This is a Transnational Crime Syndicate Masquerading as a Government is a new sound work created for the Embassy Cultural House‘s inaugural virtual group exhibition: Hiding in Plain Sight organized by Ron Benner. The exhibition focuses on the themes in the book “Hiding in Plain Sight” published in 2020 by St. Louis-based journalist Sarah Kendzior.  In her book she describes US President Trump’s administration as “a transnational crime syndicate masquerading as a government.” An audio clip of Kendzior saying her most iconic phrase was used as the basis of the sound composition in which the tone and rhythm of her speech were roughly transcribed and then expanded upon using a piano.
The exhibition launches on October 30th via Zoom, further details can be found here. 

Weeks Feel Like Days, Months Feel Like Years  at the Anchorage Museum has been extended until December 31st. The work will be available as both an audio/video installation and on their website.  Weeks Feel Like Days is a generative sound artwork in which performers are invited to interpret a series of 5 text-based scores responding to the COVID-19 pandemic. The scores were composed to be performed by individuals or groups in isolation, and welcomes performers to reflect on their own experiences during the pandemic. You can learn more about the work and participate in the piece by clicking here.

Improvisation XXXIV: Decay Music (detail above left) and Meditation: Canoe Lake 1917 (right) are included in the exhibition Summer Winter Exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts in London, UK from October 6th until January 3, 2021.  This year’s exhibition was coordinated by artists Jane and Louise Wilson. 

Weeks Feel Like Days, Months Feel Like Years will be on view at the Anchorage Museum in Anchorage, Alaska, from August 6th until October 31st. The work will be available as both an audio/video installation at the Museum when it reopens September 1st and on their website for those who can’t be there in person.  Weeks Feel Like Days is a generative sound artwork in which performers are invited to interpret a series of 5 text-based scores responding to the COVID-19 pandemic. The scores were composed to be performed by individuals or groups in isolation, and welcomes performers to reflect on their own experiences during the pandemic. You can learn more about the work and participate in the piece by clicking here.

The Tom Thomson Centennial Swim video installation at Touchstones Nelson Museum of Art and History in Nelson, British Columbia has reopened to the public after being closed due to the COVID 19 pandemic for most of March, April, and May. The exhibition run has been extended until September 20th, 2020. Space in the gallery is limited to 15 people at a time. 

Weeks Feel Like Days, Months Feel Like Years will debut at One Mile Gallery in Kingston New York for the month of June. Due to the COVID 19 pandemic the work will only be available online and there will be no official opening. Weeks Feel Like Days is a generative sound artwork in which performers are invited to interpret a series of 5 text-based scores responding to the COVID-19 pandemic. The scores were composed to be performed by individuals or groups in isolation, and welcomes performers to reflect on their own experiences during the pandemic. You can learn more about the work and participate in the piece by clicking here.

The Tom Thomson Centennial Swim video installation will be debuting at Touchstones Nelson Museum of Art and History in Nelson, British Columbia. The exhibition opens the evening of March 6th from 7:30 until 9:00pm and runs until May 31, 2020. Paul Walde will be delivering an artist talk at 7pm.

Paul Walde will be performing John Cage’s Lecture on Nothing as scored by Cage biographer Kay Larson on October 25th at 7:00PM at the Phillip T Young Recital Hall, University of Victoria. In addition to Walde, the performance features Alex Jang, Cathy Lewis, Peter Hatch, Daniel Brandes, Laura Brandes, Christopher Butterfield, Laura Jane Scoffield Giffen, Nathan Friedman, Tina M Pearson, Paul Walde, Christine Walde, Hollas Longton, Chris Reiche, Emily Morse, Tiess McKenzie, George Tzanetakis

This is part of a weekend of events around the conference: In The Present Moment, exploring the influence of Buddhism in Contemporary Art organized by the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria.

Paul Walde will be in residence this month at The Fondazione Morra – Istituto di Scienze delle Comunicazioni Visive in Naples, Italy, studying the music and event scores of Hermann Nitsch at Museo Nitsch 

John K. Grande’s book Art, Space, Ecology: Two Views, Twenty Interviews is out now with the University of Chicago Press and features the most comprehensive interview on Paul Walde’s large-scale performative works and audio/ video installations to date. Other artists in the collection include Dennis Oppenheim, Jason deCaires Taylor, Buster Simpson, Alan Sonfist, and Pilar Ovalle. 

Requiem for a Glacier is featured in the Montreal Museum of Fine Art’s M Magazine this month .

The Tom Thomson Centennial Swim world premiere is taking place at  Barbara Edwards Contemporary Project Space at 315 King Street, Toronto on January 26th. There are two screenings starting at 5:30 and 6:30 with a reception to follow.

Ecologies of Landscape curated by Mark Cheetham is the first exhibition at Barbara Edwards Contemporary‘s new project space at 315 King Street, Toronto. The exhibition features work by Tacita Dean, Bonnie Devine, Olafur Eliasson, Isabelle Hayeur, Shelly Niro, James Nizam, Reinhard Reitzenstein, Simon Starling, and Paul Walde. Walde will be presenting a new video work derived from the forthcoming video installation Tom Thomson Centennial Swim entitled Meditiation:Canoe Lake 1917. The exhibition opens November 10th from 6 to 9pm and will continue until January 26th, 2019.

On September 14th Paul Walde is debuting a new performative work entitled Of Weather (for Geoff Hendricks). The work was commissioned by the University of Toronto’s Blackwood Gallery as part of the large scale outdoor exhibition Work of WIND AIR LAND SEA curated by the Blackwood’s Director/ Curator Christine Shaw and presented in the Southdown Industrial area in Mississauga Ontario. The exhibition runs from September 14th until the 23rd with the opening from 6pm until 9pm of the 14th. 

Of Weather is the first of a proposed series of performances called Moving Image Works in which large scale stretched photographic prints (in this case of clouds), are animated by teams of handlers. The performers in Of Weather moved thorugh the Southdown Industrial Area over the course of exhibition coming together a prescribed intervals to performa a choreography of image movements. This ballet of images is build upon standard filmaking camera movements and editing techniques including pans, zooms, tilts, wipes, and cuts. When not roaming the exhibition area, the images form a photographic installation in a radio transmission field. 

On June 25th Paul Walde was awarded the Kenny Doren Award from Ed Video. “This year’s recipient’s commitment to education, ecology, and his innovative approach to audio art was very much in line with Kenny’s practice, and Ed Video is pleased to announce that the recipient of the 2018 Kenny Doren Award is Paul Walde. Kenny Doren was a Canadian multi-media artist and composer whose practice employed musical interventions and political discourse utilizing video and performance. His art installations, videos, and digital operas have been presented in Canada, China, Finland, France, and the U.S.A. To honour Kenny’s spirit we have established this award to be presented to an extraordinary community individual who has demonstrated a strong artistic practice in or contribution to media art with an emphasis in audio.”

On May 24th Paul Walde was awarded the Univeristy of Victoria REACH Award for Creativity and Artistic Expression. The Award recognizes a significant project or body of work that furthers knowledge or awareness of the human condition. The award citation included following: “While the history of Canadian art has been built on our relationship with landscape and the environment, Paul Walde has fused that artistic legacy with decidedly 21st-century concerns and practices by exploring unexpected interconnections between landscape, identity and technology. Since joining UVic in 2012, he’s enhanced the student experience with these skills while expanding his reputation as one of Canada’s leading extended media artists.”

Alaska Variations is the subject a solo exhibition at the Campbell River Art Gallery in Campbell River, British Columbia. The exhibition opens May 3rd and runs until July 3rd. Copies of the Alaska Variations soundtrack LP coloured vinyl record will be available at the gallery for purchase.

Requiem for a Glacier is featured in renown Canadian art historian Mark Cheetham’s new publication Landscape into Eco Art: Articulations of Nature Since the ’60s. The book published by Penn State University Press and is described by the publisher as: ” Dedicated to an articulation of the earth from broadly ecological perspectives, eco art is a vibrant subset of contemporary art that addresses the widespread public concern with rapid climate change and related environmental issues. In Landscape into Eco Art, Mark Cheetham systematically examines connections and divergences between contemporary eco art, land art of the 1960s and 1970s, and the historical genre of landscape painting.” The book features the works of many artists including international artists such as Olafur Eliasson, Nancy Holt, Mark Dion, Tacita Dean and Robert Smithson, as well as Canadians Andrew Wright, Jeff Wall, Arthur Renwick, and Isabelle Hayeur.

Alaska Variations is featured in a solo exhibition at the Kootenay Gallery of Art in Castlegar British Columbia. The exhibition opens March 2nd at 7pm and runs until April 14th. Copies of the Alaska Variations soundtrack LP coloured vinyl record will be available at the gallery for purchase.

Requiem for a Glacier will be featured in the group exhibition: AU LOIN UNE ÎLE at Mains d’Œuvres in Paris, France opening February 1st. The exhibition runs until March 2nd.

Music for Natural History a collaboration of Tina Pearson and Paul Walde is featured in an audio program entitled the Touch of Sound curated by renown sound art Hildegard Westerkamp for the Helicotrema Festival in Venice Italy. The concert event takes place at Teatro di Palazzo Grassi on November 20th at 9:30pm. The program features the works of Peter Cusack, Aki Pasoulas, David Dunn, Andrew Skeoch, Katerina Tzadaki, David Monacchi, Annea Lockwood, and Westerkamp herself.