Mira Hunter's Curriculum Vitae

>>CV

Emine Mira Hunter (née Burke) is a visual artist and second-generation sufi mevlevi whirling dervish, she began her traditional training at the age of 16 with her father Raqib Burke and Sheikh Jelaladdin Loras. As a visual artist, she studied at NSCAD and Yale, graduating with a BFA in Interdisciplinary Arts and a minor in art history. For the past 10 years she has collaborated with Turkish born, Canadian producer/musician/DJ Mercan Dede, performing at such acclaimed international events as the Montreal Jazz Festival, the Vancouver Folk Festival, the Montreux Jazz Festival and the Paleo Festival. She has toured all over the world, from New York, to London, to, Dubai, to Japan. She was featured in David Michalek’s Slow Dance project that was exhibited at the Venice Biennale in 2008, and appeared in Fatih Akin's award winning documentary Crossing The Bridge: The Sounds of Istanbul. Mira continues to challenge the fundamental forms of whirling by incorporating innovative movements and concepts, coaxing the 13th century practice into a contemporary context. She is currently pursuing her MFA at Columbia University. She currently studies Sufism under Sherif Baba Catalkaya and lives and works in New York City.

Mira’s 2008 piece Time Machine, which is the result of a collaboration with her husband, Derek Hunter, is a multi-sensory video made using a custom circular bullet-time camera, consisting of 65 disposable 35 mm tourist cameras fixed to a 360-degree rail, activated by electromechanical solenoids. The photographs which feature Mira whirling at the centre, were animated in a sequence, giving the audience the visual experience of revolving around a whirling dervish, caught in a single moment. The concept is to translate the restorative energy of whirling through technology, allowing the viewer to have a positive physical response. The images, often displaying unusual exposure anomalies, were scanned and made into two films, which played simultaneously within a wooden yurt-like viewing structure. The work was installed at the Bartlett Gallery in Vancouver 2008, in Toronto at the 2008 MADance Screen Salon, and will be shown in September 2010 at A1C Gallery, St. John's, Newfoundland.

In 2009 Mira worked on the installation Waterpod™, a floating, sustainable, solar-powered living experiment and exhibition space, including 4 bedrooms, an efficient rocket wood stove, a gravity-fed shower room, extensive edible landscapes, grass roots hydroponics, a small flock of laying hens, composting toilet and urine separation, rain water collection and a grey water recycling system all secured to a rented deck barge, produced by a collective of artists, engineers and volunteers from mostly reclaimed and intelligently re-used materials. Waterpod™ was conceived as a showcase for grassroots attainable sustainable technology through a cross-disciplinary artistic lens. It travelled the New York waterways in the summer of 2009, acting as a home for a small collective of visual artists. As one of the resident artists and the first artist director Mary Mattingly invited to join the project in 2006, Mira focused on the restriction and transformation of personal waste, the creation of collaborative innovative projects and ideas, the active caretaking of the nourishing onboard eco-system, and documenting her trials, successes and explorations to share within the public sphere. Waterpod™ was an accessible self-reliant eco-habitat, exhibition and living space, constructed with the advancing sea levels in mind.

Mira is currently working with Derek on a companion piece to Time Machine, working title Time Bomb. Time Bomb will be a different look at reparative/restorative potential in art. Inspired by Fischli/Weiss and Mary Mattingly's future human Navigators, it will playfully document a post apocalyptic/ apocalyptic moment when nature and the common animal will raise a Molotov cocktail in the name of environmental injustice, through bullet time photography, stop motion animation, video and a rotating tripod machine. The following work, working title Time Capsule, and last work of the Time Machine Trilogy will be the animated monologue of a microscopic, permanent, future robot. Originally created by humans to witness a single lifetime, it is now drifting introspectively, a century beyond it's own planned usefulness.

Education
Columbia University School of The Arts, 2012 MFA Candidate (New Genres)

Vancouver Institute of Media Arts, Vancouver, British Columbia, 2007 (Diploma Stop Motion Animation)

Emily Carr University of Art + Design,Vancouver, British Columbia, 2006 (Diploma Web Design + Flash)

NSCAD University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, 2000-2002 (BFA Interdisciplinary Visual Art)

Yale University Summer School of Art, New Haven, Connecticut, 2001 (Fellowship in Painting)

Capilano University, Vancouver, British Columbia, 1998-2000 (Diploma Studio Art)

Pacific Institute of Culinary Arts, 1996-1997 (Diploma French Cooking)

Mevlevi Order of America, Fairfax, California, 1995-1997 (Mevlevi Whirling)

Exhibitions
Carlito Dalceggio's Death of Fear at Galerie SAS, Montreal, QC, 2010

Waterpod™: Ecology and Autonomy, Exit Art, New York, NY, 2010

Waterpod™, Waterpod™, New York, NY, 2009

Time Machine, MADance Screen Salon, Toronto, ON, 2008

Time Machine (installation), Bartlett Gallery, SFU, Vancouver, BC, 2008

Experimental Empire, SFU Studios, 611 Alexander, Vancouver, BC, 2008

The Dark Between, Beaumont Studios, Vancouver, BC, 2008

Forecast: An Environmental Disaster Opera, Whitebox Gallery, New York, NY, 2006

We Go Round And Round In The Night, Feldman Gallery, Portland, OR, 2005

1005 McLean, 1005 Mclean, Vancouver, BC, 2005

The Life Boat, during Art Basel, Miami, FL, 2004

Art Under Foot, Roundhouse Community Centre, Vancouver, BC, 2004

Aviary, Salon Des Arts, San Francisco, CA, 2003

A Night At The Tigress, The Roundhouse, Vancouver, BC, 2003

Golden Double Happiness, Capilano University Gallery, Vancouver, BC, 2003

Graduation Exhibition, Anna Leonowens Gallery, Halifax, NS, 2002

Batin Zahir, Anna Leonowens Gallery, Halifax, BC, 2002.

Qiwhole, Moreland Clearwater Gallery, Vancouver, BC, 2000

Graduation Exhibition, Capilano College, Vancouver, BC, 2000

Selected Performances
Carlito Dalceggio's Death of Fear at Galerie SAS, Montreal, Canada, 29/4/2010

CanAsian Dance Festival, with Raqib Brian Burke and Eric Powell, Toronto, Canada, 7-9/5/2009

Dubai International Film Festival at the Jumeirah Al Shams Arena with Circo de Bakuza and Mercan Dede, Dubai, United Arab Emirates, 18/12/2008

Forum Theater with Mercan Dede and Stimmhorn, Melbourne, Australia, 14/12/2008

Sudpol with Mercan Dede and Stimmhorn, Kriens/Luzern, Switzerland, 4/12/2008

Batiement des Forces Motrices with Mercan Dede and Stimmhorn, Geneva, Switzerland, 3/12/2008

Rotfabrike (Aktionshalle) with Mercan Dede and Stimmhorn, Zurich, Switzerland, 2/12/2008

Dampfzentrale with Mercan Dede and Stimmhorn, Bern, Switzerland, 30/11/2008

Cinema Teatro with Mercan Dede and Stimmhorn, Chiasso, Switzerland, 29/11/2008

Theater Performance with Mercan Dede and Stimmhorn, Chur, Switzerland, 28/11/2008

Kaserne (Reithalle) with Mercan Dede and Stimmhorn, Basel, Switzerland, 27/11/2008

Koç University with Mercan Dede Secret Tribe, Istanbul, Turkey, 19/11/2008

Istanbul Modern Museum with Mercan Dede Secret Tribe, Istanbul, Turkey, 14/11/2008

Vredenburg with Mercan Dede Secret Tribe, Utrecht, Holland, 26/10/2008

Trinity St. Paul's Breath with Mercan Dede, Toronto, Canada, 2/2/2007

Mary Mattingly’s Forecast: An Environmental Disaster Opera, Whitebox Gallery, USA, 19/12/2006

Barbican Hall Concert with Mercan Dede Secret Tribe, London, England, 20/10/2006

Sinsaibashi Club Quatro with Mercan Dede Secret Tribe, Osaka, Japan, 5/10/2006

Worldbeat:Nights of Ramadan with Mercan Dede Secret Tribe, Tokyo, Japan, 4/10/2006

Saint-Denis Festival with Mercan Dede Secret Tribe, Paris, France, 16-18/6/2006

Simdi Now Stuttgart with Mercan Dede Secret Tribe, Stuttgart, Germany, 26/11/2005

MOVE Festival with Mercan Dede Secret Tribe, Prague, Czech, Republic, 15/9/2005

Arena with Mercan Dede feat. Natasha Atlas, Istanbul, Turkey, 20/8/2005

Le Parc De La Villette with Mercan Dede Secret Tribe, Paris, France, 14/8/2005

The London Forum with Mercan Dede Secret Tribe, London, England, 04/6/2005

Seattle International Children’s Festival with Mercan Dede, Seattle, Washington, 15-20/5/2005

M15 with Mercan Dede Secret Tribe, New York, USA, 06/05/2005

Yeni Melek Sinemasi with Mercan Dede Secret Tribe, Istanbul, Turkey, 22/12/2004

Simdi Now Berlin with Mercan Dede Secret Tribe, Berlin, Germany, 3/9/2004

Forum with Mercan Dede Secret Tribe, Barcelona, Spain, 30-31/8/2004

Stern Grove Festival with Mercan Dede Secret Tribe, SF, USA , 1/8/2004

Grand Performances with Mercan Dede Secret Tribe, LA, USA , 31/7/2004

Celebrate Brooklyn with Mercan Dede Secret Tribe, Brooklyn, USA, 23/7/2004

SummerDance with Mercan Dede Secret Tribe, Chicago, USA, 22/7/2004

Joe’s Pub with Mercan Dede Secret Tribe, New York, USA, 19/7/2004

Vancouver Folk Fest with Mercan Dede Secret Tribe, Vancouver, Canada, 17/7/2004

Guldestan with Modern Dance Turkey, Istanbul, Turkey 21-28/6/2004

Don’t Go Back To Sleep with The Open Secret School of Whirling, Vancouver, Canada, 15/11/2003

Jazz A Vienne with Mercan Dede Secret Tribe, Lyon, France, 13/7/2003

Montreux Jazz with Mercan Dede Secret Tribe, Montreux, Switzerland, 12/7/2003

New Dance Festival, Halifax, Canada, 3/2/2002 Montreal Jazz Festival with Mercan Dede Secret Tribe, Montreal, Canada, 3/7/2001

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