253469

Filming in September

FILM IN PROGRESS

September 2019

Ermina Pérez is Marie of Wozzeck in this feature length art film directed by Wes Rickert

Evan Lepp is Suitcase Jack in this feature length art film directed by Wes Rickert

FILM 2019 with Tess Danforth and Ulysses Castellanos

Writer and film director Wes Rickert behind the camera

The Thousand Islands Film & Stage is currently casting experienced actors for a feature length, dada-inspired, avant garde film. This is a non-equity, non-union project with outdoor filming scheduled for September 2019. Honorariums, travel and accommodation will be provided for the chosen cast. Actors and artists will have dialogues and monologues to perform based in highly stylized language and sound poetry, exploring philosophical and satirical themes. Directed by Wes Rickert.

To apply contact 253469@gmail.com.
Previous experience in film or stage required.

Casting choices will be made by August 22.

ART FILM 2019

CALL TO ARTISTS:

New ART FILM starting in September 2019!
Get in touch at 253469@gmail.com if you are interested in being part of the next absurdist and surreal film!

Performing in NYC

COMING UP: Kathleen Reichelt & Wes Rickert in NYC
for the 12th annual launch of MAINTENANT, the contemporary art journal by Three Rooms Press, NYC

JUNE 3 at Le Poisson Rouge, 158 Bleecker Street, west village, NYC

Spring 2019 Artists In Residence

bill bissett, Adeena Karasick, David Bateman, Rosemary Doyle, An Kosurko

film and voice plays written and directed by Kathleen Reichelt & Wes Rickert

at the Thousand Islands Film & Stage

bill bissett

Adeena Karasick

David Bateman

Rosemary Doyle

filmed interviews and voice play written and directed by Kathleen Reichelt and Wes Rickert

Artist Residencies SPRING 2019

Artists in Residence at the 1000 Islands Film & Stage Studio

Art Szombathy is the Prisoner of Reality in the 2018 film "Waxed Wings"

more production photos here

Contempoetry at SHG Toronto

Sunday November 26 / 2 - 5 pm / 170A Baldwin Street / Kensington Market, Toronto

audio poetry / sound poetry / performance poetry / contempoetry

with bill bissett, David Bateman, Burning Iceberg

New Art Film Started

The fourth 253469 feature length art film has started! As always, poets and artists interested in being part can get in touch 253469@gmail.com

Pigeons, photograph by Wesley Rickert, 2017

Gallery Beat Website

Gallery Beat has a website featuring the work of resident artists Wesley Rickert and Kathleen Reichelt.

Gallery Beat Opens June 2017

sculpture, painting and collage at Gallery Beat, 2017

bill bissett, David Bateman and Burning Iceberg album on Bandcamp

bill bissett with Wesley Rickert, at beat manor studio, 2017

The 2017 album produced by Wesley Rickert is here:

https://burningiceberg.bandcamp.com/album/bill-bissett-david-batemen-burning-iceberg-modern-fuel

bill bissett story in Arteidolia


bill bissett performing in Kingston, Ontario as part of the 253469 coproduction sound one two

Check out the story on bill bissett at Beat Manor, on the road and in Kingston April 2017 in the NYC art journal Arteidolia

"The Road To Elsinore" Officially Selected For The 2017 Annual Copenhagen Film Festival and 2016 Chicago Film Festival BLOW-UP

The Road To Elsinore is part of the official selection for The 2017 Annual Copenhagen Film Festival AND The 2016 Chicago Arthouse Film Festival BLOW-UP!

"The Road To Elsinore", Canadian, 2016, HD, 98 minutes

A renegade art-road trip that roams a rural landscape in search of lost poets, art criminals, outcasts, ghosts and a mirage east of Toronto. Leaving behind the spectacle of the city, this journey takes the long way in championing iconoclastic irrationality, never assuming traditional characters or narratives, and creating itself with cross genre mixing. Part documentary, part music video and part stage play, this film provides a psychedelic alternative to the usual road trip plot, while confronting the dazzle camouflage of entertainment that pokes into Canadian and international politics.

Poet Steve Dalachinsky plays himself as the post-beat poet who has left the island of Manhattan, after seeing the ghost of Alan Ginsberg, who picks him up in a truck. Steve performs his poetry to the darkness, confronting his place in history, and his own mortality, before abandoning himself to nature. The poet momentarily crosses paths with King Canada, played by Ulysses Castellanos. This gravedigger trades, barters and confuses Canadian and American identity, reminiscent of the first Trudeau era. In return, King Canada gets a free ride.

Anarchy, nihilism and peyote style dreams fill the screen as an all artist cast play a diverse range of supporting characters. Kathleen Reichelt, -as Discordia, Henry Benevenuti, -as Philosopher with Bricks , Ashley Zarowny-Riha, -as The Art Vandal, Wesley Rickert and A Phonetic Spring, -as Rosencratz and Guildenstern, Christina Kozak, -as Hamlet's Mother, Kathleen Troy, -as the Neoist Model, Robert Ezergailis, -as The Weatherman and an unauthorized cell-phone cameo avec -Monty Cantsin. These elements define a post-beat road-trip saga and ultimately an absurdist adaptation of Shakespeare's Hamlet. Audio recordings by Burning Iceberg.

Directed by Wesley Rickert .
https://www.facebook.com/blowup.film.fest
http://www.blowupfilmfest.com

Reality River Snow Job

2016 ART Film Project

PREVIEW:
https://vimeo.com/215233753

Production photos
WITH cast:
Danielle Hubbard, David Roche, Art Szombathy, Christina Kozak, Kathleen Reichelt,
and Wes Rickert

The Road To Elsinore

Production shots from summer 2015, for "The Road To Elsinore", Canadian, 2016, HD, 98 minutes

Ulysses Castellanos

Ashley Zarowny-Říha

Henry "Banger" Benvenuti

Kathleen Troy

Steve Dalachinsky

CALL FOR ARTISTS FOR 2015 SUMMER ART FILM

CALL FOR ARTISTS FOR SUMMER ART FILM

SHOOTING DATES
August 4th thru September 21, 2015

If you are interested in learning more about this art film project, please email director Wes Rickert at 253469@gmail.com

Beat Manor

Spring has dug up new opportunities at Beat Manor. Located in the Montreal-Toronto-NYC triangle, surrounded by acres of farmland, lakes, UNESCO Frontenac Arch biosphere and stars you've never seen. Artists are invited to stay, work, play, collaborate and make your own residency in the continuing groove of 253469.

Cross Canada Screening Tour Finishes in Yellowknife November 13 , 2014 @ YKARCC

YK ARCC is hosting the final screening of "Cold Iron Is A Titanic Comedy" on Thursday, November 13 @7pm, as part of the cross Canada screening tour of the independently produced avant garde, absurdist feature length 2014 film, shot and produced in Toronto, Canada.

October Screenings of Cold Iron Is A Titanic Comedy

Thursday, October 2 - University of Alberta Film Society, Edmonton, Alberta
& Friday, October 10 - NSCAD Film Club, Halifax, Nova Scotia

will be screening "Cold Iron Is A Titanic Comedy"

image: Ian Malone as the hippie beat hipster of records and archives travelling the A1A, still from Cold Iron Is A Titanic Comedy 2014, Wesley Rickert

Cold Iron Is A Titanic Comedy Screenings in September!!!

Tuesday, September 16 - Niagara Artists Centre, St Catharines, Ontario, doors 8pm, screening 8:30pm, $5 or PWYC
AND at Iqaluit Library, Iqaluit, Nunavut

Saturday, September 27 - this town is small artist run centre & Island Media Arts Festival ExperiMental in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island

July 30 & August 06 screenings of "Cold Iron" in Kelowna, Kingston and Toronto

Upcoming screenings of "Cold Iron Is A Titanic Comedy":
Wednesday, July 30 - Alternator Centre for Contemporary Art, Kelowna, British Columbia, 7pm
Wednesday, July 30 - Modern Fuel Artist Run Centre & The Screening Room, Kingston, Ontario (director Wesley Rickert will be available for Q&A following), 7pm
Wednesday, August 6 - Art Zoo Studio, Toronto, Ontario (includes an exhibition and reception) doors 7:30pm - screening 8:00pm

Cold Iron Is A Titanic Comedy Cross Canada Tour Sails June 25 from St John's and Winnipeg, continues to October

Starting June 25, 2014 "Cold Iron Is A Titanic Comedy", a 72 minute kabuki opera art film, featuring 253469 artists and with the support of artist communities across Canada, will be screened at artist run centres, screening collectives and film festivals from Prince Edward Island to the North West Territories.

Below is a list of screenings in cities across Canada!

aceartinc., Winnipeg, Manitoba - Wednesday, June 25, 7pm
Eastern Edge Gallery, St John's, Newfoundland - Wednesday, June 25, 7pm
Alternator Centre for Contemporary Art, Kelowna, British Columbia - Wednesday, July 30, 7pm
Modern Fuel Artist Run Centre & The Screening Room, Kingston, Ontario - Wednesday, July 30, 7pm
Art Zoo Studio, Toronto, Ontario - Wednesday, August 6, 8pm
Niagara Artists Centre, St Catharines, Ontario - Tuesday, September 16
Iqaluit Library, Iqaluit, Nunavut - Tuesday, September 16
this town is small artist run centre & Island Media Arts Festival, Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island
- Saturday, September 27
University of Alberta's Film Society, Edmonton, Alberta - Thursday, October 02
NSCAD Film Club, Halifax, Nova Scotia - Friday, October 10
Yellowknife Artist Run Community Centre, Yellowknife, North West Territories - October (date TBA)

Many special thanks to our screening partners for supporting this project!

253469 Premiere of feature length art film "Cold Iron Is A Titanic Comedy"

It was a packed house at CineCycle Underground Cinema for the premier screening of "Cold Iron Is A Titanic Comedy", a 72 minute kabuki opera art film by Toronto artist Wesley Rickert shown January 23, 2014. Rickert's first feature length digital film, shot and produced in 2013, radiates Istvan Kantor as the Neoist Pied Piper, Art Szombathy as Louis the IV, Ian Malone as Juan Ponce De Leon and Christina Kozak as the universe expanding Tally Aurora. The film is structured on kabuki opera with elaborate costumes, stylized movements and an orchestra of absurdist poetry that communicates scale, passage, discovery and invention.

In the words of director Wesley Rickert this film is a "tin-foil road-trip to Florida & the British Museum, in faster Chinese that dialogues over the electric kettle of Toronto's City Hall and rotates in perpetual stillness towards a tsunami of row-boat performances". Appearances by other Toronto artists include Henry Benvenuiti as Captain Smith, The Hercinia Arts Collective playing sirens, Sandra Fitzsimmons as Liberty, Tonya Henry as an old flame, Eszter Jagica as the fountain of youth, Kathleen Reichelt as the Ventriloquist, Olivia Roblin as Janus, Brooke Stubbings as the swimming passengers, Kirsten W as a groovy disco Gargon, Amber X as the Captain's Hallucination and Ashley Zarowny as Vincent Van Gogh.

"Cold Iron Is A Titanic Comedy" is an independently financed Art Zoo Studio production distributed internationally by 253469, "an umbrella without the hat". Reviews by David Bateman and Kathleen Reichelt can be read here.

Premiere Screening of "Cold Iron Is A Titanic Comedy" January 23, 2014 at CineCycle, Toronto

PREMIERE SCREENING

"Cold Iron Is A Titanic Comedy" 2013, (70 minutes) Directed & written by Wesley Rickert
January 23, 2014 CineCycle (behind 129 Spadina Ave, Toronto, Canada)
8 PM
Tickets $10

Read the Pre-Release Review here

PLUS
a short line-up of short films and videos by Toronto area artists:
"the sinking of the TITANIC, 2012, (3 minutes, 30 seconds) Istvan Kantor
"untitled" 2012, (4 minutes 30 seconds) Chris Boni
"powerline" 2013, (2 minutes) Wallace D. Robinson

To reserve tickets or for more information contact 253469@gmail.com

(photo: Art Szombathy as a pipe smoking "Louis the IV")

253469 Opens Art Zoo Studio With Group Exhibit

Art Zoo Studio, a new project by 253469, opens with a weekend group exhibit on Saturday October 19, from noon - 6pm and continues Sunday October 20, noon - 6pm in Toronto's west end. Promoting the avant garde, the known and the underground, Art Zoo Studio is a place for art enthusiasts and the public to gain access to bi-monthly group exhibits and non-traditional performance workshops. Art Zoo Studio is also a full time working studio for creating and is genuinely dedicated to working with a diverse range of challenging artists and art forms.

The first group exhibit includes contemporary sculpture, work on canvas, mixed media, work on paper, ceramic art, photography, video art, audio recordings and found objects. Participating artists Henry Banger Benvenuti, Istvan Kantor, Kathleen Reichelt, Wesley Rickert, Kathleen Troy, Caroline Mosby, Kelly Wray, Char Da Silva, Kenneth Laing Herdy, Alexandria Pellegrino, David Bateman, Erin Murphy, Alpha Couple and Ashley Zarowny.

Art Zoo Studio is a 253469 "umbrella without the hat" project and will be open for art exhibits, special events and by appointment.

Art Zoo Studio is located at 1 Wiltshire Avenue, Unit 132, Toronto, at Dupont and Symington.

www.artzoostudio.com
www.253469.com

Spell of the Hippodrome

Spell of the Hippodrome
a theatrical duration intervention

Saturday October 5, 2013
898 Queen Street West
8PM - midnight

A mobile theatre on wheels pulled by the chariots of abstraction. Part performance, part intervention, part allegory, part noise band, the theatre within the theatre mesmerized and hypnotized all who looked into the stage, at any stage of the night. With Burning Iceberg, Kathleen Troy, Henry Banger Benvenuti, Ashley Zarowyn, Ellamira and Sandra Fitzsimmons.

March to Paris

Burning Iceberg and Fountain Enterprises performing in Paris

On August 2, 2013, in the gardens across from the Louvre, Burning Iceberg and Fountain Enterprises made a stage on the elevated terrace between Jardins des Tuileries and Jardin du Carrousel, a historical site at the front of the Tuileries Palace before it burned in 1870.

Expressing the fountains of quiet elation, paper buildings and public poetry the Canadian artists slowly circled with ice on post-revolutionary spaces where thousands were drowned and beheaded.

To declare quietly that all may see!
The individual is alive!
Conformity is the salt on your paper!
Suburbs are to be drowned and cities are to be snowed!
Art speaks for us!
We are living!
We are abstraction!
I sign my name to the sky!
I stir my river on your idols!
I sleep outside of museums!
Only some things are for coins!
The revolution is a hat on my head!

Photographs by Philippe Henry

The Triple Absurdist Play House & Film Project at 163 Sterling Road

* Christina Kozak and Art Szombathy on set in the Triple Absurdist Play House

For the month of February 253469 works out of 163 Sterling Road to create the Triple Absurdist Play House & Film Project. A group of Toronto artists will create, collaborate and perform for the camera under the direction of Wesley Rickert.

The 253469 film project process and approach is based in art making and collaborative creation with little connection to the film model of script and traditional instruction. Instead artists are invited to enter a space designed to develop and express their ideas within the parameters set by the director, using and making objects, costumes and movements. It sounds something like art school but its really more of a collective agreement with a captain steering the ship.

While Rickert controls the camera and editing, the other half of the project is headed by Kathleen Reichelt who provides the tools for artists, if they choose, to prepare for their performance through drawing, painting, sculpture, audio and discussion. There is room for costume and prop making and for creating work that won't be in the film but is still part of the project through its creation in the space during this time.

Each filming session is an opportunity for the artists involved to participate in multiple ways. The ultimate goal is to film the performers and capture the magic of their performance. But sometimes the magic in art making can't solely be captured on film. The energy and ideas that are generated by object based creation are directed to the camera and though gratification may come through performing, the participating artist may have a more immediate sense of gratification through the object which was created directly or indirectly for the film. Ultimately the immediate object view is something the film can't provide in the same way. Even if the video can be played back instantaneously, its not an object that's tactile and can't be held or touched. This does not take away from the ultimate experience of the film as the end result, but may be different to the performer's experience.

As the month of February progresses Rickert will be filming the performances and Reichelt will be safeguarding the objects that are made. At the end of the month there will be an exhibition in the Sterling Road space.

Post Film Exhibition