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Title: Harmony, by Lily Beaul, Valerie Ho, and Vivian Kwong
Description: This is a platforming game about love and relationships. What this means will be conveyed through the rules and constraints of the game itself, as B. Laurel talks about in her article, Dramatic Techniques for Orchestrating Human Response. There are two characters you can switch between, whose genders are up to the player (boy, girl, and neutral). Both characters have to cooperate as a single unit, despite being controlled independently of each other. There is a focus on combat. The enemies will be representative of problems that interfere with the relationship, such as ‘apathy’, ‘distance’, ‘fear of commitment’, ‘career’, and so on. By defeating them, the characters can ‘level up’. By doing so, they become strong enough to handle the constant scaling of difficulty as the game progresses. Importantly, the characters each advance separately. If one character is neglected, then both will. This will make it harder to survive the increasing difficulty of the game. You can never ‘win’. You just go for as long as you can. The rules are unusual, in order to be cause for reflection. The player should come to an interpretation of the game without need of a direct narrative. The character select screen is framed with the sentence, ‘I am a ____ seeking a____’, reminiscent of a dating site. This clues the player in on the relationship between the characters, without need of an intro. The rules will be unusual, in order to be cause for reflection. The player should come to an interpretation of the game without need of a direct narrative. The character select screen is framed with the sentence, ‘I am a ____ seeking a ____’, reminiscent of a dating site. This clues the player in on the relationship between the characters. The game will not say exactly what it means, beyond a few hints (enemy names, introduction screen, etc.). This is to put emphasis on the player’s engagement, and to get them thinking. By reminding the player of their own possible relationships, and helping to bring them to their own conclusions, it can create a different kind of meaning for them than if it was just stated directly. The game does not say exactly what it means, beyond a few hints (enemy names, introduction screen, etc.). This is to put emphasis on the player’s engagement, and get them thinking. By reminding the player of their own possible relationships, and helping to bring them to their own conclusions, it can create a different kind of meaning for them than if it was just stated directly. The idea that user and program ‘cooperate’, applied to a form of literary interpretation rather than simply interactivity, is the focus of this game. Not just working with the program to find out what you can do with it – working with it to find out what it ‘means’. The reason we chose relationships was because it is such a nuanced and personal subject, and more importantly, a lot of it defies language. The point of this game was to express something that defies expression. It’s an experiment to see just what this sort of thing can convey.
Type: Interactive game
Date: Spring/Summer 2014
Identifier: intensions7-harmony
Identifier (PID): yul:1156007

Title: Across the Unseen Sea, by Tereza Stehlíková
Description: Dinner for Deep Surface Divers uses food as a poetic medium, where eating is depicted as a highly sensual act, while exploring the role of the senses and embodiment in informing our vision. Across the Unseen Sea captures the essence of a multi-sensory banquet that I created and which took place in London, in 2013. I based the event on William Morris’s diary entries from his journey to Iceland, in 1871/73 and “translated” these into a multi-sensory immersive performance. The project was developed in collaboration with Charles Michel (cook and researcher at Charles Spence’s Crossmodal Research laboratory, Oxford), as well as a team of dedicated collaborators from various backgrounds and with different professional expertise (set, sound, scent designers, actors, food historians etc.). The film was created with the intention of communicating the subjective, multi-sensory experience of one of the guests, a writer, by audio-visual.
Type: Moving image
Date: Spring 2018
Identifier: intensions9-terezastehlikova1
Identifier (PID): yul:1156004

Title: Dinner for Deep Surface Divers, by Tereza Stehlíková
Description: Dinner for Deep Surface Divers uses food as a poetic medium, where eating is depicted as a highly sensual act, while exploring the role of the senses and embodiment in informing our vision. Across the Unseen Sea captures the essence of a multi-sensory banquet that I created and which took place in London, in 2013. I based the event on William Morris’s diary entries from his journey to Iceland, in 1871/73 and “translated” these into a multi-sensory immersive performance. The project was developed in collaboration with Charles Michel (cook and researcher at Charles Spence’s Crossmodal Research laboratory, Oxford), as well as a team of dedicated collaborators from various backgrounds and with different professional expertise (set, sound, scent designers, actors, food historians etc.). The film was created with the intention of communicating the subjective, multi-sensory experience of one of the guests, a writer, by audio-visual.
Type: Moving image
Date: Spring 2018
Identifier: intensions9-terezastehlikova2
Identifier (PID): yul:1156005

Title: Buried Traces, by Michelle Smith
Description: By the time I came to make this film, my grandfather had already passed on. There was no one in my family to speak about their experiences growing up Métis. It was in talking to Lorraine Freeman, a Métis community leader in Winnipeg, that I came to really comprehend the extent of racism and challenges of being a ‘halfbreed’ in the first half of the 20th century. My conversations with Lorraine helped me to see that the years of silence around our culture and identity was linked to a much broader colonial legacy. Lorraine was able to say what my family wasn’t. It is as if through this film, I was able to engage with Lorraine’s memory, to access the difficult experiences of my grandfather, to make sense of my family’s silence. Remembering the assault on the body, embodying this past, searching for a voice within this fraught identity. For people who call themselves Métis, the ongoing battle of who belongs, the struggle for political inclusion, is played out in the contested body of the “hybrid halfbreed”. Who we are is framed between fragmented memories, memories denied, images, stories, rumors, and a legacy of colonialism’s crusade for assimilation if not extermination. In the early 19th century, the physiology of the inferior non Anglo-Saxon was his/her cultural identity, a racial classification wherein, as Shohat and Stam write, “a mania for classification, measurement, and ranking – expressed in such pseudo-sciences as phrenology and craniometry – left no domain untouched. Every detail was mastered in the name of abstract hierarchies” (1994: 91). This racism disguised as science was particularly vicious towards persons of mixed race, “dreaded by racists as a monster, an infertile hybrid” (Pieterse in Shoat and Stam 1994: 91). This view shaped the life experience of the Métis Nation in very concrete ways. Bonita Lawrence notes how colonial surveyors classified halfbreeds and Indians based on racial indicators (2004: 88). Those that “looked and acted Indian” were classified as Indians. Others assimilated into the white majority. Yet others of this “mongrel” race remained on the margins, surviving in isolated communities, many just outside the boundaries of the reserve. Some, pushed off their land base, scrip squandered, became the “road allowance people”, making a life and settling on the thin strips of undesignated land on either side of the roadways. I blur the boundaries between past and present – between Lorraine’s voice and my body, between historical footage and contemporary footage of me and my grandmother, between photos of Métis heroes and today’s prairie landscape. Contemporary lives and struggles are infused with the knowledge and experience of the past. I draw connections between current realities and the political repression and social exclusion that came before us. I layer images and suture fragments together. Our identities and memories are unstable and impermeable. I survey my own body: Do high cheekbones or almond shaped eyes make you an Indian? To what extent do lived experience, historical affiliation, family lore, blood quantum and physiology play into notions of cultural identity? Who decides? How does self-identification manifest itself in relation to policy decisions and struggles for rights and recognition? It is not my parents’ or grandparents’ experiences that I “remember”. They were silent about their trauma. Lorraine Freeman’s testimonial becomes my expression in a metaphorical sense, breaking down the division of past and present, infusing my own experience as a Métis person today with the knowledge and experience of this past. This “postmemory” invokes, as Lebow describes in reference to Chantal Ackerman’s work, “a broader, ancestral postmemory” (Lebow 2008 19) For me, Lorraine’s words reflect a collective experience that is life affirming and political. We are still here. We have survived. Buried Traces has been selected and featured in a number of recent festivals and galleries, including: Images Festival 2009, Gimme Some Truth, Festival Prescence Autochtones, GIV summer festival, Métis Media Festival, FIFA 2011, Traverses Festival Toulouse, Métis Health: Culture, Identity, History conference, NAHO; Galleries and Curated Collections: Alternator Gallery Kelowna, Urban Shaman Winnipeg, Topo-vidéographies: Territoires/Territorios Montreal. Copies of the work can be ordered via GIV http://www.givideo.org/ang/indexA/videosA/A-299.html.
Type: Moving image
Date: Fall/Winter 2011
Identifier: intensions5-michellesmith
Identifier (PID): yul:1156000

Title: Borders, by Alexandra Gelis
Description: Borders, 2010, is a 3 minute intimate photographic exploration of the bodies belonging to six queer individuals. This animation, made up of hundreds of high-resolution photographs, unabashedly examines the evidence of physical change and transformation: surgery scars, tattoos, and other traces. The bodies are fragmented, as are the stories affiliated with these traces, and identities remain delightfully elusive. Alexandra Gelis is a Colombian Venezuelan, Toronto based multidisciplinary artist with a background in photography, web design and visual arts. She works with photography, video and digital art to explore the image in relation to memory, migration and encounters. Her use of sequential photographs focuses on her relationship with communities where she has worked facilitating photography and video workshops. She also has developed a series of works documenting intimate performances and translating them into photomontages and video installations. Her video work has been shown in several venues in Toronto, Colombia, Venezuela, Panama and the U.S..
Type: Moving image
Date: Fall 2010
Identifier: intensions4-alexandragelis2
Identifier (PID): yul:1155998

Title: One Dollar Click, by Alexandra Gelis
Description: One Dollar Click, 2009, features a 2 minute trip through 400 islands in Kunayala, home of the native Kuna community in Panama, and follows everyday routines and a mixture of signifiers that transforms cultures. Alexandra Gelis is a Colombian Venezuelan, Toronto based multidisciplinary artist with a background in photography, web design and visual arts. She works with photography, video and digital art to explore the image in relation to memory, migration and encounters. Her use of sequential photographs focuses on her relationship with communities where she has worked facilitating photography and video workshops. She also has developed a series of works documenting intimate performances and translating them into photomontages and video installations. Her video work has been shown in several venues in Toronto, Colombia, Venezuela, Panama and the U.S..
Type: Moving image
Date: Fall 2010
Identifier: intensions4-alexandragelis1
Identifier (PID): yul:1155997

Title: A Silence Full of Things, by Alejandra Canales
Description: Political torture continues as a practice used to undermine the “enemy.” As spectators, most people can look away or turn it off. Others live with marked bodies and memories triggered by everyday smells, sights, and sounds. The central question behind this work was how to make a film about someone’s experience of torture. What kind of strategy and what kind of filmscape could embed the sensorial experience? What are the images and sounds? Furthermore how does one make the boundaries of documentary permeable? To be able to look again and ask new questions. A Silence Full of Things gave me the possibility to touch on the issue of political torture from a new perspective: the memory of the senses. From there a filmscape was created that proposes new relations between testimony, sensorial memory, image, sound and the sensorial entanglements of the audience. The film juxtaposes the poetic beauty of intimate imagery with a story about the physical, emotional and psychic wounds of political torture. Miriam narrates and performs her story. It is in this deliberate theatrical performance where shifting relations occur and the story becomes individual and universal at the same time. A Silence Full of Things is self-conscious about strategy, form, style, and effects. The internal composition of the film is made up of a relationship to close up images in order to arrive at the core of the pain through the beauty of the voice and the images: the fragility and delicacy of the lace, the yellowness of the day of the capture, and Miriam’s look to the audience at the film’s closure. Her face leaves us imagining being hit in the stomach. We cannot escape being affected by her expression. What, when and how we imagine documentary films to be saying are other matters. A Silence Full of Things leaves a sensorial mark, and it open questions on how we read the gestures, the signs and the words. Educated in Australia in performance, television, film and video production, Alejandra Canales is currently completing her Doctorate of Creative Arts at the University of Western Sydney. She has taught at the University of Western Sydney and at various community organizations. Her films have been shown at festivals internationally where she has gained recognition from the Film Critics Circle of Australia, and the Women’s International Film Festival among others. Alejandra Canales can be reached at alejaca@hotmail.com
Type: Moving image
Date: Fall 2010
Identifier: intensions4-alejandracanales
Identifier (PID): yul:1155996

Title: Suspended, by Joan Kaufman. Houdini and the Red Suspenders
Description: Using would-be circus performers as subjects, Suspended explores the boundaries between illusion and reality capturing private scenes of performance in which desire for the impossible prevails. Caught in desperate and absurd situations, solitary acts of magic and illusion do not entertain, but instead isolate the characters in a private and unending cycle of performing. Images of suspension conflate opposites: freedom and confinement, determination and futility, bravery and crippling inaction. With references to metaphorical and allegorical principles, Suspended recalls the myth of Icarus who flew too close to the sun and Sisyphus who unwittingly is condemned to an endless purgatory. Like Lucky and Vladamir these individuals are confined to an absurdist reality with no beginning and no end, just endless and determined repetition with darkly amusing results. Fly In A Jar On A Wire is a 5:57 minute video projection with sound on a continuous loop. It depicts a high-wire act in which a novice wirewalker is caught on a length of wire confined by the picture frame. While the performer should feel free and in control, trapped like a fly in a sealed jar, she kicks and bangs at the edges unable to escape. Never reaching the end of the wire and never returning to the beginning, she is suspended in an unrelenting predicament. The sound component reflects her struggle at the edges of her confinement. Houdini and the Red Suspenders is a 1:50 minute video projection with sound on a continuous loop. It begins with an amateur performer studying archival footage of Houdini, once the world’s greatest magician, doing his straightjacket escape of 1923. As the performer watches Houdini, he begins to perform his own escape act that quickly goes awry. Suspended in an absurd situation from which he can’t escape, his failed attempts get repeated over and over while Houdini continuously repeats his escape successfully. The sound component is a recorded piano accompaniment used in silent films of the era. Joan Kaufman is a Toronto-based artist working in photography, video, sound and sculpture. She works in series producing multi-media installations that blur the boundaries between illusion and reality. By creating constructed realities her work is experienced as moments suspended in a larger unfolding narrative. Kaufman has exhibited both nationally and internationally in public and artist-run galleries; is the recipient of Canada Council, Ontario Arts Council and Manitoba Arts Council grants; and has works in both public and private collections. See www.joankaufman.com for more information and to view the complete Suspended photo and video installation.
Type: Moving image
Date: Fall 2009
Identifier: intensions3-joankaufman2
Identifier (PID): yul:1155993

Title: Suspended, by Joan Kaufman. Fly in a Jar on a Wire.
Description: Using would-be circus performers as subjects, Suspended explores the boundaries between illusion and reality capturing private scenes of performance in which desire for the impossible prevails. Caught in desperate and absurd situations, solitary acts of magic and illusion do not entertain, but instead isolate the characters in a private and unending cycle of performing. Images of suspension conflate opposites: freedom and confinement, determination and futility, bravery and crippling inaction. With references to metaphorical and allegorical principles, Suspended recalls the myth of Icarus who flew too close to the sun and Sisyphus who unwittingly is condemned to an endless purgatory. Like Lucky and Vladamir these individuals are confined to an absurdist reality with no beginning and no end, just endless and determined repetition with darkly amusing results. Fly In A Jar On A Wire is a 5:57 minute video projection with sound on a continuous loop. It depicts a high-wire act in which a novice wirewalker is caught on a length of wire confined by the picture frame. While the performer should feel free and in control, trapped like a fly in a sealed jar, she kicks and bangs at the edges unable to escape. Never reaching the end of the wire and never returning to the beginning, she is suspended in an unrelenting predicament. The sound component reflects her struggle at the edges of her confinement. Houdini and the Red Suspenders is a 1:50 minute video projection with sound on a continuous loop. It begins with an amateur performer studying archival footage of Houdini, once the world’s greatest magician, doing his straightjacket escape of 1923. As the performer watches Houdini, he begins to perform his own escape act that quickly goes awry. Suspended in an absurd situation from which he can’t escape, his failed attempts get repeated over and over while Houdini continuously repeats his escape successfully. The sound component is a recorded piano accompaniment used in silent films of the era. Joan Kaufman is a Toronto-based artist working in photography, video, sound and sculpture. She works in series producing multi-media installations that blur the boundaries between illusion and reality. By creating constructed realities her work is experienced as moments suspended in a larger unfolding narrative. Kaufman has exhibited both nationally and internationally in public and artist-run galleries; is the recipient of Canada Council, Ontario Arts Council and Manitoba Arts Council grants; and has works in both public and private collections. See www.joankaufman.com for more information and to view the complete Suspended photo and video installation.
Type: Moving image
Date: Fall 2009
Identifier: intensions3-joankaufman1
Identifier (PID): yul:1155992