Recent Canadian Video Shorts
dal 31/5/2006 al 31/5/2006
Segnalato da
31/5/2006
Recent Canadian Video Shorts
MUU galleria, Helsinki
The show presents remarkable single channel videos made by Canadians in recent years incorporating a spectrum of creative strategies: endurance performance, appropriated footage, personal address to the camera and mechanisms of popular culture. Programmed by Alissa Firth-Eagland.
Recent Canadian Video Shorts presents remarkable single channel videos made by
Canadians in recent years incorporating a spectrum of creative strategies: endurance
performance, appropriated footage, personal address to the camera and mechanisms of
popular culture. Some artists enact characterizations, some perform choreographed
gestures, some use their corporeal shell as a tool of measurement. But all works
share one commonality. Each artist consciously positions his body within the
structure of the video, right under the surface. The use of the self as materia
prima comes from considerations around the relationship of the human body to the
camera and Canadian video art’s long relationship to performance. These artists
present individual examinations, poignant opinions, provocative values, and personal
challenges. And in using their own bodies, they have given a face to the
contemporary Canadian psyche.
The video shorts:
Heather Keung, Handstand (2006 / 3:40 min.). Keung places herself within the frame
and performs a simple, yet challenging physical endurance act.
Jeremy Bailey, worthless human (2005 / 2:45 min.). Bailey complicates the notion of
performance by artists by introducing smoke and mirrors, then revealing the man
behind the curtain.
Daniel Cockburn, Metronome (2002 /10:40 min.). The artist is on a bizarre personal
quest: he tries to maintain a steady beat for an extended period of time.
Benny Nemerofsky Ramsay & Pascal Lievre, Patriotic (2006 / 9:00 min.). The artists’
performance marries the infamous US-American Patriot Act address given by George W.
Bush and Celine Dion’s smash hit from the Hollywood blockbuster Titanic.
Aleesa Cohene, READY TO COPE (2006 / 7:00 min.). Cohene has gathered hundreds of
images from cinema, self-help videos, and instructional tapes from the decade after
her birth in 1976, assembling a pre-9-11 picture of security.
Curator Alissa Firth-Eagland (Toronto, Canada) is in Research Residency at NIFCA,
Nordic Institute for Contemporary Art in Helsinki from 18 May to 19 July 2006. The
screening at MUU Galleria is organized by MUU in collaboration with NIFCA.
For more information please contact Alissa Firth-Eagland, alissafe@gmail.com, tel.
+358 (0)45 657 74 22, or at NIFCA project coordinator Mitro Kaurinkoski,
mitro.kaurinkoski@nifca.org, tel. (+358 9) 686 43 105.
1 June 2006 from 7 to 9 PM
MUU galleria
Lonnrotinkatu 33 - Helsinki