Articles tagged with: centre for studies in arts and culture

  • Small Walker Press launches publications exploring music, choreography

    Wednesday, May 05, 2021 | By

    The Small Walker Press choreographed poem and Improvising Places / Improvising Time book covers

    Image caption: The Small Walker Press has announced two new spring publications: Arc, a choreographed poem and Improvising Places / Improvising Time.

    Originally published in The Brock News on TUESDAY, MAY 04, 2021 | by 

    The Small Walker Press (SWP) is announcing two new spring publications with an online book launch page.

    With in-person book launches still on hold due to public health restrictions, the innovative publishing house within Brock’s Centre for Studies in Arts and Culture at the Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts (MIWSFPA) opted for a virtual celebration.

    The online launch page features two new books: Arc, a choreographed poem written by Paul Savoie with accompanying choreography by Mélanie Mesager, and Improvising Places / Improvising Time with music notation by Devon Fornelli, creative writing by Thomas Ayouti and essays by Derek Knight and Matthew Royal. Graphic design for both publications was done by Bernhard Cella.

    The concept for the books, “music and choreography,” was outlined by Small Walker Press editors Catherine Parayre, Associate Professor and Director of the Centre for Studies in Arts and Culture, and Derek Knight, Associate Professor of Visual Arts. The creative texts were inspired by these themes, drawing on inspiration from participating artists incorporating dance, music and creative writing.

    The book launch page features excerpts from the publications as well as notes from both SWP editors.

    To learn more about The Small Walker Press, please visit the website.

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    Categories: Alumni, Announcements, Current Students, Department/Centre News, Events, Faculty & Instructors, Future Students, In the Media, Media Releases, News, Uncategorised, Walker Cultural Leader Series

  • Art residency “A River Rises” now on view

    Friday, January 15, 2021 | By

    Exterior of the historic Brown Homestead in St. Catharines

    Caption: Brown Homestead (Photo by Shawn Serfas)

    STAC’s Research Centre in Interdisciplinary Arts and Creative Culture presents “A River Rises,” a collective investigation of a creative-writing piece, resulting in the creation of photography work, a recorded performance, an inverted sculpture, an experimental book, and more fiction writing. The project also documents the Brown Homestead, in close proximity of Short Hills Provincial Park and the oldest building in St. Catharines.

    View A River Rises here.

    To learn more about the Centre for Studies in Arts and Culture, please visit the STAC website.

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    Categories: Alumni, Announcements, Current Students, Department/Centre News, Events, Faculty & Instructors, Future Students, News, Uncategorised

  • STAC’s journal ti< listed on Mir@bel

    Monday, December 21, 2020 | By

    ti

    STAC’s online, free-access journal ti< A JOURNAL OF TEXT-AND-IMAGE CRITICISM/CREATION – UN JOURNAL DE CRITIQUE/CREATION TEXTE-ET-IMAGE publishes creative work by students, their instructors, as well as by artists and writers whose work combines literature and the visual arts.

    All languages are welcome, including endangered languages. No translation is needed.

    ti< has recently been included in the Mir@bel database, an initiative by top higher-education institutions in France and Europe, such as Sciences Po and ENA.

    To submit work, please consult the website of the journal: https://journals.library.brocku.ca/index.php/ti/index

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    Categories: Alumni, Announcements, Current Students, Department/Centre News, Faculty & Instructors, Future Students, In the Media, Media Releases, News, Uncategorised

  • Donna Szőke presents ‘On Invisibility’, January 21 at the MIWSFPA

    Thursday, January 16, 2020 | By

    Donna Szőke The Dark Redacted book cover

    On 21 January, the Centre for Studies in Arts and Culture welcomes artist Donna Szőke, Chair of the Department of Visual Arts and a member of the recently created Research Centre in Interdisciplinary Arts and Creative Culture, as a Walker Cultural leader for 2020.

    Szőke will present an artists’ talk “On Invisibility” at 7:00 pm at the Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts of Brock University (MIWSFPA). This is a free community event and everyone is welcome to attend.

    Invisibility is this year’s theme at The Small Walker Press, a small press valuing interdisciplinary cooperation and the exploration of image and text, homed in the Centre for Studies in Arts and Culture (STAC) at the MIWSFPA.

    Szőke creates expanded animation, media art, video, drawing, and collaborations. She investigates immanence, embodied perception, and the fluidity of lived experience.

    In her artist’s talk, she will present her work and her current book project The Dark Redacted in cooperation with author Gary Barwin, to be published in April 2020 by the Small Walker Press.

    In an excerpt from the forthcoming volume, editors Catherine Parayre and Derek Knight write:

    Donna Szőke thoughtfully investigates the fluidity of meaning and presence. Rather than elucidating a concept or an experience, she proposes a semi-abstract perusal of collective or intimate issues. Offering a reflection on the evocative instability of the biographical and the personal, and opting for an approach close to autofiction, her work constellates subtle possibilities and its scope defies the limitations of certainty. The artist is a compelling storyteller for whom the quest for meaning and the vagrancies of that search are more significant than plain facts. For The Dark Redacted Szőke proposes traces of a fragile story and never-faltering endurance. Her sequence of images alternates beautifully detailed natural life – a buffalo, intricate vegetation – and minimally sketched-out human presence and personal objects. As a result, her work addresses the viewers’ intuition and sensitivity to the environment.

    The event is presented by the Centre for Studies in Arts and Culture for the Walker Cultural Leader Series, generously founded by Marilyn I. Walker. The Walker Cultural Leader series brings leading artists, performers, practitioners and academics to the Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts at Brock University. Engaging, lively and erudite, these sessions celebrate professional achievement, artistic endeavour and the indelible role of culture in our society.

    Join us on January 21, 2020 at 7-8:30 pm.  The presentation takes place in the Art & Val Fleming Smart Classroom (MWS 156), located on the lower level of the MIWSFPA.  Limited parking is available at the MIWSFPA, with additional parking nearby at the Garden Park/Carlisle Street Parking garage and adjacent lots.

    Centre for Studies in Arts and Culture: Walker Cultural Leader Artist’s talk
    ‘On Invisibility’, with Donna Szőke
    21 January 2020, 7-8:30 pm, MWS 156

    download the poster

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    Categories: Announcements, Department/Centre News, Events, Faculty & Instructors, In the Media, Media Releases, News, Uncategorised, Walker Cultural Leader Series

  • Fundraising campaign launched for Brock Humanities grad impacted by shocking tragedy

    Friday, August 09, 2019 | By

    Carla Chambers Jeffreys (BA ’16, MA ’19)

    A recent Brock University master’s graduate was moving her family from Vancouver to St. Catharines this week when tragedy struck.

    Carla Chambers Jeffreys (BA ’16, MA ’19), was travelling in an SUV near Oyen, Alberta with her husband and three children when it was involved in a collision with two transport trucks on Wednesday, Aug. 7.

    Tragically, the couple’s 11-year-old son was killed in the collision. The other two children suffered serious injuries and were taken to Alberta Children’s Hospital, where they remain. Carla Chambers remains in a Calgary hospital with serious injuries.

    A GoFundMe campaign has been launched by a family friend, and in the first 24 hours it raised nearly $30,000.

    After completing her bachelor’s degree at Brock in 2016 in Studies in Arts and Culture, Chambers graduated at Spring Convocation in June with a Master of Arts in Studies in Comparative Literatures and Arts.

    A trained opera singer, Chambers has been an example of student success in the Faculty of Humanities and, specifically, at the Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts.

    “With her opera-trained voice and her master’s-level scholarship, Carla was a soaring spirit of trans-disciplinary and creative inquiry and performance during her time at the MIWSFPA,” said Director David Vivian. “She launched remarkable new initiatives of community engagement for her colleague students and faculty.”

    David Fancy, who was Chambers’ thesis supervisor for her recently completed master’s said, “the community is reeling at the very difficult news of the loss of one of Carla’s children, and of her grave injuries and those of the rest of her family.

    “As an artist and scholar, Carla’s extensive qualities of insight, persistence, passion and generosity will certainly help sustain her during this exceptionally difficult time. All our thoughts are with Carla and her family now,” said Fancy.

    Catherine Parayre, Director of the Centre for Studies in Arts and Culture ​and of the graduate program in Studies in Comparative Literatures and Arts said Chambers is known for her “enthusiasm, her commitment and the brilliance she brought to both programs.”

    “Our thoughts are with her and her family. We grieve the cruel loss of her child and hope with all our hearts that she, her companion and her two other children will recover,” she said.

    Anyone interested in donating to the family can find the GoFundMe campaign at gofundme.com/f/k7uj84-support 

    (Source: The Brock News, Friday, August 9, 2019 | by Dan Dakin)

    See these articles:

    Friends rally around family whose child was killed after SUV struck by tractor-trailer

    COMMUNITY DONATES MORE THAN $57,000 AFTER FAMILY TRAGEDY

    Boy, 11, dies in crash as family was heading to Niagara to start a new life

    Boy, 11, dies in crash as family was heading to Niagara to start a new life

     

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    Categories: Alumni, Department/Centre News, In the Media, News, Uncategorised

  • Book publishing division launched by Brock’s Centre for Studies in Arts and Culture

    Monday, May 06, 2019 | By

    Inland and The Quarry, Small Walker Press book covers

    Brock’s Centre for Studies in Arts and Culture is launching two new books, Inland and The Quarry, through the new Small Walker Press.

    Brock’s Centre for Studies in Arts and Culture (STAC) has partnered with The Salon für Kunstbuch in Austria to launch an international book publishing division.

    The new Small Walker Press will celebrate the publication of its first two books at an official launch event on Thursday, May 9 from 4:30 to 7:30 p.m. The event will take place in the main lobby of the Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts (MIWSFPA) at 15 Artists’ Common in downtown St. Catharines.

    This year’s books were published under the theme of environmental degradation and include Inland, by Associate Professor of Visual Arts Shawn Serfas with creative writing by Atlanta-based New York Times journalist Richard Fausset and an essay by Associate Professor of Visual Arts Derek Knight, and The Quarry, by Associate Professor Adam Dickinson and artist Lorène Bourgeois.

    Noelle Allen, Publisher for Hamilton-based literary press Wolsak and Wynn, will be the guest speaker for the event.

    The launch is free and all are encouraged to attend.

    “The University is the ideal place to promote book culture,” said STAC Director Catherine Parayre. “Working with different authors and artists to bring about the completion of a book project is a fully interdisciplinary challenge that is rewarding intellectually, but also a wonderful opportunity to work with expert graphic designers.”

    Headed by STAC, the Small Walker Press addresses the research and creative interests of faculty members at Brock’s MIWSFPA and engages with authors, artists and academics alike to produce small, innovative publications.

    Funded by the generous support of the Walker Cultural Leader Series and the late Marilyn I. Walker, the press publishes collaborative work that brings together authors and artists from the Niagara region, as well as those across Canada and internationally.

    Parayre and Knight serve as its editors; Bernhard Cella, from The Salon für Kunstbuch in Vienna, Austria, is the press’s book designer.

    Inland provides two distinct reflections on pollution and the consequences of human intervention on natural resources. It features work created by Serfas for his 2016 exhibition Inland, curated by Stuart Reid at Rodman Hall Art Centre, and creative writing by Fausset, whose work includes extensive coverage of the devastating environmental and socio-economic impacts of Hurricane Katrina.

    The Quarry offers a reflection on a walk that Dickinson and Bourgeois embarked upon through the Glenridge Quarry Naturalization Site on the Niagara Escarpment in 2018. Dickinson contributes a poem for the book, which is accompanied by drawings by Bourgeois.

    “We are very much looking forward to sharing these books with the public at the launch on May 9,” Parayre said.

    The Small Walker Press is predicated on, and values, interdisciplinary co-operation, the exploration of image and text, and seeks to contribute to and participate in the promotion of book culture.

    Publications will include exhibition catalogues, artist’s books, chapbooks, short essay format and creative writing as well as online art folios or editions, and recorded sound work or interviews.

    Publications may be in English, French or other languages and books will be available for purchase at the launch.

    They will also be available at Rodman Hall Art Centre, the Brock Campus Store, and The Salon für Kunstbuch in Vienna, Austria.

    Learn more about the Small Walker Press by visiting the STAC website.

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    Categories: Announcements, Department/Centre News, Events, Faculty & Instructors, In the Media, News

  • Brock University ready to welcome thousands to annual Open House

    Wednesday, April 03, 2019 | By

    Students at Brock University open house booth

    Alexandra McDermid, Brock Student Life and Community Experience Events Assistant, shares details of summer orientation programs with visitors during the 2018 Spring Open House.

    (From The Brock News, Monday, April 1, 2019 | By: )

    With early signs indicating Brock continues to rise as a top choice for high school graduates, campus is expected be buzzing for the University’s annual Spring Open House this weekend.

    The entire Brock community will join together to welcome thousands of potential undergraduate and graduate students and their families Sunday, April 7.

    Running from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., Open House aims to give visitors a taste of all that Brock has to offer. In addition to a comprehensive information fair, prospective students will have the chance to tour campus, meet students, senior administrators, faculty and staff, attend presentations related to programs of interest, learn about student services and research opportunities, and even take in a first-year lecture.

    Tours of residences, research labs, athletic facilities and the Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts downtown will also be available, and welcome sessions will be introduced to help visitors make the most of their time on campus.

    “The day will be action-packed, allowing for a ‘choose your own adventure’ style experience that meets students’ personal interests and passions,” said Beth Natale, Director, Recruitment for Brock University. “Open House is one of the best ways to solidify that Brock is the right choice for your future. It allows you to try us on for size and learn how you can shape your Brock experience to fit your own priorities and goals for your future.”

    One of the most important days on the recruitment calendar, Spring Open House comes on the heels of promising early signs for the University’s fall enrolment.

    Last September, Brock welcomed a record number of students to campus, taking enrolment past 19,000 for the first time. Recent figures compiled by the Ontario Universities’ Application Centre (OUAC) indicate that trend may continue, with an increasing number of students shortlisting Brock as their possible destination for 2019-20:

    • Ontario high school students who put Brock in their Top 3 universities are up nearly 12 per cent over a year ago.
    • Those listing Brock as their No. 1 pick shot up more than 15 per cent.
    • In Brock’s home communities, applications from students across Niagara region are up nearly 10 per cent.
    • Globally, Brock has nearly 4,000 applications from international students, up 22.5 per cent over the same time last year. (This number reflects both students applying from overseas, as well as international students currently studying in Ontario high schools.)

    It will be a few months before universities know where students ultimately register, but the strong numbers combined with early interest in Brock’s Open House are promising.

    “We are seeing indicator after indicator that shows Brock is definitely in demand,” Natale said. “Our reputation as a career starter and place of interest for students is gaining serious momentum.”

    Online registration and a full schedule for Spring Open House can be found at discover.brocku.ca/openhouse/

    What: Brock University Spring Open House
    When: Sunday, April 7 from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.
    Where: Information fair to begin in Ian Beddis Gymnasium on Brock’s main campus

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    Categories: Announcements, Future Students, News

  • New art exhibition the product of student collaboration

    Thursday, March 28, 2019 | By

    Quality Family Time artwork by Emily Andrews 50's looking family laying on floor child has cat face

    Quality Family Time (and Space), a piece by Brock alumna Emily Andrews (BA ’11), is part of the new Erasures exhibit that will run from April 2 to 27 in the VISA Art Gallery and Student Exhibition Space at the Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts. An opening reception is set for Thursday, April 4 from 5 to 8 p.m.

    (From The Brock News, March 27, 2019 | By: Jaquelyn Bezaire)

    While they’re known for correcting errors, erasures are signs of progress and an expanding imagination.

    Students in Brock’s Visual Arts (VISA) and Studies in Arts and Culture (STAC) programs will explore this theme in a new collaborative art exhibit on view from Tuesday, April 2 to Saturday, April 27.

    The exhibit, Erasures, will be open to the public in the VISA Art Gallery and Student Exhibition Space at the Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts (MIWSFPA) in downtown St. Catharines.

    An opening reception will be held in the gallery on Thursday, April 4, from 5 to 8 p.m.

    Led by Shawn Serfas, Associate Professor of Visual Arts, and Catherine Parayre, Director of the Centre for Studies in Arts and Culture, students enrolled in VISA 4P03/4P04 and STAC 3P01 worked together to create a show that features paintings and text that thematize different types of erasures.

    The work ranges from the exploration of scenes lacking important elements, simplified adaptations of existing artworks and abstracted forms of figurative objects.

    Short written statements commenting on well-known recent artworks accompany the paintings to provide further context.

    Serfas and Parayre frequently bring students from different backgrounds together to collaborate on creative endeavours.

    “It has been an enriching learning experience, for both the students and the instructors,” Parayre said of working with the students on Erasures.

    The exhibition evokes transformations and process, an important theme in both Serfas’ senior studio courses and Parayre’s Media Transformations in the Creative Arts course.

    Whether in visual expressions or in texts, Parayre added, erasures are invitations to scrutinize, read and interpret, which is exactly what the public is encouraged to do at the upcoming exhibition.

    Erasures runs from April 2 to 27 in the VISA Art Gallery and Student Exhibition Space at the MIWSFPA in downtown St. Catharines. The gallery is open to the public Tuesdays to Saturdays from 1 to 5 p.m.

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    Categories: Current Students, Events, News

  • Canadian poet Adam Dickinson to reflect on human impact to our environment in upcoming Author Talk March 18

    Friday, March 15, 2019 | By

    (From The Brock News, March 15, 2019 | By: Sarah Ackles)

    Join Brock Associate Professor Adam Dickinson as he uses poetry to explore the dramatic impact humans have made on Earth’s climate, geology and biological makeup.

    Presented by the Centre for Studies in Arts and Culture (STAC), Dickinson’s talk will be the next presentation in the Walker Cultural Leaders Series. It will take place on Monday, March 18, from 8 to 9 p.m., in room 211 of the Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts (MIWSFPA).

    “Writing in the Anthropocene: Poetics and the Environment” will focus on the intersections between poetry and science as a way of exploring new ecocritical perspectives and alternative modes of poetic composition.

    Catherine Parayre, Director of STAC, said Dickinson is a fitting artist to welcome to the Walker Cultural Leaders Series this year because of his involvement with the Centre’s new Small Walker Press.

    Officially launching this spring, the press publishes books by artists and authors working together on a given theme.

    “The Small Walker Press is publishing works on the theme of environmental degradation this year, and Adam Dickinson’s work perfectly aligns with it,” explained Parayre. “He was inspired to write his contribution to the press after a walk he took with artist Lorène Bourgeois at Glenridge Quarry in the Fall of 2018.”

    Dickinson is an award-winning poet whose work has been featured at prominent international literary festivals such as Poetry International in Rotterdam, The Harbourfront International Festival of Authors in Toronto, and the Oslo International Poetry Festival in Norway.

    He is perhaps best known for his work The Polymers (2013), which was a shortlisted finalist for the Governor General’s Award for English-language poetry at the 2013 Governor General’s Awards, the 2014 ReLit Award for Poetry and for the 2014 Trillium Book Award.

    He is also the author of Cartography and Walking (2002), Kingdom, Phylum (2006) and Anatomic (2018).

    His poem “My Fear of Being Eaten” will appear alongside art by Lorène Bourgeois in the forthcoming Quarry, to be published by The Small Walker Press later this year.

    His upcoming author’s talk is free and open to the public. No registration is required.

    For more information, please contact Catherine Parayre at cparayre@brocku.ca

    Generously funded by Marilyn I. Walker, the Walker Cultural Leader series brings leading artists, performers, practitioners and academics to the Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts at Brock University. Engaging, lively and erudite, these sessions celebrate professional achievement, artistic endeavour and the indelible role of culture in our society.

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    Categories: Announcements, Events, News, Walker Cultural Leader Series

  • First-year orientation activities for DART, Music, VISA, and STAC students

    Friday, August 24, 2018 | By

    Group of students hanging out in Marilyn I. Walker hallway

    Welcome to the Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts (MIWSFPA)!

    As a new student with the school, you are invited to The New Student Welcome and Academic Orientation as your official welcome to Brock University on September 4! The orientation begins at 8 a.m. in the Ian Beddis Gym, where you’ll hear from President Gervan Fearon and enjoy an inspirational keynote to begin your day and kick-start your term. Afterwards, you are welcome to connect with your faculty and upper year student mentors to receive important information about academic supports and resources. Then, go check out the vendor and welcome fair, take a campus tour and to locate your classes, and get an orientation to the Brock Library. * Don’t forget to register for this orientation at Experience BU.

    As a student in Dramatic Arts, Music, Visual Arts or the Centre for Studies in Arts and Culture, you are invited to then attend the Faculty of Humanities orientation session, beginning at 10:00 a.m. in the Sean O’Sullivan Theatre on Brock’s main campus.

     

    First-year MIWSFPA mixer and lunch

    September 4

    12 to 1:30 p.m.

    MIWSFPA lobby

    Downtown St. Catharines

    15 Artists’ Common

     

     

    There are also several department-specific orientation events that you are encouraged to attend!

    Centre for Studies in Arts and Culture

    Sept. 4:   2 to 6 p.m.
    Marilyn I Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts Room 334
    15 Artists’ Common

    Visual Arts

    Sept. 7:  3 to 4 p.m.
    Marilyn I Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts Lobby
    15 Artists’ Common
    *This will be followed by an opening of Murray Kropf’s new exhibit, Three to Eight at 4 p.m. in the VISA Gallery

    Dramatic Arts

    Sept 24: 6 to 8 p.m.
    MIWSFPA Theatre
    15 Artists’ Common

    Music

    September 11: 12 -12:50 p.m.
    Cairns Recital Hall.
    For all Music majors, single or combined.  

     

     

     

     

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    Categories: Announcements, Current Students, Department/Centre News, Events, Faculty & Instructors, News, Uncategorised

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