CHARLES STANKIEVECH
Eye of Silence, 2015
6K Video with 7.1 Surround Sound Audio
30 minutes
Charles Stankievech’s multidisciplinary practice is characterized by ambitious site-specific projects that have taken him from the Arctic’s northernmost settlement to the depths of the Pacific Ocean. His work converges interests in deep ecologies and sonic resonances as a response to geopolitics and the paradoxes of our existence.
Eye of Silence was originally created as an immersive 3-channnel video installation as part of the exhibition The Desert Turned to Glass at Contemporary Calgary. Beginning with a macro perspective of the universe and embarking on a journey into the depths of the Earth, the work explores alternative theories of the origins of life and consciousness. Eye of Silence traverses high atmospheric video recordings of the Albertan Badlands, the Utah Salt Flats, Icelandic & Japanese volcanoes, and a meteorite crater in the Namibian desert, materializing as richly textured grey toned imagery and a soundscape that resonates deep in the body. Combining static camera, drone footage, and a mirrored screen, a churning mass of clouds, lava, and stone. Eye of Silence visualizes deep geological time, showing the Earth at critical moments of its evolution and speculating about the moment when life on the planet was seeded from a frozen meteorite.
Towards the end of the video, early cultural evidence of what distinguishes our humanity emerge, revealing images of prehistoric art deep in a cave. The video concludes with a reminder of our place in the greater universe as stars form within a vast and limitless universe. In this half hour journey spanning the abyss of space and the depths of the Earth, Stankievech provides an epic meditation on origins, endings, and infinity.
Artist Biography
Charles Stankievech’s diverse body of work has been shown internationally at institutions including the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Copenhagen; Palais de Tokyo, Paris; Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary, Vienna; MASS MoCA; Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal; Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montreal; and the Venice and SITE Santa Fe Biennales, among others.
His writing has been published by Sternberg, e-flux, Verso, MIT, and Princeton Architectural Press, and he has lectured at dOCUMENTA (13) and the 8th Berlin Biennale. He has participated in residencies at The Banff Centre, Fogo Island, Marfa Fieldwork, Atlantic Centre for the Arts, Museumsquartier Vienna and the Canadian Department of Defence and organized curatorial projects, including the exhibitions Magnetic Norths (2010) and CounterIntelligence (2014). In 2015 Stankievech won the OAAG award for best solo exhibition Monument as Ruin and was shortlisted twice for the Sobey Art Prize in 2011 (Westcoast) and 2016 (Ontario). Since 2015, he has been an editor of the peer-reviewed Afterall Journal (U. of Chicago Press) and was the co-founder/director of K. Verlag Press, Berlin. In 2007 Stankievech was a founding faculty member of the Yukon School of Visual Arts in Dawson City, Canada (under joint governance by the Indigenous sovereign nation of Tr'ondëk Hwëch'in).
From 2015 to 2021, Stankievech was the Director of Visual Studies at the University of Toronto’s John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design, where he is currently an Associate Professor. In 2022-23, he was also a visiting research professor in the Department of Architecture at the University of Tokyo.
Eye of Silence, 2015
Video still, 6K Video with 7.1 Surround Sound Audio
30 minutes
photo courtesy of the artist