V I D E O S
Paul Collins
Berlin Vent, 2015
Black and white, with sound
Duration 4:52
Courtesy and copyright of the artist
Drifting through the city as an art student, on the constant look-out for meaning and motifs, I one day noticed an air vent of painted wood, fitted into the walI of a building on Spadina Avenue in downtown Toronto. It felt not as though I had simply “noticed" it, but as though the vent itself had come looming, glowing out of the noise of the city and of my experience. The form and fabrication of that slatted object seemed to embody so many of the elements and complexities that, I was discovering, were necessary for the construction of a work of art - essentials of surface and depth, composition, aura, and most especially the gridded x and y axes intrinsic to much art, be it the written word, notated music, the painted, printed or projected image. Much, if not most of my work since then has flowed and flown out of this object and this form. But the air vent is not a mere metaphor. That it is and was an air vent is not important. It could have been a tree, a mountain, a glass of water, a face, a word or a square. Its 'is-ness', that thing that makes a stone stony and an air vent an event is what matters. Russian writer and critic, Victor Shklovsky (1893 –1984) identifies this process as Ostranenie, or defamiliarization - the rendering or imbuing of something with strangeness.
Paul Collins bookwork VENT ■ Photographs 1977 - 2017
General Hardware Contemporary, Toronto and Care Not Care editions, Paris. Printed at Coach House Printing, Toronto in a limited edition of 100
“In Berlin recently, I came upon this articulated air vent fitted into the bullet-ridden wall of the Martin Gropius Bau. The birds’ chirping from the adjacent trees seemed to emanate from the vent’s yapping slats, like the creaking of metal.”
Collins participated in a Duchamp colloquium held in Paris in 1994.
Black and white, with sound
Duration 4:52
Courtesy and copyright of the artist
Drifting through the city as an art student, on the constant look-out for meaning and motifs, I one day noticed an air vent of painted wood, fitted into the walI of a building on Spadina Avenue in downtown Toronto. It felt not as though I had simply “noticed" it, but as though the vent itself had come looming, glowing out of the noise of the city and of my experience. The form and fabrication of that slatted object seemed to embody so many of the elements and complexities that, I was discovering, were necessary for the construction of a work of art - essentials of surface and depth, composition, aura, and most especially the gridded x and y axes intrinsic to much art, be it the written word, notated music, the painted, printed or projected image. Much, if not most of my work since then has flowed and flown out of this object and this form. But the air vent is not a mere metaphor. That it is and was an air vent is not important. It could have been a tree, a mountain, a glass of water, a face, a word or a square. Its 'is-ness', that thing that makes a stone stony and an air vent an event is what matters. Russian writer and critic, Victor Shklovsky (1893 –1984) identifies this process as Ostranenie, or defamiliarization - the rendering or imbuing of something with strangeness.
Paul Collins bookwork VENT ■ Photographs 1977 - 2017
General Hardware Contemporary, Toronto and Care Not Care editions, Paris. Printed at Coach House Printing, Toronto in a limited edition of 100
“In Berlin recently, I came upon this articulated air vent fitted into the bullet-ridden wall of the Martin Gropius Bau. The birds’ chirping from the adjacent trees seemed to emanate from the vent’s yapping slats, like the creaking of metal.”
Collins participated in a Duchamp colloquium held in Paris in 1994.
Brad Isaacs
On Exactitude in Science, 2016
Colour, with sound
Duration 6:35
Courtesy and copyright of the artist
My current photographic and video work operates around themes of invisibility and simulation, as well as European and colonial imaginings of nature. I seek to illustrate connections within a complex array of relationships between animal research, hunting, colonialism, and masculinity, demonstrating a concern with how the scientific study of nature serves as the foundation for larger social structures and systems of domination, and how the methods and technologies we use to visualize animals create their own meaning.
- Brad Isaacs
The video was shot in an animal furs cold storage vault at the Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa and first presented in the exhibition Brad Isaacs: The Map of the Empire at the Queen’s University’s Centre for Indigenous Research Creation in 2016.
Guest curator Carina Magazzeni’s related MA thesis is available at: https://qspace.library.queensu.ca/handle/1974/14960
Colour, with sound
Duration 6:35
Courtesy and copyright of the artist
My current photographic and video work operates around themes of invisibility and simulation, as well as European and colonial imaginings of nature. I seek to illustrate connections within a complex array of relationships between animal research, hunting, colonialism, and masculinity, demonstrating a concern with how the scientific study of nature serves as the foundation for larger social structures and systems of domination, and how the methods and technologies we use to visualize animals create their own meaning.
- Brad Isaacs
The video was shot in an animal furs cold storage vault at the Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa and first presented in the exhibition Brad Isaacs: The Map of the Empire at the Queen’s University’s Centre for Indigenous Research Creation in 2016.
Guest curator Carina Magazzeni’s related MA thesis is available at: https://qspace.library.queensu.ca/handle/1974/14960
Jinny Yu
Not Even Silence Gets Us Out of the Circle, 2017
HD video, colour, silent
Duration indefinite
Courtesy and copyright of the artist
So many ills in this world
I write my wishes and burn them up to the sky
And I hope.
I made this work when I felt powerless facing all the ills of this world.
“Not Even Silence Gets Us Out of the Circle” is a quote from Adorno’s Negative Dialectics
The motif of the burning paper is taken Korean shamanistic ritual.
- Jinny Yu, 2021
HD video, colour, silent
Duration indefinite
Courtesy and copyright of the artist
So many ills in this world
I write my wishes and burn them up to the sky
And I hope.
I made this work when I felt powerless facing all the ills of this world.
“Not Even Silence Gets Us Out of the Circle” is a quote from Adorno’s Negative Dialectics
The motif of the burning paper is taken Korean shamanistic ritual.
- Jinny Yu, 2021
Lois Andison
threading water, 2014
Duration: 6:12
Courtesy and copyright of the artist, and Olga Korper Gallery
In threading water, a solitary swimmer moves through a body of water with a giant comb, much like the one that Andison has realized as a sculpture. Balancing agility and stamina, the swimmer performs a surrealist gesture shaped by a subtle play on words between a grooming technique to remove hair (threading) and the act of staying afloat in water through constant movement (treading). At once humorous and poetic, these works allow us to see a swimmer as both a stylus and an agent of change.
Crystal Mowry, from Lois Andison: all the world began with a yes, Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery, 2019
Duration: 6:12
Courtesy and copyright of the artist, and Olga Korper Gallery
In threading water, a solitary swimmer moves through a body of water with a giant comb, much like the one that Andison has realized as a sculpture. Balancing agility and stamina, the swimmer performs a surrealist gesture shaped by a subtle play on words between a grooming technique to remove hair (threading) and the act of staying afloat in water through constant movement (treading). At once humorous and poetic, these works allow us to see a swimmer as both a stylus and an agent of change.
Crystal Mowry, from Lois Andison: all the world began with a yes, Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery, 2019
David Merritt
wahditty, 2008
Duration: 10:40
Courtesy and copyright of the artist
On a black screen words such as da, hey, doo, zip, la, ba, boom, and hidi fade in from black, to red, to grey, and to black again in what appears to be a series of syncopated beats across the screen. But gradually the words start to become familiar. Our mind starts to make sense of them. There is a pop song rhythm to the video, and we realize that Merritt might be playing or performing for us because these “words” that appear on the screen are not just “words” but nonsense song titles from the hit parade: Boom She Boom, Boom Shak a Lak, and Boom Chica Boom. And as soon as these words are read as song titles, they cease to be silent. In fact, they become quite audible. We hear these words as the songs they reference. We mouth the titles as we would Karaoke text. And our experience is similar to that of Jefferson and the gramophone in The Purple Cloud. Our silent reading is fractured, and we are haunted by a collage of recorded voices from popular music's past.
Excerpt from David Poolman “Silence / Debris / Duration” for David Merritt, shim/sham/shimmy, a coproduction of Museum London, the Art Gallery of Hamilton, the MacLaren Art Centre and Art Gallery of Windsor, 2010.
Duration: 10:40
Courtesy and copyright of the artist
On a black screen words such as da, hey, doo, zip, la, ba, boom, and hidi fade in from black, to red, to grey, and to black again in what appears to be a series of syncopated beats across the screen. But gradually the words start to become familiar. Our mind starts to make sense of them. There is a pop song rhythm to the video, and we realize that Merritt might be playing or performing for us because these “words” that appear on the screen are not just “words” but nonsense song titles from the hit parade: Boom She Boom, Boom Shak a Lak, and Boom Chica Boom. And as soon as these words are read as song titles, they cease to be silent. In fact, they become quite audible. We hear these words as the songs they reference. We mouth the titles as we would Karaoke text. And our experience is similar to that of Jefferson and the gramophone in The Purple Cloud. Our silent reading is fractured, and we are haunted by a collage of recorded voices from popular music's past.
Excerpt from David Poolman “Silence / Debris / Duration” for David Merritt, shim/sham/shimmy, a coproduction of Museum London, the Art Gallery of Hamilton, the MacLaren Art Centre and Art Gallery of Windsor, 2010.
wahditty, 2008 from davidmerritt on Vimeo.
Richard Grayson
Cosmic Joke, 2015
Single screen HD Video, stereo sound
Duration: 19:40 mins
Courtesy and copyright of the artist.
The work is formed from the texts of jokes that refer to ways of understanding and modelling immaterial or abstract forces, drawn from scientific, religious, philosophical, psychological or political systems. The sections of the jokes are articulated and animated by a 3D modelling animation programme. The soundtrack is based on the section of the Blue Danube Waltz by Johann Strauss used by Stanley Kubrick in the famous extended space station docking section of 2001: A Space Odyssey. This is mixed with sounds derived from the NASA recordings of the electromagnetic activity of the rings of Saturn.
- Richard Grayson
Single screen HD Video, stereo sound
Duration: 19:40 mins
Courtesy and copyright of the artist.
The work is formed from the texts of jokes that refer to ways of understanding and modelling immaterial or abstract forces, drawn from scientific, religious, philosophical, psychological or political systems. The sections of the jokes are articulated and animated by a 3D modelling animation programme. The soundtrack is based on the section of the Blue Danube Waltz by Johann Strauss used by Stanley Kubrick in the famous extended space station docking section of 2001: A Space Odyssey. This is mixed with sounds derived from the NASA recordings of the electromagnetic activity of the rings of Saturn.
- Richard Grayson
Cosmic Joke. 2014 from richard grayson on Vimeo.
Gary Pearson
The Waiter Joke, 2011
Colour, with sound
Duration: 7:24
Courtesy and copyright of the artist.
“Comprised of a five-language performance cycle The Waiter Joke is an exploration of the entertaining nuances of the waiter – customer relationship.”
- Gary Pearson
Colour, with sound
Duration: 7:24
Courtesy and copyright of the artist.
“Comprised of a five-language performance cycle The Waiter Joke is an exploration of the entertaining nuances of the waiter – customer relationship.”
- Gary Pearson
Alexander Pilis
Opening_Closing_Time_São_Paulo, 2019-2021
Duration: 1:59
Courtesy and copyright of the artist
A short film that, through architecture, explores the collapse of interior and exterior worlds through a moving plane, the glass door of the Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo, Brazil. This film is part of a series that articulates the parallax. Parallax is a displacement or difference in the apparent position of an object viewed along two different lines of sight seen from different viewing positions (at one given moment) can appear differently placed against the background of moving and fixed structures. “Sure, the picture is in my eye, but I am also in the picture.” Slavoj Žižek, The Parallax View
- Alexander Pilis
Awarded the Playtime Prize in the 2021 ArchiShorts 2-minute film contest, Winnipeg
Duration: 1:59
Courtesy and copyright of the artist
A short film that, through architecture, explores the collapse of interior and exterior worlds through a moving plane, the glass door of the Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo, Brazil. This film is part of a series that articulates the parallax. Parallax is a displacement or difference in the apparent position of an object viewed along two different lines of sight seen from different viewing positions (at one given moment) can appear differently placed against the background of moving and fixed structures. “Sure, the picture is in my eye, but I am also in the picture.” Slavoj Žižek, The Parallax View
- Alexander Pilis
Awarded the Playtime Prize in the 2021 ArchiShorts 2-minute film contest, Winnipeg
