AD HOC #83: ARTIST ON FIRE

Program 5 

ARTIST ON FIRE 

PRESENTED BY THE AGO, INNIS COLLEGE, THE CINEMA STUDIES INSTITUTE,  TIFF CINEMATHEQUE, AND AD HOC AT INNIS TOWN HALL, 2 SUSSEX AVENUE  

FREE OF CHARGE, NO TICKET NECESSARY 

INTRODUCED BY KAY ARMATAGE 

In Artist on Fire, Armatage made the decision to focus on Wieland’s work and to eschew biographical details. Instead, she foregrounds Wieland’s “spontaneity, playfulness, sensuality, joyful discovery, the language of unconscious processes, and the traces of her own body as both image content and process of production.” At the same time Armatage emphasizes that her own working methods, which are informed by more theoretical concerns, are completely different from Wieland’s. Hence, “the exciting task of Artist on Fire was not only to engage with Wieland’s work without succumbing to imitation, but to effect an interweaving of two opposite styles without producing one as comment upon the other.” She does acknowledge that the use of voice-overs, multiple and not acknowledged until the end of the film, may have been inspired by Wieland’s approach to sound, especially in films like Solidarity. While Wieland’s voice is clear and uninterrupted, the other voices – friends, colleagues, critics – are off-screen, more fragmented and unscripted, and include personal, scholarly, critical, and poetic responses to her work, unidentified and disembodied, intercut with sonic reverb, sound effects, music, and sound from Wieland’s films.  

This screening is presented as part of the series Jigs and Reels, The Complete Films of Joyce Wieland, co-curated by Jim Shedden and Georgiana Uhlyarik and co-presented by the Art Gallery of Ontario, TIFF Cinematheque and AD HOC . This series coincides with the exhibition Joyce Wieland: Heart On – an important survey of one of Canada’s most prominent and prolific twentieth-century artists and filmmakers – on view at the AGO until January 4, 2026.