Normally this time of year, we’d be inviting you to slather in the sunscreen, spritz on a fine layer of bug spray, stuff your poncho in your backpack, fill your pockets full of adventure, and/or sip on a cold one while soaking up some sweet indie jams as we gear up for another go at Edmonton’s only found space multidisciplinary art festival.
But! The pandemic had other plans. And that’s cool. The health and safety of our community is our top priority.
Found Festival will look a whole lot different this year. There will be no Found Grounds, no beer garden, no immediate way for us to gather as pals and artists and community. But you better believe we’re reinventing how artistic exchange happens when we can’t gather together.
Our buttons are burst: we are proud to deliver 14 brave digital and distanced projects brought to you by more than 30 multidisciplinary artists.
Let’s get wired and weird.
Found Festival 2020: Reimagined
July 2 – 5, 2020
online and from a safe distance
ticket & schedule info coming soon – stay tuned!
Announcing your 2020 Found Festival: Reimagined Lineup
Poetry Showcase
curated by Dwennimmen
The 2020 Found Fest Showcase is a collection of wordsmiths who connect with amiskwaciy-wâskahikan (Edmonton). They will lead you on a verbose journey through their experiences and ideas. They will represent and signify their widespread roots with poems that offer windows to look through to their souls while you stroll the neighbourhood.
Featuring: Omar Ramadan, Saint, Sara Campos-Silvius, Some Sum, Timiro, and Donovan Shirt (not pictured). Supported by Story City.
Live from the Found Fest DJ Booth
curated by Mustafa Rafiq
Live music streaming from our house to yours.
Featuring Dj Dooshima, DJ Guzlar, HJ (aka Hood Joplin), Saw Whet Records, Pepper’d Collective & more!
#NEWSKILLS
created by Morgan Yamada
This new normal has changed how many of us live our lives! Learning new things can be challenging, but also can lead to new ways of finding daily joys. Morgan is attempting to continue that learning in #NEWSKILLS! Taking lessons from a wonderful group of individual artists on things that they are great at and that bring them joy! Morgan will try her very best to learn those skills and put them all together in an ode to continual learning! There will be laughs, there will be failures, there will be happy accidents. Try and learn alongside her or witness what will be created when all of these new skills are combined in, #NEWSKILLS.
Featuring Morgan Yamada, Cynthia Jimenez-Hicks, Helen Belay, Althea Cunningham (not pictured) & more!
Chamber Obscura
presented by Le Fixe Theatre
Our family of three has collaborated to adapt and perform this American folk story as a 15-minute drive-in performance set in Dustbowl-era Alberta. Inspired by the storytelling style of Edward Gorey, “Chamber Obscura: 50 Cent Piece” is a whimsically dark tale of one family’s strange encounter with the kindness of strangers. Each performance is a private viewing experience for the driver and passenger(s) of a single enclosed motor vehicle, to be viewed through your front windshield, with live audio broadcasting on your FM radio.
Connection
by Mackenzie Brown
Hailing from the Sturgeon Lake Cree Nation, performer and drummer Mackenzie Brown leads you on a personal immersive musical journey through the ᐄᓃᐤ (ÎNÎW) River Lot 11∞ Indigenous Art Park.
Supported by Story City.
Existentialism for Babies
by Elise Jason
Existentialism for Babies is a textural and experimental delve into the question “what does it mean to survive?” In collaboration with local composer Mustafa Rafiq, novice filmmaker Elise Jason dips their toes into their own childhood oncological trauma (and filmmaking) with their former pediatrician Dr. Melanie Lewis. Created using found footage and the decaying footage of their childhood from their parents’ closet, Existentialism for Babies attempts an honest look at trying to survive surviving.
THE GUARDIAN
Inspired by the chapter ” ‘el guardian’ alma número” 13 in the book “Almas de Brandon” by Brandon Cesar.
The Home Suite
presented by Two Little Theatre
The Home Suite is an answer to the question “who would I be if I lived in this house?” It invites audiences to take a stroll through the streets and avenues of Old Strathcona, pausing to notice all the little details that make a house into a home, while listening in on the lives of their possible inhabitants. The Home Suite is an ode to the homes that shape us, even as we shape them: 10 short audio pieces to be played in succession, like a musical suite.
In The Home Suite audiences will be given directions to the location of ten homes in Old Strathcona. With the help of the brilliant Story City App, they will find their way to these locations where they can listen to audio pieces inspired by each home. Whether it’s a grand manor or a microloft; a tear down or an infill; an eccentric bungalow or a forgettable walk-up; every home has a story to tell.
Featuring Paula Humby, Ben Stevens & more! Supported by Story City.
The Quaranteens
by Juniper Moon Productions
The Quaranteens is a virtual interactive gallery that allows audiences a glimpse into the daily lives of teenagers in quarantine. Shown through their eyes, and complemented by interviews with the project creators, you are invited to experience a different version of quarantine – one that has perhaps been overlooked by those of us who might be preoccupied with our own adult responsibilities.
Using their own language and unique style to interpret and process the upheaval of their lives, these teens will pull back the curtain to reveal a world that is sometimes secretive, but nonetheless valid. Told perhaps through short film, an original piece of music, or even some visual art, The Quaranteens will give audiences the teenage perspective as they navigate these uncertain times.
Directed by Maura Penn and produced by Kate Ward
record/record: a VHS funeral
by Gabby Bernard
What is a record? What is memory? How do we try to capture permanence in our impermanent lives? You are invited to record/record: a VHS funeral. Stay as long as you like. Listen, watch, leave, come back as you please. Over the course of this live-streamed digital funeral, 33 VHS tapes will be dismantled, erased, and laid to rest, as we explore what it means to remember and be remembered. Feel free to bring something you loved once, and leave a eulogy of your own.
/Secret/Creek/
/Secret/Creek/ is a 45 min experiential medicine show, aimed to take the audience on a stunning musical journey through the woods. Medicine shows were touring acts that peddled miracle cures, natural medicines and products alongside community entertainers. The viewer will be compelled to carry on, deep into the woods to discover the secret miracle cure, Tzadeka!
Starring Kirsten Elliot, Allison Ochoa, Audrey Ochoa, Aytahn Ross & Maigan van der Giessen
Sounding
by Dwennimmen
Sounding is a revisitation of Dwennimmen’s least performed work with visual interpretations of the meaning and affect of the poems. Follow Dwennimmen through an idyllic journey through the Audiobook of her debut book, Horn.
Supported by Story City.
Stories from Nowhere in Particular
by Simone A. Medina Polo
Stories from Nowhere in Particular is a series of interwoven vignettes by interdisciplinary artist Simone A. Medina Polo. Each story aims to be a slice of life contemplation, oscillating between concrete moments by hanging out to a building, a place, or a thing as a mnemonic device as opposed to more abstract reflections on the passing moment. As a whole, the composition is an exploration of various intersections between gender, immigration, race, mental illness, and class as they are conditions to an on-going experience of time and narrative. When time and narrative are disjointed by different contemporary disorientations, stories have to take on a different dynamic form as they gather a voice for themselves in transience.
YEGOLI
by Aytahn Ross
YEGOLI turns the every day into an adventure with a live circus and comedy show for all ages! Featuring amazing physical tricks and stunts, as well as elegant and silly moments that will warm your heart. This highly visual performance will happen outside of buildings where the audience can watch a live show safely from their windows or balconies right in the heart of the city. YEGOLI is a word that combines YEG for Edmonton and OLI for Oliver which is exactly where the performances will happen. This is the first time Found Fest will feature a show across the river in this neighbourhood that is the most densely populated in the city. The artist behind YEGOLI has been seen live by 1 million people in 13 countries around the world. He’s had repeat invitations to Just for Laughs, sold-out shows at the National Arts Centre, and performed with the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra. Don’t miss your chance to see him live at your doorstep!
Big news, Foundsters! We’ve partnered with Story City to deliver some of Found Festival’s distanced artistic adventures. Stay tuned – we’ll be updating the Story City app with content and maps for exploring the heart of Old Strathcona at your own pace (or from the comfort of your own home!).
About Story City: at Story City we transform streets into adventures! Story City makes you the hero of your own adventure, with each real-life choose your adventure, puzzle trail, or historical tale through city streets only opening if you’re in the right location. Each experience is created by local content creators who know their cities best. Download the Story City app to find trails near you, or if you’re a content creator sign up to our newsletter to hear about the latest opportunities. The world is full of adventures, choose yours!
Found Festival is generously supported by these fine funders!