ARTIST RESIDENCY:
This is Not My Culture

Xstine Cook brings the CAOS to This is Not My Culture
cSPACE Eau Claire Neighbourhood Hub
Various events through September

For a full list of events, see the cSPACE Eau Claire Calendar here.

About the Project

5 Types of Events

Open Studio
Watch and Work
Screenings
Workshops

Exhibition

Artist Xstine Cook invites you to contemplate the creative potential of plastic as she transforms diverted packaging material into a full body mask creature.

By touching, manipulating, and re-purposing plastic that was intended for a single use before being thrown to Earth to process over unknown millennia, “This is Not My Culture” invites you to view this miraculous material not as waste, but as an extraordinary resource. The globe’s frantic pace of plastic generation is at the crux of the fraught relationship between humans’ minds and hearts; our addiction to convenience, vs the interconnectedness of all life.

The packaging materials for this residency were generated by Cook’s family’s normal consumption over the course of a year, and will be prepared on site in the Hub, where the mask will be imagined, designed, created and exhibited. Viewers will observe the repetitive, meticulous process of creation, and the slow reveal of the creature.

Open Studio

Whenever the artist is working, the space will be open. See schedule for confirmed times, or drop by to see what’s going on.

Events and Happenings

Check out several community events happening as part of This is Not My Culture, including Make-Your-Own Mask sessions, Mapperz Bring Your Own HDMI Vol II projection mapping event, Work and Watch movie nights, Cabaret Jam puppet meet up, a screening of the Bum Family’s film Pollution Solution, a special National Day of Truth and Reconciliation screening of Gitz Crazyboy’s Peace Pipeline, and an exhibition of This is Not My Culture creations.

*Some events request registration via Eventbrite.

ABOUT XSTINE COOK

A cultural activist who uses the power of storytelling to bring unconventional stories and art forms to light, Xstine Cook operates on the core belief that all humans are art makers, and acts of radical creativity are necessary to evolve our understanding of ourselves, each other and our world.

Xstine is a visitor to the Treaty 7 area, who was raised in Calgary and in the foothills of Alberta along Dog Pound Creek. Cook is a mask maker and multi-disciplinarian and she trained at Dell’Arte theatre school in Humboldt County California, and with various masters in Indonesia, Italy, France, and the West Coast of Canada.

Xstine co-founded Green Fools Theatre where she wrote, directed, and designed many of the company’s boundary-stretching original works until she left in 2003 to start the Festival of Animated Objects, and CAOS, an interdisciplinary arts company.

Xstine is the recipient of the 2022 City of Calgary Award for Community Achievement in the Arts, the Queen Elizabeth II’s Platinum Jubilee Medal, the Rozsa Foundation’s Innovation Award, and countless awards for her filmmaking.

She recently co-wrote and produced MONSTR, an animated short by Tank Standing Buffalo for HBO Max Warner Brothers Discovery Access Animated Shorts Program.