JourneySandra Vida

EMMEDIA presents

OCT 24 - NOV 1, 2014 | 12-6PMEMMEDIA Screening Room - 351 11 Ave SW

OPENING RECEPTION: OCT 24 | 7-9PMPASSAGES - A Panel Discussion: NOV 1 | 2-4PMFor more info, go to: EMMEDIA.CA

A white horse advances effortlessly toward the camera. This course of action is repeated numerous times with the effect of postponing a singular destination in favour of multiple pathways. The horse moves freely, it inhabits “the zone of all possibilities.” This expression is used in equestrian dressage to describe harmony in movement and, very aptly and likewise, in creativity research to describe imaginative momentum, or when an art project wells up intrinsically.1 In short, human and non-human can be “in the zone.” Vida’s Journey, a short

five-minute loop video, achieves this experience. The silvery horse passes successively through subdued and partially veiled environments where time seems suspended. Journey offers a zone where possibilities are made by recombining dreams and memories. Vida’s interest in complex cross-disciplinary and circular narratives is, once again, skillfully revealed through her elegant and subtle layers of images. Many of these images come from her vast video archive accumulated over decades of dedicated work. In a very similar manner the artist’s video archive functions like her corporeal memory; both encode, store, and retrieve information but more importantly, both conjure up new combinations and nexuses.

The image of a white stallion was chosen for its powerful symbolic charge through long-standing allegorical associations such as divination, wisdom, fertility or transcendence. To paraphrase Leonard Cohen, Vida invites her viewer to compare mythologies. Images from previous works are rearticulated in a rhythmic montage of subdued colours and impressions of animated contour drawings to evoke her personal journey and ancestry: many derive from a pre-Celtic and Celtic universe, such as temples, archways and spiral carvings. They are joined by other equivocal transient images of fire, water, earth, and wind. Near the end of the video, a dancer dressed in white with a floating translucent veil is superimposed over the horse. Once more human and non-human animals are reunited to generate alternative conceptions and intriguing associations. Along with an evocative ancient violin tune, the large-scale projection lures the viewer to empathetically join the horse and the performer.2 The last sequence

Let us compare mythologies: Sandra Vida’s Journey

by Mireille Perron

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reworks a central image from The Autonomous Eye (1992). Conceived with Irish artist Pauline Cummings, this collaboration is a feminist tour de force. In this scene, Vida’s hands encircle the image as if they were the zooming device on the camera lens. The artist is a conjurer and her prestidigitatorial hands make things appear and disappear at will.

Nicolas Bourriaud, the well-known French curator, coined the term heterochrony (hetero: other, chronos: time) to emphasize the number of contemporary artworks that wander through history undermining the modern concept of time as linear progression. He recalls Walter Benjamin’s poetic description of the relations between past, present and future; the past acts like a sunflower, always looking for where history will rise. Bourriaud posits that contemporary art is a process that makes the real precarious by showing formally how it is constructed. Art uses the formal qualities of life, including the notion of time, and makes them apparent as constructions. Artworks traverse knowledge and find their own pathway through the co-presence of different times. Bourriaud’s description is in striking parallel with how Vida’s video works function. Indeed the artist, in this instance by means of the recently added footage of a horse, invents new pathways through the endless possible permutations available in her extensive video archive.3

Inspired by Journey’s predilection for recombination, my own memory recalls another videographic work, Box, by upcoming Montreal artist, Olivia Boudreau. Twenty-two hours in length, Box offers viewers

to share the space of a black horse in its stall. By suspending time, both artists, among others, foster intimacy with these large animals. It has been said by many on countless occasions, that video is time.4 While Box suspends time by unfolding it, Journey proposes temporal disruption by using repetition and recombination to provoke a depreciation of narrative linearity and an appreciation for circular storytelling. The past, present, and future are indistinguishable. This leveling devalues the current idea that time is passing by at furious speed, that progress only moves forward, and that nothing comes back again. By suspending time, one by unfolding it, the other by looping duration, both artists put their viewers’ perception of time to the test. Suspension creates a state of latency, in other words, a zone of new

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possibilities that can develop prolific imaginary connections while preserving the impossibility of grasping completely what they mean. In part a reaction to the passing of several family members within a short time, Vida’s Journey, among other things, “conveys a sense of perseverance in the face of life’s challenges and obstacles.”5 Journey favours a fluid conception of time that blurs the distinction between past, present, and future.

“Dear friend, I have searched all nightthrough each burnt paper,but I fear I will never findthe formula to let you die”6

The hoary horse is forever in a loop, endlessly recombining memories into new landscapes. Vida shares her formula to live and let die.

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1 Dressage Today “Ask the Experts” Column, July 2008 Issue. http://www.losalamosdressage.com/July08DTArticle.pdf Robert Kelly & Carl Leggo, Creative Expression, Creative Education: Creativity as Rationale for Education, Detselig Enterprises Ltd Publisher, Calgary, 2008.2 An raibh tú ar an gCarraig? (Were you at the Rock?) – a traditional Irish tune revived with new lyrics during the Penal Times (late 18C) to convey secret plans for religious meetings.3 Nicolas Bourriaud, The Altermodern, Tate Publishing, London: 20094 Christine Ross, The Past is the Present; It’s the Future Too: The Temporal Turn in Contemporary Art, Continuum International Publishing Group, NewYork/London, 2012 5 Artist statement, 2014.6 Leonard Cohen, Let Us Compare Mythologies, Contact Press, Toronto, 1956

About Mireille Perron:Mireille Perron is a visual artist, scholar, writer and educator. She is the founder of the Laboratory of Feminist Pataphysics. LFP promotes social experiments that masquerade as artworks/events. She has also written and published on a variety of subjects related to representation. She now lives and works in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, where she teaches at the Alberta College of Art + Design.

About Sandra Vida:Sandra Vida’s work over the past three decades has included photo-based collage, performance, film, video and installation. In addition to her art practice, she is known for her dedication to other artists through Calgary’s artist-run centres and as an advocate for the arts and arts groups. She has appeared as a speaker and panelist at conferences, and her writing has been published in local and national magazines and artist catalogues. She has been nominated twice for a Governor General’s Visual and Media Arts award, received the EPCOR Established Arts award at the Mayor’s Luncheon for Business and the Arts, and was one of three finalists for Alberta’s first Marion Nicoll Visual Art award.

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