“The +15 is the term for a network of indoor Calgary walkways that allow downtown workers to commute from building to building sheltered from the weather. Ghost is a 22-second looped video shot in the +15 at a location where The Glenbow Museum is connected by a bridge to the EPCOR Centre for the Performing Arts. It was a failed music video that explores the relationship between urban culture and the institutions that direct our cultural practices. The venue is a specific corner that once had been a safe place for street people to congregate. Cameras were installed to deter ...Read More

TIMELAND | Alberta’s 2010 Biennial of Contemporary Art: Ken Buera’s Ghost

Bloor Cinema - Photo Courtesy of Toronto After Dark Film Festival

By the time this article is published, the Toronto After Dark Film Festival will already have been underway at the Bloor Cinema for a few days. However, I would like to take this opportunity to say a few words about the nature of alternative film festivals and their place in both the city's cultural landscape, as well as in the film world in general. The nature of the arts festival is indeed prickly at best, the criteria for what makes for a necessarily "good" festival is, like anything, extremely dim and I always wonder whether or not the fundamental difference between ...Read More

The Toronto After Dark Film Festival: A note on the festival medium