Artist talk: Emily Pelstring
Date: August 26th 7:00 – 8:00pm
Location: 1411 Dufferin St. Unit B
FREE!!
Please join us on August 26th 7:00 – 8:00pm at TAIS for an in person artist talk with Emily Pelstring, a 2022-23 TAIS Artist in Residence!
Light refreshments will be served.
*please come prepared to wear a mask. TAIS still requires indoor masking at this time.
Emily Pelstring
Bio: Emily Pelstring is an artist and filmmaker, and is faculty in the Department of Film and Media at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. Emily’s artistic research often brings antique media into contact with contemporary images, exploring the evolution and cultural perception of various media forms, the material contingency of the cinematic spectacle, and the intersections of science and magic. These inquiries have been supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Ontario Arts Council, and the results have been exhibited internationally in museums, galleries, DIY spaces, and festivals. She has directed many music videos and short experimental films, specializing in animation techniques for 16mm film and analog video. In addition to her solo work, Emily is engaged in ongoing artistic collaborations with Jessica Mensch and Katherine Kline, her “sister-crones” in the performance trio The Powers, and was a core organizer of The Witch Institute, an international symposium discussing media representations of the witch.
@_em_bo_
www.emilypelstring.com
Description of the work: Spirit of the Hedge
This residency will support the production of a short film which interprets themes emerging from the etymological roots of the term “hag”. Stemming from the Old High German hagezussa, this term has complex and contested linguistic roots that can be loosely translated as either “the spirit of the hedge” or “hedge-rider”, and suggest a cultural figure who sits at the boundary between the tamed garden and the wild, or resides at the edge of the village. The film takes interest in the variety of meanings and images behind the hag, and will attempt to capture the imagined perspective, in a fever-dream barrage of imagery, of this liminal figure as she traverses histories and locations. This project proposes the hag as a figure who challenges humanity’s sense of separation from nature, who begs us to question the ethical implications of this false divide. The production process will investigate some of the tensions at her threshold, making a link between herbalist witchcraft and technological imaging, creating moving images that are “animated” on multiple levels: by the human hand in drawing; by the computer; by the cinematic apparatus; by the interaction between chemicals on the surface of the film strip.
The film is a companion piece for an installation project entitled The Passion of the Hedge-Rider, to be exhibited at the Kitchener Waterloo Art Gallery in September 2022- January 2023.
These projects are funded by the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council.