Public Studio
Public Studio is the collective art practice of filmmaker Elle Flanders and architect Tamira Sawatzky. Their multidisciplinary practice spans a wide range of topics such as war and militarization, globalization, ecology, and political dissent. With backgrounds in photography, film and architecture, the point of departure for Public Studio is an image that is often formed and informed spatially. Their photographs and immersive film installations consider the relationship between ethics and aesthetics through landscape. Central to their work is the role of aesthetic judgment and not just how to “make meaning,” but how to “make meaning matter.”
Their most recent work includes: The Accelerators (2015), an exhibition about trade, colonialism, and a networked constellation of events; The Dialogues (2014), a series of films displayed in public spaces — subways and advertising LED billboards — addressing revolution through the extraction of dialogue from the history of cinema; Drone Wedding (2014), an eight-channel film installation examining surveillance in the everyday; Visit Palestine: Change Your View (2014), in which they turned their art studio into a travel agency running tours to the West Bank; What Isn’t There (1999-2014), a fifteen-year ongoing installation project that documents Palestinian villages that no longer exist; Road Movie (2011), a six screen installation on the segregated roads of Palestine; and Kino Pravda 3G (2010), a series of video installations addressing public dissent and protests across the globe. Their work has screened and exhibited internationally including: the Museum of Modern Art; Berlin International Film Festival; The Toronto International Film Festival, and the MoCCA. Public Studio is currently working on a new feature film called HarMageddon addressing war and deterritorialization, and several large-scale public art installations.
Elle Flanders is a filmmaker and artist based in Toronto. She was raised in Montreal and Jerusalem and holds a PhD in Visual Arts. She is an alumnus of the Whitney Independent Study Program where she mentored with Mary Kelly and Martha Rosler.
Tamira Sawatzky is an architect and artist working in Toronto. After working for the award-winning firm MJM Architects (1999-2010), she founded her independent practice, Public Studio Architecture.