Spring Newsletter In This Issue: February 21, 2011  •   CAFKA Charitable Status •   Annual General Meeting •   Big Ideas in Art and Culture: Mary Mattingly •   Call for Volunteers •   Ch,ch,ch,ch,changes . . . •   CAFKA TV: Fujiwara Takahiro, Trance Veil, CAFKA.09: Veracity. CAFKA Charitable Status This past November CAFKA received its charitable status designation from the Canada Revenue Agency. The application and its success could not have happened with out the support and advice of Blair Botsford at Miller Thomson. The acquisition of charitable status designation allows CAFKA to solicit support from a wide range of charitable foundations as well as issuing tax receipts for direct donations from individuals and businesses. And CAFKA needs financial support. CAFKA is a non-profit, artist run organization dedicated to bringing the best in cutting-edge international contemporary art to the public spaces of the Waterloo Region. Please support the vision by becoming a supporting member and making a donation to CAFKA. Become a member today. Big Ideas in Art and Culture: Mary Mattingly Wednesday, March 30, 2011, 7:30 pm Guelph Youth Music Centre 75 Cardigan Street, Guelph Admission: Free Mary Mattingly's art practice collapses boundaries between performance, sculpture, architecture, and documentation. Her work addresses the need for humans to migrate due to current and future environmental and political situations. In 2009 Mary Mattingly launched Waterpod, a 3,000-square-foot experimental platform for art and community living. The Waterpod was designed as an autonomous marine-based habitat and as an interactive public space that could be recreated in the future, when terrestrial resources might be scarce. The goals of the project were to illustrate a future of coping with rising sea levels and lack of land-based resources, to research and develop sustainable living systems, and to foster new forms of community-based gathering spaces. Built atop a 99 x 31 foot industrial flat-deck shipping barge, Waterpod was constructed from donations and recyclables. It showcased a wide range of solutions-based technologies involving energy, agriculture, water treatment, nutrition, and marine navigation: its systems ran on solar power; its crew grew its own greens and collected its own rainwater. Waterpod was the product of the collaboration of a multinational team of artists, designers, builders, civic activists, scientists, environmentalists, and marine engineers, brought together to propose a pathway to sustainable survival, mobility, and community building. It docked in all five of New York City's boroughs, hosting close to 200,000 visitors on its voyage lasting from June to October 2009. Mary Mattingly is an artist based in New York. She is currently a fellow at Eyebeam Art and Technology Center (NYC) and a resident at the Marie Walsh Sharpe Foundation (NYC). Her work has been featured in Art Forum, the New York Times, the New Yorker, the Financial Times, Le Monde Magazine, ICON, The Brooklyn Paper, Aperture, BBC News, MSNBC, Fox 5, WNBC, and shown both nationally and internationally. Mary Mattingly is our third guest in the Big Ideas in Art and Culture series. The series will continue in Guelph on June 22 with Bik Van Der Pol. A program of multimedia performance by Bob Wiseman and organized by Kazoo! will follow the lecture to celebrate the launch of 1mile2, an arts program curated by Musagetes that will map the cultural ecology of the centre of Guelph. From March 30-November 30, 2011, 1mile2 will feature nine artists and artist collectives who have a background in socially engaged practices that build pathways to new urban communities. For more information, please contact Christine Shaw at christine.shaw@musagetes.ca or call 519.836.7300. A bus is being made available to people from the Waterloo Region who want to attend the lecture. Advance registration is necessary. For more information regarding transportation to Guelph for Mary Mattingly’s lecture please contact CAFKA at 519.744.5123 or email gwhatt@cafka.org. Big Ideas in Art and Culture is a joint production of the Contemporary Art Forum Kitchener and Area and Musagetes. The Big Ideas in Art and Culture series is made possible in part through a grant to the Contemporary Art Forum Kitchener and Area by the Ontario Trillium Foundation. Ch,ch,ch,ch,changes . . . After four years with CAFKA, Artistic Director Rob Ring announced in October that he would be leaving to pursue independent projects. As Artistic Director, Rob over saw the development of CAFKA’s programs, managed the Open Call for Entry, contracted all the artists and oversaw the exhibition installations. Fortunately, Rob will continue to be involved in CAFKA as a volunteer supporting the biennial exhibition as well as helping out with CAFKA TV. Rob is an accomplished artist and we wish him the best success in bringing his vision forward. Visit his website at www.robring.tv. Stepping into Rob’s position is Sarah Kernohan. She is also a practicing artist and graduate of the Ontario College of Art and Design. Sarah has been deeply involved with CAFKA since May 2008. Many will know her from her role on CAFKA’s board of directors as Vice Chair and the chair of the Volunteer and Membership Committees. Sarah has been involved in the programming at CAFKA as first a member and then chair of the Programming Committee. Her experience working in a variety of roles with artist-run organizations, independent projects, and with public galleries brings a full kit of skills and knowledge to the job. Photo credit: KJ Bedford Annual General Meeting Monday, March 21 at 7:30 p.m. Schmalz Room, Kitchener City Hall CAFKA’s Annual General Meeting will take place on Monday, March 21, at 7 p.m., in the Schmalz Room of the Kitchener City Hall. The meeting is open to all paid up members of CAFKA. People who are not currently members but wish to participate in the Annual General Meeting will be able to purchase memberships at the door. CAFKA’s audited financial statement for 2010 will be tabled at the Annual General Meeting and a new board of directors will be elected. Become a member. Call for Volunteers CAFKA relies on the support of its volunteers, offering unique opportunities to work on special events, exhibition installation, video production, marketing and promotion, programming, education, hospitality, and our bicycle loan service, Cycle CAFKA. We are currently seeking people who are able to billet visiting artists during the biennial exhibition this coming September, as well as people who are handy maintaining and repairing bicycles to help us get our popular fleet of Cycle CAFKA bicycles up and running again. Sign up to volunteer here. CAFKA TV: Fujiwara Takahiro, Trance Veil, CAFKA.09: Veracity. Takahiro Fujiwara’s Trance Veil installed immediately inside the front entrance doors, became the centrepiece of the city hall installations during Veracity. Inspired by the image of falling water, Fujiwara proposed a simple mechanical substitute. Clear, thin polypropylene bands were studded with subtly coloured foam cleats at regular intervals. The bands were looped and turned by wooden spindles of different sizes, causing the belts to move at variable rates of speed. A number of sites were considered before the front entrance to the City Hall was selected and the work was measured and designed to fit the space precisely. Fujiwara sent to us specifications for materials and parts that were too large to bring with him from Tokyo. On site, the assembly was carried out by Fujiwara and his wife Yuko and with the help of City of Kitchener facilities management staff and CAFKA volunteers. The many moving parts of Trance Veil made a gentle mechanical clatter, the colours flickered and blended into an impressionistic haze resembling a waterfall and the moving polypropylene bands bounced dappled reflections of sunlight onto the floor. The overall effect was indeed both trance inducing and utterly charming as a simple yet sophisticated low–tech optical illusion. CAFKA TV is a video production arm of CAFKA, responsible for documenting the art and artists engaged in contemporary art in pubic places. If you have experience in video recording and editing or would like to learn, please contact CAFKA and get involved in CAFKA TV. Watch Fujiwara Takahiro talk about his work in this CAFKA TV short feature. Contemporary Art Forum Kitchener and Area 141 Whitney Place, Studio #7 Kitchener, Ontario Canada N2G 2X8 T 519.744.5123 E cafka@cafka.org www.cafka.org / www.cafka.tv The Contemporary Art Forum Kitchener and Area is supported by Ontario Trillium Foundation, the City of Kitchener, Musagetes, the Canada Council and the Ontario Arts Council  CAFKA.11.SURVIVE.RESIST: September 16 - October 2, 2009

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