Taste of Ed Video 2025

Programmed by Megan Arnold

Taste of Ed Video 2025 is a menu dégustation of 7 short video art works by a selection of artists with a connection to Ed Video Media Arts Centre and Guelph.

Taste of Ed Video 2025, est un menu de dégustation, composé de 7 courts métrages, réalisés par une sélection d’artistes ayant un lien avec Ed Video Media Arts Centre et la ville de Guelph.

Biography:

Megan Arnold is an interdisciplinary artist who has been based in Guelph since 2021. She has performed and exhibited across Canada and internationally, including at LIVE Biennale (Vancouver), Gallerí Úthverfa (Iceland), and FLIM NITE (Manchester, UK). Their work has been supported by the Ontario Arts Council, Canada Council for the Arts, and Arts Council England, among others. They are also an arts educator and community arts programmer, with experience in undergraduate-level teaching, campus & community radio programming, and art & music curation. Her favourite activity used to be karaoke, but now it might be lying down.

Biographie:

Megan Arnold est artiste interdisciplinaire établie à Guelph depuis 2021. Ses performances et expositions, ont été présenté à travers le Canada et à l’international, notamment à la LIVE Biennale (Vancouver), au Gallerí Úthverfa (Islande) et à FLIM NITE (Manchester, Royaume-Uni). Son travail a reçu le soutien du Conseil des arts de l’Ontario, du Conseil des arts du Canada et de l’Arts Council England, entre autres. Ses fonctions incluent l’éducation artistique, la programmation et le commissariat en arts visual, arts communautaires et musique, l’enseignement universitaire et le travail en radio communautaire. Son activité préféré était autrefois le karaoké, mais c’est peut-être maintenant de s’allonger.

Program:

  1. Elisa Glugosh, whale? 0:56, 2024
  2. Evgenia Mikhaylova, Mimeglish, or How to Spot a Meaning When The Sound Stands Still, 10:00, 2022. 
  3. Maria Simmons, Segmented Life, Regenerative System, 9:26, 2022. 
  4. Marissa Sean Cruz, BILLED-A-BEAR ʕ´•ᴥ•`ʔ, 6:29, 2021. 
  5. Maddie Lychek, Bulge, 7:04, 2021. 
  6. Racquel Rowe, Bodies of Water, 7:55, 2023.
  7. sophia bartholomew, short dreams, 6:45, 2023. 

Total Runtime: 42:15

  1. Elisa Glugosh, whale?, 2024, 0m53s (looped)

whale? Is a short digitally overlayed video (meant to be played on loop) that was originally a part of a final sculpture installation Dreamscape. Shot on Canon Powershot S24, this video references children’s imaginations and dreams, sleep, memories and remembering the past. As a child I loved to connect with nature, a lot of the time I would spend time collecting and analyzing the things around me and creating fictional stories with them. The “whale” in this video is a large rock in the credit river in Mississauga. I would always stare at it, picturing a massive whale underneath the shallow river. Overlayed on top is a video of rocks being clanged together, nature’s morse code, these combined sounds soothes the clutter in my brain, creating a white noise that encourages sleep, creating a dreamscape environment. It is encouraged to close your eyes and listen to the video.

  1. “Mimeglish or How to Spot a Meaning When The Sound Stands Still”, Evgenia Mikhaylova, 2022, 10m

Mimeglish or How to Spot a Meaning When The Sound Stands Still investigates language as an interrelation between the visual, auditory and mental concepts. It explores how the connections between the landscape as a space of limitless possibilities of engagement, sound, and an embodied and attuned sensorial experience assist in meaning-making. The work explores ways of connecting through broader linguistic propositions, attuned attention to the sonic and visual stimuli and a more expansive definition of a community, extended to the more-than-human participants in the meaning-seeking interrelationships.

  1. Maria Simmons

Segmented Life Regenerative System is a video meditation on more‑than‑human models of love. It asks: What would it be like if we thought of loving not from a circulatory system but from a nervous system? To love not with one’s whole heart but instead like a planarian worm with a nervous system that can be divided and regenerated. By shifting love from a singular heart to a divisible, renewable nervous network, the piece reimagines care as endlessly regenerative connectivity.

  1. “BILLED-A-BEAR ʕ´•ᴥ•`”, Marissa Sean Cruz, 2021, 6m29s

“BILLED-A-BEAR ʕ´•ᴥ•`ʔ” considers the implications of networked life, money and power. Comparing cryptoassets to the Beanie Babies market and bear symbolism, Cruz builds an allegory to make sense of interconnected systems embedded in the art-industrial complex.

The video satirizes the ever-widening popularity of non-fungible tokens (known as NFTs) and their value in the art market. This work remixes the capitalist jargon, authentication practices and digital branding surrounding NFTs in comparison to the white-hot Beanie Baby resale market. The video looks at bear symbolism in culture and media – a commonly reproduced form seen in toys, television, video games, books and candy. This work critiques originality and e-commerce platforms contextualized in a time of rapid digital reproduction under capitalism and how conversations of digital art have changed since the most recent NFT boom.

  1. Maddie Lychek, Bulge, 2021, 7m04s

Bulge explores gender performativity through the deconstruction of a supermarket bouquet of flowers which is then used as material to pack the artists’ briefs and create a bulge.

  1. Racquel Rowe, Bodies of Water, 2023, 7m55s

Through an interdisciplinary practice that includes performance, video, photography, and installation, I explore themes of food, family, water, and the body. I’m interested in how images and actions can offer new ways to engage with the lived experiences of Caribbean communities and what these explorations can tell us about how identity is formed, remembered, and remade over time.

  1. “short dreams”, sophia bartholomew, 2023, 6m45s

“short dreams” is a video short that unfolds small, daily experiences of gender fluidity, domestic intimacy, and play, while grappling with loss, physical fragility, and my partner’s terminal, degenerative illness diagnosis. I shot this video with my late partner, Richard Laviolette, four months before his death. Following the rapid onset of Huntington’s Disease symptoms, his health deteriorated very quickly and at age 41 he chose a medically assisted death. 

Biographies

Elisa Glugosh is an interdisciplinary artist, going into her fifth year, majoring in Studio Art at the University of Guelph. Currently working in sculpture/video install and painting. During her time at Guelph, she has been featured in four Kaleidoscope art magazines, participated in a group photography exhibition Transitions, a solo show Reproduction of Reality, Capstone group show Compromise and Etc. in Zavitz Gallery, is the upcoming president of the Fine Arts Network for 2025 and has won two 56th and 55th annual Juried Art Show awards for photography. As well as winning the 57th Juried Art Show Silence award, Honourable Mentions, Volunteer Award and Technicians Award. She is currently working on writing her work for GALT magazine and an upcoming solo show at Silence Sounds, Guelph, as well as a group show with student artist Andi Syme.

Evgenia Mikhaylova is an interdisciplinary artist working in installation, video, sound, drawing, writing and performance. Her work examines the intricacies of communication systems, language and epistemology through interdisciplinary research-based practice that investigates parallels between the ways we experience the world through our senses and the ways we interpret the knowledge we acquire.

Investigating meaning-making through sounds and objects at play, curious about existing knowledge patterns becoming porous, destabilizing hierarchies, and revealing hidden agencies in communication ecosystems, Mikhaylova explores the underbelly of language and role of reciprocity, play and collaboration in communication through semiotic approach to musicality and performance.

Maria Simmons is a Canadian sculpture and installation artist embracing contamination as an act of collaboration. She collects garbage, buries butter, ferments plants, and nurtures fruit flies. She makes art that eats itself. Simmons holds an MFA from the University of Waterloo and a BFA from McMaster University and is currently undertaking a PhD at Concordia University. Recent exhibitions include the Visual Art Centre of Clarington (Canada), Lydgalleriet (Norway), Tromsø Center for Contemporary Art (Norway), Fiminco Foundation (France), and the Contemporary Art Museum of Estonia. She has completed residencies in Canada, Norway, Finland, and the USA. Her work has been featured in Le Sabord, CBC Arts, Esse, Peripheral Review, and Public Parking.

Marissa Sean Cruz is a digital multimedia and video performance artist from Kjipuktuk (so-called Halifax). Cruz’s topics of interest are related to labour, power and surveillance as seen through digital platforms and pop culture. Their experimental videos comprise found footage, 3D modelling, sound design and costumed performances to look at value systems with critical sensibility. These satirical works aim to capture a fast-paced contemporary present and envision possible, liberatory futures. Marissa Sean Cruz has been exhibited in venues like InterAccess, Gallery 1C03, Video Pool Media Arts Centre and Dazibao. Cruz’s various projects have been displayed throughout the United States and Europe distributed digitally through spaces like the Centre for Art and Thought, Canadian Art, The Art Gallery of Ontario, PLATFORM Projects and more.

Maddie Lychek is a conceptual lens-based artist and curator. She works in video, performance and installation exploring how her body and its consumption can be used as a radical act of self-discovery. Lychek creates a tension between abjection and eroticism engaging with conversations around power and play. She has presented in venues like InterAccess and Xpace Cultural Centre and curated for Ed Video Media Arts Centre, InterAccess, and Platforms Project. Lychek worked as the Program Director at Ed Video Media Arts Centre and served as a board member of the Independent Media Arts Alliance. She is currently pursuing an MFA at the University of Waterloo.

Racquel Rowe is an interdisciplinary artist from the island of Barbados currently residing in so called Canada. Her studio practice has been recognized in solo and group exhibitions across the country. Recent solo exhibitions include The Centre of the World Was the Beach at Forest City Gallery (2025) and Saltwater Cures All at the Tom Thomson Gallery (2024). She holds an MFA from the University of Waterloo (2021) and a BA from the University of Guelph (2019). 

sophia bartholomew is a queer person and interdisciplinary artist, descended from Norwegian immigrants on Treaty 3 territory, and English and Irish settlers on the shores of Lake Ontario. Working outwards from the ruins and runes of their own cultural inheritance, sophia’s practice spans drawing, writing, sculpture and installation, photography, video, performance, collaboration, and small, daily negotiations with found materials and household waste. They received their BFA from UBC and their MFA from the University of Guelph, with upcoming exhibitions at the Art Gallery of Grande Prairie and the Ministry of Casual Living.