ART & PERFORMANCE ON WILLOW ISLAND:
Presented by Neutral Ground Artist Run Centre

This year, Swamp Fest is working with Neutral Ground Artist Run Centre to present multidisciplinary Arts programming on Willow Island. Be sure to look for these exciting art works and performances on Saturday September 8th! 

FadaDance Troupe:
Fates & Gates

​Acting as the GateKeepers to the island, FadaDance will lead the audience through a ritualized crossing over from the Mainland of the Mortals to the Island of the Swamp. Taking inspiration from the Three Fates, the trio will spin, dispense, and snip acting as guides to the mortal visitors.

​FadaDance was born on the dance floor in 2002. Heather Cameron, Fran Gilboy, and Misty Wensel came together through a shared desire to create a dance community rooted in dance floor culture. Responsive and collaborative, FadaDance embraced the unexpected as they move towards a new form of prairie dance.

​Today the troupe are prodigious creators of innovative contemporary work. They draw on principles of modern and contemporary dance while pioneering new approaches to the artform and being bound by none. Their practice is fueled by curiosity: for each other, other art forms and the communities in which they live and work.

fadadance.ca

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Ernie Dulanowsky
Shore Leave Phycology

​This installation attempts to add to the existing scientific research surrounding the discovery of the TAB creature and other associated entities in Wascana Lake as described by Swamp Fest lore. Using specially constructed underwater microphones and associated frequency analysis equipment it is expected that we might hear and possibly track the movements of TAB and his minions around Willow Island. Any detected sounds will be amplified for the public to experience.

Ernie Dulanowsky (who often performs as Pulsewidth) is an electronic sound composer and performer using homemade and commercial non-keyboard electronics to create ambient drone and noise pieces. His work is informed by the sounds found at the intersection of office building ambience and broken media transmissions. Some of his compositions can be found at
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pulsewidth.bandcamp.com
soundcloud.com/ernst-pulsewidth

The Swamp Swarm 

​The Swamp Swarm is a horde of unusual and mysterious creatures; an active manifestation of the swamp. Seemingly uncontrollable and feral, the Swarm is comprised of plant, animal and element, who are set to leave their familiar swamp-biotope and join the human world at Swamp Fest 2018.

​The Swamp Swarm typically stays out of sight of humans, but when the Swamp Portal opens each September, they rise from the green waters, personifying the secret world of swamp - revealing what mere festival going mortals cannot see, fear or interpret.

They dance. They weave. They play. They’ll lead you to secret island crevices and chasms. Take them by their swampy paws… ultimate adventure and wild abandon await!

*Due to unforeseen circumstances, artist David Hoffos will no longer be able to present his work at Swamp Fest 2018.*

We apologize for this last minute change and hope to bring David to town another time! 

The General Store
Swamp Forage

Photo Credit: Diane + Mike Photography

This year Swamp Fest will become the foraging grounds for a new line of ‘Willow Island Import’ products at The General Store, which will be on display at the Dunlop in October. The collection will manifest from found and exchanged items made at the festival. With our shiny new fold-out-bike-trailer-store, we will be foraging in and around the swamp festival, including reconnaissance missions around the lake loop. Willing participants will be engaged via informal, roaming workshops that may take the form of story recordings, weed foraging sessions, object transformations, and then some. The possibilities are infinite!

The General Store is: Lane Shordee & Nikki Martens
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Lane Shordee (b. 1979, lives and works in Calgary) creates work that has strong ties to urban ecology and recycling, utilizing techniques that combine a variety of materials in various installations. Harvesting the alleyways has become a central part of Shordee’s process, actively demonstrating the trope “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure”. Shordee uses these cultural artifacts as a way to tell stories about the past while acknowledging our present concerns about the environment and society at large.

Nikki Martens (b. 1984, lives and works in Calgary) Nikki Martens is an artist/horticulturist/educator, with a focus on art as a way of knowing. She creates sensation-based learning experiences for groups of various demographics. The local environment is a crucial component to these learning experiences, and she uses art and horticulture as a way to connect people to their it, inviting individuals to shape the way they learn

laneshordee.com/the-general-store

Colby Richardson​
​Inner Worlds, Outer Worlds

"Imagine a spider web. That extends into all dimensions. The web is made up of dew drops. And every drop contains the reflection of all the other water drops. In each reflected dewdrop, you will find the reflections of all the other droplets. The entire web in each reflection. And so on to infinity.” - vocally synthesized narrator of youtube-new-age conspiracy video.

​Inner Worlds, Outer Worlds, is a site-specific multichannel audio-video installation, which depicts the micro and the macro of our universe in adherence to fringe new age beliefs and meditation practices. Simultaneously a critique of the so-called ‘Conciousness-Expanding’ video genre, and a method for investigating the appropriation of meditation. Utilizing inexpensive camera functions like ‘Digital Zoom’, freely available resources like Google Earth, and found footage and audio: the artist aims to reference and comment on the no-budget, DIY, qualities of the burgeoning YouTube-New-Age conspiracy culture.

Colby Richardson is a media artist and experimental filmmaker currently based in Winnipeg MB, Canada, working within installation, video-based sculpture, single-channel film and video, and expanded cinema performances. His work embraces the potential meditative qualities of abrasive and jarring stimulus and investigates themes of transformation, escape, progress, obsolescence, and death. Colby has exhibited and screened work across Canada and internationally, including European Media Art Festival (Osnabrück, DE), International Video Art Festival Madrid (ES), Bideodromo (Bilbao, ES), San Diego Underground Film Festival (US), Antimatter (Victoria, CA), Microscope Gallery (Brooklyn, US), Videofag (Toronto, CA) Montreal Underground Film Festival (CA), Winnipeg Underground Film Festival (CA), Coaxial Arts (Los Angeles, CA), and Studio Kura (Itoshima, Japan).

colbyrichardson.com

Scummy Magic 

Scummy Magic is a mobile sticker dispensary/gallery that aims to promote affordable adhesive art at community-minded events in the form of retro vending-machine nostalgia. Dispensing locally designed stickers, hand-made zines, limited edition screen prints, DIY life advice and whimsy, Scummy Magic is a design collusion that exists in the most unexpected of spaces, where weirdo pop culture visuals meet street art.

Scummy Magic, a Saskatoon-based sticker art dispensary project, is a collaborative project and co-curated art gallery between Joanna Graves and Chris Morin. Having been involved in a number of festivals and events across Saskatchewan and Manitoba, including Nuit Blanche, Big Fun Festival, Swamp Fest and CFCR FM-Phasis, Graves and Morin aim to bring whimsy via pop-up art pieces amidst larger shows and markets. Actively seeking collaborations with a number of featured artists, Scummy Magic is a dispensary of take-home art pieces that are accessible to anyone with a spare dollar.

cargocollective.com/chrixmorix/Scummy-Magic
facebook.com/scummymagic/