustrational drawing, she is also active in video, animation, ‘zines and artist book works. Her recent book The Far Woods was influenced by her artist residency locations, travels in the wilderness, and stories from remote areas and rural communities.

Elizabeth McIntosh in her studio

Artist Elizabeth McIntosh will speak as a guest lecturer at UBC on Tuesday, February 25th at a free public event. The talk starts at 12 noon in Room CCS223, Creative and Critical Studies Building, UBC’s Okanagan campus, Kelowna

The work of Elizabeth McIntosh reveals itself through the multiplicity of visual interpretations and understandings, shying away from aesthetic resolution. McIntosh’s position is in that sense rather bold, as she operates in an unguarded manner, with a subjective process that becomes an invitation to the direct appreciation of the perceptual experience. Reflecting on the painter’s role, she renegotiates limiting categories such as abstraction and figuration, to convincingly propose sophisticated, intriguing and intangible pictorial worlds.

Elizabeth McIntosh received her Bachelor of Fine Arts Honours from York University in Toronto, and her Masters of Fine Art from Chelsea College of Art in London, UK. McIntosh is represented by Diaz Contemporary in Toronto. Recent solo exhibitions include Pink Nude, Diaz Contemporary (2012), Three Oranges at Exercise in Vancouver (2011), Violet’s Hair at the Contemporary Art Gallery in Vancouver (2010-2011), A Good Play at Diaz Contemporary in Toronto (2010), and Cut Out at Goodwater in Toronto (2009). In 2013 she was the recipient of the prestigious VIVA Award in Vancouver. Elizabeth McIntosh lives in Vancouver where she is an Associate Professor at Emily Carr University.

From Left to Right: Astri Jack, Lauren Richardson, David Jefferess, Francine Lingad, and Samantha Steenwyk

Students in a 4th year Cultural Studies and English seminar have produced a Study of the Global Citizen Kelowna initiative.

Shaped by course readings on humanitarianism, the students analyzed specific components of the local global education initiative, as well as the way the initiative conceives of global citizenship education. The students characterize the Global Citizen Kelowna initiative as a form of ‘soft’ global citizenship, as it focuses only on global citizenship as a form of providing aid to the so-called ‘developing’ world.

The initiative does not provide opportunities for participants to explore the complex inter-connections among people in the world. Instead, it focuses on ‘empowering’ Kelowna children and youth to ‘make a difference’ by providing support for development NGOs working in the Global South.

Specific aspects of the initiative, such as the simulated ‘slum’ activity and the Global School House, present people in the Global South in simplistic and degrading ways, reinforcing long-established stereotypes of the Canadian ‘saviour” and the ‘helpless’ African ‘in need’.

The Study analyzes the Global Citizen Kelowna initiative in the context of global citizenship education and debates regarding the best ways to alleviate poverty. The students provide a variety of recommendations that they hope will make the initiative more ‘critical’.

The Study was launched in January at an AlterKnowledge Discussion event at the Alternator Centre for Contemporary Art which was attended by nearly fifty people. Students Astri Jack, Francine Lingad, Lauren Richardson, and Samantha Steenwyk presented key elements of the Study.

The project is the product of course-work in CULT/ENGL 437A Postcolonial Studies (Topic: Humanitarian narrative), taught by David Jefferess, Associate Professor of Cultural Studies and English.

A copy of the Global Citizen Study can be found on our web site.

Click here for more information about the Cultural Studies program.

WHAT: Future Delta – Gaming Technology and Climate Change
WHEN: Wednesday, January 15, 2 to 3:30 p.m.
WHERE: CCS 142, UBC Okanagan Campus
ADMISSION: Free

As part of the FCCS Research Series, Emerging Visions: Digital Media and Culture,  Dr. Aleksandra Dulic and Dr. Stephen R. J. Sheppard, will discuss Future Delta, an educational virtual environment where players can learn more about climate change solutions by interacting with the space.

Future Delta is an immersive and interactive virtual environment that acts as a tool for communication between researchers and the public.  Combining climate change modeling, socioeconomic scenario analysis and 3D image modeling of real places, we aim to make climate change science and solutions more salient and understandable.

Dr. Aleksandra Dulic is media artist working at the intersections of interactive multimedia and live performance with research foci in cross-cultural media, interactive animation and computational poetics. Her artistic work is presented in exhibitions, festivals, and television broadcasts across Europe, Asia and North America. These works include films, animated media performances, interactive computer installations as well as instruments and tools for live animation.

Dr. Stephen R. J. Sheppard teaches in sustainable landscape planning, aesthetics, and visualization in the Faculty of Forestry and Landscape Architecture programme at UBC. He received a BA/MA in Agricultural and Forest Sciences at Oxford, a MSc. in Forestry at UBC, and a Ph.D. in Environmental Planning at UC. Berkeley. He directs the Collaborative for Advanced Landscape Planning (CALP), an interdisciplinary research group using perception-testing and immersive/interactive visualization to support public awareness and collaborative planning on sustainability issues. He has over 30 years’ experience in environmental assessment and public participation internationally. He has written or co-written two books on visual simulation, and co-edited “Forests and Landscapes: Linking Ecology, Sustainability, and Aesthetics”, Volume 6 in the IUFRO Research series. Current research interests lie in perceptions of climate change, the aesthetics of sustainability, and visualization theory and ethics.

Emerging Visions: Digital Media and Culture is sponsored by Green College UBC and the Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies, UBC Okanagan. For more information on the research series, visit www.ubc.ca/okanagan/fccs/research/areas-of-expertise/media/emergingvisions.html

WHAT: What does it mean to be a global citizen?
WHEN: Friday, January 10, 7-8:30pm
WHERE: Alternator Centre for Contemporary Art, 421 Cawston Ave.

Undergraduate students from UBC’s Okanagan campus will present the primary findings of a collaborative research project analyzing the events associated with Global Citizen Kelowna’s “Global Citizen Week.”  How is the Global South represented in these events? Who can be a global citizen?

Discussion of the research report, as well as the larger issue of global citizenship, will be facilitated by David Jefferess.

The AlterKnowledge discussion series brings together faculty and/or students affiliated with the Cultural Studies Program at UBC’s Okanagan campus and members of the Kelowna community to foster discussions about topics related to Culture, Power, and Identity. The series is organized by Allison Hargreaves and David Jefferess, and is held at the Alternator Centre for Contemporary Art, downtown Kelowna in the RCA, 421 Cawston Ave.

For more information on the Alterknowledge Discussion series, visit our web site www.ubc.ca/okanagan/fccs/news-events/ongoing/alterknowledge.html

Emerging Visions: Digital Media and Culture is a research series jointly sponsored by UBC Vancouver’s Green College and FCCS.  This series presents innovative artists and scholars who are pushing the boundaries of contemporary creative and critical practice.

This fall we had three excellent presentations from artist-researchers and scholars from all over North America.  Their talks have been inspiring and relevant to a number of faculty member’s work in FCCS, and has been a great opportunity to be introduced to faculty members’ research in FCCS as well. The topics included the use of new technology in performance, interactive art, art history, narrative, and interdisciplinary practice and study, and curriculum development.

The series will continue into 2014:

Wednesday, January 15, 2014  | Future Delta- Gaming Technology and Climate Change
Dr. Stephen Sheppard, UBC Vancouver and Dr. Aleksandra Dulic, UBC Okanagan

Wednesday, March 19, 2014 | Indigenous Digital Media and the Post-Colonial Imagination
Jason Edward Lewis, Concordia, and Stephen Foster, UBC Okanagan

Wednesday, April 16, 2014 | Archive, Edition, or Research Environment? The Perils and Pleasures of Digital Scholarship
Dr. Lorraine Janzen Kooistra, Ryerson University, and Dr. Constance Crompton, UBC Okanagan

Each session is held on campus at 2:00pm in the Creative and Critical Studies building, room CCS 142.

For more information, visit www.ubc.ca/okanagan/fccs/research/areas-of-expertise/media/emergingvisions.html

WHAT: Do They Know it’s Christmas? The Question of Global Poverty
WHEN: Friday, December 13, 7-8:30pm
WHERE: Alternator Centre for Contemporary Art, 421 Cawston Ave.

Every year at this time, the 1985 Band Aid fundraising song, “Do They Know it’s Christmas,” returns to the airwaves, despite the nearly 20 years of criticism of the initiatives simplistic representation of the Ethiopian famine, and the insensitivity, if not racism, of the song’s lyrics.

The next Alterknowledge Discussion Series, which will be held on Dec. 13 will be facilitated by David Jefferess. This discussion will explore the way global poverty and inequality are represented, the politics of development aid and the charity model (especially at this time of year), and how we might seek different answers to the problems of suffering, oppression, and injustice.  This discussion will also respond to screenings of the 2012 spoof fundraising song, “Africa for Norway,” as well as other short videos on the representation of poverty and development aid.

The AlterKnowledge discussion series brings together faculty and/or students affiliated with the Cultural Studies Program at UBC’s Okanagan campus and members of the Kelowna community to foster discussions about topics related to Culture, Power, and Identity. The series is organized by Allison Hargreaves and David Jefferess, and is held at the Alternator Centre for Contemporary Art, downtown Kelowna in the RCA, 421 Cawston Ave.

For more information on the Alterknowledge Discussion series, visit our web site www.ubc.ca/okanagan/fccs/news-events/ongoing/alterknowledge.html