Antimatter 2013

Media Installations

October 18 to November 16, 2013

in the main Deluge gallery

Rituals

Julika Rudelius | 2012

“After a performance during Expo 2010 in Shanghai, Arthub Asia and Chen Tong invited me to work for a month at their artist space in Guangzhou. I was hoping to gain access to rich party members through Chen Tong. I got invited to a lot of dinners but gained very little access so I ended up getting lost in Guangzhou a lot.

During my wandering, I stumbled upon the market area, where these androgynous boys were hanging stoically on their bikes and carts during endless traffic jams. I stayed to stare for weeks and they stared back. On first sight these big groups of boys seemed to have very individualised, unique styles and ideas about fashion—I think one article called them fashionistas. However, I realised after a while that these styles were actually very uniform—they were copying the styles of soap opera and television idols. I realised that their aspirations, dreams and images of what they would like to be are influenced by the same TV- and advertisement-generated images we see all over the world.

Parts of Rituals are staged and parts are shot en passant. I cast the staged aspects of Rituals like I would anywhere I am working on the street. The participants posed and sometimes felt awkward. They giggled a little during shooting and afterward we went to their favourite restaurant, which was McDonald’s. A lot of them have never been in a film before, but a lot of my western subjects have also never been in films before they work with me. The boys pretty much accepted my poses without questioning because these erotic gestures are so prevalent in advertisements. The erotic has been pulled out of the private or hidden sphere into the public sphere, which created a very powerful but completely non-sexual and not kinky erotic.” – JR

Julika Rudelius is an internationally exhibiting video and performance artist. She received her BFA in photography from the Rietveld Academy, Amsterdam in 1998, followed by residencies at the Rijksakademie van beeldenden kunsten in 1999–2000 and the ISCP program in New York in 2006. Her work explores themes of emotional dependency, politics, abuse and power. Rudelius’s work has been exhibited at the Tate Modern, London; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; ZKM, Karlsruhe; Brooklyn Museum, New York; MOCA North Miami, Miami; the ICP Triennial 2009; International Center of Photography, New York; the 2009 International Incheon Women Artists’ Biennial, Korea; and Heartland at the Smart Museum, Chicago; with solo shows at the Swiss Institute of Contemporary Art, New York; Centre Culturel Suisse, Paris; Stedelijk Museum Bureau, Amsterdam; and at the Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem. Rudelius was recently featured on the cover of Art Papers and a catalogue of her latest solo show entitled Soft Intrusion at Ursula Blickle Stiftung in Kraichtal, Germany was published by Sternberg Press, Berlin. She currently lives and works in Brooklyn, Amsterdam and Beijing.

in the Deluge transom window

Frobisher Bay

Steven Woloshen | 2012 | 3 min

“In 1989, I was an employee on a cinematic feature in the town of Iqaluit, NWT, Canada (formerly Frobisher Bay). Referencing the Whitney Brothers films of the 1950s and 1960s and after a 24-year period of expressed sorrow for its town and people, I created this mandala installation loop. The film, revolving and repeating, offers a glimpse into the permanence of nature—in contrast to the transience of man-made ideals and ambitions.” – SW

Montreal-born artist Steven Woloshen (BFA, MFA Studio Arts) has been creating short abstract films and time-based installation pieces since 1982. He has shown his work, lectured on the subject of handmade analogue film techniques and been commissioned to create unique films at artist-run centres, international film festivals and galleries. In 2010, he published his first book on the subject of decay, archiving and handmade filmmaking techniques, titled Recipes for Reconstruction: The Cookbook for the Frugal Filmmaker.

at 634 Yates, below Deluge

Portraits (Terminators)

Tiffany Funk | 2011 | 5 min

Portraits (Terminators) is a video projection consisting of 49 individual Youtube videos of young men’s faces, but with bionic overlays (laser eyes, alloy jaws) on their features a la James Cameron’s Terminator. Each uploaded this content on social networking sites, creating an ad hoc community displaying their 3D tracking and modelling prowess. The tutorial they followed to produce these “portraits” begs the question, Why the Terminator? Why do they transform themselves into a militaristic cyborg, when this software is capable of an infinity of options? Or is it the software that influences the user to create such a figure?

Tiffany Funk (Ph.D ABD) is an artist and art historian living in Chicago, Illinois. Her research investigates the use of technological prosthesis in historic and contemporary art practices and popular media. Her multimedia work involves both traditional and digital practices, alternately taking the form of critical and conceptual writing, drawing, software, video, and installation. She received her MFA in 2012 from the University of Illinois at Chicago in New Media Arts, and is currently researching and writing her dissertation focusing on John Cage and Lejaren Hiller’s HPSCHD (1967–1969) and its legacy in computational art practices.

at Legacy Art Gallery

Don’t

Karl Spreitz & Herbert Siebner | 1965 | 9 min

Filmed by Karl Spreitz and Herbert Siebner at Beaver Lake, Victoria. Featuring Siebner, Bob de Castro, Nita Forrest, Michael Morris, Pam Butcher, Sally Gregson and others.

at the fifty fifty arts collective

Always Moving, Slowly Moving

Sara MacLean | 2012 | 11 min

“Time is not, Time is the evil, beloved” – Ezra Pound (Canto LXXIV)

A solitary retreat into the Rocky Mountains by a dancer (MacLean) who attempts to hold still poses against the wind and the slow geological movement of the landscape itself. Appearing, disappearing, balanced on a precipice and hanging from the sky, in search of a place and posture where the living and the dead can co-exist in a moment.

Animated photograms illustrate the absence and presence of the lone figure in nature. The mechanical sounds of the film camera relentlessly mark the seconds as gloved hands animate papery mountain photograms, a gesture towards storytelling—a retelling of something already gone.

This black and white hand processed film (16mm transferred to HD) is accompanied by a cedar viewing platform scented of the forest.

Sara MacLean was born in Okinawa, raised in Montreal, and now lives and works in Toronto. She holds a BAH from Queen’s University in Drama & Philosophy, an MA from the University of Toronto in Drama, a certificate in film production from Ryerson University and an MFA from OCAD University in Film & Installation. Her work has been exhibited internationally at International Film Festival Rotterdam, Anthology Film Archives, EXIS Experimental Film & Video Festival, Seoul, and at Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona, amongst others.

at The Guild (lower level)

Smokestacks, Below

Panu Johansson | 2012 | 6 min

Cinema has always had a special interest in factory workers. The Lumière brothers film Workers Leaving the Factory from 1895 is often credited as the first motion picture. In the 20th century many experimental filmmakers depicted the rat race of modern life in their own way: Manhatta (1921) by Paul Strand, By Night with Torch and Spear (1940s) by Joseph Cornell and Necrology (1969–1970) by Standish Lawder. Smokestacks, Below continues this tradition.

Panu Johansson is a Finnish artist who works with moving image, photography and sound. His work has shown in international festivals and exhibitions since 2000. Johansson works primarily with found footage materials and also produces the audio tracks for his films. Recurring themes include the history of avant-garde film and cultural history in general.