This summer, Modern Fuel, in partnership with the Katarokwi Native Friendship Centre, is organizing Voice Off a multi-media based project that brings artists Sarah DeCarlo and Bear Thomas to work with youth ages 12-25 at the Katarokwi Native Friendship Centre through video workshops. The partnership between Modern Fuel Artist-Run Centre and the Katarokwi Native Friendship Centre is a new community outreach initiative made by Modern Fuel Artist-Run Centre to build new relationships between the Kingston arts community and the community served by the Katarokwi Native Friendship Centre.
Bear Thomas will contribute to the project by giving an artist talk on the evening of Friday August 21 at 7pm and then going on to lead a weekend workshop on Saturday and Sunday. Bear Thomas’s workshop follows the successful weekend workshop run by Sarah DeCarlo in July. The project will culminate in a screening of the finished works at a public venue in Kingston in September.
The goal of the project is to create an opportunity for the youth at the Katarokwi Native Friendship Centre to gain media skills and to facilitate an opportunity to explore, create and share personal and community experiences and stories through new media and video technologies.
Artist’s Bio: Bear Thomas is an Ottawa based Onondaga multi-disciplinary artist. His video-based work chronicles the effects of colonialism on native people. In the fall of 2005, Thomas was chosen to participate in the Saw Video youth program, where he has been actively producing new works. In addition to his video work, Thomas has begun to create and score his own videos and the work of others. He received an honourable mention for his video work “Death by Vibration” at the ImagineNATIVE festival in 2006 for best emerging artist and has been included in several exhibitions throughout Canada, such as Oh So Iroquois, curated by Ryan Rice. His film The Story of Apanatschi and Her Redheaded Wrestler recently screened at the prestigious 2009 Berlin International Film Festival.