Video – Page 2 – annetteandquebec

March 21, 2014

Knots of people loitered on the street like teenagers as the sun started to have some real meaning. It was an afternoon to saunter.

Trinity Square Video

The work on display at Trinity Square Video, called The Cloud of Unknowing, by Ho Tzu Neyen, put me off lunch. The camera lingered over plates of rotting food and maggots, appalling skin diseases, obese half naked people, fetid water and a heavy set man wearing a Depend.

Still from The Cloud of Unknowing by Ho Tzu Neyen

The soundtrack could be described as ambient metal or dark ambient with an overlay of heavy breathing and occasional bursts of quite good drumming. There is no dialogue. A collection of vaguely surrealistic and improbable tableau vivant were linked with a cloud/steam/fog image. At the conclusion of the presentation a fan switches on somewhere and a steamy vaporous cloud wafts into the dark viewing room as the screen fades to a blinding white. It’s disorienting.

Showing video in art galleries has always been challenging. On this Saturday afternoon I became aware of an apparent new trend in the medium: a material manifestation (literal fog or cloud in this case) of the onscreen work.

(Fog was one of the key components of a memorable art piece I saw in London by Olaf Elliason called The Weather Project. In that case viewers in the Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall became so spaced out they lay on the floor, staring up at the fog shrouding a dim sun in the mirrored ceiling far above. The fog created a dreamlike atmosphere and seemed to release all kinds of inhibitions. )

The Weather Project by Olaf Elliason

Ten minutes away from Trinity Square Video, at the Georgia Scherman Project, there is an anything goes atmosphere as an art installation/perfume launch is underway. The space is very dark and very fragrant. A short black and white video loop is playing is which a model clomps up a circular stairway in what appears to be a dank cave or grotto of some sort. The soundtrack is ambient metal. No dialogue. The floor is littered with black confetti which has been heavily doused in the fragrance. The artist wants to create a particular atmosphere. At the counter – I mean desk – sachets of Andrea Maack’s upcoming fragrance “Dual” are handed out.

The gallery staff mentioned the plan for the video to go viral. You never know what’s going to catch on. More than 40 million people have watched: Double Rainbow.

Samples of the fragrance “Dual” by Andrea Maacke

The idea for the black confetti underfoot – more material manifestation – is that the public will inadvertently track it out into the neighbourhood and disperse the olfactory offering up and down Tecumseh Street and beyond.

Susan Hobbs – Krista Buecking

Next door at Susan Hobbs I thought I was in more conventional terrain. Big, beautiful framed art pieces hung on the walls. But at the moment of entering the gallery a soundtrack is triggered: swelling violins and “This Magic Moment’ by the Drifters spills into the space.

In the exhibition, titled Matters of Fact, Krista Buecking creates exquisitely subdued atmospheric fades and then suspends hard edged graphics above them on the encasing glass.

For me, although the music was an endearing touch, the art pieces could totally stand alone. It did strike me as amusing, that whereas the media artists want some ambient element scattered about, the painter selects an old school emotional torch song to create an atmosphere.

codified form B by Krista Buecking

Mist, fog, dreaminess, atmosphere. Those seems to be the themes for this beautiful sunny afternoon.

January 27, 2015

Biting cold…cruel gusts along Annette Street…broken down Dupont bus…one glove lost…not even February….but the days are getting longer.

Clint Enns, Leslie Supnet

I arrive just in time to catch the beginning of Adventures in Transgression, a screening of videos by Clint Enns and Leslie Supnet at Trinity Square Video. The mood of the crowd is that of cabin fever induced excitement and recklessness that make for an interesting evening, and, TSV has a capacious screening room with a sound system worthy of the ambient industrial tracks to come.

Some of the videos of Clint Enns have a tossed-off larkishness, like the short nostalgic clip called Freddie Mercury Sing-A-Long.

Still from Freddie Mercury Sing-A-Long by Clint Enns

Others are discomforting, like the superimposed close-ups of an ejaculating penis and vigorous teeth brushing in Gleem or the tight shot of cataract surgery called Botched Eyeball Operation which is more horrifying than any slasher movie. Let me ASMR you explores the perceptual phenomenon of autonomous sensory meridian response, which is evidently a popular youtube indulgence.

Still from Let me ASMR you by Clint Enns

Many of the works have a connection to some earlier film or technology or video art piece. They are remakes, tributes, recreations, remixes, variants of existing technology or artwork — some more obscure than others — which becomes clear in seeing Andy Warhol, Michael Snow, James Benning, Hans Richter, Chris Burden, Name June Paik and others referenced in the programme notes. Clint Enns is apparently a student and ardent fan of earlier achievements in moving imagery but he is definitely on his own path.

The videos that are truly spellbinding, for me, are those in which Clint Enns goes for pure image. Take as a starting point, for example, the scratchy, flaring, generally beat up look of a Guy Maddin film and keep going…and keep going… all the way. Clint Enns apparently sets outs out to degrade his images until they are virtually abstract.

Detail of still from Ten Skies by Clint Enns

What happens on the journey to total annihilation is really interesting: not only are the visuals often incidentally gorgeous but also the viewer is obliged to think about the phenomenon of seeing itself.

Stills from Spiderman vs. Macrovison by Clint Enns

In Spiderman vs. Macrovision the real time image decay is fast and unsettling. Macrovision’s “Ripguard” technology, was designed to prevent illegal copying. In the tape we see antique cartoons repeatedly churn, hesitate and dissolve into a froth of colour only to be reformed momentarily and dissolve again, like a babel of photons struggling for coherence.

Strangely, in these videotapes the emotional content is heightened with increasing abstraction. The sound design/music (frequently performed by Clint Enns) is a big factor. In winnipeg stories: sacrificial memories, composed of discarded footage, Clint Enns achieves a fitful, melancholy tone. The golden glow gives the tape a “trapped in amber” look and the music is wistful, haunting, emotive.

Still from winnipeg stories: sacrificial memories by Clint Enns

The Everden (which is my favourite) creates a sense of panic and paranoia as the viewer looks deeper and deeper into a bleak urban landscape. It’s like watching the famous “grassy knoll” footage from Dallas. Everything is so tantalizingly close, but the resolution just isn’t there and the image breaks up, becomes meaningless, closed and unknowable.

Still from The Everden by Clint Enns

The Everden also made me think of the Laura Poitras’ film Citizen Four, in its dark, brooding unease and revelations of betrayal and duplicity. The sound track of processed ambience and guitar, the unrelenting static, drop out, smear and interference all conspire to create a powerfully tense piece about extreme alienation in this: the age of surveillance.

Leslie Supnet’s work also has a “take no prisoners” approach to materials. She chooses to hand draw her animations, paint and cut out her sets (with scissors), and shoot in super 8 instead of HD.

Still from First Sun by Leslie Supnet

Capturing simple, graphic pictures with these erzats techniques Leslie Supnet’s work frequently achieves a sense of elemental imagery. In pieces like Sun Moon Stars Rain or First Sun the bold images, coupled with a boisterious percussive sound track results in wildly playful pagan joyfulness.

Leslie Supnet’s narrative animations explore themes of depression, anxiety, loss and redemption. Simple line drawings have an affecting emotive depth and nuance that seems precisely current.

Still from Fair Trade by Leslie Supnet

Her processed super 8 work also has complex results using simple imagery. Recurring themes include flocks of gulls, bizarre landscapes, cats, horses. Last Light Breaking has an other worldly, meditative dreaminess. Wind and Snow combines startling depictions of classic subjects in flaring, shimmering psychedelic colours. Less like a documenter of the natural world and more like poet, Leslie Supnet gets at the essence of what’s around her.

Stills from Wind and Snow by Leslie Supnet

September 13, 2014

On this cold, overcast afternoon I walked south on Dundas toward Roncesvalles, skipped the Polish Festival, and headed for the clutch of galleries on Morrow Street.

Gerald Ferguson paintings are on exhibit at the Olga Korper Gallery.

This artist taught at the Nova Scotia College of Art & Design (NSCAD) from 1968 to 2004 and his work embodies the cool, dispassionate aesthetic that defined the school as the nexus of Conceptual Art. These are paintings in which the idea is paramount and the actual framed objects are merely resulting detritus. Composition, allusion, color, form, symbol were all rigorously ignored, and yet, the paintings are entirely contemporary, powerful and complex.

I particularly liked seeing the “Dropcloth” paintings. Gerry picked up dropcloths strewn around the worksite of commercial painters. He then had them framed and stretched. They are subtle and suggestive, like a Cy Twombly or maybe even a Jackson Pollack…but wait a minute, they are dropcloths! The idea lingers, inhabiting a sensuous formality, but it remains pure.

This show is particularly successful in its display of the range of work as it skips through various decades and series to give a sense of the breadth Jerry Ferguson achieved. Using frottage, rollers, stencils, found objects, spray paint and various mundane, utilitarian objects he never flinched in exploring and manifesting the concepts that appealed to him.

Below is a snapshot of Gerry Ferguson’s take on still life: a stenciled urn and rubbing of cast iron fruit.

Gerald Ferguson died in 2008. This was a great loss for the Halifax art community and his friends, colleagues and former students everywhere. Gerry was a true artist and a catalyst for so many.

Across the courtyard is the Christopher Cutts Gallery

The multi-media artist Simone Jones was standing outside the Gallery. It was her work that was on display and she looked a little uneasy. She warned me as I was about to enter that it was very dark and could be disorienting. She was right.

The large gallery was divided in half and each half was displaying a large screen format video. On one side, in the center of the space, there was a low-to-the-ground robotic ramp on which the video projector slowly travelled backwards and forwards in relation to the projected image. Definitely a tripping hazard.

I positioned myself in the center of the divided space and watched the two synchronized videos. A guy in period costume, trailed by a wolf, tramped through a snowy landscape. On the other screen a woman in period costume clacked out a message on an ancient manual typewriter. A shot rang out and the guy collapsed and lay in the snow. The woman cried. The wolf looked menacing. I felt like I was at a tennis match. There was some elegiac music but no dialogue. The woman at the front desk, who had to sit in the dark all day, mentioned Tom Thompson and his mysterious death. (I decided not to tell her that he was not shot in the snow. He died in Canoe Lake.)

This piece, for all the imposition for the audience and difficulty in presentation, was strangely lacking in ambition. I assume this artist will go on to develop more deeply the ideas she has hinted at here. On the other hand, bravo to Christopher Cutts Gallery for supporting her and showing the piece. A Gallery is a business just like any other. How a media installation will generate revenue for this gallery is as mysterious to me as the death of Tom Thompson.