This is Not My Culture – Open Studio with Xtine Cook
2023-09-06 11:00 - 14:00, 2023-09-07 11:00 - 16:00 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.

This is Not My Culture – DIY Mask Making Activity
2023-09-10 13:00 - 17:00, 2023-09-24 13:00 - 17:00
Drop in and try your hand transforming plastic into an interesting mask. All ages, children welcome with accompanying adult.
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 and 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.
She recently co-wrote and produced MONSTR, an animated short by Tank Standing Buffalo for HBO Max Warner Brothers Discovery Access Animated Shorts Program.

Photo Credit: Sean Dennie

This is Not My Culture – Watch and Work
2023-09-11 17:00 - 19:00
Watch and Work: Free screening of Koyaanisqatsi Godfrey Reggio’s classic 1982 film “Life Out of Balance”
Drop in to watch Koyaanisqatsi “Life Out of Balance” an experimental classic film featuring a collection of expertly photographed phenomena with no conventional plot, to a soundtrack by Philip Glass. The footage focuses on nature, humanity, and the relationship between them.
Drawing its title from the Hopi word meaning “life out of balance,” this renowned documentary/experimental film reveals how humanity has grown apart from nature. Featuring extensive footage of natural landscapes and elemental forces, the film gives way to many scenes of modern civilization and technology. Given its lack of narration and dialogue, the production makes its points solely through imagery and music, with many scenes either slowed down or sped up for dramatic effect.
Please sign up at the Eventbrite link.

This is Not My Culture – Watch and Work: Naqoyqatsi
2023-09-11 21:00 - 23:00
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.

This is Not My Culture – Workshop Cabaret Jam
2023-09-12 14:00 - 16:00
Artists from Calgary Animated Objects Society (CAOS) invite you bring your puppets, masks, and playful spirit to share and learn with a gathering of like-minded folks.

ABOUT CAOS
CAOS is a non-profit arts organization dedicated to acts of radical creativity using the art forms of mask, puppetry, and animated objects.
CAOS produces the Dolly Wiggler Cabaret, a ribald anything-goes night of short form puppetry and mask for adults that takes over the #1 Legion annually around St Patrick’s Day.
CAOS website:
https://animatedobjects.ca
Looking for more puppets? Check out the Festival of Animated Objects, coming up in March.
FAO Website:
https://www.puppetfestival.ca

This is Not My Culture – Watch and Work with a Forest Ecologist
2023-09-19 19:00 - 21:00
Watch and Work – Free screening of a recording of forest ecologist Suzanne Simard’s talk on the interconnectedness of forest systems.
Drop in and enjoy listening to a recording of Forest Ecologist Suzanne Simard talk where she reveals that trees are part of a complex, interdependent circle of life; that forests are social, cooperative creatures connected through underground mycorrhizal networks by which trees communicate their vitality and vulnerabilities, and share and exchange resources and support.
The talk 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.
Simard’s extraordinary research and tenacious efforts to raise awareness on the interconnectedness of forest systems, both above and below ground, has revolutionized our understanding of forest ecology. This increasing knowledge is driving a call for more sustainable practices in forestry and land management, ones that develop strategies based on the forest as a whole entity, not on trees as isolated individuals.
Mother Trees and the Social Forest was given on June 15, 02021 as part of Long Now’s Seminar series. The series was started in 02003 to build a compelling body of ideas about long-term thinking from some of the world’s leading thinkers. The Seminars take place in San Francisco and are curated and hosted by Stewart Brand.
The Long Now Foundation is a non-profit dedicated to fostering long-term thinking and responsibility. Our projects include a 10,000 Year Clock, endangered language preservation, thousand year+ data storage, and Long Bets, an arena for accountable predictions.
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/longnow
Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/longnow
Free screening of this pre-recorded talk 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

This is Not My Culture – Watch and Work: Mother Trees and the Social Forest
2023-09-19 19:00 - 21:00
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 7: Tuesday September 19
7pm: Watch and Work: Free screening of a recording of forest ecologist Suzanne Simard’s talk on how trees communicate with fungi, and with each other.
Drop in and enjoy listening to a recording of Forest Ecologist Suzanne Simard talk where she reveals that trees are part of a complex, interdependent circle of life; that forests are social, cooperative creatures connected through underground mycorrhizal networks by which trees communicate their vitality and vulnerabilities, and share and exchange resources and support.
The talk 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.
Simard’s extraordinary research and tenacious efforts to raise awareness on the interconnectedness of forest systems, both above and below ground, has revolutionized our understanding of forest ecology. This increasing knowledge is driving a call for more sustainable practices in forestry and land management, ones that develop strategies based on the forest as a whole entity, not on trees as isolated individuals.
Mother Trees and the Social Forest was given on June 15, 02021 as part of Long Now’s Seminar series. The series was started in 02003 to build a compelling body of ideas about long-term thinking from some of the world’s leading thinkers. The Seminars take place in San Francisco and are curated and hosted by Stewart Brand.
The Long Now Foundation is a non-profit dedicated to fostering long-term thinking and responsibility. Our projects include a 10,000 Year Clock, endangered language preservation, thousand year+ data storage, and Long Bets, an arena for accountable predictions.
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/longnow
Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/longnow
Free screening of this pre-recorded talk 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
https://secure.natureconservancy.ca/site/SPageNavigator/Forms/landing.html?s_locale=en_CA&_ga=2.136098099.329967507.1691470962-445715520.1691470962

This is Not My Culture – Open HDMI Vol II
2023-09-21 19:00 - 22:00
In celebration of their one-year anniversary, MAPPERZ takes over cSPACE Eau Claire Neighbourhood Hub in collaboration with This is Not My Culture artist residency. In this Open HDMI night, the Hub will be immersed in projectors with a spare cable ready for local visual artists to plug in and play. Free to attend. Open to the public.

ABOUT THE ARTIST
MAPPERZ is a projection mapping club that transforms areas around Calgary with the use of optical illusions and creative alteration of perspective.
https://www.instagram.com/mapperzyyc/
https://www.mackenziebedford.com

This is Not My Culture – Open Studio
2023-09-27 11:00 - 14:00
Drop in and observe 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 with Xtine Cook
2023-09-28 10:00 - 14:00
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 – 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
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.

Trivial Thursdays @ Dark Recess with Karolina Gajewska
2023-10-05 18:30 - 20:30
Join us to test your horror film and dark arts knowledge! From Harry Potter to The Exorcist we will are going to see if your horror trivia lives up to the hype!
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 peal 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.
