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

SMASHING!!!!

Istvan Kantor presents
SMASHING!!!! 
Internationally Controversial Performance Art Gala

Featuring
NON GRATA: STORM GENERATION
Performance Art Network Group from Estonia via New York
And local artists
Burning Iceberg Performance / Noise Band
Jessica Patricia Kichoncho Karuhanga – solo performance
Saturday nov 24, 2012, Toronto
Outdoor location – Car destruction @ 3pm – 4pm
Empty lot next to 163 Sterling Road Co-presented with SMASH store/gallery

Indoor event @ 7pm – 10pm followed by reception

The Theatre Centre Pop Up, 1095 Queen St. West
Technical support: 253469 
Special thanks to The Theater Centre, CASTLEPOINT

Sponsored by FADO Performance Art Centre

Jessica Patricia Kichoncho Karuhanga performing at the Theatre Centre Pop Up 

Burning Iceberg at the Theatre Centre Pop Up 

 Amber Lee, Taje Tross, Al Paldrok are Non Grata 

Non Grata at the Theatre Centre Pop Up 

Gesture Hot Cold

concept: Kathleen Reichelt, audio: Wesley Rickert

performers: Christina Kozak, Brooke Stubbings, Olivia Roblin

photos: David Dupont, July 2012

"Burning Birch X 3"

Burning Birch X 3, the Worldwide Film Festival of Short Art Films By Artists at the Trash Palace,
Saturday May 26, 2012, 9 - 11 pm


The defining characteristic of art is poetry.  For all the things that art can be, without poetry it is not.  

Burning Birch X3, the worldwide festival of short art films and videos by artists at the Trash Palace in Toronto May 26, was an evening of visual poetry.  Without a pre-selected theme, the program revealed a number of shared commonalities from contemporary artists around the world who work with film and video as an art form.  These include art as a sacred ritual, art as an expression of joy, as moving paintings and drawings.

Complete article here:  http://www.artoronto.ca/?p=11359

Photos by Christina Kozak and Kathleen Reichelt

Text by Kathleen Reichelt

Images of films in event ps, order from top to bottom:

Black Plastic Fork, Wesley Rickert, Toronto, Canada 2012

The Story of Thomas Edison, Aaron Zaghers, Winnipeg, Canada, 2011

Vertigo, Julia Weber, Paris, France, 2012

Imtra, Andreas Karaoulanis, Germany, 2012

Henry Banger Benvenuti, NYC expatriate, 2009

(above: Ullysses Castellanos,  ”I’m Too Sad To Tell You”)

(above: Nervous Breakdown)

The 253469 punk jazz noise band, Alpha Couple, Nervous Breakdown, Adolf Glitter, Ulysses Castellanos, PublicMachine, Jubal Brown, BLENDED SURPRISE and the DJ Abominable Hominid.

Carelessly blended audio, video screenings and intense performance made of whole art ingredients including dadaism, bi-lingualism, surrealism, post modernism, absurdism, punkism, glitterism, whacktivism, projectorism, popularism, curbism, circle-ism, line-ism, moonism, square-ism, noise-ism, funism, showism, pure-ism, intellectualism, couple-ism, dreamism, performerism(s).

http://www.artoronto.ca/?p=8822

The Critical Wake of Makemake

The Critical Wake of Makemake @ Fountain Enterprises

1261 Dundas St West, Toronto

an exhibition by Kathleen Reichelt and performance by art noise band 253469

Opening Party Thursday December 15, 2011 

9 pm

The Critical Wake of Makemake is an imagined manifestation conjured through abstraction and the yet un-realized vessel moving towards antirealism.  It is a fictional understanding communicated through a state of constant becoming.  It is created in order to claim its rightful place in the present.  The inheritance is colour and transparency, rituals and rites of masks, concealment and revealing.  Metaphors are forms as openings and objects conveying the relationships of struggle, power, ease and awkwardness through overlapping and propinquity.  Power can be seen as European realism still trumping other cultural, individual and philosophical alternatives.  Abstraction can be seen as the rejection to this that it was 70 years ago.

The Critical Wake of Makemake is also a live performance by the art noise band 253469 starting at 9pm on Thursday December 15th, using absurdist lyrics, analogue and digital synthesizers and a loud electric stick guitar.
Exhibition runs 12.15.11 - 01.25.12

253469 Art Films on Vimeo

http://vimeo.com/channels/twofivethreefoursixnine

Quiet & Loud Art Noise Band

The 253469 Experimental Audio Project continues:

JULY 21, 2011

303 Augusta Ave in Kensington Market, Toronto

10:30 PM

as part of Transcendental Mirror

253469 Experimental Shooting

Summer shooting begins.
Actors, performers, artists should contact 253469@gmail.com if interested
in performing for the camera.

Brooke Stubbings & Ian Malone Outdoor Studio Shoot for

"Black Clouds"

Shooting with Amber Dawn Scott at Lake Ontario

Climbing the Pink Tree

Climbing the Pink Tree exhibition, screening, live audio, installation and performance opens Saturday March 19th at 9PM.

photo:  Mylissa Prisner

The main space will show the premier screening of "The Tree That Makes Me Laugh" by Wesley Rickert (10 minutes), with improvised live audio performance. Also in the main space, an installation performance by the Goddess of Pink Dreams Amber Dawn Scott. In the front windows, "Chopping the pink tree" is an installation by Wesley Rickert. 

Above:  Henry Benvenuti exhibition, October 2009

ILLOGICAL ANIMAL SNOWPANTS

ILLOGICAL ANIMAL SNOWPANTS
Saturday December 11, 8-10:30 PM

253469 is duty bound to host the one-night art event Illogical Animal Snowpants, a screening of challenging art films and short art performance works that resist the current cold climate and bucks and bellows in the new art ghetto of Bloor and Lansdowne to fill one small room with large and unpredictable dreams and "Naked Again" a window installation with frequent flyers in mind.


8:00-8:30

HOBBY HORSE

The future of fiction and beauty as not understood by the artists 253 & 469. Ideas will be expressed irrationally by time, object(s), noise and image projection.

8:30-9:30

SHORT ART FILM SCREENING

Adam David Brown (Toronto)

Henry "Banger" Benvenutti (NYC via Toronto)

Eugénie Cliche (Saint-Lambert, QC)

Angela Eileen De Crescenzo (Toronto)

Robert Ezergailis (Hamilton))

Guy Hood (Peterborough)

Christina Kozak (Toronto)

Wesley Rickert (Toronto)

9:30-10:00
INVERTED SPACE FEMME THEATRE

A non text performance based in immediate, organic and collaborative audio and visual responses to the concepts of movement, nature and relationships to each other. Kathleen Reichelt, Christina Kozak and Wesley Rickert

(All times approximate)

(Image below from short by Eugénie Cliche)

@253469

Istvan Kantor's Exhibit @253469
November 5 - 28, 2010

Friday November 5th, 7PM
Exhibit and Performance featuring art-rebel fashionista 
Andii Brooks of StanDingVertiGo with Alexander Braun, Eszter Jagica, Lewis Kaye, 
Rebecca Leung and others. 

Display Value

an exhibit of new work by Wesley Rickert and Kathleen Reichelt
September 30 - October 30, 2010
opening reception Saturday October 9, 2 - 5PM
Exhibition hours are Wed - Sat, 1 - 6 PM

Movement comma movement; collective dream 26

Saturday June 26, 2010 8-11 PM @253469



























(Above:  Ulysses Castellanos) 
The official city of Toronto artist secure event zone taking place @253469 on Saturday June 26 from 8-11PM. "Movement comma movement; collective dream 26" is a pro-global sub-atomic art particle summit of demanding short art films, irrational video, new sound and short performance. Security costs for this extra-ordinary one night art event plummeted from an initial estimate of over one billion billion billion Canadian to just a little over nothing.

PROGRAM
7:45 East Window
Ongoing Performance:
Nicole Torok "The Names People Give Me"  (PHOTO)



8:00 - 8:15 pm
loops

8:15 - 9:00 pm
SCREENING

Robert Morpheal
The Burning Times
5 minutes, 25 seconds

Karol Orzechowski
The Call, 18 mins
The Callis a meditative fake documentary (not a mockumentary) about the thin line between knowledge and insanity, learning and losing it. As the G20 caravan of doom troopers rolls through town and promotes ignorance and fear of authority, this adaptation of an H.P. Lovecraft tale reminds us that we should lean into the fear and seek to know more... even if it means the end result is that we are no more.

Lucy McKenna
Fish Freezing Factory
90 seconds
Based on an abandoned Icelandic building, 'Fish Freezing Factory' is a visual apparition of the spirit lost to an Icelandic Fish processing factory.It is a projection of images of my work onto the abandoned fishing plant building at night, filmed, and then digitally manipulated. It is inspired by the mythology and magic of the Icelandic culture, the history of Skagaströnd town where the building is situated, and influenced by the Northern Lights. The audio features a sample by Icelandic band Múm.

Wes Rickert
Blue Tarp Black Boots
2 minutes
Recently In Paree
2 minutes
Demonstration of Concept
6 minutes

9:15 - 10:30 pm
PERFORMANCE

Inverted Space Femme Theatre @253469 @ 9:15 pm
Christina Kozak, Kathleen Reichelt, Wes Rickert, Angela Eileen De Crescenzo
A non text performance based in immediate, organic and collaborative responses to the concepts of movement, water and relationships to each other.
20 minutes

Angela Eileen De Crescenzo @ 9:35 pm
Windmills
video and performance
10 minutes

Ulysses Castellanos @ 9:45 pm
CLA - CONCEPTUAL LIBERATION ARMY ACTION NUMBER 1: NARCOLEPTIC DRIFT
video and performance
15 minutes

Daeve Fellows @ 10:00 pm
Sky Demon
video and performance
10 minutes

Istvan Kantor @ 10:15 pm
video and performance
20 minutes