An art-making duo, Clint Enns and Leslie Supnet work both independently and together, sharing duties, skills, and visions to assemble some of the most inventive and charming recent experimental film and video in Canada. Both artists bring a strong DIY practice and aesthetic to their films and videos. Often reworking established aesthetic and technical objects and forms — canonical experimental films, television commercials, pop ephemera — Enns brings together an ironical, satirical edge with an underlying sincerity to create a space for new visions and energies to emerge. Glitch, circuit-bending, and/or appropriation is often the name of the game in Enns’s lovingly combative relationship with the canons of consensus. Supnet’s whimsical, and sometimes surreal, animations and short films draw from her everyday experiences, looking inward to communicate intimate observations and subtly moving thoughts and feelings through the image. In her carefully crafted hand-made puppetry, for instance, Supnet tackles issues at once idiosyncratically personal and resonantly political. Taken together, their work coalesces and counterpoints to construct a delicate, searching, and always intriguing engagement with the contemporary world.
This special Café Ex presentation will screen selections of films and videos from both Clint Enns and Leslie Supnet as selected by curator Scott Birdwise in consultation with the artists. Clint Enns and Leslie Supnet will be in attendance to introduce and discuss their work.
Clint Enns is a video artist and filmmaker living in Toronto, Ontario, His work primarily deals with moving images created with broken and/or outdated technologies. His work has shown both nationally and internationally at festivals, alternative spaces and mircocinemas. He has a Master’s degree in mathematics from the University of Manitoba, and has recently received a Master’s degree in cinema and media from York University. His writings and interviews have appeared in Millennium Film Journal, Incite! Journal of Experimental Media and Spectacular Optical.
Leslie Supnet is a Toronto based artist, originally from Winnipeg MB. Her moving image and drawing work is informed by lived experience - foregrounding the every day and its' dark undercurrents with sincerity and humour. Her works have screened at various festivals and cinemas such as Short Cuts Canada - Toronto International Film Festival, Oberhausen, International Film Festival Rotterdam, Image Forum Festival, Images, Center for Asian American Media Festival and Antimatter. She is currently in the MFA Film Production program at York University.
Clint Enns:
- The Death of Natural Language (2007, Ascii Animation, 2:54)
An ASCII animation of a plane crashing. The abstracted image mediated by ascii text parallels modern human communication; visual literacy replaces written literacy. The music is miko by the beans.
- Prepare to Qualify (2008, Circuit Bent Atari, 3:08)
A circuit bent Atari struggles to qualify as "good" or "valid" art.
- Back + Forth (2009, Super 8, 3:20)
Shot entirely in one take. This film documents the happenings on one of the strangest streets in Winnipeg.
- Self Improvement (2010, Found Footage/After Effects, 2:54)
A self help video that rests somewhere between the realms of code hacking, archaic design and spiritual awakening.
- Spider-Man Vs Macrovision (2010, Found Footage/Macrovision’s Ripguard, 2:49)
A video examining digital copy protection. Macrovision's Ripguard is a technology designed to prevent or reduce digital DVD copying. By ignoring it, and copyright infringement in general, the artist is able to produce new and innovative work. "Digital disintegration and corrupted systems recombine into a strange new beauty." - Toby Tatum
- Connecting With Nature (2011, Found Footage/After Effects, 1:28)
An infomercial and an audio guide to spiritual enlightenment spawn an instructional video epitomizing New Age commodification.
- Ten Skies (2012, Found Footage/After Effects, 2:36)
A condensed version of James Benning's Ten Skies (2006) with the skies removed. Nothing but the clouds remain. “Ten Skies is an achievement of a different order, destined for eternal, well-deserved obscurity!" - Michael Sicinski, Cinemascope
- Splice Lines (2012 Found Footage, 0:47)
Splices from Kurt Kren's 6-64 Mama und Papa.
- The Everden (2013, pxl 2000, 16:33)
Conflicted emotions about the city. Fears and anxieties surrounding movement and travel. Fragile dreams become nightmarish realities.
Leslie Supnet:
- The Animated Heavy Metal Parking Lot (2008, Digital video, 01:40, Colour, Stereo)
A stop-motion animated tribute to Jeff Krulik and John Heyn's 1986 video documentary classic, Heavy Metal Parking Lot. Remaining faithful to no-budget film making, Supnet reconstructs her favourite scenes using cut-out characters made out of aged paper, glue and ink.
- Fair Trade (2009, Digital video, 04:30, Colour, Stereo)
A young woman experiences heavy nostalgic trauma, as she purges herself from the materiality of her past. A story of one woman's quest for a psychedelic transformation.
- sun moon stars rain (2009, Super 8, 03:20, Colour, Stereo)
sun moon stars rain is a psychedelic visual elegy, lamenting the death of Mother Nature’s children.
- How to Care for Introverts (2010, Digital video, 01:47, Colour, Stereo)
An instructional video on how to respectfully deal with introverts and their sometimes difficult character traits.
- Weekend (2010, Super 8, 03:20, Colour, Stereo)
A condensed weekend shot in New York, a travelogue shot for WNDX's 5th annual One Take Super 8 event.
- gains + losses (2011, HD, 03:26, colour, stereo)
Through situational vignettes, gains + losses illustrates the filmmaker's thoughts on death and other personal, day-to-day anxieties. The work touches on internal grief, tempered with a playful sense of humour and lo-fidelity charm.
- Allan Gardens (2014, Digital Video, 05:55, Colour, Stereo)
In-camera edit of a sleepy afternoon visit to the conservatory of one of Toronto’s oldest parks.