Atom Egoyan: Steenbeckett

The MacKenzie Art Gallery, in collaboration with Strandline Curatorial Collective and University of Regina, brings to North America, for the first time, Atom Egoyan’s most important lens-based installation work to date. The extraordinary result of an Artangel commission installed at the former Museum of Mankind (London, 2002), Steenbeckett immerses the viewer in a continuously moving web of 35mm film strung floor to ceiling and wall to wall. Driven by a Steenbeck editing table, the 2,000-foot film loop features the last reel of Egoyan’s brilliant film adaptation of the Samuel Beckett play Krapp’s Last Tape. With the wear and tear produced by each rotation of celluloid through the system, the whole work edges, like Krapp himself, inexorably toward extinction. For the MacKenzie installation, Egoyan takes advantage of noise cancelling headphones, to project a digitally remastered version of the film within the same space as the meandering and chattering film loop. Steenbeckett masterfully contemplates the nature of memory and its recording while foregrounding Egoyan’s fascination with new and obsolescent technologies and the analogue/digital divide.

About Atom Egoyan
Atom Egoyan is one of the most celebrated contemporary filmmakers on the international scene. His body of work—which includes independent features, television, theatre, music, opera, and art installations—delves into issues of memory, displacement, and the impact of technology and media on modern life. As a lens-based installation artist, Egoyan has contributed to the development of expanded cinema through his work on trauma, memory, and witnessing as they relate to historical events, such as the Armenian Genocide and diaspora, and more personal histories involving desire, lost love, and family relations.

Publication
Atom Egoyan: Steenbeckett will be the first major publication to focus on Steenbeckett. Published by Black Dog Publishing, in partnership with the MacKenzie Art Gallery and Strandline Curatorial Collective, the catalogue will include an introduction by Egoyan, with contributions by a selection of international scholars (available in 2017).

Atom Egoyan in conversation with Noah Richler
A screening of the world premiere of the digital remaster of Krapp’s Last Tape will be followed by a conversation between Atom Egoyan and writer and critic Noah Richler on Friday, November 4, at the MacKenzie Art Gallery.

International symposium and events
“Meet in the Middle | Stations of Migration and Memory Between Art and Film”
Events: November 2–3 / symposium: November 4–5

Revolving around the transnational issues of the migration of people and ideas, “Meet in the Middle | Stations of Migration and Memory Between Art and Film” international symposium gathers artists, filmmakers, curators, and academics in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada for a program of film screenings, panel discussions, and performances. A special focus of this project is to create a dialogue between Saskatchewan and Armenia—two relatively isolated geographical areas with common histories of genocidal trauma—while profiling the work of renowned Canadian-Armenian filmmaker Atom Egoyan as it articulates the theme of memorializing trauma, at both the political and personal levels. The symposium is part of a larger durational series of Meet in the Middle exhibitions, screenings and events taking place from spring 2014 to spring 2017. See: meetinthemiddle.squarespace.com

For more information, including a schedule of events and symposium registration, please visit: egoyanatthemackenzie.ca

Atom Egoyan: Steenbeckett and “Meet in the Middle | Stations of Migration and Memory between Art and Film” international symposium are organized by the MacKenzie Art Gallery, Strandline Curatorial Collective, and University of Regina Faculty of Media, Art, and Performance with the support of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, Canada Council for the Arts, Saskatchewan Arts Board, SaskCulture, City of Regina, and University of Regina.