0:05

hi everyone um my name is uh lindsay sharman uh i’m the curator of the art gallery of

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alberta i’m very happy to be introducing our event this evening

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which is a screening of ana hawkins new film blue light blue and then a conversation with anna

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and a look into her exhibition that’s at the aga anna’s exhibition also titled blue light

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blue is up right now um at the art gallery of alberta and although we remain closed to the public

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uh that exhibition will be ready uh whenever health restrictions allow us to open to the public

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again um so anna hawkins works primarily in moving image and installation uh she has

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completed a ba in art history at the university of pittsburgh and received an mfa from

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concordia university and she’s currently assistant professor in fine art at mcewan university

1:04

anna i and the aga we’re all situated on treaty 6 territory

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uh we are also in edmonton um and this and uh treaty six are a traditional

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land of uh diverse indigenous peoples including uh cree uh blackfoot metis

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nicotisou iroquois inuit and ojibwe solto anishinabe

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i’d also like to acknowledge all of the indigenous inuit and metis people who make edmonton

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and alberta their home today so this evening we are going to watch

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anna’s film uh in its entirety uh so it’s about 15 minutes

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after which um i have some questions for anna and if anyone watching has

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uh any questions about uh the video or anna’s practice uh you can just put them in the chat at

1:58

any time i’ll be monitoring it throughout um so before i

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invite uh anna to come introduce the film i’d like to thank epcor for their support our online

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programming is brought to you because of the generous support of the epcor heart and soul

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fund i’d also like to thank canada council for the arts for their

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support of our online programming and anna’s exhibition is also in the rbc gallery at the aga

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and was sponsored by rbc and so thank you to them for their ongoing support of

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artists um so anna

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would you like to join me and and set the stage for for your film for us hi hi

2:47

thanks lindsay hi thanks so much um yeah i just want to also um kind of reiterate that i’m also

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joining today from treaty 6 territory and amazon skykin um and just thinking

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in all of these um digital virtual events that were taking up so much of our time right now

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it’s uh good to kind of think about where we are physically located and the history of that place um and also just really want to thank

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you lindsay it’s been a real pleasure working on this exhibition with you and with the whole team at the aga um

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i’ve really enjoyed working on this exhibition and hope that people will be able to see it fingers crossed um we’ll see um

3:24

so yeah before we watch the film i don’t want to say too much but just to kind of introduce it um it’s a work that um i started about

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two years ago and um the production for it largely unfolded over two summers so the summer

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of 2019 i shot a lot of it while um on a residency in sackville new brunswick

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and then i continued working on it last summer in semi lockdown um here in edmonton

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um and so the the theme of the work and sort of responding to blue light so

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the type of light that is emanated from our screens and devices

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i think since i’ve begun this project has become something that maybe people have become more aware of or are

4:07

thinking more about their exposure to this type of light and what that means and

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uh though you’ll see in the work that um i’m kind of adopting a sort of um

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reference to horror film and the horror genre and that came about um kind of from a previous work that i had done and

4:26

i knew that this was a genre that i wanted to explore and when i started working on this um

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project i saw a lot of news pieces and kind of click bait headlines about blue light

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and a lot of the stock imagery um really looked like stills from horror films so there would be

4:43

often female figures in a bed in a darkened room with this super

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intense blue light emanating from a device so i kind of that’s where i started to

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link these things together and um as the projects have progressed i um decided that i wanted to work with um 16

5:02

millimeter film as well as digital video um and so as you watch the work you’ll see that

5:07

um there are kind of two perspectives and maybe you could even see it as two different characters that are characterized by these two

5:14

different formats so um the film footage is often shot in a sort of pov

5:20

first person perspective and kind of a handheld manner and the video footage is often a more

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objective camera um more stationary um although those rules are broken within

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the work as well but there’s something to maybe think about in watching it um so i think maybe i’ll stop there and

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hopefully we can talk a lot more after we watch the work sure thanks um yeah so there we go

5:48

thank you

5:59

amazing congrats thank you

6:06

um right um so i’d like

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to show a little bit about what the installation looks like um so we have

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some images here so this is you know when you first walk in um text panel and i guess

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here’s a drawing that’s also in the space so in the exhibition there is this one

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drawing um and the video and i think if i go one

6:39

more yes so here you can you can kind of see like a little bit of of what the full installation

6:46

looks like so the video is projected on the the back of this wall but the first thing that you see

6:51

when you come in this space here you’re sort of confronted with this drawing um and the

6:59

imagery of the lamppost is also something that kind of shows up throughout the film um so i wonder if

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you could just share a little bit about um the significance of the lamp post

7:13

itself as like an image and also the the drawing sure um so this kind of um

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bit of the film sort of emerged over this this past summer and as i was doing sort

7:26

of more research for the project and um thinking about the history of artificial lighting and

7:33

thinking about um so thinking about devices as light emitting rather than just sort of um

7:40

communication and conduits of information so thinking them as devices that essentially emit light um so

7:48

um in in sort of researching like histories of of artificial lighting which maybe this is obvious but i hadn’t

7:54

really connected the idea that um artificial lighting and lighting in public spaces has always been kind of

8:00

connected to ideas of surveillance and societal control and intervention by

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governments so thinking about how people felt when even gaslighting when gas lines were

8:14

installed and into private homes it was a real um infiltration of uh of

8:20

um larger you know governmental forces coming into really intimate domestic spaces in a way that

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um was quite uncomfortable i think for a lot of people so um thinking about that and think of the

8:32

lamp post as this symbol of um potentially yeah as i said

8:37

surveillance um uh in that way i had also in reading this in a book um that i had

8:44

been reading about this called disenchanted night which is about sort of the industrialization of um light um

8:50

i had come across this political cartoon um that was created during the french revolution where

8:56

there are these sort of anthropo anthropomorphized um lamp posts that are pursuing a french general um

9:03

and so the idea that the then this lamppost which is the you know the symbol of the asean regime

9:10

is like then overturned by the people and taken to its own source i thought was a really

9:15

um interesting image and also just i liked i i was just really drawn to these um these lampposts that were like

9:21

wearing boots and had these sort of faces um that imagery so i kind of brought that in this

9:27

work um i brought that together so the image some of the imagery of these sort of blue legs that appear

9:32

in the video work um incorporated into this um imagery from

9:38

that that source that political cartoon and then that political cartoon is also um featured on screen in the film at one

9:44

point as well um yeah so i’m just gonna advance a

9:49

little bit so we can have a look at what the video looks like in the space um

9:57

so you in your introduction you you spoke a little bit about kind of your interest in in horror um and like horror tropes

10:06

um i wonder if you could talk a little bit about that that interest um if you could maybe

10:12

expand on that a little bit yeah i think this stems from uh the project that i did

10:18

just before this one which was called fall fell felt which was a work um which was largely using a lot of

10:24

appropriate imagery from fail videos and specifically the genre of girl fails and so

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um i became kind of interested in applying some ideas from feminist film critique um to these sort

10:38

of internet-based um internet sources and specifically this genre so thinking about sort of

10:44

feminist readings of film where the idea that um female bodies are often

10:50

ones that are used to transmit um these sort of somatic responses these really intense physical responses

10:57

so um in that work i think there is a uh even though it’s taking these kind of

11:03

humorous videos there is like an element of horror there and um in screening the work at one

11:09

point um in a large auditorium of students um actually at concordia

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um i had there was a moment when there was like a moment of suspense and something happened and

11:20

someone in the audience like very loudly gasped and i just thought it was so amazing to have such like a

11:26

like audible tangible like sort of response and just thinking about that and thinking about

11:31

horror as um a genre that elicits these like very um bodily responses sometimes where

11:39

you’re physically like jolted but also thinking about that as a way of like um

11:45

horror is like a genre where you really get immersed in it and caught up in those emotions and reactions but

11:51

often as soon as you have one you immediately kind of get um bumped out of the experience and you sort of realize that you’re a body

11:57

sitting in a chair in a theater or in front of your computer so like those two types of awarenesses of something

12:03

that i’ve been interested for a while in my work i think um of kind of breaking the illusion of the

12:08

screen so then um yeah i think from that i knew that i wanted to kind of explore this

12:13

genre more yeah i think it’s really interesting in that um in the fell feld felt video

12:21

um the thing that i thought was like so jarring about that is like so it’s a

12:28

collection of found um footage um of fail videos

12:33

but you you always like cut right before like the actual

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fail so right before somebody falls or like does whatever and and i think it’s something that’s

12:46

that you also kind of play with in this video as well and it’s

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it is definitely something that’s employed a lot in horror where you kind of cut right

12:57

before and there’s just like something about it that makes it so much more

13:04

visceral than actually you know seeing the fall and then you kind of laugh i think it’s something

13:10

that like turns it very like quickly and very easily from like humor into horror

13:19

in those videos and in your previous work as well um you’re often using found footage

13:27

but this one you’re actually using your own body um

13:34

i’m not sure so have you have you used yourself as a an actor in previous videos and i

13:40

guess maybe like how what was that like in in kind of using your

13:46

your own body to kind of investigate this a little bit more um it has been an element in my

13:52

previous i would say two projects that i have been interacting with the found footage and it has been myself

13:59

um who has been who has been the actor in those works as well um but this is the first work in a very

14:06

long time that i’ve made that does not incorporate found footage well i suppose there is like a

14:11

when like the hammer hit this hits the screen that hammer is actually taken from a youtube video but that’s the only moment that’s sort of like under a second of

14:18

footage so um that was something that i from the last work i kind of knew

14:23

i i think as time had gone on i for a few years i was working exclusively with found footage

14:29

and so gradually i’ve been injecting more original footage often of myself into the work um and then

14:36

i kind of knew that for this work to sort of almost as a challenge to myself and also just to create new ways of working i

14:41

decided i didn’t really want to work that way for this piece um so so yeah i guess i have been

14:48

working with myself in the footage and in a lot of ways i think um partially that’s due to a fact of

14:54

just like when i make my works i make them like by myself like i don’t i that’s the way i prefer to work is

15:01

sort of not even though film and video often like uh requires

15:06

collaboration um so uh but i kind of like to do it on my in my own way because i also think that

15:12

i work in a way of like i don’t really know what i’m doing i’m just always kind of like experimenting and trying different

15:17

things and to think about trying to direct someone else i don’t really know how that would work um but also just uh i think

15:24

conceptually in the works that i’m often kind of like invest like investigating like a hypothesis so like

15:32

i had a work called how to chop an onion where i was sort of trying to think about how we learn things online

15:37

from instructional videos et cetera so like the process of me enacting those things or repeating those

15:42

gestures was sort of like testing how that happens in in a very loose way um and the same with the last project

15:49

where i was sort of interested in how or why videos have failed like fail videos

15:55

are so captivating and why they have such a physical effect on us and it was sort of like testing that effect on

16:01

myself in some ways um in this work i’m not you know i’m not sure if that applies quite as much

16:07

because there’s a lot more narrative here than has been in my previous works um

16:13

yeah um [Music] yeah also um i just wanted to take a

16:20

moment to remind our audience that if they have any questions for you that they can go ahead and add them into the

16:25

chat um at any time um so i’m just gonna advance a little bit

16:32

um so there are a few um kind of recurring

16:38

visual elements in the film um so i’m just wondering if you could maybe

16:44

talk about them a little bit um how you chose them and what you hope that those elements achieve and while

16:51

you’re talking i might just click through the images um yeah so i think i in my head or in my

16:59

organizing of the the pseudo like not really script of this but the shot list as i organized this work

17:05

i did develo sort of divide it into chapters um and partially that was an organizing

17:11

prince like um way of working for me because this work um just by its nature had to unfold in a

17:18

very different way than i normally work because i normally work primarily in video and i do a lot of just visual experiments um

17:26

you know creating a lot of imagery um but working in film i knew i had to have um a bit more of a script and a plan and

17:32

i also kind of in knowing that i wanted to work more with narrative um i knew that um i wanted to i might have to sort of

17:40

script this out a bit more so i kind of started by just collecting a bunch of images that i wanted to include

17:46

in the film in a document and then just sort of ended up grouping them around these themes

17:51

um thinking about like one i think would be like mirror or glass like surfaces and thinking

17:57

about how all of these things kind of relate to screens so the screen is a reflective surface it’s also sort of a gla like a window that you look

18:05

through um and then also thinking about there’s a one um segment that i associate more with

18:12

like the candle flame smoke light um in that way so thinking about the these

18:18

devices as like i said sort of light sources um and then a third chapter which is more like um

18:25

i think it’s like it’s not it’s a little bit not as neat like maybe it’s like water

18:30

and like the curtain slash window um and just thinking about maybe the screen as this sort of like

18:37

it’s like a it feels like a permeable um layer or surface that we can kind of

18:43

like see through and traverse into um although of course that’s an illusion but um uh

18:50

yeah so i think it was kind of like once i had all of these images that i knew i wanted to work with it was kind of like just a matter of

18:56

like figuring out how to organize them and so these themes were something i was thinking about and just thinking about once again the idea

19:02

of the screen as being like um yeah the guiding principle here and just thinking about

19:08

all the different meanings of that word screen and how it can be something that you project something on to or something that is a boundary

19:15

between like indoor and outdoor or different types of spaces so um yeah so i think that’s i guess what to

19:21

say and then there’s some other sort of imagery of like the lock also that sort of appears and that’s kind of like ideas once again of yeah

19:27

boundaries and um different interior now to exterior space um private and public space and those

19:34

kind of ideas come up with the curtain as well so yeah long-winded answer sorry [Laughter]

19:41

that’s what we’re here for um do you have a question uh uh from the

19:48

chat so you did just mention your kind of interest in in narrative or loose in a narrative and they’re

19:54

wondering if you can say a little bit more about narrative in this work uh was there a story or a hint of one

20:00

for you in the planning stage of this work um uh hi tamara nice to see you i wish i

20:07

could see you but nice nice to see your name there um uh yeah i think um well i there were it’s i guess it

20:14

began with just a no a desire to work with narrative which i haven’t as i said before i think in my

20:19

previous work one kind of emerged in the process um and it just made me realize i wanted to work with it um

20:25

but it was a challenge for me to kind of think in that way um so i guess there was a hint of one just in the sense of as soon as i kind

20:32

of decided that i wanted to use these two different formats 16 millimeter film and then actually

20:37

it’s 4k video so thinking about the differences of those two formats i sort of like i said began to think of them

20:43

almost as two characters and so whether one is like the protagonist and one is the antagonist or

20:48

the villain or whatever i don’t know and they’re kind of the same person ultimately but um thinking about it in that way um

20:56

was one way i started to think about it and then i knew it would kind of work in these cycles of day and night that would become

21:02

potentially increasingly confusing although i’m i think maybe they’re just confusing from the outset at this point

21:08

um but yeah so i knew that was also like going to be set up on these cycles of day and night

21:13

that are become more and more confused so that was the basically the hint of narrative that

21:18

i began with could you um expand a little bit more on

21:25

like like how the film is made and a little bit more maybe like the technical side of like using

21:32

the 60 millimeter and 4k and the different kind of filming tactics that you were using

21:39

um yeah so i think um the desire to use film for this project

21:45

i hadn’t used like 16 millimeter film since i had very first begun working with moving images

21:51

um so it’d been quite a long time um and i think i was just sort of interested in how um

21:59

these two mediums capture light so very differently um and how one thing i was thinking

22:05

about was specifically that 16 millimeter film you know it’s balanced for tungsten and daylight um

22:11

and so these like screens you know the whole idea of blue light of why it is kind of confusing for us

22:16

is that it mimics daylight but it’s not daylight so i kind of wanted to see how 60 millimeter film would respond um

22:24

to that sort of light source um so that was maybe a beginning point with knowing

22:30

that i wanted to work with that um and just thinking about um

22:35

how i would like yeah work with these two different vantage points often like filming the same thing with

22:41

both cameras um and combining the footage um in the same frame often because masking it’s kind of like

22:48

something that appears and collage type work appears in my work um very often so i knew that would probably come back

22:54

so wanting to sort of have these two different looks in the work but then also combine them at certain times just to

23:00

um talk about those two perspectives and i guess you know i um for me i’m really interested in how

23:06

um whatever image capturing technology we have um becomes so much a part of well i

23:14

think really influences the way we see the world like it shifts how we act in the world it’s just how we um

23:21

present ourselves you know like thinking about like um i remember like when hd

23:28

video first appeared on the market like there was all like a new lines of makeup appeared that were specifically like

23:34

targeted for hd resolution and then also i think you know with instagram and filters and like things like that like

23:40

the way that we actually um shape how we appear in the

23:45

world based on image making technologies and also how our collective sort of memory of a time

23:50

exists based on how those appear so i was thinking about all those things

23:55

and working on with the film so i was shooting in tandem the film footage and the video footage

24:01

so technically i was shooting those like in the same day you know sometimes um and uh like i said for me it was a

24:09

big adjustment because i’m very used to working um like where i’ll shoot a little bit of video and then i do a lot of sort of

24:16

um work with effects so i usually shoot a little bit play around with it and then gather more as needed but with film

24:22

obviously i had to work on a different timeline and um basically do a bunch of shooting before

24:27

i started the editing process so that was a big difference um and then i guess i would just say lastly like uh

24:34

that i think another reason that i found the film footage to be interesting to work with was because and sort of like

24:40

i i really have enjoyed working with found found images um in many ways because of the limitations

24:47

that it that gives me i think with video like you know when i’m shooting original footage i can just reshoot and shoot and

24:53

get so much footage um that it’s hard to know when to stop and i i’ve always like appreciated like found footage for um yeah the

25:01

limits it presents and what it might present that i wouldn’t have expected and a lot of ways i’ve started creating

25:06

my own footage in the same way where i’m often end up using shots that were just like um

25:12

they weren’t intended to be in in the final work but then i kind of appropriate them as if they were found footage and with film the same way not

25:18

knowing exactly what i was going to get i felt like i had that limitation um which i find to be like productive

25:27

um so

25:32

[Music] um so leslie sharp is asking

25:39

um so she’s interested in the other light that’s in the film which i think you were talking about a little bit as she she

25:45

put this question up um she says the film light the natural light that gets disrupted and

25:51

infiltrated especially since film is another early technology were you specifically

25:57

interested in how those work together um and did oh no i don’t know this book

26:04

and so i think i’m gonna butcher this name so and she’s asking did the shavel bush

26:11

influence that um well i’m i think i’m not sure if i totally

26:18

understand but thank you leslie so much um i think um

26:23

like thinking about how the film light and the natural light that gets disrupted and infiltrated i mean i think i was sort of

26:29

think you know in some ways i also in a maybe sort of simplistic way thought about like um the the film as the more like

26:39

um naturalistic element like you know a lot of film buffs will still

26:44

argue that film is a more um it captures light in a more true way than digital video i mean

26:51

i’m sure there are many perspectives on that but sort of thinking of that as being like um more tied to actual daylight

26:58

um when we’re seeing that um and so that that sense that it’s often being infiltrated by the blue light which is

27:05

definitely true is happening time and time again and i just was thinking about sort of like

27:10

that idea that like i don’t know when we’re constantly in front of screens it’s really i mean i

27:15

feel like it just ends up like no matter where we are that light is is present it comes with us wherever

27:21

we go um you know it’s it’s like literally on our bodies like at all times with our

27:27

phones maybe not on um but often is so just thinking about how it sort of bleeds into that and so

27:33

also just how our experiences or um what we see online ends up leading into what we see

27:39

like in the the real world in in the outer world um so i think i hope that answers your

27:45

question let’s not let me know um and i would say that the chiva bush book that i referenced earlier and i think

27:50

you actually did read this as well lindsay that’s the um one on the industrialization of light so just thinking about um

27:57

uh i actually read that kind of in the second half of my research so i was just kind of thinking about more

28:03

about that sort of yeah the that maybe came later but so i i guess i would say from the beginning i was sort

28:08

of interested in always having these two types of light merging and blending specifically having the blue

28:14

light kind of seeping into the more like 16 millimeter film light if that makes sense

28:22

um nicole is asking about this soundtrack which i’m also super

28:28

interested in because this is one of the the last elements that you you added and

28:33

so you and i have not really even talked a lot about um the soundtrack so um she’s wondering

28:39

uh the inspiration for the soundtrack uh and she also has a second question um

28:45

she’s also wondering if you’re if you experience any challenges filming a year a year apart and half in

28:52

new brunswick and half in edmonton great um thank you um

28:58

so the soundtrack yeah it was sort of the last element um and um it was collaboratively

29:05

collaboratively i couldn’t even say the word collaboration i was gonna say i don’t normally work collaboratively um before the

29:12

soundtrack i worked with my partner who’s also an artist um and uh obviously there’s a lot of

29:19

quotation happening um with uh based

29:26

soundtracks for um horror film um obviously there’s a lot of yeah

29:31

association with that jump with that genre um and so i knew i kind of wanted to go

29:36

in that way but i was also really concerned about it becoming too much of a parody or too

29:43

much um too nostalgic i guess were my concerns

29:48

um but i think that there’s also such an interesting history of how filmmakers and directors have worked

29:54

with synthesizers because they are so low budget and often directors themselves can kind of score

29:59

films because because of the accessibility of um synthesized soundtracks and also just

30:05

the importance of the soundtrack in in horror film as often like that’s a way to communicate a perspective of

30:11

either the the monster or the the slasher or communicate the perspective of

30:17

um the victim or protagonist so it adds so much to the texture of the

30:22

work and the the the way that you can kind of have such a large soundscape um existing

30:29

um with that um was sort of where i wanted to approach it i mean i

30:34

guess like i said it’s obviously there’s going to be a lot of quotation there and i was concerned about that a lot in the work but

30:40

eventually i just i just sort of embraced it i guess um uh but yeah and i think another

30:47

reason i would say is that i i don’t also normally work with like a musical score um for my works

30:54

um but in the way that i think this work plays a lot with like immersing you in it and then kind of

31:01

like um you know panning back and you realize that you’re seeing something different or you’re kind of

31:06

like the illusion is broken so i wanted to use like a a musical score to kind of work

31:12

like to draw you in and then also like create that rupture um yeah so i guess i guess that

31:18

hopefully that answers it and then thinking about the um the filming a year apart um yeah i

31:23

definitely did post some challenges i think just thinking about the the the landscape um

31:30

i know brunswick does factor in quite largely into the work um so then kind of transposing it um

31:37

here in edmonton was a challenge although i was doing a lot of sort of reshoots filling things in um more like detail shots and um i think

31:44

it also just posed a challenge because mentally like where we were where we all were in the summer of 2020 was a very

31:51

different place than we were in the summer of 2019 so i think thinking about that was i mean that was a challenge also just thinking

31:57

about approaching a project from in such a different headspace um but yeah so i think i mean

32:04

i guess it did pose challenges but um because of the types of things that i was shooting

32:09

i i was i you know in the my not huge concern with maintaining a whole lot of like like breaking the consistency was

32:17

okay with me um and i was able to use the same model of camera so

32:22

um that sort of visual consistency was still there but i think it also shifted the work in a way that um that i think was um beneficial to the

32:30

work in the end so yeah thanks um you just mentioned a little bit of this

32:36

you know kind of like this panning back um i think it’s like an interesting element um

32:42

in the film of this you know you’re constantly like tricked into like not quite knowing what

32:48

you’re you’re looking at and or not quite knowing like how many screens you’re looking through at any

32:54

any given time um can you talk a little bit more about that

33:00

kind of like trickery i guess in in the film yeah and i think i guess

33:06

that’s maybe something that’s been consistently an interest in my work like i think that

33:12

like the surface of the screen is something that in past works as well i’m always kind of

33:17

interested in breaking apart sort of rupturing that surface and playing with it like thinking about

33:23

it once again as i was talking about with those sort of metaphorical like themes that appear in the work is something that’s like a space

33:29

that that feels like it’s um that we can traverse and and go into but then ultimately is

33:35

just like a flat surface and then always kind of reminding i guess the viewer of that

33:40

but playing with that has been something that i’m always um always really interested in in thinking

33:45

about um and then also just i think you know distraction is a big part of

33:52

our lives right now especially but um something that i was thinking about with the work as well and just

33:57

so often you’re kind of being drawn into something and then all of a sudden you know a window like a computer a browser

34:03

window rather closes or something shifts all of a sudden and you’re it’s kind of like

34:08

hard you get distracted um and you know just sort of thinking about that and um another of the the books that was

34:16

kind of influential early on in the research for this project was um jonathan carrey’s book 24 7 and he kind

34:21

of talks about how like um being an uninterrupted spectator is like completely outmoded that

34:27

every time we’re looking at something we’re constantly like clicking to go forward or clicking to skip the ad or reviewing it or rating it or like

34:34

there’s some interaction involved and this idea of like being completely immersed as a spectator

34:40

for a long period of time is something that um it’s very hard to achieve now and so

34:46

sort of thinking about that in the work as well is sort of like um yeah all those things

34:53

so was there some some motivation in wanting a full screening of the film so you could yes exactly

35:01

[Applause] yeah exactly because i know myself but right now it’s really hard to sit down

35:07

and like well i’m in front of a screen all day for for every for everything um for work for for

35:14

studio practice for um uh friendships you know for everything so

35:21

um i think it’s really hard to dedicate time a block of time so yeah i guess i i i

35:28

you know i can imagine having the best of intentions to sit down and watch a 15-minute film but it might be very hard so thank you all

35:33

for everyone for being here today and watching so yeah yeah thanks for everybody’s attention um

35:41

yeah i mean i guess you you touched just briefly on you know the pandemic that kind of

35:48

changed your way of working and how you were actually able to produce the film

35:54

um but i wonder if it’s if it’s changed how you think about it um the imagery

36:01

that you were using in it i i think it it’s interesting that you know these these themes of kind of

36:08

having your life mediated through screens and being kind of always

36:14

at the mercy of this blue light was definitely relevant before the pandemic but now i think it’s

36:21

kind of like tenfold yeah exactly exactly and i think um yeah so i mean

36:30

i guess i guess maybe it has shifted in some ways i mean i think a lot of the ideas were already in the work

36:36

but as you’re saying that maybe the experience has been amplified a bit in in the past

36:43

uh 12 months so um i think also that i think one thing that i wanted to work

36:49

with in the film was just feeling like this feeling of sort of disorientation that comes from

36:54

um being exposed to your screen for an extended period of

37:00

time and just sort of this disorientation of time and place and time of day etc but also just thinking

37:06

about how um [Music] uh like i think i was recently listening

37:12

to something on i think the cbc or about how memory is even being shifted in this pandemic because it’s really hard to kind of grasp

37:18

time when every day kind of feels the same um and you sort of can’t remember if something happened

37:24

like a day ago or like three weeks ago because it all kind of like that sort of blurry sense of time

37:30

and disorientation of distinguishing markers of time is something that i’ve been thinking about a lot lately which i i hope that

37:37

the work kind of like maybe captures in some ways um yeah well and i

37:42

think even just like this image that we’re looking at here of like the the strawberries and they kind of like

37:48

evaporate into smoke or kind of go bad before your eyes but but yeah i think it’s definitely like

37:54

i’ve i’ve lost all sense of the timeline no idea um then

38:02

anything was yeah exactly actually now that we’re on this image like the the strawberries they do

38:08

show up um like a few times kind of repeatedly um did you want to expand a little bit

38:15

on on that sure i mean i think this is something that came out of like the in the editing process like i was

38:22

shooting them when i was on residency um and not knowing sort of how they fit into

38:27

anything and then this works specifically like what what you’re seeing is um a shot

38:33

from on 16 millimeter film um that was shot of this bowl of strawberry sitting on this chair and then i had re-shot

38:40

um the bowl the same bowl of strawberries um with like intense blue lights with the video camera

38:46

from a slightly different angle and then um transpose that on top of it so you’re

38:51

sort of seeing this video image that you can kind of see like there’s a more harsh sort of glare

38:56

on the strawberries the reflection in that portion of it so collapsing those two images together um

39:03

and so um yeah i think this was something that i just sort of was shot a few times with the 60 millimeter film and with the

39:10

video it’s kind of like a test subject in a lot of ways it was something i just had around in the um in the apartment where i was

39:16

staying so it’s sort of um i just had this footage but i really i really liked the footage and i knew i

39:22

wanted to include it so it kind of happens at um uh what i think of as these sort of

39:28

different chapters so as as we move from one to another the strawberries reappear so they appear here there’s one time

39:34

where you sort of see them reflected in the the phone itself and then another time at the end where the strawberries are

39:40

being chopped so it’s sort of like they just sort of signal the shift i guess um which is maybe not perceptible

39:45

to anyone but me but that was like how i perceived them in the work

39:52

um yeah we have a couple of questions um related to um

40:00

are there art historical quotations um in the work in particular

40:08

um like the mingling of of screens and and still life

40:14

um maybe uh uh willem calf in this dangling orange peel um or maybe

40:21

a duchamp in the leg um the the only

40:29

direct sort of quotation i guess i would say um of another artwork i think is the leg

40:35

but i i was actually thinking of um one of my favorite films um syntagma by valley export um where

40:42

there’s a sequence in the work where um there is um uh an actress um who is on a bed and she’s

40:50

sort of interacting with these images of herself so it’s like an image of her arm and then she places and then

40:55

there’s a like a photo print of an arm and then the actress like lays her arm beside it and they interact in this way

41:01

um that’s really compelling and i i love that work so um i was kind of thinking

41:06

about this that work and and so instead i have it like it’s in front of a t i have the image of my leg on the tv

41:13

and then my actual leg sort of steps in to sort of interact with it um that part has been shot on film and

41:19

so just it’s just thinking about the interaction of like the body and the image um that’s so such a big part i guess of

41:26

my work in a lot of ways um so that was that’s kind of an like a nod there as far as like other

41:34

like i mean certainly to the genre of still life there are some some nods but i wasn’t thinking of any specific works

41:40

with those um i just kind of that was one of the images that i knew um

41:48

early on that i wanted to have like i just knew that i wanted to have a film shot of the still life that would gradually

41:54

the objects would be replaced by the video footage of the same stuff so the blue sort of lit

41:59

video imagery would sort of overtake that still life and that was just something that i knew i wanted

42:04

in there from sort of the beginning of working on the project

42:11

yeah maybe you can can you talk a little bit about this kind of like layering of smoke i know

42:17

that you spoke just a little bit about um kind of like the smoke is more like a broader

42:23

element um but if you could talk maybe about this like juxtaposition of like this

42:28

smoking hand with the forest um sure and i guess actually i this will

42:34

contradict what i just said because i was like i only have one direct quotation um but i

42:39

so this shot kind of began from um the many of the many horror films that i

42:45

watched and kind of thinking about this project um i think it was a dario argento film

42:50

um deep red where there’s like a shot of someone smoking in front of a of of of a tv with like a newscaster and

42:58

the the hand is sort of in soft focus and you see what’s on the tv and i just visually i was really

43:03

compelled by that image so um i kind of wanted to bring that in somehow that type of framing um and so

43:11

um it’s sort of the footage has been replaced by this this imagery of forest fires um very

43:17

devastating forest fires and just the way the the the smoke commingles

43:23

from both sources you know i was just sort of thinking about like one one thing i guess uh you know

43:31

also sort of themes that run through my work but thinking about um when we’re when we’re just kind of inundated with imagery like this

43:37

um that’s that’s just so devastating and horrifying and just but not really being able to respond or

43:43

act or understand is how i feel often where it’s like the more the more imagery i have of it the less i

43:50

kind of know how to how to comprehend it in some ways um so like this sort of like the the smoke

43:58

from a joint sort of mixing with that is like the the best way to like understand it and sort of like the way

44:04

these two things sort of blur together um and obviously there’s like kind of a like a a sense of like

44:10

um escapism also that’s happening and just sort of like i think

44:15

the way that in this sequence then the smoke sort of follows the camera and continues is

44:20

um sort of thinking again more about like how um what we experience on the screen

44:27

ends up sort of leaking into our daily lives um so like you know like i said in collapsing in

44:33

some ways so i guess that was another thought there um but yeah this is essentially just a shot taken in front of my laptop screen

44:40

um just to explain that a little bit more yeah um so taryn is curious about the blue

44:47

droplets can you talk a little bit about what material they are and is this the

44:54

blue light becoming uh material or matter um i like that idea the idea of like the

45:02

blue light becoming material and i guess in some ways it is um um i mean literally it’s just sort of like

45:10

drops of like blue food coloring that i green screened out and laid over the image

45:15

um i think it was just kind of once again that i like it multiple ways of thinking about it

45:21

kind of like um i think i already used the term leaking but once again with that

45:26

those droplets it’s sort of really making that really material so that idea that like the the blue light is actually just like

45:32

dripping onto these other surfaces and and um it’s not really bleeding through because it’s dropping onto them as a

45:38

surface but um just how it kind of starts to um

45:44

bleed onto um the other image or the other experience um so thinking about it in that way i

45:50

guess um and i think formally it’s just like something that i’m like i said very interested in

45:55

always playing with that idea of like surfaces and and and breaking or

46:01

or revealing that surface more so um yeah hopefully that answers the question but i i i think that’s a

46:08

really interesting way of saying it thinking about is like becoming becoming an actual substance

46:15

yeah and there’s like a relation here to you with like this image and kind of like how you’re playing with this in a couple instances as well

46:24

um i might just go back to um i’m sorry this

46:31

a little bit my clicker is a little bit slow um yeah just to kind of draw everybody’s

46:38

attention to this um so this is the the political um cartoon that you were talking about

46:45

in the the beginning that comes from that um that uh book that then has the

46:51

the light in the back um was there anything else that you wanted to kind of

46:56

expand on with the lamp post um i mean

47:04

i think i think i said most of it i mean i think um in a maybe what i

47:12

didn’t say in like once again maybe this is more simplistic reading i’m just like thinking about

47:17

you know when i saw this originally i was like it’s it’s liked being embodied as as a sort of figure um which is what

47:24

drew me to it because at that point that was where like i said i this was that was like a

47:29

part of this work that had sort of um been um i knew that that was where this work was

47:36

gonna go from the beginning so um i think there was also just like a pleasure in seeing that and thinking

47:41

about using that in the imagery of the work or pulling that in somehow

47:47

just became a an interest um yeah well i think we’re

47:55

we’re just a few minutes past our hour um and it doesn’t seem to be

48:03

any more questions in the chat for you um is there anything else that you

48:08

wanted to share about the the video before we

48:14

kind of wrap up um nothing off the top of my head um

48:19

if anybody wants to email me questions my emails on my website if anything

48:24

comes up um uh but thank you so much for all the questions that was it went it flew by for me so thank you

48:31

so much and also as i said i know that um everyone’s spending a lot of time on the

48:36

screen so thanks for dedicating a bit more time uh to spend with us yeah and thanks so much for for sharing

48:44

for kind of like allowing us to share the whole video in its entirety it’s really really great um to be able

48:50

to do that while the gallery is is closed um hopefully fingers crossed

48:56

that um things will get a little bit better um maybe our vaccine rates will

49:04

catch up to our uh current numbers that will allow us to reopen um and everybody will be able

49:12

to come and see i think the installation is is um really beautiful um and you should be be

49:19

very proud i think it the exhibition looks really fantastic um so yeah thanks

49:25

thanks for your time this evening and thanks for the work um and thanks everybody for joining us

49:31

yeah thanks so much bye bye

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