5th and Victoria

Lit Pix is a series of images made with a custom android app created by the artist that activates the LED flash of an Android device as a flashlight and takes a picture. Matt Smith’s day job is working as an audio visual technician at the Vancouver Art Gallery. Many of these images show views of the small spaces behind walls in which Smith works everyday.

Frolapse is a time lapse animation over the course of 5 months, documenting CSA’s Curator Steven Tong’s hair growing into its trademark shape. Steven took a picture most mornings over the time period and Matt Smith assembled it into an animation specifically for the “Birdtrap” exhibition at CSA in August 2013.

5th & Victoria
LUMIN-HAUS, RIVERSIDE PARK

In Radical Rupture the visual of the creation of a universe, one star at a time, is combined with an audio recording of a lecture given by Herbert Marcuse in 1968 on the nature of aggression and repression. At the mid-point of the lecture, the stars begin to disappear one by one, ending with a black screen. This installation consists of a projection screen tilted between the wall and the ceiling, five beanbag chairs and a large shag rug. Viewers should lean back in the chairs to orient themselves towards the screen.

Sunrise / Sunset: Three Early Modern Utopias, Revised
In this video, a paperback copy of a book titled Three Early Modern Utopias is raised into the frame. The lower right hand corner of the book is central in the frame, when the person holding the book starts flipping rapidly through the pages. Random words from the text are briefly legible, while a bright yellow ink-splotch on the bottom of the page becomes animated by the action of flipping the pages. The ink-splotch comes to resemble a sun rising and setting on the horizon, as the person holding the book repeats his action from front to back, then back to front numerous times.

Loheland
Inspired by the Loheland Colony, a radically utopian, all female school founded in Weimar Germany, this video focuses on the relationship between modern dance and Great Danes, two disparate enterprises for which the colony became well known. While the tenants of modern dance developed at Loheland, such as non-rhythmic, asexual movements, were curtailed due to criticality towards the gaze in performance, their commercial success at breeding Great Danes (which enterprise funded the school) lives on today: Loheland Danes are still the top prize winners for the breed. Loheland Dance Rehearsal Research Residency is a video document of an experiment in movement combining human and animal bodies, wherein an exploration of physical repertoires and an intersection between radically different bodies creates a speculative connection between the creative and commercial enterprises of this historical example of feminist utopian pedagogy.

LUMIN-HAUS, RIVERSIDE PARK

Vincent Viezzer is a former student at Thompson Rivers University. Viezzer works in video and has acted in TV productions. In his short film seen through the eyes of a youth, Young Kairos meets a familiar grown-up and begins to realize that their relationship is not as it seems. As the potentials of a past and future self discover each other, they face the consequences of existing together in a time that is neither past nor future for either of them.

LUMIN-HAUS, RIVERSIDE PARK

Siqi Xu is currently a fourth year student at Thompson Rivers University, working on 3-D animation and video projects. He is an international student from China. The Gu Zheng is one of the traditional Chinese musical instruments, one of the oldest instruments in China. Gu Zheng music has an over 5000 years history and is played to reveal human emotion. In this video, Siqi Xu explores this part of his heritage, wherein the music is transmitted through body language, using the human torso, with hands, feet, face and eyes.