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Exploring time, death, memory, change
Exhibition by media study students to take place in Big Orbit Gallery
By PATRICIA DONOVAN
Contributing Editor
"Collisionscollusions," a two-part exhibition of film, performance, video, experimental music and networked actions produced by 11 graduate students in the Department of Media Study, will be held tomorrow through Sunday and Nov. 16-18 in Big Orbit Gallery, 30D Essex St., Buffalo.
The exhibited work, all time-based, was produced in the graduate course "Installation (Temporalities)," taught by Caroline Koebel, assistant professor of media study.
Student work produced in this course traditionally has been exhibited at sites in the greater Buffalo area, including the Mead Branch Library in Buffalo's Lovejoy District, on the 25th floor of Buffalo's City Hall and at Babeville, formerly The Church, on Delaware Avenue.
Opening receptions for the show will take place from 7-10 p.m. tomorrow and Nov. 16 at Big Orbit, and performances will take place at 9 p.m. on both nights. Gallery hours on the remaining exhibition days are 12-5 p.m.
Part I of the exhibition (tomorrow through Sunday) will feature two works.
The first, "Horseman," by Tatiana A. Koroleva and Maria "Masha" Sharafudinova, investigates the construction and deconstruction of identities within the limited space and time offered by video projection. In the installation, three characters will be split into sections distributed over three different projections. As the videos progress, sections of each character move between projections to combine and form new identities.
"Works in Translation" by G. Douglas Barrett, Francesco Gagliardi and Lindsey L. Lodhie brings together works in film and video, as well as live performances that engage the notion of translation. In these pieces, says Gagliardi, "translation" is "rediscovered" in its original Latin meaning—transducere: "to carry across"—and recast as a crossing from one medium to another, one form to another, one place to another.
Part II of "collisionscollusions" (Nov. 16-18) will features five works.
The first, "another project about the degeneration of human memory" by Justin Chouinard, is a real-time performance in which the artist will manipulate 16mm films he has taken of his children to gradually erase the images until they disappear.
"Obsex Series I" by Gautam Malik is a video installation documenting interactions between people and the programmed responses they have to everyday city life.
"Southern Hospitality" by Lisa Jane Davis explores regional stereotyping and the cultural identity of the people of Southern Appalachia. The installation includes a faux-dining room, a "mockumentary," projected images and a full buffet featuring regional cuisine.
"Dark Rifts: Mining Mulvey, Time, Magic, Death and Reprising Eternity's Framing" by Camille P. Garcia employs a three-screen projection to examine original and appropriated still and moving images evoked by a close reading of "Death 24x a Second" by film theorist Laura Mulvey. This elegant and melancholic book investigates cinematic incarnations of time, stillness, movement and death.
In her performance installation "Give It Up," Jessica Thompson will explore the hyper-socialized space of Web-based performance through an open-source model of participation. On opening night, the artist will facilitate a live "breakdance battle" between participants in two geographically distinct spaces who are linked through a live Web stream.
"Death of..." by Dietrich Olivier Delrieu-Schulze is a performance in which the artist will employ death and obsolete technologies as metaphoric tools to investigate the desire to declare closure.
In addition to the Department of Media Study and Big Orbit, the exhibition is sponsored by the Graduate Student Association (GSA) and the GSAs of the departments of Media Study, Music and Comparative Literature.
For additional information on the artists and their work, click here.