Media Release

For Immediate Release
April 26, 2004

Aboriginal artists consider unnatural resources in cyberspace

CyberPowWow 04 — Unnatural Resources
May 1 & 2, 2004, 11 a.m to 4 p.m.
Walter Phillips Gallery, The Banff Centre

If there are “native” and “non-native” ways of looking at the value of land, how do these two groups see the ownership of online territory? On May 1 and 2, 2004, Aboriginal artists will gather in galleries and artist-run centres across Canada to link up via the internet for a public exhibition and discussion centred on the value of virtual spaces. Co-curated by artists Skawennati Tricia Fragnito and Jason E. Lewis, this year’s CyberPowWow is the fourth time this event has engaged artists in cyberspace.

A combination chatroom, virtual gallery and library, CyberPowWow 04 — Unnatural Resources will link up Gathering Sites including: The Walter Phillips Gallery at The Banff Centre, EMMedia Gallery in Calgary, Tribe in Saskatoon, Winnipeg’s Urban Shaman Gallery, InterAccess electronic media arts centre in Toronto, Artengine in Ottawa, Oboro in Montreal, Halifax’s Eyelevel Gallery, and Confederation Centre Art Gallery in Charlottetown. The Gathering Sites are social places where members of the community will have access to the CyberPowWow Palace to participate in the online discussion and enjoy refreshments and conversation.

Visit the site from home at www.cyberpowwow.net or at the Walter Phillips Gallery Gathering Site on the afternoons of May 1 and 2 from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. (MDT time). The CyberPowWow Palace will feature works by invited artists including Sault Ste. Marie-based Rosalie Favell, installation and performance artist Greg Hill, Kahnawake-based filmmaker Joseph Tekaroniake Lazare, Banff- based designer Ryan Johnston, and new media artist, writer, and curator Archer Pechawis. The artists will be discussing claims on territory in cyberspace, and the natural resources available in a virtual world.

Curators’ bios
Skawennati Tricia Fragnito is an artist, writer, curator, and founder of Nation to Nation, a First Nations artist collective. She has completed a curatorial residency at the Walter Phillips Gallery at The Banff Centre, where she mounted the shows Blanket Statements and The People’s Plastic Princess. She has curated exhibitions for the Arts Alliance Laboratory and GenAtSF in San Francisco, and has published essays in Fuse, BlackFlash, and HorizonZero.

Jason E. Lewis is an assistant professor in the department of Digital Image/Sound and the Fine Arts at Concordia University in Montreal. He is a digital media artist and technologist whose main body of work revolves around experimenting with dynamic and interactive texts, including his collaboration on the programming and development of the ActiveText library.

— 30 —

More information on CyberPowWow 04
Downloadable, print-ready image

<Top> 

The Banff Centre : Communications : Media Releases