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Calgary Goes To The Movies Map

Artist: Amanda Forbis & Wendy Tilby
Research: Tamara P. & Robert M. Seiler, Andrew Watts, Charles Tepperman
Editing: Jim Ellis & Charles Tepperman
Graphic Designer: Glenn Mielke

Calgary’s movie screens are sites of fantasy and struggle. This map traces the history of venues for motion picture exhibition in Calgary, and the way films mediate an encounter between the local and more far-flung influences from the USA, Britain, and further afield. Movie-going was the quintessential modern entertainment, projecting Hollywood glamour to a rapidly growing city in the Alberta foothills in the early 20th century.

The history of Calgary screens is both a cultural and business struggle, as Calgary entrepreneurs sought ways of making movies speak to local audiences and fought for control with encroaching theatre chains. But when commercial cinemas were controlled by distant corporate offices, new venues and organizations have sprung up to support local filmmakers and audiences in diverse and distinctive ways.

 

About the Calgary Atlas Project

The Calgary Atlas Project seeks to recover crucial stories about Calgary’s past and present, stories that illuminate in surprising ways the character and diversity of the city.  Forgotten or overlooked stories from Calgary’s history are mapped onto the city’s geography, highlighting significant sites, events, and people in Calgary’s past. Ultimately the project will produce eighteen to twenty maps, spanning the earliest moments of habitation and settlement to the latest re-developments in the East Village.

The first two maps produced showcased Calgary’s LGBTQ2S+ history and First Nations participation with the Calgary Stampede. Newly completed maps explore the history of alternative art movements, labour activism and Calgary’s lost cinemas. Upcoming maps will illustrate immigration waves (as reflected in ethnic groceries and restaurants), Calgary’s architectural heritage, our connections with animals and the notable faces and places of Stampede Wrestling.

Each map has text written by local historians and images specially commissioned from Calgary artists, in most cases artists who have a relation to the history they are interpreting. The Atlas aims to bring a new vision of Calgary to Calgary; to show us how we got to where we are, and who we came to be.

The Calgary Atlas Project is an initiative of the Calgary Institute for the Humanities at the University of Calgary, and is generously supported by the Calgary Foundation. Individual maps are available from Calgary’s fine independent bookstores including Shelf Life Books, The Next Page, Pages Kensington, Owl’s Nest Books, as well as Map Town and Lougheed House. The project is steered by a group of five professors at the University of Calgary: George Colpitts (History), Jim Ellis (English; CIH), Nancy Janovicek (History), Graham Livesey (School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape), and Charles Tepperman (Communications, Media and Film).

In Summer 2020, the Atlas Project was the recipient of a Calgary Foundation Grant. We are enormously grateful for this grant as it has allowed us to hire a project manager to oversee the production of the forthcoming maps and to work on effective distribution schemes for the maps, making sure that they are read by the communities that would benefit from them the most.

 

Calgary’s Architecture Map

Text and photography: Graham Livesey
Map design: SPECTACLE Bureau for Architecture and Urbanism (Philip Vandermey, Jessie Andjelic, Veronique Ulrich, Vanessa Wang)
Editor: Jim Ellis
Graphic design: Glenn Mielke

This map shows important examples of Calgary’s architecture with its evolving styles and architectural characters. Prior to the settlement of Calgary and surroundings there were, and still are, the longstanding traditional architectures of the Indigenous people of the Treaty 7 region in Southern Alberta. Early examples of settler architecture tended to be interpretations of colonial models, which is evident in most buildings before World War II. With the advent  of modernism after the War an increasingly sophisticated local architectural community came to the fore, resulting in the regionally responsive approaches of the 1960s. The economic boom of the 1970s created a dramatic expansion of the city both outwards and upwards, which also brought to the city large architectural firms from Toronto and the United States. Postmodernism came to the city in the late 1970s, followed by a reinvigorated modernism. Recent years have seen various “starchitects” contribute to the city’s fabric, adding to the rich diversity of Calgary’s architectural history.

 

About the Calgary Atlas Project

The Calgary Atlas Project seeks to recover crucial stories about Calgary’s past and present, stories that illuminate in surprising ways the character and diversity of the city.  Forgotten or overlooked stories from Calgary’s history are mapped onto the city’s geography, highlighting significant sites, events, and people in Calgary’s past. Ultimately the project will produce eighteen to twenty maps, spanning the earliest moments of habitation and settlement to the latest re-developments in the East Village.

The first two maps produced showcased Calgary’s LGBTQ2S+ history and First Nations participation with the Calgary Stampede. Newly completed maps explore the history of alternative art movements, labour activism and Calgary’s lost cinemas. Upcoming maps will illustrate immigration waves (as reflected in ethnic groceries and restaurants), Calgary’s architectural heritage, our connections with animals and the notable faces and places of Stampede Wrestling.

Each map has text written by local historians and images specially commissioned from Calgary artists, in most cases artists who have a relation to the history they are interpreting. The Atlas aims to bring a new vision of Calgary to Calgary; to show us how we got to where we are, and who we came to be.

The Calgary Atlas Project is an initiative of the Calgary Institute for the Humanities at the University of Calgary, and is generously supported by the Calgary Foundation. Individual maps are available from Calgary’s fine independent bookstores including Shelf Life Books, The Next Page, Pages Kensington, Owl’s Nest Books, as well as Map Town and Lougheed House. The project is steered by a group of five professors at the University of Calgary: George Colpitts (History), Jim Ellis (English; CIH), Nancy Janovicek (History), Graham Livesey (School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape), and Charles Tepperman (Communications, Media and Film).

In Summer 2020, the Atlas Project was the recipient of a Calgary Foundation Grant. We are enormously grateful for this grant as it has allowed us to hire a project manager to oversee the production of the forthcoming maps and to work on effective distribution schemes for the maps, making sure that they are read by the communities that would benefit from them the most.

 

Calgary’s Art Underground Guide

Artist: Drunken Paw ( Mark Dicey, Leslie Sweder, Janet Turner)
Writer: Diana Sherlock
Photographer: Dave Brown
Editor: Jim Ellis
Graphic Designer: Glenn Mielke

For thousands of years before colonization, the nations who signed Treaty 7 including the Blackfoot Confederacy (the Siksika, Piikani, and Kainai First Nations), the Tsuut’ina First Nation, and the Stoney Nakoda (the Chiniki, Bearspaw, and Wesley First Nations), as well as members of the Métis Nation of Alberta, integrated visual and material culture into their daily lives to share stories about this land, Moh’kinstsis, the place now known as Calgary.

Comparatively, Calgary’s contemporary visual art history is only a blip in time, and it remains enriched by Indigenous voices. It began with and continues because of a robust group of dedicated do-it-yourself artists, arts administrators, and arts supporters who believe art has the power to share and respond to people’s most deeply held beliefs and values. This map represents an incomplete survey of many of the visual and media art initiatives that have shaped and, in some cases, continue to shape Calgary’s vibrant and expansive art scene.

 

About the Calgary Atlas Project

The Calgary Atlas Project seeks to recover crucial stories about Calgary’s past and present, stories that illuminate in surprising ways the character and diversity of the city.  Forgotten or overlooked stories from Calgary’s history are mapped onto the city’s geography, highlighting significant sites, events, and people in Calgary’s past. Ultimately the project will produce eighteen to twenty maps, spanning the earliest moments of habitation and settlement to the latest re-developments in the East Village.

The first two maps produced showcased Calgary’s LGBTQ2S+ history and First Nations participation with the Calgary Stampede. Newly completed maps explore the history of alternative art movements, labour activism and Calgary’s lost cinemas. Upcoming maps will illustrate immigration waves (as reflected in ethnic groceries and restaurants), Calgary’s architectural heritage, our connections with animals and the notable faces and places of Stampede Wrestling.

Each map has text written by local historians and images specially commissioned from Calgary artists, in most cases artists who have a relation to the history they are interpreting. The Atlas aims to bring a new vision of Calgary to Calgary; to show us how we got to where we are, and who we came to be.

The Calgary Atlas Project is an initiative of the Calgary Institute for the Humanities at the University of Calgary, and is generously supported by the Calgary Foundation. Individual maps are available from Calgary’s fine independent bookstores including Shelf Life Books, The Next Page, Pages Kensington, Owl’s Nest Books, as well as Map Town and Lougheed House. The project is steered by a group of five professors at the University of Calgary: George Colpitts (History), Jim Ellis (English; CIH), Nancy Janovicek (History), Graham Livesey (School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape), and Charles Tepperman (Communications, Media and Film).

In Summer 2020, the Atlas Project was the recipient of a Calgary Foundation Grant. We are enormously grateful for this grant as it has allowed us to hire a project manager to oversee the production of the forthcoming maps and to work on effective distribution schemes for the maps, making sure that they are read by the communities that would benefit from them the most.

First Nations Stampede Guide

Researcher: Erin Hryniuk
Artist: Adrian Stimson
Editor: Jim Ellis
Graphic Designer: Glenn Mielke
Photographer: Dave Brown

Calgary is the Stampede City. Since 1918, the annual celebration has brought together cowboys, fairgoers and First Nations to mark the high point of the summer.

The map describes in detail the First Nations participation in the Stampede and the ways that participation changed the nature of the event. It highlights stories from the Calgary Stampede that are not often heard—stories that focus on the sometimes-controversial histories of the Stampede that are an important part of its legacy.

The artist, Adrian Stimson, a member of the Siksika Nation, has mapped the events using Indigenous ways of knowing, using pictographs in spiral and linear arrangements painted on a buffalo robe. The map serves as much to inform and remember as it does to decolonize and reclaim.

 

About the Calgary Atlas Project

The Calgary Atlas Project seeks to recover crucial stories about Calgary’s past and present, stories that illuminate in surprising ways the character and diversity of the city.  Forgotten or overlooked stories from Calgary’s history are mapped onto the city’s geography, highlighting significant sites, events, and people in Calgary’s past. Ultimately the project will produce eighteen to twenty maps, spanning the earliest moments of habitation and settlement to the latest re-developments in the East Village.

The first two maps produced showcased Calgary’s LGBTQ2S+ history and First Nations participation with the Calgary Stampede. Newly completed maps explore the history of alternative art movements, labour activism and Calgary’s lost cinemas. Upcoming maps will illustrate immigration waves (as reflected in ethnic groceries and restaurants), Calgary’s architectural heritage, our connections with animals and the notable faces and places of Stampede Wrestling.

Each map has text written by local historians and images specially commissioned from Calgary artists, in most cases artists who have a relation to the history they are interpreting. The Atlas aims to bring a new vision of Calgary to Calgary; to show us how we got to where we are, and who we came to be.

The Calgary Atlas Project is an initiative of the Calgary Institute for the Humanities at the University of Calgary, and is generously supported by the Calgary Foundation. Individual maps are available from Calgary’s fine independent bookstores including Shelf Life Books, The Next Page, Pages Kensington, Owl’s Nest Books, as well as Map Town and Lougheed House. The project is steered by a group of five professors at the University of Calgary: George Colpitts (History), Jim Ellis (English; CIH), Nancy Janovicek (History), Graham Livesey (School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape), and Charles Tepperman (Communications, Media and Film).

In Summer 2020, the Atlas Project was the recipient of a Calgary Foundation Grant. We are enormously grateful for this grant as it has allowed us to hire a project manager to oversee the production of the forthcoming maps and to work on effective distribution schemes for the maps, making sure that they are read by the communities that would benefit from them the most.

Gay & Lesbian Calgary: A Queer Map

Researcher: Kevin Allen
Artist: Mark Clintberg
Design collaborator: Jeff Kulak
Graphic design: Glenn Mielke

The pilot map, A Queer Map: Gay and Lesbian Calgary, documents Calgary’s rich LGBTQ2S+ history, drawing on the historical research of the Calgary Gay History Project with research by Kevin Allen and artwork by Mark Clintberg. Its exploration of the places and faces of Calgary’s LGBTQ+ history beautifully documents the scenes and bars where these communities thrived as well as the people and organisations whose activism and initiatives raised much needed awareness and support. The map reveals the strong sense of resistance, collaboration and pride of these communities in the face of an often inhospitable city over the years.

A Queer Map is a retelling of an old story. Lovingly curated, the history of Calgary’s LGBTQ+ community is relayed on the footprint of our city. From Club Carousel through to modern ephemera, this tour through history covers a broad swath of Calgary’s under-documented LGBTQ+ community hubs and sources of resistance in a sometimes-inhospitable Sandstone city. Drawing on the historical research of the Calgary Gay History Project of Kevin Allen and Mark Clintberg, this map explores the places and faces of Calgary’s LGBTQ+ history, its scenes, bars, community, and organisations, and the efforts made by LGBTQ+ activists to raise awareness through initiatives like Blue Jeans Day. The histories told are uniquely Calgarian, but also paradigmatic of many similar cities across western Canada. The strong sense of community, resistance, collaboration and pride which emerges from this trip down memory lane, continues to characterize Calgary’s LGBTQ+ community to this day.

 

About the Calgary Atlas Project

The Calgary Atlas Project seeks to recover crucial stories about Calgary’s past and present, stories that illuminate in surprising ways the character and diversity of the city.  Forgotten or overlooked stories from Calgary’s history are mapped onto the city’s geography, highlighting significant sites, events, and people in Calgary’s past. Ultimately the project will produce eighteen to twenty maps, spanning the earliest moments of habitation and settlement to the latest re-developments in the East Village.

The first two maps produced showcased Calgary’s LGBTQ2S+ history and First Nations participation with the Calgary Stampede. Newly completed maps explore the history of alternative art movements, labour activism and Calgary’s lost cinemas. Upcoming maps will illustrate immigration waves (as reflected in ethnic groceries and restaurants), Calgary’s architectural heritage, our connections with animals and the notable faces and places of Stampede Wrestling.

Each map has text written by local historians and images specially commissioned from Calgary artists, in most cases artists who have a relation to the history they are interpreting. The Atlas aims to bring a new vision of Calgary to Calgary; to show us how we got to where we are, and who we came to be.

The Calgary Atlas Project is an initiative of the Calgary Institute for the Humanities at the University of Calgary, and is generously supported by the Calgary Foundation. Individual maps are available from Calgary’s fine independent bookstores including Shelf Life Books, The Next Page, Pages Kensington, Owl’s Nest Books, as well as Map Town and Lougheed House. The project is steered by a group of five professors at the University of Calgary: George Colpitts (History), Jim Ellis (English; CIH), Nancy Janovicek (History), Graham Livesey (School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape), and Charles Tepperman (Communications, Media and Film).

In Summer 2020, the Atlas Project was the recipient of a Calgary Foundation Grant. We are enormously grateful for this grant as it has allowed us to hire a project manager to oversee the production of the forthcoming maps and to work on effective distribution schemes for the maps, making sure that they are read by the communities that would benefit from them the most.

Purple – Limited Edition Tote by Chloë Lum and Yannick Desranleau

“Purple is the front image of a mask used in one of our performance videos. We have been working with masks since 2016, as they seemed appropriate props to convey the autofictional narratives that seeped our works. Unlike classical ‘Green’ theatre masks, our masks don’t illustrate a particular state of mind or convey any concepts; they rather help in establishing that the story we are telling is detached from the identity of the performer. It’s organic and unfinished look is meant to underline this transitional function. However, it’s pink because it looks cool against pretty much any other solid colour.” – Chloe & Yannick.

Screen Printed by Morgan Melenka.

Product Description:
12oz Heavy Canvas – Black.
Bottom Gusset.
Reinforced at stress points.
Web Handles.
Size: 15″W x 16″H x 3″D
21″ handles.

“RING-A-DING-DONG DANDY” A Map of Stampede Wrestling

Launched by Edmonton-raised pro wrestler Stu Hart in 1951, world renowned, Calgary-based Stampede Wrestling (originally called Big Time Wrestling), was much more than a wrestling promotion in Alberta. Rather, for four decades it was a part of the province’s very cultural fabric. Several generations of fans followed the testosterone-fueled soap opera religiously and attended weekly matches on the Calgary Stampede grounds. Children bonded with their parents and grandparents, who had been watching the show for years. Kids roughhoused at recess, pretending to be their favorite grapplers. Certain mayors and provincial premiers counted themselves as fans and the show was a staple attraction each year at the famed Calgary Stampede.

This map documents the very real impact Stampede Wrestling had on Calgary from the 1950s to the ‘80s, focusing on key locations that tell the tale of the promotion, the Hart family, and the motley cast of characters who passed through along the way.

Artist Bio

Kyle Beal holds a BFA from the Alberta College of Art and Design (2001) and an MFA from the University of Victoria (2004). His work has been exhibited across Canada and the USA in Montréal, Toronto, New York City, Calgary, Saskatoon, Seattle, Vancouver and most recently Kelowna. Notably, his work was presented in the 2015 Alberta Biennial of Contemporary Art at the Art Gallery of Alberta (Edmonton) and the Esker Foundation (Calgary) among others. Beal currently lives and works in Edmonton, and is represented by VivianeArt in Calgary.

Writer Bio

Heath McCoy is a Canadian journalist, author, and communications specialist. McCoy has written two non-fiction historical books about professional wrestling in Canada: Pain and Passion: The History of Stampede Wrestling (2005) on Calgary’s iconic Stampede Wrestling promotion and Benoit: Wrestling with the Horror that Destroyed a Family and Crippled a Sport (a 2007 co-written compilation of essays) about wrestler Chris Benoit and his double-murder and suicide. Both books were critically acclaimed with David Meltzer of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter declaring of Pain Passion: “I would rank it with any wrestling book ever written.”

City of Romance: The Literary World of 1920s Calgary

A captivating and diverse cast of literary personalities called 1920s Calgary home, including a Chinese-Canadian novelist who made her name masquerading as Japanese, a mixed-race writer from North Carolina who fashioned a Blackfoot identity, and an Icelandic-Canadian bent on literary fame. Here lived a crusading feminist who wrote bestselling fiction, a car-crazy war correspondent, a policeman-novelist, and a posse of pioneering female journalists pursuing success. Many of these characters and other city writers were enjoying international acclaim.

In an era of city building after a world war and pandemic, the literary scene was booming. Writers and others saw Calgary as a “City of Romance”—a storied landscape rich with literary inspiration. Novelist Winnifred Reeve noted in 1923: “something more valuable than oil may spring from our wells.” In a small city of sixty-five thousand far from the country’s cultural centre, writers were making a literary world here. Their enterprise took effort, optimism and bravado. This map tells that forgotten story.

 

Contributors

Eveline Kolijn, Artist

Shaun Hunter, Writer

Jim Ellis, Editor

Glenn Mielke, Graphic Designer

The Animals Guide to Calgary

Travelling to the city for food, shelter, or the chance to find a mate?

Just sightseeing with your family?

Passing through on your way to somewhere else?

Whether you’re arriving on hooves, paws, fins, or feathers, this map will guide you to some of the prime spots of interest, hopefully divert you away from the many potential dangers for animal visitors to Calgary, while providing some historical fun facts for you and your family. Be advised that things may have changed since you were last here: trails may have been blocked, fences installed, or road traffic increased — creating dangers for travellers. On the bright side, there are new green spaces, a new weir, and lots of ways to move about, even if it means sharing paths with skateboarders. While some human attitudes towards wildlife in the city are changing, there are still plenty of misunderstandings, particularly about the dangers posed by our four-legged brethren. Enjoy your stay, but please be mindful of risks posed by humans.

Contributors

Artist: Rita McKeough

Writers: Shelley Alexander and George Colpitts

Editor: Jim Ellis

Graphic Designer: Glenn Mielke

Peter von Tiesenhausen: Songs for Pythagoras

Writing by Natasha Chaykowski, Ellie Epp, Lucy Lippard, and David McGregor.

Published by Art Gallery of Alberta with support from Esker Foundation.

The craftsmanship that has gone into the fabrication of this limited-edition career monograph underscores the very nature of Peter von Tiesenhausen's artistic practice. For von Tiesenhausen, the landscape of Alberta has been a primary source of inspiration, with sustainability being a constant thread that has woven its way through his work over the course of his long career. Most often working with natural materials such as wood, ice, and the land itself, von Tiesenhausen has also incorporated discarded industrial materials such as wire cabling, glass, and metal sheeting into his work. Addressing ideas of time, life, nature, and re-generation, he engages audiences with issues related to extraction, production, and our impact on the environment. As well as providing a thorough overview of von Tiesenhausen’s career, this hand-finished publication showcases a work made especially for the exhibition, inviting visitors and readers on a journey from dark to light, from weight and sombreness to radiance and reflection. The images, objects, and sounds encountered reveal the stories of their own past, yet in their re-formation and re-presentation, they ask us to consider how we are creating our own future.

Peter von Tiensenhausen: Songs for Pythagoras is a hard cover, cloth-bound book, with a debossed tipped-in image on the front cover. Each book is individually marked inside by the artist, and includes a inserted artwork and a limited edition press flexi disk of a 7 minute outtake of audio from the sound and video installation Reservoir, produced in collaboration with Jen Reimer and Magnus Tiesenhausen.

Peter von Tiesenhausen is an Alberta-based multidisciplinary artist whose practice has grown from landscape painting to installation, sculpture, performance and from simple media to complex combinations of media and multifaceted collaborations. He has had over fifty solo exhibitions and has participated in over sixty group exhibitions. Von Tiesenhausen was the 2015 recipient of the prestigious Lieutenant Governor of Alberta Distinguished Artists Award.

Natasha Chaykowski writes for Carbon Paper, esse: arts + opinions, Canadian Art, and the Journal of Curatorial Studies. Lucy Lippard is the author of David Wojnarowicz: Brush Fires in the Social Landscape: Twentieth Anniversary Edition (Aperture, 2015) and Undermining: A Wild Ride Through Land Use, Politics, and Art in the Changing West (The New Press, 2014). David McGregor is a Winnipeg-based cinematographer. Ellie Epp is a Vancouver-based artist and filmmaker.

ISBN 978-1-77179-027-7

96 pages, hardcover, original drawing insert, and audio disk

40 colour illustrations

24.4 x 30.5 cm

$84.00

Rita McKeough: Works

Edited by Diana Sherlock

Contributors: Anthea Black, Eli D. Campanaro, Elizabeth Diggon, Johanna Householder, Areum Kim, Cheryl L’Hirondelle, Deidre Logue, Jude Major, Rita McKeough, Jeanne Randolph, Mary Scott

Published by EMMEDIA Gallery & Production Society, M:ST Performative Art Festival, and TRUCK Contemporary Art in Calgary

 

This critical monograph documents Rita McKeough’s collaborative artistic process and pedagogy from the late 1970s on; her interactions with visual and media arts communities in Halifax, Toronto, Vancouver, and Calgary, particularly alternative music and performance scenes; and the audio, installation and performance work that is her ongoing contribution to the contemporary Canadian art community.

Includes a vinyl record with five audio works from installations and performances: Shiver (1995), Opponent and My Heart Beats too Fast from In bocca al lupo/In the Mouth of the Wolf (1991), Lament from Dancing on a Plate (1991), Veins (2016) and one new composition, Ashes (2017).

This project has been generously funded by the Canada Council for the Arts, the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, Calgary Arts Development and the City of Calgary, EMMEDIA, M:ST, and TRUCK; institutional sponsor, the Alberta College of Art + Design; and community contributors, Owens Art Gallery, Sackville University and NSCAD University.

 

ISBN 9780986736926

Slipcase, hardcover publication, 12" vinyl

40 x 40 cm

$75.00