DATE & TIME
April 28, 2022 @ 06:30PM
Doors open @ 06:00PM

LOCATION
Main Lobby at the GRAND

TICKET PRICE
$0.00 to $75.00
includes all fees and taxes

IMPORTANT

Proof of vaccination or negative COVID-19 test will not be required to attend this event.

Masking will not be required to attend this event.

By purchasing tickets to this event, you agree to abide by the COVID-19 Policy at the time of the event.

Please see our full COVID-19 Policy here.

Flexible Hours is a performance-driven collaboration residing in Canada. It’s participants are live composer and experimental sound artist, Eric Fraser and interdisciplinary artist Stephanie Patsula. 

Through an exploration of new media, live performance and sound creation the pair work to assess and manipulate their surroundings. Patsula uses her own body as a conduit and site to explore, while Fraser relies on sound creation and collection. Together they use chosen and created materials to develop live performances and scores. 

The catalyst of these works is found in both artist's desire to subvert a linear or binary perspective of the world around us, and aim to create atmospheric interventions that allow both artist and viewer to take agency in the co-creation of the moment. 

Eric Fraser is a composer and sound artist who lives and works on treaty 6 territory ᐊᒥᐢᑿᒌᐚᐢᑲᐦᐃᑲᐣ - amiskwacîwâskahikan, Edmonton, Alberta. 

He is a live performer and electronic musician who draws inspiration from the overall physical and political climate. The local industrial influences of the Places in which he works form the foundation of his conceptual and experimental process. By sampling and manipulating field recorded and synthesized soundscapes in his musical compositions, he attempts to create a mood of dissonance. 

Fraser approaches his work with a hybrid of analog, digital and acoustic tools. Fraser experiments with non-linear patterns, pacing and spatial sound design as a tool to create tension for the listeners and viewers. He has been involved as a composer, sound artist and participant in various electronic music and audio-visual projects in Canada for over a decade. 

Stephanie Patsula is an early career artist who lives and works on treaty 6 territory ᐊᒥᐢᑿᒌᐚᐢᑲᐦᐃᑲᐣ - amiskwacîwâskahikan, Edmonton, Alberta. 

This past November (2020) she graduated with an MFA in Intermedia from the University of Alberta. The projects Patsula creates are focused across a variety of processes, meeting at an intersection of lens, installation and performance work and are mediated by both physical and digital locations. She is interested in the metaphor vehicle of vessels and how the body gives material form to personal and abstract experience. Patsula’s work prioritizes embodied research, exploration of site(s), reciprocity through sound and symbology, while attempting to approach concepts of relational ethics, cultural ritual and spirituality.  

In addition to her art practice, she aims to foster connections within the arts community, working with project spaces and arts incubators to activate sites with programming, interventions and events.

Project Statement 

Information Systems

This small pop up exhibition explores ideas of directional guidance both environmentally and interpersonally and uses visual symbols and metaphors to describe ways in which a person can navigate a variety of planes.

As part of the exploration, Flexible Hours has created a live, improvised performance and installation, titled Beacon. In this collaboration, Patsula uses self-made instruments and found objects as tools for performance and sound creation. These selected objects hold symbolic importance and help to describe a relationship she has to places and individuals. At the intersection of this work, Fraser uses audio from field recordings captured in Iceland along with synthesizers, samplers and a drum machine to co-create a musical composition with Patsula.

True to wayfinding, they use a variety of approaches to make decisions on the direction, mood and tone of the piece. Much like navigating the multiple facets of daily life, these choices lead to discoveries and familiarity that can only unfold on the journey.

Rufi Oswaldo’s purpose is to inspire reflection, gratitude, and joy through his dance practice. And for over twenty years, he has done just that through a richly multi-disciplinary and stylistically eclectic dance career that spans contemporary dance, “Latin” and standard dancesport, and Cuban traditional and social dance styles. In addition to maintaining an independent choreographic and performance practice, he serves concurrently as the Artistic Director of Dancers’ Studio West in Calgary, AB and conducts research remotely as a PhD Candidate of Performance Studies at York University.