video/poem | 2015 | Tyco VideoCam TVC 8000 B&W Kids’ Camera->VHS->DV | 5:45
Synopsis
A video realization of Michael Snow’s Poem (1957). Shot at North York Pet & Animal Control. Made for Mark Templeton’s Variations released on Graphical Recordings in 2016.
Special Thanks: Leslie Supnet (Camera Assistant), Alex Holdin (Handler), Ramon Cardona (Handler), Mark Templeton, & Kyle Armstrong.
Variations
Variations includes twelve Canadian moving image and sound artists interpreting Poem (1957) by Michael Snow. The artists selected for this project approached the work from a number of different angles, perspectives and emotions.
Snow’s poem provided an anchor for the contributing artists’ work to be fastened to, while giving them the freedom to allow their subjectivity to influence the result.
Each of the artists chose to cling to different words, and groupings of words, in creating their own unique narrative, a narrative based on an individual assessment of Poem and how it could be interpreted through moving image and sound. – Mark Templeton, Variations DVD (Edmonton: Graphical Recordings, 2016).
Artists: Michael Snow, Evangeline Belzile & Ian William Craig, Stephen Broomer & Stuart Broomer, Kyle Armstrong & Mark Templeton, Dan Browne & Steve Richman, John Price, Christine Lucy Latimer, Mani Mazinani, and Clint Enns.
Poem (1957)
It stayed
Where I saw it
Then it moved a fraction
To the left and then twice that
Distance again further and further
It
disappeared
Then just faintly
A corner of it just a fraction
Was visible if you peered
Very very closely
And just as
quietly
it was
gone
Critical Discourse
“Clint Enns turns Snow’s ‘It’ into a laboratory mouse in what could be one of Snow’s own experiments with the effects of reflections and mirrors on photographs and video.” – Riva Sumko, “Re-presentations, Adaptations, and Variations,” Luma Quarterly 5, vol. 2 (Summer 2016).
“The video itself is like that of an old VHS player; ghostly lines decorate the video, and the music falls prey to the destabilised image. Ambient in tone, the music is a beautiful glide that mirrors the air around it, riding the currents with ease. One moment vanishes, and a new one begins.” James Catchpole, “Variations,” Fluid Radio: Experimental Frequencies (July 1, 2016).
Screenings/Exhibitions
April 14, 2018. Then it moved, a fraction, Standards, Milan, Italy. Curated by Gaia Martino and Roberta Pagani.
September 8 – 9, 2016. Inheritance, SWARM, Boheme, Vancouver, British Columbia. Curated by Mark Templeton and presented by Cineworks.
June 1 – August 31, 2016. VARIATIONS, Arts Commons Gallery of Alberta Media Art (GAMA), Calgary, Alberta. Curated by Mark Templeton.
June 23 – July 30, 2016. VARIATIONS, Latitude 53, Edmonton, Alberta (curated by Mark Templeton).