MARK SOO
RIVERSIDE PARK
Reflecting Mark Twain’s famed quote, “The past does not repeat itself, but sometimes it rhymes,” Several Circles is a project that investigates the many “revolutions” that link the 19th century riverboat steam-engine with the 20th century automobile combustion engine: two forms of rotary-driven mechanical power that bookend a hundred year arc of American industry.
The work is set to a thundering soundtrack of Detroit techno, a uniquely American form of folk music. Invented in the ’80s in Motor City with the advent of imported drum machines, the music’s foundation on electronic rhythm eerily parallels the replacement of labor itself by machines in the factories and assembly lines that surrounded the makeshift clubs of early techno.
Commissioned by the Or Gallery, Vancouver with Arts Partners in Creative Development
Mark Soo
Several Circles, 2010
dual-screen digital projection or 35mm film
(HD transferred to 35mm film transferred back to HD), sound
5:45 min.
Photos: Devon Lindsay