Thursday, July 22, 8pm, Durham Art Gallery
Opening Celebration
Winterscape
Video installation by Jim Bizzocchi (2007)
Stars of the Town: Holstein
Film by Leroy Massecar (16 min, 1948) with music composed by Eric Cadesky and performed by Steve Kennedy
Looking at artwork on the wall of a gallery does not always seem like the most intuitively natural experience. That is precisely why it is the perfect setting for Jim Bizzocchi’s ambient video: Winterscape, on display at the Durham Art Gallery during the opening reception and for the duration of the Series of Staggering Film and Music Events. This mesmerizing, wall-sized projection of a slowly transforming landscape is one of a series of works that the Vancouver based artist uses to explore the dynamic tensions within video, media and moving images. (Another work in this series, Streaming Video, is on display in the window of Secure Insurance in downtown Durham.)
Bizzocchi is acutely aware that video, filmmaking and photography are collapsing into a hybrid media form. We now shoot video as casually as we might have used an instamatic camera a few decades ago, and the barriers to distribution that defined television and cinema have been exploded by the Internet. It is in this rapidly evolving terrain that he creates his moving images.
At the same time, he sees a new mode of reception for his work and media images in general. Bizzocchi’s images, at first glance, appear like photographs: they await our attention. But once we engage with them and start to study their composition, we are surprised to have them mutate gently before our eyes. Clouds seem to magically transform into mountains and shadows give way to streams.
Bizzocchi is well aware of the tension that exists between current forms (such as galleries and visual artwork) and emerging forms (such as hybrid media and our increasingly screen-based environment). This is the heart of Bizzocchi’s project: he is examining the shifting role of imaging technology in our environments and the parallel shift in our sense of narrative and time.
Later this same evening we will see the Holstein installment of Stars of the Town (see the Saturday program notes for more details). This historical, silent film will be accompanied by a new musical score written by Eric Cadesky and performed by Steve Kennedy. Cadesky has composed numerous scores for theatre, film and dance including the National Ballet of Canada and the Desrosiers Dance Theatre. He is currently the Artistic Director of the Glass Orchestra. Kennedy’s soulful sound on tenor sax has made him a legendary soloist in such groups as Lighthouse, Motherlode, Blood, Sweat and Tears, and Dr. Music. An award-winning songwriter, he is best known for the hit When I Die.