History

The Mountain Standard Time performative art festival (M:ST) was conceived and created by The New Gallery, one of Canada's oldest artist-run centres. The New Gallery is part of an active and vibrant artist-run community in Calgary with a collective history in fostering and promoting time-based art works. MST is the latest in a series of successful interdisciplinary festivals that combine art forms through the collaborative efforts of the arts community.

The first known performance festival in Calgary was in 1971 organized by arts collective WORKSHOP. Held outdoors in Prince's Island Park, the festival combined theatre, visual arts, dance and giant, live action puppetry in a multimedia presentation that had never been seen before or repeated since. Subsequent festivals in the late 1980's and early 1990's combined emerging arts disciplines like video and contemporary performance with more established forms like film and dance. These festivals were the beginning of what is now a well-established collaboration between Calgary's artist-run centres in presenting works of critical importance to the arts community. The New Gallery worked in cooperation with Second Story Gallery (now entitled Truck Gallery), Stride Gallery, EMMEDIA and the Calgary Society of Independent Filmmakers (CSIF) to present three such festivals: Media Blitz (November/December 1988); Media Blitz 2 (November/December 1989); and PULSE: an Intermedia Festival (January 1991).

Throughout the month of April 1999, The NEW Gallery produced EX.120, a five day, 24 hour a day for 120 hours of Continuous performative art. This project was a spin off of Space for Space, a semi-regular performative project that existed between 1998-2002.

These three festivals and series are of particular interest in their early support of a growing and diverse local performative arts community. Building on this tradition, the first M:ST was organized to celebrate a mature arts community by presenting works by local artists alongside visiting artists from across Canada and throughout the world, creating an important dialogue between local, national and international artists. Spanning the month of April, M:ST 1 (2001) featured over 30 local, national and international artists presenting work within the urban landscape of Calgary, and included workshops, lectures and panel discussions.

As a result of the overwhelming success of the festival, M:ST was established as a biennial event. M:ST 2 (2003) concentrated performative works into a two-week period from April 2-17, 2003. M:ST 2 (2003) grew from seven to eight arts organizations and enjoyed continued community support in terms of corporate donations and festival volunteers.

In October of 2004, with assistance from the Canada Council for the Arts Off the Radar: Initiatives in Critical Thinking grant, and CJSW 91 FM, M:ST presented M:ST 2.5 Grand Action. This was a three-day seminar event that included studio visits at the Banff Centre; a public Grand Action Panel Discussion held at the Alberta College of Art and Design; and Community Party and Networking Session held in the Kaboom Room at the Uptown Theater. The weekend events were concluded with the M:ST Annual General Meeting held at The New Gallery.

The enduring success of the festival has received local, national and international recognition, leading to the incorporation of the Mountain Standard Time Performative Art Festival Society in September of 2003. The M:ST society will continue to maintain the operational structure of the previous festivals with the collaboration of local arts organizations and thereby benefiting from the inclusion of public art galleries and academic arts institutions as venues and co-presenters of a critically acclaimed performative art festival. In its two prior festivals M:ST has been programmed and administered by eight Calgary arts organizations.

These organizations are:

The New Gallery (TNG), Calgary Society of Independent Filmmakers (CSIF), EMMEDIA, the Art Gallery of Calgary (AGC), the Nickle Arts Museum, Stride Gallery, TRUCK Gallery and the Alberta College of Art & Design's Media Arts and Digital Technologies Program (MADT).

This vast collaboration (with the inclusion of the Walter Phillips Gallery and the Southern Alberta Art Gallery (SAAG) for M:ST 3 ) makes M:ST a truly unique initiative, continuing in a tradition of important performative activities in southern Alberta.

Objectives:

M:ST operates on the objective of showcasing original, diverse, entertaining, and thought-provoking performative works. The term "performative" describes practices that originate from a visual or media arts discourse and involve the live presence of the artist. These often incorporate sound, video, film, spoken word, or live web streaming.

M:ST also strives to nurture performance-related discourse in Calgary through workshops, panel discussions, and artist's talks.

The festival ensures that the exceptional quality of performative art in this region is recognized while promoting Southern Alberta and Canada as important art centres on an international scale. Due to the outstanding quality of programming, substantial publicity, and worldwide interest surrounding M:ST (2001/2003), the organizers are producing it as a biennial event, widening the scope of presenters to include arts organizations outside of Calgary. M:ST has become its own society with its Board members comprising a representative of each presenting arts organization as well as artists from the community.


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