We acknowledge that this exhibition takes place on unceded Indigenous land belonging to the Coast Salish peoples, including the territory of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam) First Nation.
Digital Shift 2020 is a virtual, 6-week long conference for independent media arts organizations and artists alike across Canada. As a part of this year’s online conference, Cinevolution presented two new works, Pandemic Piks by Deanne Achong and rhzyal maku’ (my land) by Anchi Lin. In addition, Cinevolution co-presented with VIVO Media Arts, Ex.Situ/In.Situ, a screening package featuring seven works from the Video Out Collection.
Pandemik Piks is an interactive project based on a series of drawings originally conceived as an Instagram challenge, loosely based around the idea of hair. I drew a prong falling out of my hair clip on day 1, echoing my thoughts on the pandemic. Midway through the series, the deaths of Breonna Taylor and countless others filled the news. My feed became populated with black squares. As a response to these (ambiguous) squares, I began to scan, alter and reverse the drawings, creating exploding / flowering hair piks. This gesture also reflected a personal sense that the world is on fire.
This project reflects on forgotten stories, people, ordinary objects —the underbelly of the archive. The gaps, omissions and fragmented nature of the presentation echo the structure of the narrative, still unfolding. The animated drawings, when interacted with, bring up fragments of sounds and textual ephemera related to historical protests, riots and strikes that occurred throughout the Caribbean in the 1930s. “These images and sound bursts act as a metaphor for how social movements and moments of micro resistance fade and bloom, often going unnoticed, but still leaving their mark in tangible and intangible ways. “1
Footnote 1. Yun-Jou Chang, Curator
Deanne Achong is based in Vancouver, BC, on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh Nations. She works across disciplines, including digital and lens-based projects and installation. Her practice draws from an examination of history, literature, digital culture, and daily life, exploring concepts of time, narrative, and archival ‘fictions’. In 2018, she established a daily drawing habit, one which acts as a counterpoint to her digital practice, and that often plays with the boundaries of domesticity and technology.
Deanne‘s work has been exhibited in Canada, the US, the Caribbean, and Europe. She has been an artist-in-residence in Montreal, Quebec City, Trinidad, and Nfld. She has collaborated with many artists and is currently working on a media project with Sarah Shamash, Recipes For Undomestication. She has created several public art projects, including a series of digital images for the City of Vancouver’s Platforms 2020 launching this fall.
Deanne has taught at Emily Carr University of Art and Design and has sat on the board of several artist-run centres, including Other Sights for Artist’s Projects. In 2020, she was honoured as one of a group of women who are “pioneers of electronic literature” by ELO.
Medium: video, digital / virtual space
rhzyal maku’ (my land) is a story sharing video and a non-linear time-virtual space encompassing different portions of my personal memories, dreams and knowledge embodiment of Atayal worldview gaga (gaya). gaga is one of the key cultural concepts in pan-Atayal culture in Taiwan. Due to personal intergenerational historical trauma, diaspora resulted, thus, this work is the result of my reaction to the loss of residence and disconnection associated with my ancestral lands. Therefore, I intend to create my own on-going expansive virtual land as a container in response to the loss of ancestral land in the hope of reconnection.
A photo of Anchi Lin. Courtesy of the artist.
Anchi Lin [Ciwas] is of Taiwanese Hō-ló and Indigenous Atayal heritage, she completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Visual Art from Simon Fraser University and is currently pursuing a Master of Fine Art in New Media Art at the Taipei National University of the Arts. By negotiating and interfacing with concepts such as the environment, language, identity, gender and cultural norms, Lin uses performance, video and installation to inform her artistic practice. Her work navigates the interstitial spaces of flux between individual and collective consciousness.
Instagram @anchi.ciwas