Amber Phelps Bondaroff – September 2025

September 2 2025

Hello Hammock friends. My name is Amber PB (she/they), and I am a socially motivated, community-engaged, project-based artist, with backgrounds in visual arts, performance and music. I studied painting, textiles and multimedia in my undergraduate degree from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (NSCAD) before moving back to the prairies in 2012 to complete a Master degree in Intermedia Arts at the University of Regina. ⁠
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I just set up a new public instagram account for art and projects and things: @amberpb_art (Its new and shiny.) ⁠
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For those who know me, I’ve got a private account that goes back a ways, but its mostly for lurking, memes and occasional baby pics. 😉 @amberpb⁠
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I am a white, able bodied, queer, settler, with Ashkenazi roots. My ancestors settled on the prairies, hailing from the UK on my dad’s side and Ukraine on my mom’s side. My grandparents were all born on small farms in Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Alberta. I was born on Treaty 7 lands, in Moh-kíns-tsis (Calgary, AB.) I bounced around a lot in my 20’s before settling myself, on Treaty 4, in Oskana kâ-asastêki (Regina, SK.) ⁠
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It was in those uprooted 20smthing years that I first met Heidi, and was introduced to Hammock. Heidi and I met on a front porch in Portland, Oregon in 2010 while we were attending Open Engagement. (No photo documentation exists of this encounter, or of my subsequent performance under the kitchen table at Hammock in 2012, but our long-time friendship and creative collaborations are proof!) ⁠

@openengagement was an artist-led, socially engaged art conference founded by Jen Delos Reyes @jendelosreyes that ran from 2007-2017. I was in Portland to participate in Open Engagement, but also to check out Portland State University’s newly founded Social Practice MFA program. (I didn’t end up applying for the program, but interestingly enough, ended up working in the same studio as Jen Delos Reyes, at the University of Regina, a few years later.)⁠
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‘Social Practice’ is a term that has sometimes been used to describe my practice, but has never felt totally comfortable to me. My work usually involves working with community, and I believe that creative expression is an integral part of being a human being. I also believe that art has the capacity to make people think and feel differently, especially when the creative experience is shared amongst a group. In this way, art has the power to bring positive change to the world. I have always felt deeply about social and environmental injustices in the world, but am also a highly sensitive person, who gets easily overwhelmed. By using the creative tools that I have acquired over my years on the planet, I try to make my surroundings a little bit (or a lot bit) better.

Externally, this may look very different from project to project, but at its core, my creative practice strives to uncover deeper truths about being a human in community, while trying to make the planet a little better, on a hyper-local scale.
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September 3 2025

The posts you will see over the next 20 days, were drafted between late May – early August of 2025. At this specific time in history, I cannot share content over social media, without acknowledging the horrors I and the world have been witnessing over this same platform, for the last 661 days (and counting) in G/a/z/a. ⁠
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For the past 90 days, I would sit down at my keyboard, to write and reflect about parts of my art practice from the past. Then, I would open the location of their eventual sharing, and fall into a terrible abyss of carnage, starvation and unimaginable human-induced horror. Some days I wept uncontrollably over my kitchen sink for un-tracked amounts of time. On other days, I sat in a numb state of horror, eyes fixed to screen. Frozen with indecision about where to best donate. Post. Share. Scream. Anything. ⁠
I provide this context to the content you are about to see because it feels necessary to name and acknowledge the cognitive dissonance and overwhelm I feel while being expected to keep going as “usual” amidst these horrors, and because “there is a numb, overriding grief that colours life in the audience to a slaughter. And like all measures of grief, it is born not of some exotic incendiary impulse, but of the most plain, unadorned knowing.” (Omar El Akkad @oelakkad “One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This,” Text Publishing Company, 2025 – a highly recommended read.)⁠
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I have included a fundraising link to the @GazaSoupKitchen here. They are a Palestinian run organization, fighting to feed the many starving people in need in Ga/za. If you are able to donate. Please do. or share resources and information here. We cannot sit back in silence while a gen/oside and mass s/tarvation is being perpetrated. 

Over the next 20 days, I will be sharing content from the archives of my art practice and I will also be highlighting the accounts of people and organizations on the ground in G/a/z/a in the stories. If you are able to witness, view, share please do. If you have the means to donate monetarily, please do. Either to the organizations and mutual aid networks shared here, or others.

While I know that this is a relatively small platform, and that many of you seeing this content may already be actively engaged in meaningful work to support P/alestine, I also know, that I, as an artist, feeler, sensitive soul privileged in my corner of Turtle Island, have often felt overwhelmed and frozen, not knowing how to (re)act, how to make a change. Whether to look, witness, put my head under a pillow, self preserve, rinse. repeat… Why make art when a G/enocide is occurring and the wheels of empire will continue to devour anyone deemed ‘inconvenient’ to it’s agenda? I don’t have answers, but I know that giving up is not an option.

The images shared in this post, are scans from my sketchbook from Feb/March 2011, when I was travelling in Palestine. I did not travel to G/a/z/a but I did visit East Jerusalem, and many places across what is referred to as the “West Bank.” Some are portraits of people I met, shared conversations, music and meals with. I spent a week or so volunteering at a music organization called Al Kamandjati @AlKamandjati – in Ramallah. I had the opportunity to travel with the music teachers at the school, when they went to numerous refugee camps across the west bank, to teach children music lessons. It was a brief, yet incredibly meaningful experience, and I met so many kind and inspiring people, who literally weren’t able to cross the same checkpoints I had navigated with ease, with my Canadian passport, mere kms away. It was a time before smart phones, and a time when I travelled everywhere with a pen and paper in hand, to document my surroundings.

Sending solidarity to all of the people at the @Alkamadjati music school and across Palestine. Give them a follow and check out the amazing work they are doing.

September 4 2025

Most of the posts I will be sharing will be selections from my archive of Super 8 film, spanning the past 15 years or so. I’ve generally considered super 8 to sit in the sidelines to my other practices, something I often do in conjunction with another, larger project, or a tool I bring along on my travels or while on an art residency. I’ve come to realize that shooting super 8 film has been a very consistent practice for me for nearly 2 decades.⁠
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When thinking about how to best engage on here, as the “archival resident” my super8 practice came to mind. The task of organizing these films has long been on the to do list of my practice. ⁠I thought that this residency would be a great time and space for me to brush the dust off of some film, and to show some work that, in some cases, has never been shared digitally before! ⁠
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Some films exist in film form only, others have been digitized and a few also have completed audio tracks. I started exploring my Super8 archive imagining that I would highlight only a few films, but once I started digging in, I realized that there was a lot more material than I’d realized. ⁠
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So, sit back, and enjoy a scroll through the grainy films and frames of my Super 8 film Archive.⁠

September 5 2025

I was first introduced to shooting Super 8 in 2010 by Minneapolis-based filmmaker pal Sam Hoolihan @hoolihansam. Sam was teaching a hand processing film course at the University of Minnesota and graciously allowed me to sit in. I immediately took to the medium, and hand processed reels in buckets in my backyard. The results were blurry experiments and I have no idea what happened to these early reels, but I have continued to shoot Super8 fairly regularly, ever since. ⁠
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I like shooting super8 because it feels immediate, but not precious. The film is relatively inexpensive, and the lack of editing capabilities is an asset for me (You can definitely edit super8 but I generally have not gotten too into the cutting and splicing process – and don’t have access to the equipment for it these days.) Around this time, I was gifted a little pocket sized Canon Super8 camera by my roommate at the time, Tynan Kerr @tynan_kerr . This camera has been well used and well loved over the years! ⁠
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Super 8 was first released by Kodak, in 1965 and was designed for home movies (I’ve been recently thinking of it as the closest thing to social media of its time.) The film comes ready to load into a camera in a plastic cartridge and was a consumer friendly option for home movie making at the time. ⁠
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In 1973, Kodak started releasing a version with a magnetic stripe that allowed for sound recording. (I personally have never used the mag stripe film but am so curious). There are many different film stocks available, the ones I generally use are called Reversal Film, meaning that when it is developed, the colour is reversed & ready to view, rather than projected in negative. ⁠
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My favourite film stock is Ektachrome Super 8 Colour Reversal. The colour is vibrant, yet subdued and it gives that nostalgic quality that many are drawn to. Between 2009 and 2012, Kodak discontinued production of the colour, Ektachrome film stock, in a variety of formats, due to declining sales. However, after lots of grumbling the company announced it would be available again by 2018.⁠

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September 7 2025

The One Take Super 8 Festival or OTS8, was started in Regina in 2000 by prairie filmmaker, Alex Rogalski. It has since become an annual tradition here in Regina, and in cities across the prairies (there are editions in Saskatoon, Winnipeg and Victoria – maybe more? Has anyone here participated in one?) ⁠
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The format of the festival is: filmmakers pick up a cartridge of Film, shoot it in one take (no edits, or re-shoots), return it, and then see it for the first time at the screening, a month or so later. The format of this event immediately appealed to me, as someone who had shot super 8 film for years, but was often restricted by the developing / shipping / digitizing or not / process. ⁠
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This year marks the 25th anniversary of the OTS8 Festival, and there are anniversary events planned in the fall of 2025 to showcase some films from the past 25 years.⁠
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For the OTS8 Event, I usually have a vague concept, location or premise – but I try to not get too locked into a script or specific story board. I like letting the location, or imagery and the format of the film restricts my decisions. A roll of Super 8 film is about 3 minutes and 20 seconds long – give or take. Lighting can be tricky – the film needs lots of light – night time or indoor shots can end up being under-exposed. Each shot needs to be carefully focussed – there is no auto focus – and you can’t get too close up (despite my camera’s claim to a “macro” setting.) ⁠

September 8 2025

September 10 2025

Here are some ‘behind the scene’ shots from “Enter the Egg” featuring the illustrious cast and crew, including Jeff Meldrum @whitlinj, @Bhrustle, Eric Hill @e.a.hill and Colby Richardson @colby__richardson. I particularly enjoy the shot of Jeff holding up the egg character while Bruce runs in the back-ground. Just excellent high tech movie magic happening right here! ⁠
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(You can see his hand in the shot – but, alas, one take. We had to accept this glimpse behind the magic curtain!)

September 11 2025

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September 13 2025

September 13 2025

September 16 2025

“Cases” (2014)⁠
Mixed Media Installations with digitized super 8 film ⁠
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Here is some documentation, showing a collection of Super8 films as installations, and shown outside of a screening environment. I think that the ideal way to view Super8 is in it’s original form, light projected through celluloid, but for this series, I was experimenting with packaging the moving image within compact and tangible objects (suitcases). ⁠
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The suitcases were part of my MFA thesis exhibition in 2014. I showed looped super8 films on tablets inside of modified vintage suitcases which also contained objects and ephemera that were loosely related to the films. I think of these pieces as little self portraits, and poetic documentation of a certain time in my life. ⁠
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Looking back at them now, they really feel like an ode to my 20’s, a decade I spent moving around a lot; not really knowing my place, but trying desperately to find it (isn’t that what our 20’s are for? I wish someone had told me this while I was in the thick of it.) I think I might have been trying to make these case feel like complete, contained packages, much like what I was trying to achieve with my life over that period of time. ⁠
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I am a lot more rooted in one place these days. I travel much less, and do my best to find meaning in my immediate surroundings, no matter how flawed they may be. Having met Heidi and the Hammock during this tumultuous decade in my life, these pieces feel relevant to include in this archival residency. I also think there are some nice moments in some of the films, which I will show in the next couple of posts. ⁠

September 17 2025

September 18 2025

September 19 2025

September 20 2025

Here are some photos taken behind the scenes, “on set” of “A-B-Sees”⁠
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I shot this film in my studio/office, a cozy little room in the attick of my house, located in the Heritage Neighbourhood of Regina, SK. I value having this space to work from. It is distanced from the rest of my living space, but convenient enough for me to pop up to and work on something without going far. ⁠
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The home/studio/office has proven to be very versatile, and ive worked on everything from grant writing and drafting budgets, to films and cardboard sculptures. It does have its limitations though. Anything overly messy, or needing of specific equipment, needs to be out sourced. ⁠
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I love hearing about and seeing artists innovative work spaces, and would love to maybe do a project some day where I just document them, as an excuse to hang out in people’s studios 😎📽️⁠
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📸 1-5 Amber PB⁠

September 21 2025

September 22 2025