cSPACE Projects

This is Not My Culture – Open Studio with Xtine Cook
2023-09-28 10:00 - 14:00 UTC | cSPACE Eau Claire Neighbourhood Hub, 381 2 Avenue Southwest, Calgary, AB, T2P 0C5, Canada
Drop in and observe the Xtine Cook, founder of the Calgary Animated Objects Society, transform reclaimed consumer plastic into a mask.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Xtine Cook is a Catalyst of creativity and founder of Calgary Animated Objects Society (CAOS). CAOS blends art and technology to bring imagination to life through captivating animated experiences. Enriching the arts, one animation at a time.

This is Not My Culture – Open Studio
2023-09-28 11:00 - 14:00
This is Not My Culture – Open Studio
cSPACE Neighbourhood Hub
Artist Xstine Cook invites you to contemplate the creative potential of plastic as she transforms diverted packaging material into a full body mask creature.
By touching, manipulating, and re-purposing plastic that was intended for a single use before being thrown to Earth to process over unknown millennia, This is Not My Culture invites you to view this miraculous material not as waste, but as an extraordinary resource. The globe’s frantic pace of plastic generation is at the crux of the fraught relationship between humans’ minds and hearts; our addiction to convenience, vs the interconnectedness of all life.
The packaging materials for this residency were generated by Cook’s family’s normal consumption over the course of a year, and will be prepared on site in the Hub, where the mask will be imagined, designed, created and exhibited. Viewers will observe the repetitive, meticulous process of creation, and the slow reveal of the creature.
Open Studio
Whenever the artist is working, the space will be open. See schedule for confirmed times, or drop by to see what’s going on.
Note: Space will be closed: September 14-18
Events and Happenings
Check out several community events happening as part of This is Not My Culture, including Make-Your-Own Mask sessions, Mapperz Bring Your Own HDMI Vol II projection mapping event, Work and Watch movie nights, Cabaret Jam puppet meet up, a screening of the Bum Family’s film Pollution Solution, a special National Day of Truth and Reconciliation screening of Gitz Crazyboy’s Peace Pipeline, and an exhibition of This is Not My Culture creations.
*Some events request registration via Eventbrite.
*Photo credit: Sean Dennie

This is Not My Culture – Public Exhibition
2023-09-28 17:00 - 21:00
An exhibition of the masks created from recylcled plastics during Xtine Cook’s This is Not My Culture residency.

This is Not My Culture – Public Exhibition
2023-09-28 17:00 - 21:00, 2023-09-29 17:00 - 21:00, 2023-10-01 13:00 - 16:00
Artist Xstine Cook invites you to view the results of her month-long residency and contemplate the creative potential of plastic.
Reception at 7 pm on September 28
The packaging materials for this residency were generated by Cook’s family’s normal consumption over the course of a year, and were prepared on site in the Hub, where the art was imagined, designed, and created.
By touching, manipulating, and re-purposing plastic that was intended for a single use before being thrown to Earth to process over unknown millennia, “This is Not My Culture” invites you to view this miraculous material not as waste, but as an extraordinary resource. This is Not My Culture contemplates the globe’s frantic pace of plastic generation that is at the crux of the fraught relationship between humans’ minds and hearts; our addiction to convenience, vs the interconnectedness of all life.

ABOUT XSTINE COOK
A cultural activist who uses the power of storytelling to bring unconventional stories and art forms to light, Xstine Cook operates on the core belief that all humans are art makers, and acts of radical creativity are necessary to evolve our understanding of ourselves, each other and our world.
Xstine is a visitor to the Treaty 7 area, who was raised in Calgary and in the foothills of Alberta along Dog Pound Creek. Cook is a mask maker and multi-disciplinarian. She trained at Dell’Arte theatre school in Humboldt County California, and with various masters in Indonesia, Italy, France, and the West Coast of Canada.
Xstine co-founded Green Fools Theatre where she wrote, directed, and designed many of the company’s boundary-stretching original works until she left in 2003 to start the Festival of Animated Objects, and CAOS, an interdisciplinary arts company.
Xstine is the recipient of the 2022 City of Calgary Award for Community Achievement in the Arts, the Queen Elizabeth II’s Platinum Jubilee Medal, the Rozsa Foundation’s Innovation Award, and countless awards for her filmmaking.
Cook recently co-wrote and produced MONSTR, an animated short by Tank Standing Buffalo for HBO Max Warner Brothers Discovery Access Animated Shorts Program.

This is Not My Culture – Exhibition – Opening Reception
2023-09-28 19:00 - 21:00
Join us for some snacks and some words while you view an exhibition of the masks created from recylcled plastics during Xtine Cook’s This is Not My Culture residency.

This is Not My Culture – Public Exhibition
2023-09-29 17:00 - 21:00, 2023-10-01 13:00 - 16:00
Xtine Cook, founder of the Calgary Animated Objects Society, transformed reclaimed consumer plastic into masks. View the results of the This is Not My Culture – Open Studio residency in an exhibition of the work that was created.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Xtine Cook is a Catalyst of creativity and founder of Calgary Animated Objects Society (CAOS). CAOS blends art and technology to bring imagination to life through captivating animated experiences. Enriching the arts, one animation at a time.

This is Not My Culture – The Peace Pipeline Screening and Filmmaker Conversation
2023-09-30 14:00 - 16:00
Join us to watch brilliant satirical film Peace Pipeline and stay for a conversation and bannock with director and actor Gitz Crazyboy.

In the Peace Pipeline, comedian-activists pose as an Indigenous energy company sharing plans to reroute Enbridge’s pipeline through the wealthy white suburbs of Duluth, MN, to more fairly share the risks oil pipelines bring—with shocking and hilarious results. 24 minutes.

Gitz Crazyboy is a Denesuthine and Siksikaitsitapi (Blackfoot) activist and youth worker who de-colonizes indigenous studies and teaches the history of Canada’s indigenous population. Working on reservations in rural areas and in cities, he educates on the destructive nature of the development of the Tar Sands. He is an author (“The Secret of the Stars”), an actor (credits include the Darren Aronofsky film “Mother!”) and an impresario (he hosted an episode of VICE’s “Rise,” and played both himself and a comic fictional character in “The Yes Men Are Revolting”).

Tito Ybarra is an Anishinaabe and Mexican comedian, pow-wow singer, actor and activist. He is well known in Indian Country for his stand-up, and he has appeared in the TV series “United Shades of America,” the film “Injunuity,” and he played both himself and a comic fictional character in “The Yes Men Are Revolting.” He has also been featured on Funny or Die, and has worked with legendary Native sketch comedy troupe the 1491s.

Free screening of this video is presented in recognition of National Day of Truth and Reconciliation, as part of Xstine Cook’s This is Not My Culture artist residency at CSPACE Eau Claire Neighbourhood Hub. Xstine is modifying and altering reclaimed commercial plastic packaging material into an artistic creation during the month of September.

The cSPACE Eau Claire Hub Artist in Residency 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 Kids Sport Canada:

https://kidsportcanada.ca/alberta/calgary/donate/

Links of Interest:
https://www.youtube.com/user/TitoComedy

Pipeline Humour
https://www.facebook.com/APTNNews/videos/454485501866723

Star Tribune Oct 28, 2019
https://www.startribune.com/enbridge-and-its-controversial-line-3-pipeline-targets-of-hoax/563997772/

Website
https://theyesmen.org/project/peacepipeline

Dark Recess Open House with Karolina Gajewska
2023-10-03 11:00 - 18:00, 2023-10-05 11:00 - 18:00, 2023-10-06 11:00 - 18:00, 2023-10-06 16:30 - 21:30, 2023-10-07 11:00 - 18:00, 2023-10-07 13:00 - 18:00, 2023-10-10 11:00 - 18:00, 2023-10-10 16:30 - 21:30 and 10 more dates
Experience a fully immersive art installation designed to stimulate and evoke emotional responses common to horror themes. An element of this will include a large format horror inspired silk screened installation by printmaker Karolina Gajewska.
Dark Recess is a multi-faceted arts installation, dialog incubator and arts residency that unveils the emotions of loss, grief, pain, fear, darkness and trauma and how they are expressed culturally through art and various film horror genres. Inspired by the month of October and the resurrection of things arguably left better to dead, we’ll peel back the layers of which we express Dark Recess.

Dark Recess Poster Show curated by Karolina Gajewska
2023-10-07 18:30 - 21:00
This event summons original silk-screened designs in partnership with Burnt Toast Studio to present a show exposing the dark drama / horror genre. Experience the work of printmakers and local designers in poster art focusing on the horror genera movie re-imagined. A Q&A with artists will be taking place.
Dark Recess is a multi-faceted arts installation, dialog incubator and arts residency that unveils the emotions of loss, grief, pain, fear, darkness and trauma and how they are expressed culturally through art and various film horror genres. Inspired by the month of October and the resurrection of things arguably left better to dead, we’ll peel back the layers from which we express Dark Recess.
