Mississauga is celebrating Art's Birthday and you are invited!

Art’s Birthday - a celebration of art
Thursday, January 17, 2008
2 to 10 p.m.
Great Hall
Mississauga Civic Centre
300 City Centre Drive

Visit http://www.artsbirthday.blogspot.com/ for more information about the occasion of Art's Birthday.

Performances & Telecommunications
Ongoing
Roving reporter Darla Kitty (aka Halifax sound artist Eleanor King) keeps everyone abreast of happenings throughout the day, including radio on the ice rink and Internet streams from around the world.

I Want to be a Radio Announcer: A chance to experiment with the medium of radio.

Mississauga Sound Map: A sonic journey through the city of Mississauga

Art Gallery of Mississauga: What’s a birthday without a birthday card? Create your own postcard and mail it on-site then celebrate by making your own commemorative button.
View a screening of Robert Filliou’s work.
Gallery on Call, 905-615-3200 ext. 4707: Learn about the history of Art’s Birthday by calling into the gallery. Gallery On Call is a voice-messaging system functioning as an audio guide and extended programming to the Art Gallery of Mississauga’s exhibitions. Five minutes in length, the recordings provide information by bringing in new voices from the community to author interpretive resources.

2 – 2:30 p.m.
Tetsuo Kogawa, live from Japan via Radio Kinesonus, battles with Halifax audio artist Stephen Kelly on-site in a radio transmission race.

2:30 – 3:30 p.m.
Sound artists Eleanor King and Stephen Kelly put the sounds of the Civic Centre, inside and out, under sonic microscope.

3:30 p.m.
Youth Troopers for Global Awareness
The body makes pictures and sound. This theatre troupe introduces the art of tableau accompanied by rhythm of spoken word.

3:45 p.m.
Mississauga Sound Map Unveiling
Mississauga residents and visitors were invited to contribute sound recordings of places in Mississauga that were meaningful or intriguing to them. To contribute more recordings to this map, Contact: naisa@naisa.ca

4 p.m.
Mississauga Children’s Choir composes their own Happy Birthday song on the spot, conducted by vocalist Christine Duncan.

4:15 p.m.
Birthday Cake
Sound artist Rob Cruikshank provides the icing with portable NAISAtrons (sound art objects).

4:30 p.m.
Back2Basics
Energetic krumping dance is wired for sound.

5 p.m.
Soundwalk
Tour the Mississauga Civic Centre with your eyes closed. In a soundwalk, the listening “audience” moves through a place and the environment “performs.” In a soundwalk, time is taken to hear the environment. Every soundwalk is a unique listening experience.

5 - 7 p.m.
New Adventures in Sound Art scans the globe for Art’s Birthday radio art including Internet streams from Kunstradio, Vienna.

7- 10 p.m.
Comedian Matt. Miller hosts and evening of music by Mississauga DJ Kurtis Lewis and turntablist Mike Hansen who will spin to the theme of Forever Young with cameo appearances by Back2Basics dance troupe and other surprise guests.

Background
Art’s Birthday was proposed in 1963 by French artist Robert Filliou to celebrate the presence of art in our lives. It has since been celebrated on January 17 as an annual exchange-art event by a collection of artists and artist organizations around the world.

This marks the first year of Art’s Birthday celebrations in Mississauga that explores performance, installations and exchange-art. Explorations with telecommunications have long been part of this event in which artists from around the world unite over radio waves, via the Internet, and through mail art. As Mississauga forges its new identity for the 21st century, communications are key to its development, and the activities for Art’s Birthday are a perfect forum for exploring creative ways to interface with local and global communities.

Presented by the Mississauga Office of Arts and Culture and New Adventures in Sound Art in partnership with the Art Gallery of Mississauga, Canadian Association for Sound Ecology and in conjunction with Kunstradio - Vienna, Western Front – Vancouver, and Radio Kinesonus – Japan. Many thanks to CKLN Toronto for their sponsorship and broadcast of Art’s Birthday.
The Mississauga Office of Arts and Culture positions itself on the cusp of arts, culture, technology, architecture and urban design. It will play an integral and strategic role in the growth plan of the city for the 21st century. For further information go to http://www.mississauga.ca/portal/discover/artsandculture

New Adventures in Sound Art is a non-profit organization that produces performances and installations spanning the entire spectrum of electroacoustic and experimental sound art. For more information go to www.naisa.ca

FREE bus transportation from downtown Toronto – Gladstone Hotel 2 p.m. with 4:30 p.m. return, and 7 p.m. with 10 p.m. return. BY RESERVATION ONLY RSVP 905-615-3200 ext 4065 or DB.Boyko@mississauga.ca)

Artists
back2basics is pure Mississauga energy, from break dancing to krumping.

Darren Copeland is the artistic director of New Adventures in Sound Art. He is also a sound artistwho has received international attention, including solo releases DVD-A Perdu et retrouvé and the CD release Rendu Visible on empreintes DIGITALes (http://www.electrocd.com/).
He has created work for many media: radio art, installation sound art, theatre, and concert music. Recent highlights include his radiophonic adaptation for ZKM of Berger Sellin's book ich will kein inmich mehr sein and his long distance cellphone collaboration with Annette Finnsdottir in Copenhagen for AGM.

A musical chameleon with a near five octave range, Christine Duncan has a repertoire that spans improvisation, opera, rhythm and blues, pop and folkloric music. She has collaborated with Bob Murphy, Hugh Fraser, Miles Black, Jean Martin,Veda Hille, Paul Plimley, Danielle Palardy Roger, Kenny Wheeler, Dave Young, P.J. Perry, Ray Charles, Linton Garner, Paul Horn, Jeff Healey, John Oswald, Paul Dutton, Nobuo Kabota and many others.

Mike Hansen is a Mississauga based artist, performer and radio personality and has been involved in the Canadian improvised music scene for over a decade. As a turntablist born out of the school of Marclay, Tetrault and Jeck, Hansen disembowels the turntable. Approaching the record player as an instrument, needles cut through vinyl as knives through butter. Records are being replaced by the players themselves now used to generate sound that is processed through a series of Lo-Fi electronics, haunted by samples of actual recordings. Sounds are chosen at random, slowed down, ripped apart and manually looped. Mike Hansen’s turntablism has resulted in recordings and performances with Canadian and international players such as Tomasz Krakowiak, Michael Snow, John Oswald, John Butcher, Kaffe Matthews, and Gert-Jan Prins.

Stephen Kelly works with sound sculpture and site-specific audio installation and do-it-yourself electronics. Interested in intersections between audio art and music he creates kinetic, viewer responsive audio exhibitions and has built several unique musical instruments. Stephen has recorded, produced, and released over 14 musical albums on his independent label Dead Bum.

Eleanor King works with site-specific installation incorporating elements of audio, video, photography and sculpture. Eleanor often uses radio as a medium for audio performance, she hosts a regular radio program on CKDU 97.5 FM in Halifax. Her work incorporates humorous elements to critique social behaviors, investigating consumer and tourist culture.
Tetsuo Kogawa introduced micro free radio to Japan, and is widely known for his blend of criticism, performance and activism. He has written over 30 books on media culture, film, the city and urban space, and micro politics. He has been teaching at Tokyo-Keizai University and demonstrating radio-art experiments in various countries.

Kurtis Lewis is a Mississauga-based DJ who explores the boundaries of house, jazz, afrobeat, trip hop, electro, and techno.

Matt. Miller currently resides in Mississauga and is a graduate of Humber College School of Comedy. He has performed at Yuk Yuks, Second City, and the Alt.Lounge at the Rivoli. He was recently nominated for Tim Sims Fresh Meet Showcase – top 20 comedians in Ontario.
Celebrating over 25 years of choral excellence, the Mississauga Children’s Choir (MCC) is a treble voiced choir of over 125 children from 6 to 17 years of age. Under the leadership of Music Director Thomas Bell, the choir has grown to include three graded ensembles – Training, Intermediate, and Concert. The MCC is dedicated to providing young singers with exceptional musical experiences through excellence in performance, music education, recording, touring and service to the community, The MCC has toured across Canada and in Europe.

Youth Troopers for Global Awareness (YTGA) is a group of very passionate high school students, determined to bring about awareness of global and local social issues through writing, visual art and theatre. Tired of feeling helpless about the injustices occurring in the world, they began writing about issues that they are passionate about, in the summer of 2006. Their ultimate goal is to spread awareness which they feel is the initial action that creates the reaction. Only through awareness of what the problem is, can the solutions come to light. YTGA recognizes the suffering and torment the unfortunates and underserved are going through and they dedicate their efforts to them, for if they are unable to speak for themselves, YTGA will be their voice. For further information go to http://www.ytga.com/

Event Management
City of Mississauga
Zainub Verjee, director, Office of Arts and Culture
Jennifer Kaye, manager, Arts & Culture Initiatives
DB Boyko, supervisor, Arts & Culture
Sandra Desrochers, public affairs specialist, Communications
Richard Stone, A.V. systems technician, IT
Jim Morley, supervisor, IT Networking Service
Steve Draper, manager, Information Technology
Alex Lo-Basso, designer, Creative Services
Susanne Carte-Blanchenot, Outreach Programmer, Art Gallery of Mississauga
Su-Ying Lee, Curatorial/Administrative Assistant, Art Gallery of Mississauga
New Adventures in Sound Art
Nadene Thériault-Copeland, managing director
Darren Copeland, artistic director
Hector Centeno, soundmap programmer
CKLN Radio
Mike Phillips, station manager, CKLN
Special thanks to Don Sinclair, professor & co-ordinator, Fine Arts Cultural Studies Program, York University.
Logos:New Adventures in Sound Art, City of Mississauga, Art Gallery, CKLN, Canadian Association of Sound Art, Kunstradio, Wes