Antimatter 2012

Media Installations

October 13 to 27, 2012

in the main Deluge gallery

Methods for Composing Random Compositions
(seventeen sound performances)

Adán De La Garza

Arising from his investigations into the social and political implications of audio deterrents and sonic weaponry, punk/glitch/noise music and his concept of rejected sounds, De La Garza has inserted himself into these 17 performative videos involving chance and non-musical objects which generate sound for duration-based compositions.

According to De La Garza, “the props employed for the performances in Methods for Composing Random Compositions were selected for their sonic qualities or ability to produce sound through their usage. Some of the props have more sonic warfare tendencies with the explosive qualities such as the bomb bags, rat traps or confetti poppers, while others—such as the soap bottles or wind up teeth—have less of a violent presence and focus more on the function of the prop and its influence over the duration of the performance.”

“The performances are determined by setting parameters for the beginning and end. The beginning consists of activating the props and the end happens when all the potential for sound has become extinct. The space in between these two parameters is where the composition takes place. I cannot control how these props function or how long it takes for them to perform their duty in the performance, which is a determining factor in the length of the performance. The objective to be accomplished is a key factor in the duration of the performances and at times is not simply determined by the props but by my physical restraints. With some of the performances, the end came about when it felt like most of the sounds had been produced but mainly due to exhaustion.”

Allowing himself a space of artistic production where failure is welcomed and control is largely ceded to circumstance, De La Garza has produced a body of work that, in its physical and audio randomness, suffuses anticipation, alarm and imminent threat with release and delight.

Adán De La Garza recently graduated with an MFA in Interdisciplinary Media Arts Practices from the University of Colorado at Boulder. He has participated in exhibitions at the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art (Boulder, CO), The New School (New York, NY), The Future Gallery (Berlin, DE) and the Tucson Museum of Contemporary Art (Tucson, AZ). De La Garza is currently based in Nashville, TN where he teaches at Watkins College of Art, Design and Film.

in the Deluge transom window

The Ride

Stephan Richter | 2012 | 2 min

The Ride is a reconsideration of the famous “Prater” in Vienna and its urban surroundings as a kind of bittersweet cinematic roller coaster or ghost train. In extreme fast-motion, it passes figures in the amusement park as well as the marginal inhabitants of the surrounding area.

at The Vic Theatre Lobby

Salas... (cartel series)

\excerpts from Movie Houses of the Past, Projections in the Future

Julio Orozco

Orozco’s installation in the lobby of The Vic Theatre comprises five fictive movie posters installed in back-lit poster cases. These works take, as their point of departure, a registry of photo documentation and related ephemera created and collected by the artist, which excavates the histories of cinema houses of the past in order to reassemble them for our (re)consideration in the present.

After eight years of documenting in photographs the destruction and eventual disappearance of Tijuana’s movie houses, Julio Orozco began thinking about this body of work and how it reflects the lack of historical memory in his hometown, along with the transformations that have taken place in the urban context of the city. Using these photographs as a point of departure for a much more ambitious project, Orozco has created an ongoing series of works entitled “Movie Houses of the Past, Projections in the Future.” In these works, Orozco conceives fictional films, inspired by the photographs, for which he produces both the trailer and the poster thus focusing on the promotional strategies of commercial films. To date, Orozco has presented these diverse elements in thoughtful configurations both in the institutional space of the museum or gallery and as site-specific installations in abandoned cinema houses. – Priamo Lozada, Laboratorio Arte Alameda

A conceptual artist who has developed a wide artistic range that includes installations, video and photography, Tijuana native Julio Orozco merges fact and fiction to document the rapidly evolving face of his city. His knowledge of Tijuana goes beyond its urban surface into the psyche of residents who, in the midst of rapid change, are challenged with holding onto notions of fixed realities but continue to use dreams and fantasy as coping mechanisms in response to shifting conditions: erasing and re-imagining the past in an attempt to serve a yet-to-be-conceived future.