March 9, 2010 Fringe Arts

Digital unreality

Video show The Body is Obsolete blurs the line between flesh and hardware

by Tom Llewellin

The viewer is privy to artist Tyson Parks’ most mundane moments in his video “Bruch’s Memory,” showing in The Body is Obsolete this week.

“Technology is not an invasive thing so much as an extension of ourselves.” —Alissa Jafiarova, co-curator of The Body is Obsolete

Art Matters show The Body Is Obsolete, co-curated by Alissa Jafiarova and Claudia Burneo, probes questions of how nature and technology interact and how that interaction, in turn, changes us.

“Technology dissolves all boundaries,” said Jafiarova. “We have an option. We can be a plant if we want to.”

“Technology and the animal part of humans are all connected,” Burneo added. “The evolution of nature and the evolution of technology [go together].”

The show was curated in cooperation with the Art Academy of Video Art, an association of Concordia video artists founded in 2004, and features the work of nine Concordia students. The exhibition’s genesis was inspired by Canadian scholar Marshall McLuhan’s theory of augmented reality: the idea that technology can enhance consciousness and break down the boundaries between people.

“Technology is not an invasive thing so much as an extension of ourselves,” explained Jafiarova. “It makes us more capable [...] and changes our reality.”

Anne Milligan’s video installation “The Kingdom of Plastics” is a tongue-in-cheek take on what she calls the “religion of plastics” that post-war society has built itself around.

In her work, Gregorian chants drone on as 1950s archival footage of shiny new consumer products plays, intercut with video of Barbie dolls being torn limb from limb and household objects being wrapped in cocoons of Saran wrap. The end effect is a ritual that’s hypnotic but grounded in reality.

“We use plastics so much. They infiltrate so many parts of our lives,” Milligan said. “There’s an element of the sacred in it [...] but I use plastic all the time; it’s in all kinds of things.”
Below the projection screen is a suitcase she hopes people will fill with their own objects and wrap in cellophane. The end goal of the installation is to undertake a “plastic pilgrimage” to a provincial park next month and dump the wrapped objects on the railroad tracks that separate the park from a large plastics facility as a sort of offering.

For Tyson Parks’ “Bruch’s Memory,” Parks wore a camera on his head and filmed all his everyday domestic tasks, from pouring yogurt into a bowl to cleaning the floor. Presented together in a three-by-three grid, the effect is unsettling, a series of mundane invasions of privacy that keep repeating.

“We’ve always had technology since the beginning of cavemen and [stone] tools; it always evolves,” commented Jafiarova.

“Maybe we’re going to evolve into something else,” Burneo offered. “Maybe cyborgs are the next step for humankind.”

The vernissage for The Body is Obsolete takes place March 9 at Ctrllab (3634 St-Laurent Blvd.) at 8 p.m. The show runs until March 12.