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Images Festival Off Screen video installations at 401 Richmond
posted by Terence Dick - April 9th, 2009.
Last Saturday, I gave a tour of the video installations at 401 Richmond that make up part of the Images Festival Off Screen program. This is the third year in a row that the nice folks at Images have asked me to do this and I was pleasantly surprised by the turnout. For those of you who missed it, I’ll take this opportunity to recap with a slightly snippier tone (as I don’t have to worry about gallery directors - not to speak of artists - hovering behind me at a discreet distance).
Sylvie Boisseau & Frank Westermeyer, Chinese is a Plus, 2008, video
Starting at the top (of the building, that is) with Vtape, there you may find an amusing docu-video by a young German-French duo (Sylvie Boisseau and Frank Westermeyer) who have turned their gaze on a Chinese language school in Stuttgart. The scenes of Chinese-German teenagers learning to speak their mother tongue (can we even speak of mother tongues in these nomadic times?) are probably more culturally significant, however I was entranced by the restrained but delighted adult Germans as they meticulously engaged in Chinese small talk.
Down a floor at Trinity Square Video, Gunilla Josephson presents the results of her residency at the production centre and exhibition space. Her hourlong video E.V.E. Absolute Matrix is a collaboration with pianist Eve Egoyan who she filmed performing a five hour composition by Alvin Curran. Focusing on Egoyan’s face and stripping away the sound, Josephson paints a portrait of a woman in the throes of intense concentration and emotion. Be prepared to slow down and linger.
Joana Hadjithomas & Khalil Joriege, Khiam 2000-2007, 2008, video installation
On the ground floor, my first stop was A Space where you can find a selection of videos by the Lebanese duo Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joriege. Working along the same lines and grounded in the same recent history (civil wars in Beirut in particular) as their contemporary Walid Raad, these two explore a number of documentary methods to deal with memory, history, conflict, and trauma. From a nearly disintegrated found film (Lasting Images) that elegantly captures the haze of the past to landscape views of Beirut as fireworks and gun shots light up the sky (Distracted Bullets), these videos provide alternative and self-critical documents of an unresolved past.
After witnessing the commitment of Hadjithomas and Joriege, Jan Peacock’s slight observations of the mundane at Gallery 44 left me wanting, so I left.
Deanna Bowen, Shadow on the Prairie, 2009, video installation
Over at WARC Gallery, Deanna Bowen’s attempt to piece together the buried past of her gay great-uncle relies heavily on a film of Gwyneth Lloyd’s 1951 ballet Shadow on the Prairie that the artist deftly folds into her own film of the same name. I’m not sure that the floor text of the score is needed and an awareness of Bowen’s family history is necessary to "get" her intent from the images, but the work is effective on its own as a portrayal of displacement on the plains.
Nearby at Prefix ICA, there’s a fine selection of video installations by German filmmaker Harun Farocki that capture the range of his gallery practice and provide a good sense of his complex concerns in a contained space. The crowd pleaser has to be Workers Leaving the Factory in Eleven Decades, a series of eleven monitors, each one running a film loop from a different decade of workers leaving a factory. Some are instantly recognizable Hollywood fare, others are from the rest of the world, but the global scope and the relentless repetition says a lot more about the twentieth century that many history books.
Aleesa Cohene, Something Better, 2008, video installation
Next door at YYZ, Louise Noguchi and June Pak sample popular film for sculptural purposes, making dioramas viewed through peepholes and fragmenting projections around the room. The most compelling piece is a tower of monitors that loop the tornado spun house from The Wizard of Oz in an endless descent. In the second gallery, Aleesa Cohene has assembled a magnificent video triptych that contemplates the nuclear family dysfunction through a medley of films from the seventies. I strongly recommend checking it out.
Finally, at Wynick/Tuck there’s a nice double animation by Takashi Ishida that’s about nothing other than the process of its own creation. Sometimes simplicity rules.
Terence Dick is a freelance writer living in Toronto. His art criticism has appeared in Canadian Art, BorderCrossings, Prefix Photo, Camera Austria, Fuse, Mix, C Magazine, and The Globe and Mail. He is the editor of Akimblog.
Images Festival: http://www.imagesfestival.com/2009/
Vtape: http://www.vtape.org/
Sylvie Boisseau & Frank Westermeyer: Chinese is a Plus continues until May 15.
Gunillla Josephson: E.V.E. Absolute Matrix continues until May 2.
A Space: http://www.aspacegallery.org/
Joana Hadjithomas & Khalil Joriege: Wish We Could Tell continues until April 18.
Gallery 44:http://www.gallery44.org/
Jan Peacock: Finder continues until April 11.
WARC Gallery: http://warc.net/v3/index.html
Deanna Bowen: Shadow on the Prairie continues until April 18.
Prefix ICA: http://www.prefix.ca/
Harun Farocki: One Image Doesn’t Take the Place of the Previous One continues until April 25.
YYZ Artists Outlet:http://www.yyzartistsoutlet.org/
Aleesa Cohene and June Pak & Louise Noguchi continue until April 18.
Wynick/Tuck Gallery: http://www.wynicktuckgallery.ca/
Takashi Ishida: Toronto-EMAKI continues until April 25.
Comments (newest first)
Posted by Vera, 512 days ago on April 9th, 2009
P.S. The blog's edit function doesn't seem to be working. Tried it three times ..
Posted by Vera, 512 days ago on April 9th, 2009
Hi Terence,
Not having been able to see all the installations I'd hoped to visit, I appreciated your summary. The one thing that baffles me is your dismissal of what you call 'observations of the mundane' in Jan Peacock's work and your embrace of 'about nothing than .. its own creation' in the work of Takashi Ishida. Both responses would benefit from a bit more elaboration so that it doesn't sound like that Aesop fable -- the one about blowing on your fingers to keep them warm and on your porridge to cool it down.
All the best,
Vera