[spectre] "re:location" exhibition - Halifax/CDN

[Liz Mac Dougall]

incomplete dislocations [interactive media art] collective
Liz Mac Dougall, Coordinator, 6161 Allan Street, Halifax, NS B3L 1G7 
902.444-6869 liz at incompletedislocations.net


INVITATION to "re:location" EXHIBITION

The Incomplete Dislocations Collective is pleased to announce the 
opening of "re:location", an exhibition of 10 interactive digital 
works by NS artists. On Tuesday, August 19th at 7:30 pm at our 
temporary store-front gallery, 2203 Gottingen Street (at Cunard).

Curated by Liz Mac Dougall of the Incomplete Dislocations (ID) 
Collective, this exhibit is the result of a year long project where 
artists working in more traditional media were invited to make 
digital art reflecting their existing artistic interests. 
Participating artists were given technical support, workshops in 
digital media, and mentorship throughout the six months of 
production. For the local new media arts scene the resulting show 
breaks new ground in scale, in the uses of interactive technologies, 
and in the diversity of presenting artists.

To title re:location refers to the dislocation inherent in digital 
media. To live in a technologically mediated culture is to live 
dislocation as a quality of daily life. Communications, from mass 
media to more intimate exchanges are increasingly reliant on new 
technologies and are, therefore, disembodied mediations. The works 
can be looked at from the perspective of 'location', and our 
investment in identifying our conceptual location in a dislocated 
hyper-mediated environment.

The work of 'bluegirl' a virtual persona exemplifies this 
technological dislocation as the bluegirl.biz site is the only place 
she lives. Her site employs interactive freeware to an extreme degree 
in an attempt to make friends, find dates and communicate her 
philosophy without ever leaving home. Shawn MacLeod and Stephan 
Schulz's talking monitor piece asks that the viewer move monitors to 
create conversation between them in a reversal of the 
human/technological paradigm. Barbara Bickle's installation of a 
painting and a fax machine demonstrates the alteration of the art 
space via technology - a critical yet ironically accepting piece. 
These dislocations are amidst others that we experience on many other 
levels, cultural, racial, geographical etc.

- - Spoken Word/Digital Video Performance at 8 pm on  opening night - -

In response to often being asked "Where are you from?", Shauntay 
Grant will perform a spoken word piece with projected image. At the 
heart of this piece is a poem called "rivers", an original work and 
historical depiction of the black community of Preston. While the 
poem is performed live, a series of still images (depicting the 
community of Preston ~ then & now) will be displayed on a large 
screen. Blacks first settled in Preston in the late 18th century and 
their re-location brought them to a barren land on foreign waters. In 
truth, they were made to carve a future out of virtually nothing. And 
now, over 200 years later, the community thrives as the largest 
indigenous black population in Canada. Being from the community of 
Preston, Shauntay will tell some small part of the struggles of her 
predecessors.

In a non-narrative visual approach to issues of race and 
representation, Barry Stevens uses computer morphing to challenge 
age-old racial stereotypes. "As an Aboriginal person, I find that 
most people that I meet have a very strong opinion of what a Native 
person is, and what they should look and act like. What most people 
hold as "true", is based on little more than what they have seen in 
movies, heard as "urban legends", or outdated beliefs." To illustrate 
that stereotypes have little bearing on the reality Barry has morphed 
images from old photos of stereotype Native, White and Black people, 
to modern, well-recognized people from these races.

In Monika Kulesza's on CD-ROM, The FAT body emerges from an 
undulating combination of text and sound, conveying the hyper-FAT 
rejected body. Under this umbrella of popular FAT morality the viewer 
is confronted with two story lines featuring a GIRL and a WOMAN, both 
struggling to evolve within a cycle of oppressive taunts.  In the 
realm of the personal and psychological, Melanie Lowe piece, also on 
interactive CD-ROM, expresses a state of severe anxiety. Through an 
integration of still images, animation and sound an overall 
experience of chronic anxiety is expressed. The work conveys anxiety 
as an overwhelming repetitive trance, broken with periods of frantic 
anticipation. For Certain is based on memory and offers a dark look 
into the manifestation of distorted and irrational perception.

Also dealing with memory and with history is an interactive digital 
projection by Amish Morrell. This installation is a series of eight 
black and white photographs projected on a wall of a darkened room 
depicting the site of a now abandoned farm in Cape Breton. A computer 
voice reads the last will and testament of John Peter Ross, who 
settled this site with his family in the mid-1800's. Electronic 
sensors detect people entering the space and the motion they create 
will cause digital errors which break down the photos diminishing the 
legibility. This installation considers how images, written texts, 
and digital technologies texture our sense of time and history. The 
images of grass and stones bring us into a sense of physical space 
that for many is lost. In quite another manner Claire Hodge offers us 
a landscape that cannot be entered either texturally or visually. The 
digital qualities of the natural image are more present the harder we 
look. Technology impedes our access to nature but is somehow 
pleasurable in itself.

While the technologies the artists are using in the process of making 
new media art invite an exploration of the properties of dislocation, 
the themes of the pieces are unique to each artist's work. In 
exploring dislocation, location, identity, and displacement, each 
artist offers us a space to reflect on our own adaptation (or not) to 
communicating through this technological framework and the issues 
this raises. These art works are not about seamless story telling, 
they are about the methods we use to piece the elements of our 
complex reality together.


PANEL DISCUSSION

On Tuesday August 26th at 7:30 there will be a panel discussion 
entitled "Emergent Topologies: Navigating Interactive Landscapes" 
with Gair Dunlop of Scotland, and Doug Porter and Liz Mac Dougall 
both members of the Incomplete Dislocations Collective. The panel 
will be moderated by Andreas Guibert, also a member of the collective.

GUIDED TOURS
There will be guided tours of the exhibition daily at 2 pm.


The exhibition runs from August 19th - September 5th, 2003. The 
store-front gallery is open Tuesday to Saturday from noon to 6 pm.

Admission is free.

Contact:  Liz Mac Dougall, liz at incompletedislocations.net , 902.444-6869


_________

List of Participating artists:
Shauntay Grant, Halifax, North Preston
Melanie Lowe, Halifax, Fall River
Monika Kulesza, Halifax, Poland
Barry Stevens, Halifax, Mi'Kmaq First Nations
Amish Morrell, Toronto, Cape Breton
Claire Hodge, Halifax, Ottawa
Shawn McLeod, Halifax & Stephan Schulz, Berlin
bluegirl, Halifax, Newfoundland
Barbara Bickle, Halifax

Note: All productions were completed in 2003.
All works are interactive media of various kinds.


Artist biographies and project descriptions are available on the web 
site at http://www.incompletedislocations.net/relocation on Thursday 
August 14, 2003.


Liz Mac Dougall
Coordinator, Incomplete Dislocations Collective
http://www.IncompleteDislocations.net

Upcoming Show - -  re:location:an exhibition of interactive art installations
! ! ! August 19 - Sept 5, 2003 ! ! !