In a dark wood... is a large 32'X9' two-channel video installation . It begins as a still photograph of a long stretch of douglas fir trees, evenly spaced and exactly the same, reminiscent of a classical colonnade, prison bars, a film strip. Darkness falls in the woods and the trees spin around to the sound of a roulette wheel. When they stop, the spaces between the trees are filled with a montage of appropriated footage pertaining to BC. Two notes of music emanate from the...
Sessional Faculty, Faculty of Culture + Community
Faculty
work
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2009 -
2009Of our sons and daughters... is a two-channel looping video installation, rear projected on two 40"x30" hanging sheets of mylar. Both video channels are entirely composed of collaged and animated found footage culled from youtube and the US Department of Defense website. All the footage appears to refer to the war in iraq. The piece recalls the "talking head" shot of news or documentary TV; however, the two interviewees - a male soldier (as indicated by the hint of camouflage) and a...
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2009Portrait Series consists of five 3'X3' lightjet prints that are reminiscent of television "talking head" interviews where back lighting is used to obscure the identity of the subject giving testimony: a representational convention that does not discriminate between the criminal, the victim or the witness. What distinguishes the images from this cultural reference is their fine detail, that contrasts sharply with the aesthetic of documentary TV, and their perfectly square dimensions...
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2008Village Series consists of long exposure photographs of a miniature model. The model depicts a rural village ravaged by bullet holes and set ablaze by invisible flames. The use of long exposure photography and scale exaggeration – both techniques that are considered adverse to naturalism – ironically lends an air of realism to an obviously artificial architectural landscape.
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2008Hero of Our Time is a narrative video, 21 minutes in length, that follows the rise and fall of Hero, a 12-year-old soldier in an unnamed “other” country. Using a combination of staged sequences that highlight artifice, classical filmmaking techniques that emphasize verisimilitude and found/documentary footage from YouTube, the video engages (and sometimes echoes) our cultural database of representations – artistic and otherwise – of the pain of others.* Part myth/fable, part documentary,...