OIL – Beneath the Surface (2011)

OIL is a program of short videos exploring issues and relationships we have with oil, both politically and poetically. I am very happy and extremely proud of the program, the works are excellent and thought provoking. This project would not have happened without the generosity of all the artists involved, and all of the work by Vicki Chau and EMMEDIA. I would like to thank everyone for his/her willingness to be part in this!

The screening is tonight TUESDAY, JULY 12, 2011 @ 7PM at EMMEDIA:
#203, 351 – 11 Ave. SW Calgary, Alberta T2R 0C7

OIL @ EMMEDIA (2011)

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS: OIL

Presented by EMMEDIA Gallery & Production Society

Curated by Daniel Dugas

Deadline: June 1, 2011 @ 4:30PM

Oil. It fuels our cars, it furnishes our homes, it feeds our debates, our wars. Oil, almost magic, which can be transformed into a multitude of products, toys, fertilizers, carpets, shampoo, insulation, golf balls, credit cards, lipsticks, plastic bags, bottles. A strange philosophers’ stone giving immortality to pop bottles and plastic forks.

How are we going to negotiate our dependency and oil addiction with our environmental concerns? Who defines the Industry practices? How can the individual contribute to the emergence of solutions? What is the role of the artist, writer, poet?

OIL is looking for slick short videos to fuel the discussion! Daniel Dugas will curate the program, through a call of submissions that is open to local, national and international artists. We are looking for videos that address and explore the issues and relationships we have with oil, either politically and/or poetically. The program will be screened on July 12, 2011, which is the one-year anniversary of the capping of the BP well in the Gulf of New Mexico.

To submit your short film/video:

– Must be under 5 min.

– Must be submitted on either data DVD as a .mov file or Mini DV, if sending by mail.

– A .mov file can be uploaded onto our FTP server (Please contact programming@emmedia.ca for more details)

– Must not be an original copy as EMMEDIA will not accept responsibility for loss of, or damage to any submissions.

Please note:

– Submissions will not be returned unless accompanied by a SASE.

– Artists will be contacted if selected. Please no phone calls.

– If you are selected, screening fees will be paid in accordance with the Independent Media Arts Alliance (IMAA) fee schedule.

Please send your submissions to:

Attn: OIL submission

EMMEDIA Gallery & Production Society

#203, 351 – 11 Ave SW

Calgary, AB

T2R 0C7 CANADA

All submissions must be received by EMMEDIA on Wednesday, June 1, 2011 @ 4:30PM. Postmarked or late submissions will not be accepted.

For more information, please contact Vicki Chau, Programs & Outreach Coordinator, at:

programming@emmedia.ca

1.403.263.2833

Curator Bio:

Daniel Dugas is a poet, musician and videographer. He holds an MFA, Time Arts from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.  He was an artist in residence at: the Banff Centre, in both in the Visual Arts and in the Music  Department; Sculpture Space, New York; EMMEDIA, Calgary; A.I.R. Vallauris, France, and more recently at the Sydney College of the Arts, Sydney, Australia.

His sixth book of poetry: Hé!, was published last spring by Les Éditions Prise de Parole, Sudbury, Ontario.  This spring, he will be participating in the Festival international et Marché de Poésie Wallonie-Bruxelles as well as the Frye Festival. Daniel is currently living in Moncton, New Brunswick where he is pursuing a PhD in creative writing at the Université de Moncton.

Liaisons (2011)

Triangle amoureux, bibelots passionnés, Dante et Antoinette et Sirène
Love triangle, passionate knick knacks, Dante et Antoinette et Sirène

Corps flottants (2011)

Les corps flottants ou, plus anciennement, mouches volantes se définissent comme des formes de filaments, plus ou moins opaques, qui apparaissent dans le champ visuel. Dans ce vidéo, les notes de musique écrites par Jean-Philippe Rameau se mettent à danser follement sur les couches superposées des partitions.

La bande sonore est une adaptation de Gavotte et variations (6). Le fichier son est disponible selon les termes de la licence Creative Commons Paternité – Partage des conditions initiales à l’identique 2.0 générique.

fr.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​Fichier:Jean-Philippe_Rameau_-_Gavotte_and_Variations_(6).ogg

What We Take With Us – Ce qu’on emporte avec nous (2011)

• Galerie E DANS L’A Gallery, Moncton, NB, 2011

What We Take With Us

In this two channel video installation, each artist created a program of short videos exploring different aspects of memory and presence.  The programs are projected side by side.

An exploration of internal and external experiences characteristic to travel and displacement, the project grew from a research residency at the Sydney College for the Arts in Sydney, Australia – September / October 2009.  During our stay, we researched urban, as well as more sparsely populated coastal and inland geographies of New South Wales.  Starting from our personal exploration and interviews with others, we looked for indications of what it is like to live in a place; to call it home, and at displacement / shifts evoked by the experience of physically repositioning oneself in the world.

The research began from the perspective of examining the concept of home and what it means to individuals.  Over time, a discussion of memory and presence, of being in the world developed toward the realization that what we take with us might not be as important as what, or whom we sometimes leave behind. As the nature of living leads us forward, we are constantly required to face current events and circumstances; to grow and evolve within the present.  Ideas are shaped through interaction; through awareness of the importance of what we take with us in memory, and how interaction within social climates changes the point of view.  According to progress, of meeting life challenges; friends, family and familiar surroundings sometimes move into memory, and that becomes the only way to experience them again.  In essence, this is also part of the discussion of nomadism and contemporary life.

While developing strategies for conveying messages relating to the human experience, we have worked to open up half dream / half waking realities.

For more information see website

Ce qu’on emporte avec nous est une installation vidéo à deux canaux. Chaque artiste a créé un programme de vidéos examinant différents aspects de la présence et de la mémoire.

Ce projet sur le déplacement, la mouvance et le voyage, a pris forme et s’est développé lors d’une résidence de recherche au Sydney College for the Arts en Australie — septembre / octobre 2009. Pendant notre séjour, nous avons effectué une série d’entrevues à Sydney ainsi que sur le territoire de la Nouvelle Galles du Sud.  Nous souhaitions explorer les questions relatives au sentiment d’appartenance à une région, à une collectivité ainsi que sur l’expérience nomade.

Les idées contenues dans ce projet sont nées de l’interaction entre individus, elles se sont développées au travers du filtre de la mémoire et du souvenir ainsi que sous l’effet transformateur du contexte social. Tout en développant des stratégies de transmission relatives à la nature interne et externe de l’expérience humaine, nous avons tenté d’ériger un lien entre ce qui existe et ce qui est senti, entre le rêve et la matérialité.

Notre recherche nous a amenés à réaliser que quelquefois, ce que nous emportons avec nouspourrait ne pas être aussi important que ce qui est laissé derrière.

Pour plus d’information : site web

Ce qu’on emporte avec nous, What We Take With Us (2010)

Valerie LeBlanc et moi avons terminé notre nouveau projet : Ce qu’on emporte avec nous, une installation vidéo à deux canaux examinant différents aspects de la présence et de la mémoire.  Une première exposition aura lieu à la Galerie E DANS L’A au mois de janvier 2011.  Pour plus d’information :http://whatwetakewithus.wordpress.com/

Valerie LeBlanc and myself have just finished our new project: What We Take With Us, a two channel video installation exploring different aspects of memory and presence.  A first exhibition is scheduled at the E DANS L’A Gallery in January 2011.  For more information: http://whatwetakewithus.wordpress.com/

The Swastika is gone!

The City of Moncton came and repaired the sidewalk on Sherrard Street and it’s beautiful!

For background information, please see: A Swastika in Moncton

Poésie – 0 – 23es Instants Vidéo (2010)

Rouge sera présenté le 20 novembre 2010 à la Maison des Jeunes et de la Culture de Martigues en France, dans le cadre des 23es Instants Vidéo. Le programme intitulé Poésie – 0, débute à 15h30.

Maison des Jeunes et de la Culture
Boulevard Emile Zola
13500 Martigues, France
04 42 07 05 36

Abattue sur la ville rouge, une réflexion sur le gaz a tracé un portrait de genre sur le territoire infantile juste sous nos pieds.

Rouge de Daniel Dugas (Canada, 2010) 2’50

Centipede sun de Mihai Grecu (Roumanie, 2010) 10’

Mois de Brigitte Perroto (France/Allemagne, 2007) 5’30

Autoportraits minute 1/4 de José Man Lius (France,2009) 2’

Daidrim de Claude Yvroud (France, 2010) 11’03

L’amnésie infantile de India Solovieva (France, 2009) 15’

MARTIGUES MAISON DES JEUNES ET DE LA CULTURE

Bd Emile Zola 04 42 07 05 36

Programme complet

Camille, Andrew, Katrina & Co, an essay By Tomas Jonsson (2010)

NECESSARY FICTIONS

Tomas Jonsson

There is a quote by Steve Rienke, the source for which I couldn’t find when I wrote this, that goes something like this: “Critical reviews often rely on an autobiographical experience to instill a personal connection to the work in question, a strategy operating with a mistaken assumption that this imbues the review with meaningful insight.”  Implied in his criticism of subjective criticism is that it mistakes the object under interrogation. The suggestion is that critical writing should be more about the art object than about a personal experience of a work of art. Irecognize that I am often guilty of this, and after reading Rienke, I have made an effort -not always successfully- to adopt other strategies.

It is true that inserting oneself within the fabric of a critical response can be too easy a strategy, and often runs the risk of being less interesting than the work under discussion. Sometimes, however, the act of viewing is a subject of the work, and, when one viewer sees multiple works he or she is at the hub of a complex web of associations and judgments. Such is the case in my viewing of Nelson Henrick’s Failure, (2007, 7:00 minutes) and Daniel Dugas’ Camille, Andrew, Katrina and Co. (2008, 109 minutes).  These two videos were screened at two distinct occasions as part of EMMEDIA’s CRASH! Narrative Explorations series.   Beyond their obvious relation to the larger programming theme, something in the works sparked my curiosity, a sense that these works could speak to each other, that their respective strategies and explorations could offer some shared insight; a simultaneous push and pull at the borders of the conventions, and their personal identities that they worked with, and within. Both also implicate the viewer in the act of viewing, and challenge -subtly and overtly- passive reception of what we are witnessing.

Subtitled  “self portrait 61,” Nelson Henrick’s Failure suggests an exhaustive interrogation of the artist.  If the previous 60 video portraits (and perhaps more that follow) exist, this is the only one so far to surface for public presentation.  It begins with Henricks lying on the floor while a melancholic piano from a Nina Simone song plays. In several shot cuts we then see him peeking out from over a kitchen counter and table, and then lying on the bed. The screen goes black before we hear him sigh and say ‘I think that is ok.” A conscious slip of editing that begins to trouble our acceptance of what we are receiving. In the second segment of this video, we see Henricks shaving, first his beard and then his legs, while the following subtitles play out:

Insert subtitles in this section

Text refers to events in adolescence

That inspired the action onscreen

But not in an obvious way

Keep it open-ended and ambiguous

Make the titles go on long enough

To preserve the integrity of the long take

Keep the performative gesture unedited

While also distracting the spectator

From their boredom

Or find another strategy

Like go to a cut-away

The subtitles reflect the actions on screen. We are left to imagine our own interpretation of the adolescent acts hinted at in this ritual (or why, for that matter, Henricks shaves his legs with his pants still around his ankles).

Following the scripted cut away of scene two (a long holding shot of the humming razor) the view shifts to a record player, and the needle positioned to a fragment of a Serge Gainsborough song, where a woman’s voice lustfully and repeatedly whispers ‘nelson’, the needle is lifted immediately following her third and last utterance of the –his- name. In the next scene, Henricks emerges awkwardly from behind a curtain in a photo studio and performs an equally awkward shuffle to a tune by Pavement. “Special Guest star” Benoit Chasse appears with a handwritten sign that reads “impoverished aesthetics”. A few very rapid cuts follow, in tune to the skipping of the audio track. Despite what this audio tic immediately suggests, none of this is accidental, but rather carefully constructed. These cuts offer a fleeting glimpse of Henricks engaged in the production of this work (setting up lights, etc.), before we return to see him again lying melancholic on the floor as the Nina Simone song plays out, extending into the credits.

Failure is coated with a thick ironic sheen. It reads like a challenge, offering a seductive possibility of inference while at the same time mocking any attempt at reading insight to Henricks’ exploration of identity, and any presumed failures, try as we might. How and where do we attribute failure? Is the performative ritual of shaving symbolic of the inferred adolescent events; a failure to align with gender conventions?  We can’t confirm the readings as true regarding the subject outside of the video, but that does not prevent us from wanting – wishing – to know something of him through this construction.

Daniel Dugas’ Camille Andrew, Katrina and Co. exists in several formats, including a website, publication and script. The DVD version is presented in eight chapters and features optional English subtitles that mirrors the French voice that both informs us what we are seeing and provides all the character voices.  At times, the visual narrative does not align with the verbal / textual description, and the results are jarring. It is as if the camera cannot keep up with the direction, or instead pursues its own aesthetic concerns. The imagery has a dream-like quality which plays out at a slow, relaxed pace, even during scenes of violent conflict or struggle.

The story follows the conventions of a crime scene drama— immediately familiar to anyone with a steady diet of televised crime shows like CSI—with some magic realism thrown in for good measure. The video employs continuous foreshadowing of the events to come, and cliffhanger endings to the episodic chapters. At times, it seems that the narrator has ambitions that cannot be realized by the constraints of the hand-held video and foley sound. There is a subtle irony to this voice-over; we don’t quite believe it. It takes us in and out of the story, reminding us that we are watching a construction.  Perhaps this is a screen test for a later, more realized version.

There are a few stylistic flourishes, such as when we are drawn in to regard a painting of a ship in a storm. The camera moves into focus on one figure who, the narrator informs us, notices us, and who then begins to move up, floating or flying into the oncoming storm. The painting is in the house of Ted, who we come to recognize as the protagonist. He is cooking eggs in the kitchen of his 1970s bungalow (we are told). Over time, we come to learn more about him: his job at an insurance company; the convention he is to give a speech at; as well as larger, sinister forces that he will soon contend with as the (fore)shadow of an upcoming hurricane approaches.

We are only presented the characters in fragments. Dugas does double and triple service performing many of the characters, distinguishable only by their clothing or through representation of their actions.  A conversation between Ted and his wife Suzie, for example, is only represented by their respective cups of coffee.

At the end credits, footage taken from houses destroyed from the real hurricane Katrina play out, and we are reminded this is not merely content fodder for a dramatic thriller.  In the real world there were no industrious children  (Ted’s son, Teddy and his friends) that saved New Orleans, and it is safe to assume that a convention of hurricanes did not plot out the damage to descend on this city.  Thinking back on this piece, what can we take from this story and bring towards an understanding of the real events?

Both videos are self-conscious about the conventions of video; neither hide the construction of their form and content. Any engagement we might feel is continually subverted by our awareness of the external frames. These videos are performances. It means something that we recognize the role the artists play in this construction. In my search for the elusive quote by Steve Reinke, I did find this one, which makes this point plain:

“Through video, figures that were previously just functions of the text can be physically embodied in ways that radically undermine the stability of authors in relation to their texts and narrators. Video artists can be positioned both interiorly and exteriorly (behind and in front of the camera) to their texts in a way that is impossible for writers, who must always, despite all their desperate efforts to the contrary, remain off-page.”1

Reading this, I was reminded of watching Adaptation, a movie that, like these two videos, exposes filmic and narrative convention even as it follows it.  In the climatic finale -an absurd battle between the protagonist, played by Nicholas Cage and a crocodile- induced hysterical laughter from myself and my friend, to the annoyance of others in the theatre who were more willing to go along with the story.2

As Reinke notes, video is more amenable to this kind of slippage. It can create a space where the real and the fiction can co-exist in a tense ambivalence that destabilizes the comfort of suspended belief. While these two works subvert the conventions of conventional filmic narrative, this subversion does not counteract but rather gives new life to tired, often meaningless, conventions. Through this tension we shift from passive viewers to active participants in the construction.

Of course, this terrain is well covered. I’m conscious that a comparative analysis of two works could be made of any number of tapes, and is in itself perhaps a banal strategy. With this risk in mind, these works, exposed to me over time and space, nevertheless instill in me a nagging thought that results in an impulse to translate this to print.

________________________________________________________________

1. Nelson Henricks’ Failure was screening on November 25th, 2010 along with Deborah Stratman’s O’er the Land. Daniel Dugas’ Camille Andrew, Katrina and Co. was screened on May 14, 2010

2. I would like to thank Donna Wawzonek for reminding me of this incident.

Download the full version of IMPACT STATEMENTS

© 2010 EMMEDIA Gallery & Production Society
All Rights Reserved

All rights reserved. No part of this publication
may be reproduced or transmitted in any form
without prior written permission from the publisher.

Library and Archiving Canada
Cataloguing in Publication

IMPACT STATEMENTS:
CRASH! Anthology of Critical Texts

ISBN 978-0-9737962-9-2

Published by
emPRESS
EMMEDIA Gallery & Production Society
#203, 351 – 11 Ave SW
Calgary, AB
Canada T2R 0C7
1-403-263-2833
www.emmedia.ca

Edited by David Garneau
Project managed by Tomas Jonsson
Design by Vicki Chau
Printed in Canada by Emerson Clarke Printing

Les Ciné-Débats à Moncton pendant le FICFA

J’ai été invité par le Front des réalisateurs indépendants du Canada (FRIC) à participer, à titre de panéliste, à une table ronde sur la réalisation et le web. Cette activité aura lieu au 6e étage de l’Hôtel de ville de Moncton au 655, rue Main. L’entrée est libre.

LES CINÉ-DÉBATS

Pilotés par le Front des réalisateurs indépendants du Canada, les Ciné-débats sont des occasions d’échanges entre réalisateurs / réalisatrices de la francophonie canadienne et le public. Par l’entremise de tables rondes, les Ciné-débats proposent d’étendre l’expérience des cinéphiles et festivaliers au Festival international du cinéma francophone en Acadie en créant un espace de discussions autour de la réalisation indépendante et de ses enjeux actuels.

La réalisation et le web présenté le vendredi 1er octobre 2010 à 13h avec Anne Worrall (Vancouver), Daniel Dugas (Moncton) et Benoît Beaudoin (Montréal) Depuis la popularisation d’Internet dans les années 1990, les artistes médiatiques et les réalisateurs abordent le Web comme moyen de diffusion pour leur travail, mais aussi comme outil de création. La ruée récente vers le multiplateforme comme approche à la création d’œuvres audiovisuelles donne une large responsabilité à Internet et aux outils qui y sont reliés. La création en 2009 du Fonds des médias du Canada vient confirmer cette tendance auprès de l’industrie en venant appuyer et même obliger la création d’œuvres pouvant être diffusées sous plusieurs formes (documentaire unique, épisodes, site Internet, jeu vidéo, logiciels pour téléphone, baladodiffusions, webisodes, mobisodes) et ce, sur de nombreuses plateformes (télévision, Internet, téléphone portable). Le Ciné-débat explore de multiples approches à la création cinématographique avec Internet. Les intervenants partageront leur expérience de créer en utilisant Internet, tout en abordant l’influence que peut avoir ce médium dans le développement d’œuvres et les nouveaux rouages dorénavant partie prenante de la production audiovisuelle.