VISITING ARTISTS PRESENTATION

This Presentation will take place at The Prairie Art Gallery

Saturday, December 5, 2009 from 2:30 – 4 p.m.

Visiting Artists Presentation: Instant Places – Canadawide.

Instant Places: http://www.instantplaces.ca/

Artists Laura Kavanaugh and Ian Birse create intermedia artworks on location using software instruments they design. In their practise they combine independent activity that is local and micro-scale with internet collaboration and broadcast events. From 1997 to 2002 Kavanaugh and Birse traveled throughout Canada and Europe, making installation and performance works for festival venues and art galleries. In 2003 they began Instant Places, a series of location-specific works which have been presented in Canada, Australia, Japan, the United States, and Argentina/Uruguay.

Kavanaugh and Birse are on a trans-Canadian trek, from Makkovik in Labrador to Vancouver – which they will reach in January 2010. Their cross-country cultural odyssey – an art-project-in-motion called “Instantplaces-Canadawide” – will include performances, a blog, community workshops and podcasts. To experience the scale of Canada at close range they travel between centre’s by surface public transport (ferries, buses, and trains), and conduct explorations of local geographies on foot.  As they make their artistic journey, they upload photos and texts to Canada CODE, as well as the Instantplaces-Canadawide blog [ http://instantplaces-canadawide.blogspot.com/].

They will make presentations at community centre’s and galleries along their route, and create performances on the fly by broadcasting to their blog via cellphone. Everywhere they go, they will help and encourage other Canadians to share their corner of the country on Canada CODE. All of these submissions — as well as those by the Instantplaces team — will be collected together in our Instantplaces Gallery [http://canadacode.vancouver2010.com/explore/2534].

Once Kavanaugh and Birse reach Vancouver, they will create a media installation based on their journey that will be included in CODE Live, a celebration of digital creativity happening as part of the Vancouver 2010 Cultural Olympiad. During the performance we transform in real-time, images, sounds, and texts we have collected on our journey across Canada. Our desire is to create a zone of focused contemplation, as morphing images, angular text juxtapositions, and an evolving sound field, to form an enveloping presence. Over the performance our east-west trajectory is re-imagined as a series of frozen moments – journeys on the z-axis of time. Our aim is to communicate the diversity of Canada to an audience of varying ages, cultural backgrounds, and differing levels of familiarity with contemporary media art practise – we want the viewer to experience the suspension of time.

Video from recent performances:

Buenos Aires

http://www.instantplaces.ca/argent_09/limbo/01.html

Montevideo

http://www.instantplaces.ca/argent_09/montevideo/01.html

They will also discuss Canada Code

http://canadacode.vancouver2010.com