Program Status: Archived

N2M2L launched the Northern Ontario Mobile Residency in August 2019 as a pilot initiative. Media artists were invited to explore Northern Ontario through a mobile live/work studio model supported by fully funded residencies. The 2019 pilot year offered two fully funded 1–2 week residencies. Self-funded residency options were planned for 2020.

Our Vision:

Our residencies will encourage media artists to connect with northern locales and communities and reflect on ideas of land, geography and identity. We envision this program adding to the national media arts discourse by connecting northern communities to contemporary media arts practices and promoting our expansive region to Canadian artists by overcoming regional limitations.

Priority will be given to Indigenous artists and artists with contemporary practices that critically centralize the landscape. 

Our Mission:

The Near North Mobile Media Lab creates opportunities for artists and audiences to engage with media arts in northern Ontario regardless of class, age, gender, race, ability, or sexual orientation. N2M2L facilitates educational workshops, presents exhibitions, screenings and festivals, and provides support to our membership through equipment rentals, project assistance, and mentorships. Far from the centres of population in Ontario, our collective continues to encourage our peers and youth in their explorations of electronic media, in developing their film-making skills and through the professional presentation of their art works.

Program Details (2019 Pilot Year)

Duration: 1-2 weeks
Season: August 15 – October 12, 2019
Location: Northern Ontario

Awarded Mobile Residency
Two fully funded residencies were offered during the 2019 Pilot Year

Self-Funded Mobile Residency
Planned for future cycles

Included:

• Live/Work use of the Mobile Lab
• Fuel expenses up to 3000 kms
• Serviced Campsite Fees
• Stipend of $1500
• Travel to North Bay up to $500
• Driver’s Insurance
• Audio/Visual Media Equipment [list of N2M2L inventory]

Eligibility Framework (2019):

• Canadian Artists
• New Media or Time-Based Practices, or works produced with digital technology
• Project falls within the season and duration limits

Ineligible Projects (2019):

• Fine and Visual Arts such as painting, sculpture, print-making, etc.
• Works that do not physically or conceptually locate themselves within northern Ontario

2019 Northern Ontario Mobile Residency Jury Members

Aylan Couchie

Aylan Couchie is an Anishinaabekwe interdisciplinary artist and writer hailing from Nipissing First Nation. She is a NSCAD University alumna and received her MFA in Interdisciplinary Art, Media and Design at OCAD University in where she focused her thesis on reconciliation and its relationship to monument and public art. Her written, gallery and public works explore the intersections of colonial/First Nations histories of place, culture and Indigenous erasure as well as issues of (mis)representation and cultural appropriation. She’s been the recipient of several awards including an “Outstanding Student Achievement in Contemporary Sculpture” award through the International Sculpture Centre and a Premier’s Award through Ontario Colleges. She serves as the Chair of Native Women in the Arts and currently lives and works from her home community of Nipissing First Nation in Northern Ontario.

Serena Kataoka

Serena Kataoka has been the Managing Director White Water Gallery since July 2015, and is excited about the role that this artist-run centre is playing in revitalizing North Bay through contemporary artistic practices. She believes that art can change “the world,” and that it can create new worlds. Artistic objects and practices make sense within particular contexts, and so have the capacity to disrupt inherited modes of organizing our ways of living together (e.g. colonial, racist, sexist, ableist, hetero-sexist).  Art also generates contexts in which the senses are partitioned differently, and so its ‘real’ force can be felt through eruptions of ‘new’ ways of living together (e.g. just, responsible and responsive); one might describe such an eruption as a “distinct aesthetics,” and it is politics in action.  Serena is also a founding member of Art Fix of Nipissing, and serves as a Board member for New Adventures in Sound Art, and Creative Industries North Bay.

Darren Copeland

Darren Copeland is a sound artist who has been active since 1985 and is the founding and current Artistic Director of New Adventures in Sound Art (naisa.ca) in South River.  He lives at Warbler’s Roost, which is a country BnB in Lount Township that also hosts artist residencies. Currently, he is broadcasting an open microphone soundscape of Warbler’s Roost onlocusonus.org and on his personal website – darrencopeland.net.

Alexander Rondeau

Alexander Rondeau is a curator and artist currently based in North Bay, Ontario where he serves as the Program Coordinator at the Near North Mobile Media Lab. Rondeau holds a BFA in Image Arts: Photography Studies from Ryerson University. As a curator, Rondeau is interested in site specificity and the implications of introducing works by marginalized and underrepresented artists in heteronormative, public spaces. Rondeau has curated exhibitions at Gallery 310, the Gladstone Hotel, the Ryerson Artspace, and various site specific outdoor spaces in Northern Ontario. In 2017, Rondeau was a Featured artist during the 2017 Sotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival and participated in MAD, an international artist residency in Sigulda, Latvia. Rondeau will be entering the Criticism and Curatorial Practice MFA program at OCAD University in September 2019.

2019 Northern Ontario Mobile Residency Projects

The following projects were developed during the 2019 Northern Ontario Mobile Residency pilot year.