The Banff Centre’s Sara Diamond, artistic director/executive producer television and new media coproductions, is heading off to present works created at The Banff Centre for the Arts at the prestigious Dutch Electronic Art Festival, DEAF 00 ROTTERDAM, organized by V2 Organisation.

Diamond, who has spearheaded co-production in video, television and new media as well as the Banff New Media Institute, is a regular speaker and contributor at new media and video festivals and events both at home and internationally. "I am always thrilled to be able to showcase works from the Banff New Media Institute and CoProductions programs. Banff walks the edge of the experimental, the intimate and the big splash project. We support artists as researchers and as thinkers and look forward to the response of international audiences to their work."

The DEAF 00 exhibition, November 14-19, features video or interactive art works that deal with the notion of time in an inventive and iconoclastic way. Visitors can interact with machines and become manipulators of time by expanding, bending, stopping, derailing and compressing it. The Banff program responds to the DEAF theme of "time" by exploring issues of mortality; the frozen but eloquent moment.

Diamond’s presentation will include works created and enhanced through the Banff New Media Institute and CoProductions programs:

Paixao Nacional (9 minutes), a startling and beautiful video about a 20 year-old Brazilian man hiding in a cargo of an airplane bound for Europe. On what turns out to be the final journey of his life, he remembers glimpses of his past. Awards include Best Experimental Video, Atlanta Film and Video Festival, 1994. Co-producer: Karim Ainouz (Brazil), 1994

Words Fail (5 minutes), an arrestingly visual and starkly emotional five-minute work, choreographed and danced by PEGGY BAKER, played by SHAUNA ROLSTON, with solo cello music composed by CHAN KA NIN. The work reflects a remarkable and first-time collaboration among three of Canada’s most illustrious and noted artists with prima ballerina/filmmaker, Veronica Tennant as producer and director.

Voices of the Morning (14 minutes), a visual and sonic poem on video exploring the effects of Orthodox Islamic laws on one woman, and chronicling a childhood behind the evil. Co-producer: Meena Nanji (Los Angeles, CA), 1992

Men (18 minutes), an insightful look at the fragile nature of old men. The video contrasts nature’s infinite time with the shortness of the human lifespan, the lushness of the green landscape with the paleness of the old men, and sets the physical deterioration of the of the men's bodies against their obvious strength of character. Co-producers: MJW Dance Company (UK) and the BBC, 1997

Herr (5 minutes), a bitingly funny dissection of gender conformity performed by four women dressed as men. The choreography is inspired by everyday male gestures and elaborated into an intricate spectacle of masculinity lurching out-of-control. The dance transcends mere satire to become finally troubling and disturbing: the logic of the four is too brutal, their club's initiation rites too lethal. Co-producer: John Greyson (Toronto, ON) and Joe Laughlin (Vancouver, BC), 1998

Some Talk About It, Self Government PSAs (6 30-sec. PSAs)

Through the voices of Aboriginal directors, writers and artists, this PSA series uses story-telling, humour and powerful visual and sound images to offer Canadian and International audiences insights into issues of profound value. Co-producer: The Banff Centre for the Arts and Aboriginal Film & Video Art Alliance, 1994.

U&I dOt cOm, an experimental narrative/documentary hybrid about Zoey, a teenager who negotiates her identity in cyberspace. A web contest sweeps her into a dreamscape of desire and deception, as hidden mechanisms of e-commerce, data mining and consumer profiling monitor her every move. When Zoey rebels, she is forever transformed in the new cyber-cultural domain.  Co-producer: Branda Miller, (New York City), 1999 Format: video
http://www.uandidotcom.com/

The Secret Project (60 minutes), a dance-theatre production with five performers. The thematic organization of the piece around the notion of the "secret" arose out of work with interactive technologies. In such work, odd corporeal confusions arise between whether one moves in space or utters text. We are interested in what these technologies conjure as secret, and how our other (Irish/French) secrets might bleed into such a performative tool. Such secrets are corporeal, cultural, wrought from pleasures and repressions. This shifting sense of the secret continues to orient our thinking on the making of this work - where the utterance of text can control movement, and movement can control the utterance of text. Co-producer: Jools Gilson-Ellis and Richard Povall, 1998

Arcangel ‘s work reverse engineers machines, biology, and networks, providing audiences with playful and intimate moments on the net or immersive spectacle on the screen and amplifer. His works collapse time. Bakteria is a playable software capable of creating relationships within its own life form and autonomous system. Arcangel’s work has recently been featured at Interactive Screen and in venues throughout Europe.

The Dutch Electronic Art Festival organized by V2 Organisation, presents an international and interdisciplinary blend of interactive art exhibition, selected WWW-sites, live performances, lectures and artist presentations, workshops and an academic symposium. DEAF_00 features its own special website (http://deaf.v2.nl/00/index.jsp), and is accompanied by a catalogue on the festival theme, Machine Times.

Sara Diamond is responsible for developing the artistic and professional development direction of Media & Visual Arts, developing Banff New Media Institute research perspectives, think tanks, co-productions, artists' residencies, partnerships, and work study opportunities. She is also responsible for the publishing initiatives of Media & Visual Arts and the Walter Phillips Gallery as well as collaborations with the Aboriginal Arts program and other departments of the Centre for the Arts.

The Banff New Media Institute (BNMI) (http://www.banffcentre.ab.ca/nmi) is a vital kernel of the creative and economic infrastructure for new media research, learning, and production. As an acclaimed international leader, it provides leading-edge seminars, think tanks, summits and workshops for producers, designers, artists, writers, directors, software developers, new media content specialists, curators, scientists, educators, and visionaries.

The CoProductions program (http://www.banffcentre.ab.ca/mva/coproductions/default.html) plays a unique role in the world of Canadian and international television, interactive media, web development, multimedia and research. It supports high-quality creative projects made for a variety of platforms by bringing together the arts, changing technologies and media. Outside partners work with us to create high-quality television for specialty channels and broadcast. The Media & Visual Arts department encourages projects that research emerging digital cultures, such as location-based installations, electronic publishing or projects using networked new media, such as Web TV, satellite, cable and fibre services.

The Banff Centre for the Arts (http://www.banffcentre.ab.ca/cfa) is a place for artists and is dedicated to lifelong learning and professional career development in the arts, acting as a site and catalyst for creative activity and experience.