Amanda Dawn Christie

Biography

Amanda Dawn Christie is an interdisciplinary artist working in film, video, performance, electronics, photography, transmission art, and electroacoustic sound design. She has exhibited and performed in art galleries across Canada, and her films have screened internationally from Cannes to Korea to San Fransisco and beyond. She was the 2014 Atlantic finalist for the National Media Art prize, and had a 10 year retrospective exhibition of her work curated by Mireille Bourgeois, at the Galerie d’art Louise et Reuben Cohen, and was also included in the Marion McCain Biennale of Atlantic Contemporary Art, curated by Corinna Ghaznavi. Since 1997, she has been actively involved with artist run centres, in both volunteer and staff positions: serving on various boards, working as both a technician and later as a director, teaching workshops, publishing articles, and serving on juries across Canada. She completed her MFA at the SFU School for the Contemporary Arts in Vancouver, before moving to Amsterdam. Upon her return to Canada she worked at the Faucet Media Arts Centre & Struts Gallery in Sackville, NB, while teaching part time at Mount Allison University. She later worked as the director of the Galerie Sans Nom and the RE:FLUX festival of music, while teaching part time at l'Université de Moncton. She left her position directing the GSN in 2014 to dedicate her time to an interactive performance project called Requiem for Radio, which premiered in spring of 2017 with the support of a new media creation grant from the Canada Council for the Arts. 

She is currently working on a new media transmission art project called Ghosts in the Air Glow with the support of a Canada Council grant, which involves mixing audio and images in the D layer of the earth's ionosphere using the Ionospheric Research Instrument, an array of 180 radio antennas, at the HAARP (High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program) facility in Alaska.

Concepts and themes explored in her work focus primarily on the relationship between the human body and analogue technology in a digital age.  She spent the last several years working on various projects related to shortwave radio and the RCI (Radio Canada International) shortwave transmission site.   One major body of work related to the RCI towers is called Spectres of Shortwave, and it includes a 2 hour experimental documentary film as well as  various accompanying gallery installations. The other major body of work about the RCI shortwave site is called Requiem for Radio, and it includes a one hour interdiscplinary performance with various accompanying installations and performances in five parts.  Both Spectres of Shortwave and Requiem for Radio were created with the support of Arts NB and the Canada Council for the Arts. Ghosts in the Air Glow is currently in progress and involves creating audio and image works relating to military and civilian scientific research, surveillance, climate, territory, and communications embedded into radio frequencies transmitted straight into and through the ionosphere to the liminal boundaries of outer space.

View Amanda Christie's CV

Current Courses - Concordia University (2019-2020)

IMCA 210 - Introduction to Video Production
IMCA 310 - Intermediate Video Production
IMCA 400 - Advanced Practices in Video, Performance, and Electronic Arts
IMCA 610 - MFA studio - Intermedia I
IMCA 612 - MFA studio - Intermedia III

Past Courses - Concordia University (2017-2019)

Past Courses

ARVI 2102 - Le numérique (Université de Moncton, 2016/17)
ARVI 2404 - Photo: Opérateur de lumière (Université de Moncton, 2016/17)
ARVI 3103 - Temporalité (Université de Moncton, 2015/16, 2016/17)
ARVI 4104 - Virtualité (Université de Moncton, 2016/17)
CANA 3441 - Film in Canada (Mount Allison University, 2009/10, 2010/11)
FINA 1921 - Photography (Mount Allison University, 2009/10)

Guest Workshop Instructor, Speaker, Lecturer (Selected)

Willem DeKooning Institute of Art (Rotterdam, NL), Syracuse University: Transmedia (Syracuse, NY), Skidmore College (Saratoga Springs, NY), University of Lethbridge (Alberta), Mount Allison University (Sackville, NB), NSCAD (Halifax, NS), University of Ottawa (Ontario), AFCOOP (Halifax, NS), FICFA (Moncton, NB), IMAC (Charlottetown, PE), CSIF (Calgary, AB), Antimatter (Victoria, BC), Latitude 53 (Edmonton, AB), NAISA (Toronto, ON)

Ghosts in the Air Glow

Ghosts in the Air Glow is an ionospheric transmission art project using the HAARP Ionospheric Research Instrument to play with the liminal boundaries of outer space. Pairing air glow experiments in the ionosphere—false auroras creating soft, glowing spots in the sky—with SSTV images, audio and image signals are received and decoded via SDR (Software Defined Radio) equipment by amateur radio operators around the world, and streamed live online for audiences who do not have the equipment or expertise for reception.  Themes explored in the work including military research, surveillance, coded communications, climate, territory, conspiracy theories, spiritualist movements of the nineteenth century, medical imaging of the human body, poetry written in Morse code, and autobiographical stories. Ghosts in the Air Glow is supported by an Explore and Create grant from the Canada Council for the Arts.

Requiem for Radio

Requiem for Radio: Full Quiet Flutter is an interactive performance for human bodies, electrons, and radio waves. Architecture, technology, history, and the human body come together in this near-supernatural conjuring of the spirits of the Radio Canada International (RCI) shortwave towers.  This work is a requiem for the Radio Canada International shortwave site that was located near the border of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia and transmitted shortwave radio around the world from 1944 to 2014.

The performance is structured around an interactive installation that involves 13 towers with copper capacitance sensors positioned around the space to create a scale model of the recently demolished RCI site. Each tower is dedicated to one of the radio towers that stood there, and when touched it triggers a contact microphone recording made of that tower before the demolition. Among other elements, the performance also involves a theremin sending control voltage to trigger ghostly images of the towers and the sounds that they once made, thus allowing performers to play the ghosts of the radio towers with radio waves. The performance also includes performances on saxophone and cello with cow bone played through a 1938 Marconi tube radio, as well as a 5 channel electroacoustic work composed to be transmitted from 5 separate shortwave transmission sites around the world.  The 5 channel simulcast is recombined using 5 shortwave radios in the performance space, in order to recombine the composition.  Structured with 13 movements for the 13 radio towers, the performance follows the format of a traditional requiem, which normally has only 12 movements, however a 13th movement is added here in movement 0 as a nod to the use of binary data in much of the computer coding.

This work was created with the generous support of the Canada Council for the Arts and Arts, NB. The performance premiered in May 2017, and the work is currently being furthered refined and submitted for exhibition.

Selected Publications (written by Amanda Dawn Christie)

• "La danse machinale" curatorial essay to accompany video screening, Galerie Sans Nom / Espace Audio Vidéo, Moncton, NB, 2014.

• "La parole sourde: Entrevue avec Herménégilde Chiasson", curatorial essay to accompany exhibition, Galerie Sans Nom, Moncton, NB 2013

• "Psychocartographies: of minds and maps" critical catalogue essay in jè-st catalogue of intervention & performance, Université de Moncton, Moncton, NB, 2013.

• "Soif de parole" curatorial essay to accompany exhibition, Galerie Sans Nom, Moncton, NB, 2012.

• "Return to Spectacle: A Cinemanifesto" in the Capilano Review: Issue 3.13 Manifest Now! 2011.

• "The Platform is the Performer" in Elective Identities. Canadian Film Institute, 2010.

• "Turning Tides & Saltwater Bodies: Moving Pictures of East Coast Women"  - curatorial essay to accompany screening, printed in handmade zine.  Winnipeg Cinematheque, 2010.

• "Disruptions of Privacy: Frame X as the Next Rupture in a Regional Timeline" Critical essay in DVD liner notes, Frame X DVD compilation, AFCOOP, Halifax, NS, 2008.

• "Anticipation of the Mechanical Memory" in DAMP, Anvil Press, 2008.

• "Engaging the Ephemera: Embodied Approaches to HandProcessed and Optically Printed Films"  curatorial essay to accompany screening, printed in handmade zine, AFCOOP, Halifax, NS, 2006
  

Selected Bibliography (Writing about Amanda Dawn Christie)

Artist Residencies

2018     Wave Farm Transmission Arts, Artist in residence, New York, USA

              DAÏMÔN, artiste enresidence, Gatineau, QE (upcoming date in2018 TBA)

2017     Centre Culturel Aberdeenet le festival RE:FLUX, Moncton, NB

2016     Galerie Sans Nom,Résidence de recherche en arts médiatiques

              MDOCS Storytellers Institute,Saratoga Springs, New York 

              Island Media ArtsCo-op, Filmmaker in residence, Charlottetown, PEI

2015     Millenium Film Workshop,Filmmaker in residence, New York, USA

              Wave FarmTransmission Arts, Artist in residence, New York, USA

2011     AFCOOP Filmmaker in Residence,Filmmaker in residence, Halifax, NS
2008     37thInternational Film Festival Rotterdam:  Artist in Residence, Rotterdam, NL

Performances (selected / recent)

2018   Requiem for Radio: Pulse Decay, Circle of HOPE (Hackers on Planet Earth), New York, NY

            Requiem for Radio: Pulse Decay, WNDX Festival (Winnipeg, NB)

2017   Requiem for Radio: Full Quiet Flutter, Centre culturel Aberdeen & RE:FLUX festival

            Transmissions, TransX Symposium onTransmission Arts, Toronto, ON

2016   Requiem for Radio: Pulse Decay, NAISA(New Adventures in Sound Art) Toronto, ON

            Where Ocean Meets Air, FICFA VAM,Moncton, NB

2014   Requiem for Radio: Pulse Decay, Paved Arts, Saskatoon,SK

            Requiem for Radio: Pulse Decay, ObeyConv, HFX, NS

2013   Transmissions,Salon Métafemmes: La Centrale & Studio XX, Montréal, QC   

2012   Love Song for Lost Endings, 8fest, Trash Palace, Toronto, ON                    

2011   LastDays of Snow: The Begending of the Universe, VIVA! Art Action, Bain St.Michel, Montréal, QC    

            LastDays of Snow: Nightlights Like Fireflies, Art in the Open,Charlottetown, PEI      

            Transmissions & Acquisitions (w. E.Hearte) Antimatter UndergroundFilm Festival, Victoria, BC
            Transmissions & Acquisitions (w.E.Hearte) San Fransisco Cinematheque, California, USA

            IRiSs Lab #10: Empirical Evidence DanceParty, Halifax Canada                       

2010  Transmissions, Winnipeg Cinematheque, (MB), $100Film Festival (Calgary, AB)

Visual Art Exhibitions (selected / recent)

SOLO EXHIBITIONS

2017     Requiem for Radio: New Dead Zones,Centre culturel Aberdeen / RE:FLUX festival Moncton, NB    

2015     OffRoute 2  Latitude 53,  Edmonton, AB                        

2014     LandLost  Galerie d’artLouise-et-Reuben-Cohen, curated by Mireille Bourgeois.  Moncton, NB               

2014     OffRoute 2  PAVED Arts. Saskatoon,SK

2012     OffRoute 2 Centre Clark, Montréal, QC                                                     

2011     LastDays of Snow / Last Days of Cinema FICFA, curated by Angèle Cormier. Moncton, NB.

GROUP EXHIBITIONS

2017     Spectres of Shortwave, curated by France Choiniere, Dazibao, Montreal, QC

2016     Nocturne:Art at Night - anchor projects, curated by Michael McCormack, Halifax,NS

              Art in the Open, curated by Pan Wendt, Charlottetown, PEI

              OK,Quoi?!, curated by Struts Gallery & Faucet Media Arts, Sackville,NB

              Walking the Line: Fact & Fiction, curated by Nicky Tavares, Spring StGallery, Saratoga, New York

              Disrupting Binaries, curated by Corinna Ghaznavi, SOVA gallery, Dawson City, Yukon

2015     WritingTopography: McCain Biennale of Atlantic Contemporary Art,

                        curatedby Corinna Ghaznavi, Beaverbrook Art Gallery, Fredericton, NB

            Phantom Presence: Contemporary Photography in New Brunswick,

                        co-curatedby Terry Graff and Karen Ruet, Beaverbrook Art Gallery, Fredericton, NB
2014     Muse,curated by Anne Koval, Banff Park Museum, Banff, AB            

              Somewheres, curated by Pan Wendt, Confederation Centre for the Arts Art Gallery, Charlottetown,PE

Transmission Arts (selected radio broadcasts)

2019     Ghosts in the Air Glow: Movements I - X (Ionospheric audio and image transmissions with the HAARP Ionospheric Research Instrument in Alaska - 4 one-hour transmissions)

              Spectres of Shortwave / Ombres des ondescourtes (audio simulcast)
                       7595 kHz from Tashken, Uzbekistan
                        5130 / 3265 kHz from WRMI Monticello
2017     Spectres Falling Towers Excerpt in Short Waves / Long Distances curated by David Goren  

                        Radio Web MACBA (Contemporary Art Museum of Barcelona)

2018     Spectres of Shortwave / Ombres des ondescourtes (audio simulcast)
                        CHMA (106.9 FM, Sackvill, NB)
                        Channel Z (Pirate Radio)

2017     Requiem for Radio: Deviant Receptions (5 channel electroacoustic composition commissioned for Requiem for Radio,composed by Lukas Pearse) broadcast simultaneously from 5 shortwave radio stations around the world as a part of the Requiem for Radio: Full Quiet Flutter performance. 

                        Broadcast from WBCQ Monticello, WRMI Radio Miami International, Austria, 

                        German Shortwave Service, Nauen, and Pirate RadioBoston

2017     Spectres Falling Towers Excerpt in Short Waves / Long Distances curated by David Goren  

                        broadcast on WRMI (Radio Miami International Shortwave) and WGXC FM (New York)

                NAISA Radio – Transmissions performance and Keynote speech at TransX symposium

2016     Spectres of Shortwave / Ombres des ondescourtes (audio simulcast)
                        CFYT (106.9 FM, Dawson City Yukon)
                        WRMI Radio Miami International (shortwave broadcast aimed at Vancvouer)
                        Wave Farm Radio / WGXC FM (New York)

                Requiemfor Radio : Pulse Decay in “Wave Farm on Sound Proof” curated byGalen Joseph Hunter broadcast on ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

2015     The Sounds that Got Away on RadioStew – Wave Farm Radio and WGXC FM (New York)

2009     The Anachrotecnofetishow -- weekly program on CHMA Radio 106.9 FM

Screenings (selected / recent)

SOLO SCREENINGS AND RETROSPECTIVES
2019   Spectres of Shortwave / Ombres des ondes courtes (feature length landscape film)

            Vertical Screening Series (Jackman Hall, AGO, Toronto, ON)

2018   Cinémathèque Québecoise (Montréal, QC)

            Monograph Microcinema (Calgary, AB)

            Southern Alberta Art Gallery (Lethbridge, AB)

            NASWA (Plymouth Meeting, PA, USA)

            ...shifting earth ... / ...  terrains mouvants ... (experimental films & expanded cinema 2004-2018)

            Cinémathèque Québecoise (Montréal, QC)

2017   Spectres of Shortwave / Ombres des ondes courtes

            Ciné Campus  - Université de Moncton

2016   Atlantic Film Festival (Halifax, NS)

            FICFA (Moncton, NB) – winner of best documentary, international category

            Vogue Cinema (Sackville, NB)

2015   Dividing Roadmaps by Timezones: 10 Years ofMoving Pictures 1999-2009

            Visual Studies Workshop (Rochester,NY)

            Amherst College (Massachussets)

            Spectacle Theatre / Millenium Film(Brooklyn, NY )

2010   WinnipegCinematheque (Winnipeg, ON)

            Halifax Independent FilmmakersFestival (Halifax, NS)

2009   VogueCinema (Sackville, NB)

            Canadian Film Institute (Ottawa, ON) 

GROUP SCREENINGS (CURATED AND JURRIED PROGRAMS)

2019       Film Farm Program 2, curated by Kim Knowles for TIFF (Toronto, ON)

2018       Non-stop Beautiful Ladies, curated by Iris Film Collective (Vancouver, BC)

                Atlantic Shorts Redux, curated by Kiva Reardon for Hot Docs (Toronto, ON)

                This is (Not) a True Story, curated by Jacqueline Quaresma for Fabulous Festival of Fringe (Durham, ON)

2016         What's Clear Becomes Crystal, curated by Lauren Howes (Buenos Aires, Argentina)

                  Giv Lowe Gallery, curated by Amy Fung (Lisbon, Portugal)
                  No.w.here Lab, curated byAmy Fung (London, UK)

                  EarlyMonthly Segments, curated by Scott Miller Berry, Chris Kennedy,and Kate MacKay (Toronto, ON)

                  Not only Europe: Focus sur le nouveau cinéma acadien, curated by Marie Renée Dugay (Paris, France)
                  Filmer la danse : enjeux rythmiques et abstraction, curated by Braquage (St. Brieuc, France)

                  The Accursed Share, curated by Marina Roy, (Vancouver, BC)

                  AtlanticFilm Festival, (Halifax, NS)

                 Air Canada En Route on flight entertainment system, Images Festival 2016 Domestic flights in Canada

                 ImagesFestival, Toronto, ON

2015         Cinema Sceance,curated by Mark Street (Brooklyn, NY)
                  Antimatter Underground FilmFestival, curated by Deborah DeBoer & Todd Eacrett (Victoria, BC)
                  Fantasia Film Festival,curated by Marc Lamothe (Montreal, PQ)

                  WNDX Film Festival, Winnipeg, MB

                  Groupe Intervention Vidéo et Fonderie Darling, Montréal, QC

                  WinnipegCinematheque, Winnipeg, MB. 

2014     Stratégies Obliques, curated by theAngèle Cormier, for FICFA, Moncton,NB 

              AFCOOP 40th Anniversary Tour, Bear River, Inverness, Sackville,Sydney, Inverness.
              Braquage,Paris, France. 
              L’association du Tati Roulant, Lille, France. 

              SweetMagic, London, Ontario. 

2013     Agence du Court Métrage, Paris,France. 

              Heure Excquise! Curated by Lightcone, Mons-en-barul, France

2012     Interceltic, curated by Marie RenéDuguay, Lorient , France 

              L'arrivée, curated by Lightcone, LeHavre, France

              Scratch,curated by Christoph Bichon, Paris, France
              WNDX Film Festival, Winnipeg, MB

              St. John’s International Women’s FilmFestival St. Johns, NL 

              WorldwideShort Film Festival, Official Selection: Love Hurts, Toronto,ON

              KommunalesKino, Fribourg-en-Brisgau, Germany. 

              Elupar cette crapule, LeHavre, France. 

2011    Horror Verité, curated by TheoPelmus, Club Saw, Ottawa, ON 

            Canadiana: Visions of the Country by Independent Filmmakers, curated by Larissa Fan,

                        ArtGallery of Alberta, Calgary, AB

            Mire, Nantes, France. 

            Talent Tout Court, curated by Danny Lennon, Festival Cannes FilmFestival, Cannes, France

            Museum of Civilization Quebec,Canada

            Mire, Nantes, France

            Kurzfilm Agentur, Hamburg, Germany

            FICFA,Moncton NB – won Prix de la Vague, meilleur court métrage acadien

2010   Seoul Sisters curated by Lauren Howes, Exis Film Festival Seoul, South Korea