WINDOW HORSES: Interview with Ann Marie Fleming and Sandra Oh

December 15, 2014May 21, 2015Leave a comment

While in residence as a ResSupport Fellow at Akademie Schloss Solitude, Katherine Kennedy interviewed former fellow of the Akademie, Ann Marie Fleming, and actress Sandra Oh about their upcoming feature length animation WINDOW HORSES. Created by Fleming and starring/co-produced by Oh, the story follows Rosie Ming – a Canadian poet of Chinese and Persian heritage – as she journeys to Iran to take part in a poetry festival. This culturally rich film celebrates the beauty of diversity, and how it can be used to bring people together and affirm communities that are often under-represented.

WINDOW HORSES is seeking support through an Indiegogo campaign, which runs until December 20, 2014. Click here to donate to this worthwhile project.

Katherine Kennedy: WINDOW HORSES was originally conceptualized during your fellowship at Akademie Schloss Solitude. What did this residency do for your creative process, and how did your stay inspire the story?

Ann Marie Fleming: When I was in Solitude, it was a difficult time for me. I felt very isolated. I was one of the only residents not to be living in Europe, and would find myself alone for days at a time in the winter. I was there as a filmmaker, but I was in the writer’s wing – I met an exiled poet from China, a film festival director who had parents from different countries that both spoke different languages, another poet who would only speak his own language; and here I was, trying desperately to learn German. I truly understood how much language is culture. It was also in Germany that I was introduced to the poetry of Rumi through adaptations by the American poet Coleman Barks.

As an immigrant to Canada, I had always felt like an outsider, but when I lived in Germany, I felt truly Canadian for the first time. Suffice to say, why people leave and why people come was heavy on my mind. [The founding director of Akademie Schloss Solitude] Herr Joly, himself, spoke of the Jewish diaspora in Germany growing, especially through the arrival of Russian, Ukrainian or Belorussian Jews. Around the time of my fellowship, there was also discussion surrounding the returning of the German Jewish diaspora. This idea of belonging had an impact on me, and I actually base a character in WINDOW HORSES on Herr Joly.

I have been working with these same themes for almost two decades since then. I did two installations in Solitude about the unspoken stories of women, particularly mixed race immigrants, and about the metaphysics of Sufi poetry juxataposed against the rituals of womanhood: woman as daughter, lover, bride, wife, ex-wife and mother. That being said, the original script forWINDOW HORSES was conceived as a live action film: a father-son relationship(!) about the German diaspora, particularly to North America after the Second World War, and the alienation of families.

I wrote the song WINDOW HORSES while at Solitude – it is in the book I also wrote during my fellowship, Breathless: the book of Anne, which is about my oldest friend who had killed herself. I performed it with my guitar out by the horses one magical candlelit night. I wish I had a picture. I spent a lot of time looking out the window at those horses. Literally.

K.K.: In addition to the intersection of cultures, Solitude can foster openness to collaboration and working with kindred spirits, even beyond the fellowship period. Can you and Sandra please tell me how you came to work together, and for Sandra, what about this particular project struck a chord with you?

A.M.F.: I first met Sandra back in the early/mid 90’s, when we were supposed to make a feature film together, Dog Days, which was a kind of ghost story about a Chinese immigrant family in the wilds of British Columbia… coincidentally, with a missing father and a dead mother. That project fell through, and I was invited to attend Akademie Schloss Solitude. It’s what I did instead of the feature, I guess. Sandra and I kept in contact over the years, but she went on to a very successful and busy career in the U.S. and, after many years of development, I reached out recently to see if she was available and interested in playing the role of Rosie Ming, and she said yes. More than that, she loved the project and wanted to come on board as a producer.

Sandra Oh: There are several reasons why I fell in love with this project – firstly, I’ve known Ann Marie for years now, and we’ve been trying to work together off and on for all that time. I love [Ann Marie’s avatar] Stickgirl and all she represents, and to voice her in such a heartfelt and deep emotional story was something I knew I had to do. WINDOW HORSES hits all the things that are important to me – it’s pro girl, pro tolerance, pro diversity and PRO ART!

K.K.: The style and animation that we have seen so far is fantastic, and I think Stickgirl is perfectly positioned as the leading lady because she has the ability to be autobiographical yet universal through her simplicity and charm. Tell me more about how Ann Marie, Sandra and Stickgirl as creator, actress and avatar will bring the film’s protagonist Rosie Ming to life.

A.M.F.: It’s a big step for me. Stickgirl (who plays Rosie Ming) has been my avatar since the 80’s and she has always had my voice. So giving her to Sandra to play is an act of trust and respect. It’s like a Bunraku, really, there are three people bringing Rosie Ming to life… me, through my words and original character, Kevin Langdale through his drawings, and Sandra Oh through her voice.

K.K.: Something else I find compelling and relatable about WINDOW HORSES is that the narrative transcends specific cultures. For example, I don’t have personal ties to China, Canada or Iran, but as a multi-racial woman from the Caribbean – an intrinsically hybrid and culturally complex region – the protagonist Rosie Ming’s journey of discovery, exchange and understanding still resounds with me. Can you both share your thoughts about the cathartic effect a film like this could have across the world’s many cultures and diasporas?

A.M.F.: Omigod, Katherine. This is exactly what you are supposed to take from the story. In its specificity is its universality. This is a story that takes place in Iran, and is steeped in that culture, but is about everybody’s stories.

S.O.: My nieces are mixed race, and it’s very important to me that they see themselves represented in this society. It cannot be understated how important it is for people who do not see themselves reflected, either at all or negatively on a regular basis, to know that there is a place for them to exist, truthfully and in a whole, complex way.

A.M.F.: WINDOW HORSES speaks from the place of all people: immigrants, people who are of mixed heritage, people who know nothing about their culture, people who have never left their village and are deeply embedded in their histories. It’s about what we share, and how important it IS to share. It’s about listening to each other’s stories. In WINDOW HORSES, it is poetry that bridges those gaps between generations and cultures. It is the same moon in the Tang Dynasty poem Quiet Night Thought by Li Bai that we see when we look up at the sky and miss our own home.

K.K.: “Distances and differences keep us apart, and we forget to remind each other of our own stories.”

This is a line from the beautiful graphic memoir The Magical Life of Long Tack Sam, an epic, cross-cultural tale you unearthed about your great-grandfather. This statement stood out to me in relation to WINDOW HORSES because of the emphasis on hearing the stories of others, and using memories and experiences as cultural unifiers rather than dividers. The Indiegogo campaign offers forums for us to share our stories, poetry and music, creating a sense of community among those invested in the project. How has the public reaction been to this participatory approach?

A.M.F.: The most amazing thing about the Indiegogo campaign has been the response we have received from the public… all over the world. They say exactly what you say…that the story IS them, or the story TOUCHES them. And there have been people who just want to support us, who have been doing outreach in their communities, trying to spread the word, looking forward to the film. It’s amazing. Of course, we still are trying to raise more money, that’s the goal, but we’ve been rewarded in so many ways. There is another line fromThe Magical Life of Long Tack Sam which is continued in WINDOW HORSES: “history is relatives.” You know that it’s true.

Support the WINDOW HORSES campaign on Indiegogo here. Read the original post on the Akademie Schloss Solitude Blog.

Kara Springer’s Residency – First Blog Post

December 8, 2014May 21, 20151 Comment

One of Fresh Milk’s current resident artists, Toronto based industrial designer and visual artist Kara Springer, shares her first blog post about her time working in Barbados:

One week into our residency at Fresh Milk, and I’m already longing for more time here. It’s such a gift to have access to the beautiful Fresh Milk studio and library. Christian and I are exploring the island in my uncle’s car, scouting locations for my installation series, tentatively titled Repositioned Objects. Lately I’ve been thinking about my preoccupation with decay and erosion, which is in some way or another present in all of my work. It’s this very particular thing in the Caribbean – the way that structures can come apart, and literally crumble; the elements are always intimately and intensely present. I built the 6’x6′ cube below in a burned-out shop in Bridgetown this week. The shop is in the midst of being rebuilt so I had this brief window of time (24 hours) to build, photograph, and ultimately disassemble the piece. I was immediately drawn to the industrial quality of the space – carrying the traces of what it used to be and the questions of how it fell into disrepair, even in its current state of being prepped for re-construction.

Repositioned Objects Series. Photograph by Kara Springer.

In contrast, two weeks ago, just as the temperature dropped below freezing in Toronto, I installed the form below, which was originally inspired by a roti hut, in an industrial parking lot at Keele & St Clair. I had to trek into the store nearby every 10 minutes or so to thaw my hands as I put it together. This residency is affording me a really valuable space to think through what it means to be of and from many different places, and the translations that are negotiated in the in-between.

FRESH MILK XVII

December 4, 2014May 21, 2015Leave a comment

Join us on December 19th, 2014, from 6:30 to 8pm for FRESH MILK XVII. Visual artist Kara Springer and poet / critical writer Christian Campbell will speak about their residency experiences; Katherine Kennedy will share news about her recently completed three month Fellowship at Akadamie Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart, Germany while Natalie McGuire will join us by Skype to speak about TVE – a Transoceanic Visual Exchange between Barbados, Nigeria and New Zealand.

It’s the last Fresh Milk event for 2014. We’ll close out the year with a Pot Luck. Bring food, drink and good cheer!

This event is free and open to the public.

Visit https://freshmilkbarbados.com/about/ for directions to Fresh Milk

Kara Springer

Kara Springer

Kara Springer is an industrial designer and visual artist. Born in Bridgetown, Barbados, she currently lives and works between Toronto and Detroit. Her interdisciplinary practice explores the intersections of the body and industrial modes of production through sculpture, photography and designed objects. Kara completed an Hon.B.Sc. in Life Sciences from the University of Toronto concurrent to a B.Des. in Industrial Design from the Ontario College of Art & Design. She received her M.A. in New Media and Contemporary Technology from ENSCI Les Ateliers in Paris in 2007. Her work has been exhibited at the Frankfurt Museum of Applied Arts in Germany, the Politecnico di Torino in Italy, the Cultural Center of Belem in Portugal, and is currently included in the 2014 Jamaica Biennial.

Christian Campbell

Christian Campbell is a Trinidadian-Bahamian poet and cultural critic. His widely acclaimed first book, Running the Dusk (Peepal Tree Press, 2010), won the Aldeburgh First Collection Prize and was a finalist for the Forward Prize for the Best First Collection, among many other awards. Running the Dusk was also named one of the best books of 2010 by the Caribbean Review of Books,Horizon Review and Poetry International. In 2015 Running the Dusk will be translated into Spanish and published as Correr el Crepúsculo by Ediciones Santiago in Cuba. His poetry and essays have been published widely in journals and newspapers such as Callaloo, The Financial Times, The Guardian, Small Axe and Wasafiri. He studied at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar and currently teaches at the University of Toronto.

Katherine Kennedy

Katherine Kennedy (Born April 4, 1990, Barbados) graduated from Lancaster University, UK with a degree in Creative Arts (2008-2011) after winning a Barbados Government Scholarship for tertiary education. Her combined major of Fine Art and Creative Writing developed her interests in visual and literary pursuits. She has won awards for her artwork and writing in her home Barbados, and exhibited locally and internationally. She currently works as the Assistant to Director with both The Fresh Milk Art Platform, an artist-led initiative and residency programme, and ARC Magazine for contemporary Caribbean art. Her visual practice is heavily tied to a sense of place, and uses interplay between found organic and inorganic objects to assert cultural identity in different environments.

Katherine travelled to the Instituto Buena Bista (IBB), Curaçao in November 2012 to conduct ‘Creatives in Conversation’, a collaboration between the IBB and Fresh Milk. She received a full fellowship from the Reed Foundation for a residency at The Vermont Studio Center in May 2013. In September 2013, she took part in ‘fresh casa’, a short, intensive mentorship programme at Casa Tomada, São Paulo, Brazil.

Natalie McGuire

Photograph by Dondre Trotman

Natalie McGuire is a Barbadian Art Writer who has recently completed her MA at The University of Auckland, NZ, with a thesis deconstructing Caribbean diasporic representation in museums. She is on the board of the Fresh Milk Arts Platform in Barbados, the committee of the West Indian Society in Auckland, and has contributed to publications such as ARC Magazine and AICA Southern Caribbean. Recently she has given papers on Caribbean visual language in digital art mediums at the Small Axe Caribbean Digital Conference and Otago University’s Space Race and Bodies conference.

Fresh Milk welcomes International Resident Creatives from Toronto – Christian Campbell and Kara Springer

November 21, 2014Leave a comment

Past work by Kara Springer

FRESH MILK is happy to welcome Toronto based poet and cultural critic Christian Campbell and industrial designer and visual artist Kara Springer to our International Residency Programme between December 1st – 19th, 2014. While in residence, Christian, a Trinidadian-Bahamian, will be working on poems for a new manuscript and on essays. In addition he will be offering two “creative critical writing” workshops to Barbadian writers as a way to open up exciting and rigorous new ways of talking about writing and expressive cultures. Christian’s “Critical creative writing” workshops will be held on Saturday December 6th and 13th at Fresh Milk.

Of Bajan and Jamaican heritage, Kara was born in Barbados, and raised in Southern Ontario, Canada. This residency will provide her with a first opportunity to develop her art practice in her native island, Barbados. Kara will work on a series of temporal sculptural installations in the natural landscape – a continuation of a series begun in Nassau earlier this year. Her minimalist structural installations exist in the natural landscape and establish a dialogue that challenges standard ideas of minimalism as an aesthetic and a practice.

Stay tuned for more information including more on Fresh Milk’s final public event for the year which will take place on Friday December 19th from 6.30-8.30pm where Christian will read from his writing, Kara will share work produced on the residency and we’ll kick off the season with cheer!

Read more about the residents and their practices below.

About Christian Campbell

About Kara Springer

»Redefining Practice« Reflections with Maj Hasager

November 18, 2014Leave a comment

During her ongoing residency at Akademie Schloss Solitude, Katherine Kennedy – current fellow in the ResSupport programme supported by Res Artis, representing the Fresh Milk Art Platform at the Akademie – had a conversation with Danish artist and Solitude fellow Maj Hasager reflecting on integrated & socially aware ways of looking at artistic practice. Read the article, originally published on the Akademie Schloss Solitude Blog, below:

Maj’s studio at Akademie Schloss Solitude.

When we speak about art, we often use the word »practice« as a multipurpose term to cover the thinking, the making, the product…all the processes that build towards something such as an exhibition or a clearly defined project. But what about the moments that occur in between, not necessarily linked to a finished piece? Where do ‘non artistic’ tasks fall in the realm of this all encompassing »practice«, and how do our actions influence or become part of our artistic work? These questions led to a discussion between Katherine Kennedy and Maj Hasager, both fellows at Akademie Schloss Solitude. Read more about their talk below:

I began my exchange with Maj by introducing the Fresh Milk Art Platform, a Barbadian cultural arts centre and residency programme, and ARC Magazine of contemporary Caribbean art, the two spaces I work for; speaking about these organizations has become almost second nature to me.

It was when Maj asked about my own art »practice« that I suddenly felt unsure…I wondered, as I showed her my artist website, is this reaction backwards? The balance between making work and my other roles is something I continue to struggle with, and there are a number of doubts that arise when I confront it; am I still an artist? Will I produce work again? Have I given up my »practice«? I’m not unique in these crises…these are common questions faced by many artists whose lives teeter between other jobs and responsibilities.

Maj’s studio at Akademie Schloss Solitude.

Maj and I spoke about these anxieties, which had interesting associations to the MA programme she leads at Malmö Art Academy, Sweden, called Critical & Pedagogical Studies. This degree crosses the supposed boundaries between art, theory and pedagogy, framing relationships between production, teaching, administration and curatorship as »integrated practice« rather than distinct disciplines. While the stretch between one actual creation to the next may be long, that doesn’t negate the importance of what happens in those gaps, or the larger impact of knowledge transfer to personal and public creative growth.

I could already see how the importance of circulating information and operating in intermediary ways was applicable to the work of Fresh Milk and ARC; the foundations we are trying to lay for contemporary art in the Caribbean can very much be read as »social practice«, and affect the wider context I work within, along with my individual outlook. We spoke about whether there was a chance to marry this social »practice« with my visual one; the interconnectivity of art and life means that things are rarely as separate or stagnant as they may seem, and dormant seeds of production may just need the opportunity to flourish. We were both in agreement that Solitude can be considered fertile soil, with the freedom afforded to map out and nourish these connections.

Maj Hasager, Decembers – performing a past, 2013. Courtesy of the artist.

Maj’s personal »practice« also exemplifies hybridity. In addition to her academic pursuits, she negotiates delineations between history/lived reality; archive/interpretation; geopolitical North/South; utopia/dystopia. She took me through some of her multimedia work, which is heavily driven by communities and their geographical and socio-political positions in the environments they inhabit. Displacement is a common theme in her »practice«; she has conducted socially charged projects where she speaks and works with immigrant or underrepresented populations, such as the Filipino community in Italy, or documenting the perspective of Polish women during the solidarity movements of the 70s and 80s. The space she explores is a limbo of sorts; neither dwelling explicitly on the past nor idolizing the future, but the somehow honing in on the forgotten present, and how these communities function – or »practice« – in daily life, which inherently retains the weight of history and the possibility of tomorrow.

Relational »practice« is the core of her work, taking into account and being organically informed the multiple cultures she encounters. The drastically different points of view between herself and the societies she engages are not lost on her; she acknowledges that she is coming from a position of privilege, and does not try to overshadow the voice of the community. As a citizen of an island that is often defined from the outside rather than within, I appreciated this concession, and the genuine interest Maj takes in authenticity when treading this fine, complex line. For example, in her work Decembers – performing a past, 2013 there is no translation from Polish of the exchange between women of a certain generation sharing their stories – this is not done to exclude viewers, but to allow them to enter the moment and feel the dynamic without being distracted by divisive constructs such as language:

Spilled in the language’s veins
A militant regards
When will words be
A tool for something other

– Thom Donovan

Film still: Contemporary dancer Maria Concetta Borgese in ‘Bifurcating Futures’, directed by Maj Hasager.

This excerpt is taken from a poem by American poet Thom Donovan, whose work Maj used in a recent project that she directed and was editing while at Solitude. A departure from the usual way in which she works, the piece titled Bifurcating Futures is more abstract; it features a performance by a contemporary dancer interspersed with moving shots of an empty city and stanzas from Donovan’s poem, all overlaid with a haunting track of urban sounds, warped into a futuristic, ominous refrain that echoes the dystopic landscape. The dancer, deliberately chosen for the experience and maturity her body brought to the role, performs a series of gestures in the space, always inaudible but never truly silent. The piece straddles new media and documentary filmmaking, challenging Maj’s usual »practice«, but still referencing themes such as feminism, futurism and creating a platform for the unheard.

What remained with me after our meeting is that we have the artistic license to define »practice« as we see fit; we can use residencies as creative incubators for our work, but »practice« comes from lived experience. Even if not specifically deemed »social practice«, it still absorbs our thoughts, actions and interactions with others, and in the end, cannot be predicted, relegated or compartmentalized – only manifested, one way or another, in the direction we channel it.

Read the original article on the Akademie Schloss Solitude Blog here.