Watch and Work is a series of films and documentaries you can watch while artist Xstine Cook works on her Hub residency. Be welcome to bring along a project of your own. Please use the Eventbrite link to register.
Event 6: Monday September 11
9pm: Watch and Work: Free screening of Naqoyqatsi Godfrey Reggio’s 2002 film Life as War.
Drop in and watch Naqoyqatsi, also known as Naqoyqatsi: Life as War. This 2002 American non-narrative film directed by Godfrey Reggio and the sequel to Reggio’s experimental 1982 film, Koyaanisqatsi and 1988’s Powaqqatsi. Naqoyqasti is the third and final film in the Qatsi trilogy.
Naqoyqatsi is a Hopi word (written as naqö̀yqatsi in Hopi orthography) meaning “life as war.” In the film’s closing credits, Naqoyqatsi is also translated as “civilized violence” and “a life of killing each other”. A visual montage portrait of our contemporary world dominated by globalized technology and violence.
While Koyaanisqatsi and Powaqqatsi examine modern life in industrial countries and the conflict between encroaching industrialization and traditional ways of life, using slow motion and time-lapse footage of cities and natural landscapes, about eighty percent of Naqoyqatsi uses archive footage and stock images manipulated and processed digitally on non-linear editing (non-sequential) workstations and intercut with specially-produced computer-generated imagery to demonstrate society’s transition from a natural environment to a technology-based one. Reggio described the process as “virtual cinema.”
According to Reggio, the film has no screenplay per se, but three movements (like those of a symphony) with different themes:[5]
1. Numerica.com: Language and place gives way to numerical code and virtual reality.
2. Circus maximus: Competition, winning, records, fame, “fair play” and the love of money are elevated to the prime values of life. Life becomes a game.
3. Rocketship twentieth century: A world that language can no longer describe. The resulting explosive tempo of technology is war and civilized violence.
Release date: October 18, 2002
Director: Godfrey Reggio
Music composed by: Philip Glass
Sequel: Naqoyqatsi, Powaqqatsi
Cinematography: Russell Lee Fine
Naqoyqatsi will play as part of Xstine Cook’s Artist in Residency This is Not My Culture at cSPACE Eau Claire Neighbourhood Hub. Cook will be working on her art during the screening, and attendees are welcome to bring along a project they want to work on while watching and listening to the talk.
Free screening of this movie is presented as part of Xstine Cook’s This is Not My Culture artist residency at cSPACE Eau Claire Neighbourhood Hub. Xstine will be modifying and altering reclaimed commercial plastic packaging material into an artistic creation during the month of September.
The cSPACE Eau Claire Hub Artist in Residence program is supported by cSPACE Projects and The City of Calgary.
*Note that capacity is extremely limited.* If you sign up, please attend, or cancel your reservation so that others may.
Please consider a donation to Nature Conservancy of Canada
Please sign up on Eventbrite.
