From an idea to the flower garden
The process
New work
Taste of Love: Edible Poetry
Poetry in many shapes and forms
A unique gift to give to a loved one, 3 in 1:
- a love poem
- a one of a kind, handcrafted edible flower
- a memorable experience
Edible Flowers: The flowers are made out of wafer paper (potato starch, water and oil), with rose water and food colouring. They were available at Koko Monk (Broadway location) throughout the Hot Chocolate Festival, to February 14, 2020.
The visitors could read a verse about love by a Vancouver poet written on an edible flower. Then, use the flower to stir it into a hot chocolate, let its petals melt like their heart, and consume.
Edible poetry at Koko Monk
Showing poetry on the flower petals (Photo taken by D.Z)
Poetry Reading was on February 7th at 7:00pm
Featured Poets: Sita Carboni, Rob Taylor, Eva Waldauf, Robin Susanto, Amanda Wardrop, Leanne Boschman, Paul Stacey, Mary Duffy, Bonnie Nish, Kyle Hawke, and Natasha Boskic.
Moments from the event
Taste of Love
If you are interested in having special flowers made only for you, or have other ideas, please contact me at natasha.boskic@onlywords.ca
The process of making edible flowers is explained on a separate page.
2019 Movie Festivals
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MOPIFF
Motion Pictures International Film Festival has announced the films to be included in its 2019 run.
The festival venue:
Creative Guild Studios, Salt Lake City, Utah, United States of America
DATE: August 23-25, 2019
The Motion Pictures International Film Festival has received hundreds of film submissions from all over the world. More than 100 films have been
Screening at the Motion Pictures International Film Festival.
Screening schedule
Events, Readings, Workshops, Exhibitions and Installations 2019
December 2019
Featured Poet at “Poetry and Arts” in Sidney and Gertrude Zack Gallery
December 12, 7:00-9:00pm, Jewish Community Centre. Response to the exhibition Wings of Imagination by Janet Strayer.
November 2019
Transformations: Expressive Art Workshop
November 7 and 14, 2019 3:30-5:30 at Isaac Waldman Jewish Public Library, at JCC, 950 West 41st Avenue.
October 2019
Featured Poet at Spoken Ink Poetry Reading
October 15, 2019. 8:00pm Deer Lake Gallery.
With Jacqueline Turner
Still/ed Here: A Story of Displacement at the Central Library in London, ON
October 2019: ongoing exhibit of Still/ed Here during the month of October.
Oct 10, 2019, on Newcomer Day, Contributions to the story of displacement by the general public on-site.
Still/ed Here: A Story of Displacement at Victoria Public Library
October 1, 2019, 6:30-8:00pm, Central Branch Greater Victoria Public Library, 735 Broughton St., Victoria. Contributions to the story of displacement by the general public on-site.
Free
September 2019
Still/ed Here: A Story of Displacement at Word Vancouver 2019.
September 29, 2019, 12:05-12:20, presentation of the project. Vancouver Public Library Community stage, Central Library, 350 W Georgia St, Vancouver. Contributions to the story of displacement by the general public on-site 11:30am-5:00pm.
Free
Still/ed Here: A Story of Displacement at Britannia Library
September 28, 2019, 3:00-4:30pm, 1661 Napier St, Vancouver. Contributions to the story of displacement by the general public on-site.
Free
Culture Days Vancouver – Workshop: Play with words and media
September 28, 2019, 10:00-12:00, Roundhouse Community Centre, Boardroom – 181 Roundhouse Mews, Vancouver.
Free
Still/ed Here: A Story of Displacement on Bowen Island
September 26, 2019 – 7:30-9:00pm, Library Annex Cove Commons, Bowen Island Arts Council. Contributions to the story of displacement by the general public on-site.
Free
 Still/ed Here on Bowen Island |
 Recording a story: Installation |
August 2019
Still/ed Here: A Story of Displacement at Hastings Library
September 25, 2019, 6:30-8:00pm, 2674 E Hastings St, Vancouver. Contributions to the story of displacement by the general public on-site.
Free
Poetic Pairing with Trevor Carolan at Britannia Library
September 24, 2019 – 6:30-8:30, Gallery Room 1661 Napier Street, Vancouver, BC. Organized by Pandora’s Collective
Free
 Reading with Trevor Carolan: Poetic Pairing |
 Reading with Trevor Carolan: Poetic Pairing |
August 2019
Poetry reading at TWS Reading Series
September 12, 2019 8pm, Hood 29, 4470 Main Street, Vancouver
Free
 TWS Reading |
 Reading at TWS series |
August 2019
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MOPIFF 2019
“On the Margin of History” – Screening at the Motion Pictures International Film Festival.
Time and location: August 23-25, 2019, at Creative Guild Studios, Salt Lake City, Utah, United States of America
Surrey Art Gallery
June 28-August 31, 2019
“On the Margin of History” – 1st prize in the category of Digital and performative multimedia art.
 Surrey Art Gallery installation |
 First prize certificate |
July 2019
ELO (Electronic Literature Organization) Conference 2019 in Cork, Ireland from July 15 to 17, 2019
“On the Margin of History” – Exhibition of the video poem, hosted at the Glucksman Gallery, a prestigious national institution of the contemporary arts. The exhibition was open from July 10th to allow the wider audience to experience the art.
About the event from the website:
“The theme for ELO2019 #ELOcork is “peripheries”: delegates are invited to explore the edges of literary and digital culture, including emerging traditions, indeterminate structures and processes, fringe communities of praxis, effaced forms and genres, marginalised bodies, and perceptual failings.”
Gluckman Gallery, exhibition
Glucksman Gallery, Cork, Ireland
MIX2019 Experiential Storytelling in Bath, UK from July 1 to 2, 2019
“On the Margin of History” – Panel discussion where we talked about our collaborative process and creative juices.
About the conference, from the website:
“Experiential storytelling encompasses works that foreground the experience of the audience or reader. Works that offer authentic and often personalised experiences are becoming increasingly prevalent and this year MIX offers opportunities to think about what that might mean for digitally-mediated narratives. Additional themes for this year’s conference include immersion and publishing; we define these themes broadly and are interested in how new forms of storytelling can respond to and learn from emerging works that explore the potential of immersive technologies.”
Panel Poetry Film with Mary McDonald and Mohamad Kebbewar
June 2019
Connected Learning in Crisis Consortium meeting, UN, Copenhagen, DM, from June 25 to 27, 2019
 Presentation |
 UN building, Copenhagen |
“On the Margin of History“
Tvrdjava Mira – Rektorat Univerziteta Novi Sad /Fortress of Peace, Rectorate Novi Sad University, Serbia from June 14 to 21, 2019
“On the Margin of History“ – Announcement from the media:
Tvrdjava mira /Fortress of Peace, Novi Sad
War is a part of human history, but it becomes history only when there is no one to tell its story. What happens with the consequences of wars that we still witness?
A project “On the Margin of History” talks about migration and deals with the consequences of the war in Syria, as well as depicts the situation after the NATO bombing of Serbia. Although starting as a form of video poetry, the project has grown into a transmedial installation, which goal is to cause empathy, humanity and closeness in chaos following the conflict. The use of augmented reality technology contributes to expressing those emotions through art.
The project combines new media, poetry, photography and video fragments and it is a result of the international collaboration between Mohamad Kebbewar, a poet from Syria, Mary McDonald – a multimedia artist from London (Canada) and Natasha Boskic from Novi Sad who works at the Faculty of Education the University of British Columbia, as a director of the educational technology support unit.
Рат је део људске историје, али рат постаје историја тек када не постоји више нико да исприча његову причу. Шта је са последицама ратова о којима и даље можемо сведочити?
Пројекат „На маргини историје“ покреће тему миграција и бави се последицама рата у Сирији и осликавањем ситуације након НАТО бомбардовања Србије. Иако започет као облик „видео поезије“ пројекат је прерастао у тзв. „трансмедијалну инсталацију“ чији је циљ да пробуди емпатију, људскост и блискост у „хаосу“ који настаје после сукоба. Употреба технологије проширене реалности (Augmented Reality) допринеће да овај уметнички израз пренесе ове емоције.
Пројекат комбинује нове медије, поезију, фотографије и видео записе и производ је међународне сарадње Мохамада Кебевара – песника из Сирије, Мери Мекдоналд – мултимедијалне уметнице из Лондона и Наташе Бошкић – Новосађанке која на педагошком факултету на универзитету Британске Колумбије у Ванкуверу ради као директор групе за подршку за употребу образовне технологије.
 Opening reception, Novi Sad |
 Opening reception, Novi Sad |
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 Watching AR |
 Watching AR |
21st International Conference Consciousness Reframed 2019 in Porto, Portugal from June 6 to 8, 2019
“On the Margin of History” – Installation: video poem and augmented reality (AR)
About the conference, from the website:
“The conference will look at the nature of artificial thought, and forms of intelligence in nature – charted through aspects of transdisciplinary creative practice and theory in our planetary culture.
Just as new paradigms of feeling and communication are beginning to form around our interaction with life at all levels of our perception, from plants and trees to fungi and bacteria, we may see matter as inhabited mind, media as necessarily moist, and technology as a tool of the Tao.
Thought is spreading through all our systems, places and products. We need cities that are not only smart but sensitive: schools that think, roads that remember, buildings that feel. art that is as much extra-sensory as interpersonal.
Our consciousness is both reframing and reforming.”
 Installation setup |
 AR components |
On the Margin of History
Collaboration
The collaboration with a poet, Mohamad Kebbewar, started as “Poetic pairings,” an event organized by Pandora’s Collective, an outreach non-profit organization, dedicated to promoting literary arts in Vancouver, Canada. We were excited to read together since our countries, Serbia and Syria, experienced similar fates. When we began weaving our verses together, we realized how war made us both feel the same, helpless, frightened, and lost. Our lines overlapped, our words chased each other on the paper. Even our voices echoed with the same emptiness. Mohamad and I recognized how a human soul can be peeled, layer by layer, and revealed through art. We got a lot of feedback from our audience about our work together. Thanks to the generous offer of Pamela Bentley’s time, space and editing skills, we made a good audio recording of our poem at the Co-op Radio studio.
The need to go further and investigate how art enables better understanding of narrative strategies, and the functioning of intuition led us to the idea of a visual poem, and Augmented Reality installation that would challenge new paradigms of feeling and communication. We connected with an artist and writer, Mary McDonald, whose interests are in posing poetry narrative against and within layers of sound, silence, image, and video.
Project
“Margin of history” is a witness of the destruction of ancient history and the sharp demographic change in Aleppo, a city of six million people that lost ninety percent of its residents over the course of six years, and then filled with new people. It is the witness of the breakdown of former Yugoslavia, culminating in the NATO bombing of Serbia where silence was the only response to events that had left people in shock and disbelief. It is a transdisciplinary project that considers the tensions between personal voice and story and the possibilities of the digital visual to suggest and reinforce false and real narratives and/or to create understandings through metaphor, playing with all levels of our perception. It attempts to reframe our consciousness to find empathy and closeness, humanity in chaos.
Media
Mobile electronic technology is used to employ symbolic storytelling in order to tell the true cost of war — the reverberating loss of the destruction of people and place, family, heritage, traditions, and cultures. Utilizing stone and clay, the oldest forms for written record as image and metaphor, through direct photo and video manipulation layers have been created from still images, clips of slow motion, time lapse, hyper lapse, stop motion, gifs, lines of light, double exposure, long exposure, motion graphics, and text. Fragmented layers of sound and image reproduce a sense of displacement and erasure. Photographs, video, text, music are manipulated by hand — distorted, skewed, glitched, inverted, repeated, placed in juxtaposition and superimposition. The AR exhibit consists of a mosaic of stills which when viewed with the AR app on a smartphone become short videos. These brief fragments of poem and film enhance the experience of the surreal and feelings of displacement. Text is digitally exploded, creating reverberating echoes of lost words, lost truths. Writing and artistic creation is a kind of healing, processing, and letting go of war and decomposition of life. Even when we chose to leave them behind, they never leave us.
On the Margin of History from connect on Vimeo.
Presentations, exhibitions and installations
Our collaborative work has been presented in Europe in summer 2019, and in Canada. There are also other events and opportunities coming.
Movie Festivals
Our video is screencast at the movie festivals.
