Storefront Manitoba's Playlist is a monthly curated list of films, podcasts, and other resources that aim to entertain, inspire, enrich, and advance critical discussion.
Now that our province is coated in a fluffy blanket of snow, it’s time to slow down, warm up, and sleep. This month our playlist focuses on hibernation.
Perhaps bears can teach us something, about living more symbiotically with our environment in the face of climate change, about slowing down in the face of an increasingly fast-paced world.
In this month’s playlist, Bjarke Ingels calls on architects to “engineer without engines” in response to extreme climate demands; Porky Hefer designs nests for dwelling and stresses the importance of architecture that responds to local influences and instills a sense of place; and Laurie Brown guides us through a slow and soothing soundscape for a cozy evening by the fire.
WHY DO BEARS HIBERNATE?
BBC Earth
2012 | 4 Minutes
Watch this to discover how much effort is spent on survival during winter in the world of the Big Sky Bears.
From Hot to Cold: An Odyssey
Bjarke Ingels @ AA School of Architecture
2015 | 1 Hour 30 Minutes
Architecture never happens in the clinical conditions of a lab. It is always responding to a series of existing conditions – the context, the culture, the landscape, the climate. Our climate is the one thing we can’t escape – the one condition we always have to respond to. HOT TO COLD is a colourful exploration of how architecture evolves in response to its context and climate and as an artistic contemplation of how life in return reacts to the framework created by the architecture.
MINIMALISM
2016 | 1 Hour 18 Minutes
This documentary examines the many aspects of the growing "minimalist" movement that is challenging compulsory consumerism and seeking a different path. The authors of two best-selling books on minimalism, Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus, take viewers on a road trip across America that reveals the core ideas behind minimalism and meets people who share their transformational stories.
NIGHT FAIR
Cynthia Naggar & Gueze
2020 | 5 Minutes
Unique alliance of art and science, the experimental film Night Fair focuses on brain activity through the different cycles of a night's sleep. Through voice mail, media artist Cynthia Naggar and sound designer Gueze collected the dreams of citizens. These are ingeniously combined with graphic and sound representations generated by algorithms from anonymous medical data.
HUMANEST
Interview with Designer Porky Hefer
2015 | 6 Minutes
As part of the exhibition Making Africa - A Continent of Contemporary Design, the Vitra Design Museum features the work Humanest by Porky Hefer. The pice is a hammock that looks like a nest fallen from a tree, flattened by the landing and morphed into a comfortable seat.
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Porky Hefer has built oversized bird's nests since 2009. In this video, the designer talks about Humanest and his design philosophy.
PONDERCAST:
Slow Down
2017 | 1 Hour
Warning – Do not operate heavy machinery while listening to this Pondercast. Because it’s meant to help you slow down. And slow down you will - I ended up flat out on the living room carpet by about Track #6.
PRAIRIE DESIGN LAB:
Cold
2021 | 30 Minutes
Cold enough for you? The classic Canadian winter question.We explore the creative impetus that cold weather provides to two Canadian international design festivals.We celebrate the success of Winnipeg’s Warming Huts and Toronto’s Winter Stations.
UCL MINDS PODCAST:
After the Crisis, should London slow down?
2021 | 35 Minutes
This month, we're talking about slowness and what it means in the context of a city or a space. To help us think about slowness, host Christoph speaks to Pedro Gil, an architect and Senior Teaching fellow at the Bartlett School of Architecture and Dr. Elsa Arcaute, Associate Professor in the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA). Listen to hear their thoughts on slowness as a privilege, vicarious slowness, involuntary slowness, and speed as a form of power in Episode 4 of Building Better.
HINTERLAND WHO'S WHO
Get to Know Canadian Wildlife
The connection to wildlife was introduced to many Canadians through the popular Hinterland Who's Who television announcements or vignettes. First created in the early 1960s, Hinterland Who's Who made bold use of a relatively new medium - black and white television - to reach the Canadian general public. The vignettes, produced by the Canadian Wildlife Service, brought native wildlife into living rooms using excellent film footage and simple narration. They became, and remain, an enduring part of Canadian culture.