Dead Air
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PAVED Arts
November 8 - December 7, 2013
Saskatoon
Ace Art
October 5 - November 10, 2011
Winnipeg
Parisian Laundry
April 15 - 24, 2010
As part of Collision 6 group exhibition
Montréal
Time, transmission, silence/signal/noise, and the massive changes associated with modern technologies emerging in the 19th century and their social, cultural, and political aftershocks are considered through the four works that currently comprise Dead Air. The works create a space where time is considered as duration, simultaneity, and linearity, while working towards the very conception of time as the basis of a revolutionary outlook. Sound, light and transmission are the materials of the various works, part of the electromagnetic spectrum considered as time, or, ultimately, as vibration.
Start. Stop
single channel video, sound
Single channel video of people estimating a passing minute. We hear them say 'Start' and then 'Stop' when they feel a minute has passed.
Beacons
Snare drums, speakers, electronics, sound
Snare drums play back a synchronized composition of radio broadcasts of international time beacons.
Five snare drums are spread throughout a room. Wires lead out of the drums to a playback device. A sort of hissing and rumbling sound is emitted, each drum tuned to 1,000 Hz, the frequency of broadcast time signals. It is a rough percussion composition made of filtered and processed broadcasted time signals form international beacons. A speaker inside each drum causes the drum to sound.
A Minute for Walter Benjamin
Broadcast over multiple clock radios
The broadcast is composed of the sounds between ‘start and ‘stop’ of people’s minutes. The piece starts as a dense, simultaneous chorus and then fades away as each voice ends its minute. These overlapping durations lead to eventual radio silence. This silence then lasts the same length as the combined 'minutes'. Played back on loop.
To End, To Begin
video projection, stereo sound
Projected images of blank white walls on screens. The sound is the space recorded in between participants saying "Start" and "Stop". Upon entering the room, one is bathed in light reflecting from two screens. Shifting bands of white, grey and silver form geometric patterns across both screens. The images are minimal in composition. It is not clear until one is in the space for some time that these are video images and not still images. The images are documentation of white walls lit in various ways highlighting surface and texture.
Thank you: Nancy Ring, jake moore, Jeannie Riddle and the Parisian Laundry (Montréal), Ace Art (Winnipeg), crys cole and Send + Receive, Heidi Phillips, Michel Germain, PAVED Arts, and the Claudine and Stephen Bronfman Fellowship in Contemporary Art for support.
