Fresh Short Shorts: Video Out (VIVO Media Arts Centre)

Urban Decay Curated by Shauna Jean Doherty Wednesday, August 19, 2015 at 9-10PM Broken City Patio - 613 11 Ave SW

INTRODUCTION The works that comprise this program were drawn from a call for submissions based on the theme “Urban Decay” initiated by Video Out in April 2015. The selected videos when viewed together offer a distinct yet conflicted portrait of urban life. The works selected articulate the outlook of the artists featured, who have looked upon their environment and determined that though decayed the landscapes presented are capable of renewal. The video producers express a recurring sense of unsettlement through their use of a variety of video formats (16mm film, digital video, and computer generated imagery). The degraded landscapes that are consistently invoked are depicted using film stock or video cameras that are themselves often damaged resulting in physically decayed, distorted, fragmented, or glitched images. The abundance of images presented herein deploy the motif of breakdown anticipated by the “urban decay” call, but also elaborate on the theme, contemplating decay frequently in relation to transition and regrowth.

In many cases the concept of the bustling urban environment was set up aesthetically in contrast to abandoned spaces. Eva Kolcze’s, All That Is Solid (2014) and Ryan Ermacora, Jessica Johnson, and Aidan Whiteley’s Ocean Falls (2013) each illuminate sites that appear uninhabited with a somber delicateness. These two works embrace places on the margins. Through their documentation of domains of scholarship and industry, respectively, these artists consider the weight and potential of spaces that once vibrant now sit empty.

Clint Enns’, The Everden (2013), illustrates the precarity of urban existence through the use of a broken camera that renders his landscape at once foreboding and fragile.

The ghostly fields and glitchy vistas captured on Enns’ camera intimate a dystopian future that is uninhabited and inhospitable. Traces of humanity remain but are quickly erased by the noise that engulfs the screen.

Jessica Thalmann’s The Ninth Floor (2015) considers the imprint of trauma on place, traversing the empty halls and stairwells of Concordia University. The beautiful vacancy so central in this work serves as a trace and memory of the massacre that took place within these walls in 1992.

Brutalist architecture emerges as a recurring visual theme within this program, occupying the aesthetic minds of both Thalmann and Kolcze. They are fascinated perhaps by the false or naive utopianism of this stark concrete architectural style. A utopian dream that with time has transformed into an apocalyptic playground.

Both Simulacra (2015), by Theo Tagholm and Molar Formations Urban Cuts (2015) by Matteo Pasin consider the chaotic impacts of technology on the spaces that humans reside. The at times overwhelming imagery and sound that define these videos illustrate a future that is both simulated and stimulating to the point of exhaustion.

Scenes from Montreal, to Milan, from Vancouver, to London, each illustrates the effects

of living on the physical landscape. Each work included in the program operates as a provocation – a portrait of humanity’s surroundings cast with a lens of unnerving pessimism. Despite an overarching quality of doubt the artists seem to retain a faith that a place is defined by those who animate it and it is up to those who occupy space to resurrect sites that are considered by most, too far gone.

- Shauna Jean Doherty Distribution and Outreach Manager, Video Out

ABOUT THE CURATOR: Shauna Jean Doherty holds an MFA in Criticism and Curatorial Practice from OCAD U, and a BA (Hons) from the University of Toronto, where she double majored in Book and Media Studies and Semiotic Theory and Communications. Shauna Jean has curated exhibitions and events for Vtape (Toronto), Xpace Cultural Centre (Toronto), Centre for Art Tapes (Halifax), The Images Festival (Toronto), and The Art Gallery of Ontario, and has held various curatorial and programming positions at VIVO Media Arts Centre (Vancouver), Hashtag Gallery (Toronto), the Art Gallery of Ontario, and Hamilton Artists Inc. Her writing has appeared in C Magazine, the Journal of Curatorial Studies, and Carbon Paper. Shauna Jean currently lives and works in Vancouver.

ABOUT VIDEO OUT Video Out was founded in 1980 as a component of the Satellite Video Exchange Society (SVES). The distribution services and the over 4,000 title collection we manage are an integral part of the VIVO Media Arts Centre (formerly SVES) in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Video Out is a non-profit, non-exclusive distributor of media art on video to galleries, festivals, educational institution collections and broadcasters nationally and internationally.

The primary activity of Video Out is to provide artist driven distribution services that promote the practices of independent media art and earn revenue for independent media artists. In addition, we provide curatorial, exhibition and research support through communication about the videotape collection. The foundation of both these activities is ongoing collection management and preservation activity.

SCREENING PROGRAM

The Everden Clint Enns (2013, 16:33 min.)

Conflicted emotions about the city. Fears and anxieties surrounding movement and travel. Fragile dreams become nightmarish realities. Shot on a broken pxl2000 in 5 movements.

The Ninth Floor Jessica Thalmann (2015, 8:00 min.)

The Ninth Floor is a two channel video installation that meditates on ideas of place, architectural space and the contemporary implications of historical traumas.

Investigating and revisiting the site of the 1992 Fabrikant Shooting at Concordia University, the film attempts to understand the passage of time and the inevitable imprints of unimaginable events on the porous walls of concrete Brutalist architecture but also contemplate the ways we inhabit spaces after experiencing violence, trauma and loss.

All That is Solid Eva Kolcze (2014, 15:58 min.)

This film investigates Brutalist architecture through the surface of black and white celluloid. The film features three prominent examples of Brutalist architecture, Robarts Library, U of T Scarborough campus and York University campus. Footage of the buildings has been degraded using a number of chemical and physical processes.

The film explores the utopian visions that inspired the Brutalist movement and the material and aesthetic connection.

Simulacra Theo Tagholm (2015, 3:56 min.) “Today abstraction is no longer that of the map, the double, the mirror, or the concept.

Simulation is no longer that of a territory, a referential being, or a substance. It is the generation by models of a real without origin or reality: a hyperreal.� Jean Baudrillard (from Simulacra and Simulation)

Molar Formations Urban Cuts Matteo Pasin (2015, 5:14 min.)

The crowd - as a compact mass, a place of multiple exchanges, a swirling melt of individuals, a collective effect - is abolished in favor of a collection of separated individualities, of a countable and controllable multiplicity, of an abducted and scrutinized solitude. The city, a molar machine, channels the molecular intensities in conduits, pipelines, edges that thwart turbulence, that restrict movement from one point to another, that consent to stripe and measure space-time itself. But fluxes, on their part, hit sedimentations and molar formations with their molecular progress, raving them, causing their lines to vibrate and splatter; originating swayings, fractures, rhizomatic concatenations, overflowing noise.

Ocean Falls Ryan Ermacora, Jessica Johnson, and Aidan Whiteley (2015, 13:14 min.)

The natural environment sweeps through this abandoned town, once home to over three thousand people based around a thriving pulp mill. The remains of the town bears its weight down upon the vestiges of a landscape and its prescribed aesthetic value. Situated within Heiltsuk territory on the central coast of British Columbia, one of the oldest continually inhabited regions in North America. Ocean Falls is a somber, inquisitively observed portrait of a colonial settlement built upon resource extraction, now divergent from its intended role.

ABOUT FRESH SHORT SHORTS EMMEDIA is proud to present a summer series of free outdoor screenings at the relaxing Broken City Patio, showcasing works from different media art centres coast to coast. Starting with the east coast of Halifax and ending in the west coast of Vancouver, experience a unique collection of Canadian video art from across Canada. Join us on a warm summer night as we survey contemporary and historical media artworks that experiment with the medium of video, while enjoying a refreshing pint!

ABOUT EMMEDIA GALLERY & PRODUCTION SOCIETY EMMEDIA Gallery & Production Society is a non-profit media arts organization that supports both the production and presentation of media arts. EMMEDIA offers affordable access to media art production tools, services, technical and educational support, and an array of year round public exhibition programs including screenings, installations and performances. Our programs strive to foster artistic dialogue and engagement through complementary activities such as artist talks, panel discussions, publications, workshops, artist residencies, production awards and scholarships.

For more information, go to www.emmedia.ca

SCHEDULE OF SCREENINGS