Silver: Dreams, Screens and Theories

By Robert Amos January 19, 2004

} Silver: Dreams, Screens and Theories at the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria until February 8, 2004 “Contemporary spectators have developed a sophisticated sense of the dream-making machine of film; their internalized understanding of filmic language allows them to interpret cinematic illusion and to stay seated when the film begins.” Lisa Baldiserra, curator Silver is the title, and it relates to the “silver screen”, the field upon which a new modern reality is played out. Or is it a fantasy? However we interpret the parallel world of film, it is created by artificial means. The language of this artifice is the subject of a broad display of contemporary art practice, now on show at the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria. Arlene Stamp’s family home movies have yielded a snippet showing two skaters on a lake. They skate and snowball, circle and fall. The sequential frames are printed on some sort of glowing strip affixed to the wall: you walk by and your eyes and movement add the motion to the pictures, like the stop-action photos of Eadward Muybridge. Dawn Clements has made a long, long drawing of stylish 1950’s interiors, effectively sets without actors. Her scenario evolves from room to room, like a travelling shot in a film, or a Chinese painted scroll. Around the margins of the drawing are sketched vignettes, written scraps of dialogue, and comments by the artist/author. Of less interest is Damian Moppett’s storyboard for an unrealized film based on Peter-Paul Ruebens’ Peasant Dance. Moppett’s renderings of Ruebens are intriguing; his “location” photos of California cityscapes are less so; his script notes are tedious to read. At some point Stan Douglas made a film on a sound stage. This film (which is not shown) was shot on a set which looks like someone’s apartment. At the gallery, we are offered large-format colour photos of this set, the cameras and tripods which are prepared to film it, and the brooding dark of the surrounding warehouse-like soundstage. The border between illusion and reality is made visible. Claude Philippe Benoit aimed his camera at the very veil of illusion - the movie screen. From the auditorium side, the cinema honours the tradition of live theatre, with vestiges of proscenium arch and stage. Then Benoit pierces the veil. He shows us what’s behind the screen - speakers, rolls of old carpet, general storage. There are some actual “motion pictures” in this exhibition. Playing on video screens, they seem to be long on theory and short on entertainment value. Atom Egoyan’s “faithful adaptation” of Samuel Beckett’s play Krapp’s last Tape is 55 minutes long. As no chairs are provided and the quiet soundtrack conflicts with another tape nearby, I didn’t get much out of it. The film will be presented - by itself - at Cinecenta on January 27 at 7.15 pm. The soundtrack which interrupts from a TV monitor nearby comes from Egoyan’s video of Marie-France Marcil. She reminisces (in French) about her mother’s reel-to-reel tape recorder, unused since the 1970’s. I think radio would be a more suitable medium for this information. Catherine Sullivan filmed two actors making disconnected theatrical gestures on a tennis court. (I have since been told they are enacting Les Miserables without the usual context, soundtrack and costumes.) You wouldn’t pay to watch this in a cinema; if it was on television, you’d change the channel. For some reason, therefore, we categorize it as “art”. Next to it, Mark Lewis’s four minute paean to film “extras” attracts attention. His views on these unsung actors, contextualizers who inhabit the margins of most movies, is elegant and witty. I was engaged. Ron Mueck presents us with a curious illusion. With the techniques a wax museum, or the “make-up” department of a horror film, he has created a very life-like old lady, curled up in her bed for what may well be the very last time. This creature, and her realism, are unsettling, and made moreso by a slight diminution of scale - she is somewhat less than human scale and the result is a subtle distancing of our perceptions. The most intriguing elements of this large installation involve artifice and illusion. Gisele Amantea presents ranks of “snow globes” with a tiny video projection in each. The imagery, culled from cartoons and monster movies and Busbee Berkley, is presented in a minute and remote format. The wee characters - leprechauns? sprites? - seem to live in a world of dream and myth. In Your Dreams, 1998 (detail), Gisele Amantea Collection du Musée de beaux arts de Montréal Image Courtesy of Gisele Amantea photo credit: Didier Morel Janet Cardiff has created a tiny theatre for one. When you enter through the draperies and take a seat in the “balcony”, a tiny diva appears on a distant stage, and begins singing her heart out. Through a headset, you become engaged in an ambient soundscape. Coughs, whispers and mysterious hints create the impression of an experience much larger than the sum of the parts. Installation by Janet Cardiff David Hoffos creates cunning, fragile illusions: small in scale, modest in intent, each of the four is unforgettable. I was first drawn to a porthole in a dark wall. Within, a diorama presents a suburban street of houses at dusk, lit from within - like a toy train set. A battery of tricks is employed to make fireworks appear to play in the night sky above. Then, tiny and glowing, a child on a bicycle appears and rides his bike back and forth on the empty street. David Hoffos' presentation I want to believe in the fantasy of this tiny cyclist and his imaginary neighbourhood. Hoffos doesn’t try to hide the structure of these complex illusions. The technology is visible, and it is possible to deconstruct the artifice and understand how it is done. We are at once backstage and lost in the fantasy. What does it all mean? I leave that to you. But the curator and the artists have brought forth evidence which makes it clear that “filmic language” as a visual vernacular which, by now, we all speak. ___________________________________________ Copyright © 2003 Robert Amos Robert Amos is an artist and art writer who lives in Victoria, B.C.. He can be contacted by e-mail and you can view his paintings at www.robertamos.com

• Posted: 2004-01-19