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


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@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx , 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 ! ! !



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