Lifetime Piling Up

A video program that I curated for Nuit Blanche Edmonton's Petit Nuit opens tonight at 7pm. Details here.


LIFETIME PILING UP

The film projector provides an apt metaphor for life lived: as the take-up reel accumulates, the feed reel diminishes. A finite lifespan is illustrated by a growing past and shrinking future. Lifetime Piling Up will project a programme of eight videoworks which chronicle the passage of time, games, rituals, things going around in circles, lifelines and timelines.

In Francis Alÿs’s Reel - Unreel, the camera follows a children’s game in Kabul, Afghanistan. Two young boys push a reel of film like a hoop, up and down hills, through town. One unspools the film and the other tries to re-gather it, as an example of “doing/undoing”. In her performative video Iron-Woman, Alexandra Bischoff irons and then wears her entire wardrobe. Micah Lexier divides the screen proportionally between life lived and life to come. Lisa Steele catalogues the scars on her body, recounting the story of their origin. Other artists include Dean Baldwin (Montreal), Corinna Schnitt (Brunswick, Germany), Jon Sasaki (Toronto), and Miruna Dragan/Jason de Haan (Calgary).

Jon Sasaki
Ru be Goldb erg Mach ine, 2014, 00:45
A not-quite fully functional Rube Goldberg machine made from film and video equipment, is assisted by the hand of the artist.

Alexandra Bischoff
Iron-Woman, 2014, 11:03
The artist irons and wears her entire wardrobe.

Dean Baldwin
Intersection XOXOX, 2007, 1:00
Using yellow and white reflective road paint, a game of Tic Tac Toe is played out busy traffic, in the nine square grid formed by the intersecting streetcar tracks. With Kristan Horton.

Corinna Schnitt
Once Upon a Time, 2006, 25:07’
A slowly turning camera in the centre of a living room captures a succession of animals introduced into the environment.

Micah Lexier
Self-Portrait as a Wall, 2016, 00:30
Stop motion documentation of a wall text divides the screen proportionally into life lived and life yet to come.

Lisa Steele
Birthday Suit [with scars and defects], 1974, 13:23
On her 27th birthday the artist chronicles her passage through time, recounting incidents that left their mark.

Francis Alÿs
Reel/Unreel, 2011, 19:32
A variation on the classic children’s game of rolling a hoop, two boys push a reel of film through the war-torn streets of Kabul. Together they become a film projector of sorts, with one unreeling the film and the other rewinding it back onto the spool.

Jason de Haan/Miruna Dragan
The Wood and Wave Each Other Know, 2011, 38:00
A 360 degree view from a wildlife lookout tower in Northern Alberta (the tallest in the province), turned into the body of cello, on which Daniel Bosch performs to an audience of trees.