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Ex.Situ/In.Situ

A translucent layer collage of a piece from Deanne Cheong’s Pandemik Piks and from Anchi Lin’s rhzyal maku’ (my land). Over the collage reads: “Digital Shift 2020; Virtual Media Arts Conference; 9. 17 to 10. 28 2020”
Deanne Achong, Pandemik Piks, 2020 and Anchi Lin, rhzyal maku’ (my land), 2020, film still. Courtesy of the artists. Graphic Design by I-Chen Hsu.

Featured Artists

Ex.Situ/In.Situ

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.

 

Featured Artist: Deanne Achong

A piece by Deanne Achong from Pandemik Piks. On the right is the silhouette of flowers outlined by a white single-line drawing. On the inside of the silhouette is an array of patterns and colours. On the left is a single line drawing of a hand holding a hair pik. The line is a glowing copper colour with splatters of darker copper fading into the black background behind it. The artist’s signature is on the bottom-right side.
Deanne Achong, Pandemik Piks, 2020. Courtesy of the artist.

// Pandemik Piks – Deanne Achong

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

// About the Artist

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. 

Instagram @piquette
Twitter @deanneachong

 

Featured Artist: Anchi Lin

A piece by Anchi Lin from rhzyal maku’ (my land). The piece is a virtual landscape of dark green leaves and trees in the foreground. In the midground is a mountainside covered by red and grey waves, almost like vibrations which show the contours of the mountain. In the background is a grey circular disk shaped UFO peeking out from behind the mountain side. The sky, which takes up a very small amount of space in the upper right area, is a light blue fading into grey.
Anchi Lin, rhzyal maku' (MyLand), 2020, film still. Courtesy of the artist.

// rhzyal maku’ (my land) – Anchi Lin

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.

// About the Artist

An image of Anchi Lin, a female artist of Taiwanese Hō-ló and Indigenous Atayal heritage. She is wearing a sleeveless black top with a v-neck, a thick beaded choker, black stud earrings, and a thin gold ring on her ring finger. Her hair is short, shaggy, and black; she has dark brown eyes. She is pictured holding a microphone and looking towards her right side.

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

 

Film Package: Ex.Situ/In.Situ

Dream Delivery - Zheng Yuan
A still image from Zheng Yuan’s Dream Delivery. In the foreground on the left is one person squatting down low looking at something in their hands; they are wearing a bright red windbreaker, a red helmet, and glasses. Standing behind the person is another figure, facing right, drinking from a pop bottle; the person is wearing a yellow jacket, black relaxed pants and has black hair. Facing left and looking at the person in yellow is another person wearing a blue helmet, glasses, a blue jacket and black relaxed pants. In the midground are two more groups of 2 to 3 people in the jackets of yellow, red or blue. One group of three are looking at a person’s phone while the other are taking a selfie. They are in a field of brightly coloured pinwheels; some are a bright yellow, some are pastel yellow and some are green. Further into the background is a hill covered in more pinwheels in purple, pink, yellow or green. There is a small house on the hill attached to a windmill while on the left side are traditional Chinese buildings. The sky is a cotton candy blue fading into a light pink colour.
Yuan Zheng, Dream Delivery, 2018, film still. Courtesy of the artist.

Dream Delivery

Zheng Yuan | 2018 | 00:09:49

An exhausted delivery rider sprawls on the bench of a roadside park and drifts off. In his dream, workers gather together in a ‘Shanzhai’ (imitation goods) park, where they stop to pose as statues. This all-star line up of contemporary youth-labourers in a dream setting explores China’s contemporary urban life: infused with technology and capital, new kinds of markets emerge, as well as new kinds of exploitation, anxieties, and dreams.

About the Artist

Zheng Yuan (b.1988, Lanzhou, China) currently lives and works in Beijing. Working primarily with time-based media, his work often operates at the intersection of fiction, documentary, essay, and investigative studies. His practice focuses on identity and evaluation and its ever-shifting relationship with history, power and representation. By introducing archival material, found footage and situations Zheng’s work acquires an interleaved complexity within imbricated contexts.

His recent solo exhibitions include “Up in the Air”, Taikang Space, Beijing, 2017; “An Open Studio” Practice, New York, 2016. He recently participated in group shows including “Out of Blueprints”, Serpentine Galleries x NOWNESS, Online, 2020; “An Impulse to Turn”, Beijing Inside-out Art Museum, Beijing, 2020;  “UN/ CONVENTIONAL: OCAT x KADIST Emerging Media Artist Exhibition“, OCAT Shanghai, Shanghai, 2020;  The Mesh” Shanghai chiK11 Art Museum, Shanghai, 2019; “Cosmopolis #1.5: Enlarged Intelligence”, Chengdu, 2018; “OFFLINE BROWSER”, The 6th Taiwan International Video Art Exhibition, Hong-gah Museum, Taipei, 2018; “New Metallurgists”, Julia Stoschek Collection, Düsseldorf, 2018; “Long March Project Building Code Violations III Special Economic Zone”, Long March Space, Beijing, 2018. His works are also screened at film festivals including the 65th International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, Oberhausen, 2019; 55th Ann Arbor Film Festival, Ann Arbor, 2017. He was nominated at the Art Sanya for the Young Chinese Artists Award in 2017. He received his MFA in Film, Video, New Media and Animation at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2015.

Return to Sender - Sara Wylie, Hannah Tollefson
A still from Sara Wylie and Hannah Tollefson’s Return to Sender. The still shows a bird’s eye view of shipping containers superimposed over a cargo ship dumping out grey toxic waste. On the side of the ship reads “Seram”. The shipping containers are somewhat translucent, but red, grey, white or yellow in colour.
Sara Wylie & Hannah Tollefson, Return to Sender, 2019, film still. Courtesy of the artists.

Return to Sender 

Sara Wylie, Hannah Tollefson | 2019 | 00:15:26

Return to Sender tells the story of the Khian Sea waste disposal incident, in which a cargo ship carrying 14,000 tons of toxic ash travelled from Philadelphia across the Atlantic Ocean in 1986. When countries in the Caribbean, Central America and Africa refused to accept the waste, the bunker covertly dumped 4000 tons of ash in Haiti and illegally disappeared the remainder into the ocean in 1988. In 1997, funds were raised for Project Return to Sender in which the waste was picked up from Haiti and forcibly returned to the United States, setting precedents for hazardous waste disposal via cargo ship.

Return to Sender is a visual essay using the ‘poor’ images of found footage and Skype interviews to explore themes of exporting and accountability in the logistics of waste removal, the rogue movements of shipping infrastructure, and by ending with a speculative inquiry into what a zero-waste future might resemble.

About the Artists

AHannah is looking down smiling at the camera in front of a brick building with the sun shining from behind her.n image of Hannah Tollefson: a woman with brown hair tucked into her grey crewneck sweater. She is smiling and looking down at the camera. In the background is the side of a brick building and a bright sky.

A photo of Hannah Tolfsen. Courtesy of the artist.

Hannah Tollefson is a Ph.D. student in communication studies at McGill University. Informed by environmental humanities and media and technology studies, her work examines the mutual implications of environment and infrastructure, with a focus on how extraction, energy, and logistics shape settler-colonial resource economies and ecologies resource economies.

A black and white image of Sara against a wall looking into the camera and smiling.

A photo of Sara Wylie. Courtesy of the artist.

Sara Wylie is a non-fiction filmmaker, producer and researcher. She has directed and produced award-winning documentaries that have screened at Hot Docs Festival, DOXA Festival, RIDM Festival, the Canadian Labour Film Festival and more. Sara graduated with distinction from Ryerson University’s Documentary Media MFA Program in 2019, and her work explores themes of labour politics, radical histories, archival methodologies and abolitionist futures.

The Protagonists - Gabi Dao
A still image from Gabi Dao’s The Protagonists. The image shows a close up on a powder blue chopping board covered in aloe vera with a kitchen knife to the side. A hand reaches out to touch a vintage white alarm clock sat in the middle of the chopping board. It reads 12:36.
Gabi Dao, The Protagonists, 2018, film still. Courtesy of the artist.

The Protagonists 

Gabi Dao | 2018 | 00:08:08

Playfully collapsing the space between Hollywood Cinema and what Dao refers to as Domestic Cinema, The Protagonists explores the relationships between representation and reality. Motifs of a clumsy animatronic hand, colourful smokebombs, a backyard garden, and a metronome become characters —protagonists, so to speak— in the deconstruction of filmic colonization.

About the Artist

Gabi looks into the camera with her head slightly tilted and lips pursed in mid sentence. She is sitting next to an aloe plant.

A photo of Gabi Dao. Courtesy of the artist.

Gabi Dao is an artist and co-organizer at Duplex, a DIY project space + studio collective based the unceded territories of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations.  Her interdisciplinary practice insists on counter-memory, intimacy, hyphenation, multiple truths and blurred temporalities through the pursuit of sculpture, installation, moving image and sound. She prioritizes complications, questions and productive confusions against the aesthetic systems of homogeneity, complicity and control. Often, her work begins with interests in ‘patchwork’ conceptions of time and materiality, tracing histories of the everyday through themes of globalization, consumption, belief and belonging. She has shown her work at Kamias Triennale (Quezon City, Philippines) Unit 17, grunt gallery, Audain gallery, VIVO Media Arts Centre (Vancouver, Canada), Terrain Biennial (Los Angeles, US), Blinkers (Winnipeg, Canada), Images Festival (Toronto, Canada) and International Film Festival Rotterdam (Rotterdam, The Netherlands). 

Tesfaye - Daniel Negatu
A still image from Daniel D Negatu’s Tesfaye. Tesfaye is shown in profile leaning over a railing looking out at a cityscape across a body of water. He has short hair and slight stubble. Tesfaye holds his sunglasses in hand and wears a black hoodie with a trim of red, yellow, and green bands on the hood and wrists. The hood is draped over the very back of Tesfaye’s head, almost as if it were about to fall off. The water, cityscape, and sky are all a similar light blue, almost grey colour.
Daniel D Negatu, Tesfaye, 2018, film still. Courtesy of the artist.

Tesfaye

Daniel D Negatu | 2018 | 00:31:43

Shot in Ethiopia and Canada, Tesfaye recounts an immigrant’s experience of extraordinary circumstance. The titular subject, Tesfaye is an Ethiopian refugee rescued from the sea in Madagascar, and now living in Canada. Negatu‘s presentation of Tesfaye‘s everyday life explores how one navigates a new world while trying to maintain roots at home.

About the Artist

Daniel stands in front of a grey background looking past the camera to the left and smiles while holding something in his hands.

A photo of Daniel Negatu. Courtesy of the artist.

Born and raised in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Daniel Negatu has been making documentary and experimental videos, and dramatic films for ten years. His time-based and photographic works have been exhibited in Ethiopia, South Africa, Burkina Faso, the USA, France and Canada.  

“I’m very interested in working on the convergence of age-old indigenous African/Ethiopian mediums with modern, technology-driven ones like cinema, photography, VR and AR thereby discovering new ways of telling stories, engaging audiences and fostering community values, understanding and tolerance. 

This also involves explorations of two seemingly contradictory sensibilities in the cultures from which these mediums originated: values of moderation, reverence for nature and communal living, in contrast to values of individualism and superfluous comfort aided by technology. But does this mean one precludes the other? What are some problems prevalent in modern society that wisdom from indigenous cultures can address?

As many Africans look to the west as a way of life to aspire to, many traditional practices that constitute the core social functions within African societies are fast becoming obsolete. I have made it my responsibility as a filmmaker to document, re-tell and re-imagine African stories to help them stay relevant in an increasingly developing world. Cultural identity should not be a compromise for development.”

Proximity - Emma Joye Frank
A still image from Emma Joye Frank’s Proximity. A person seen from profile is smiling, looking down and walking forward. Their long dark brown hair is pulled over their shoulder and they are wearing a white short sleeve shirt. In the background is a brick building with some construction scaffolding in front. The image is very light and over exposed as if on a bright sunny day.
Emma Joye Frank, Proximity, 2019, film still. Courtesy of the artist.

Proximity

Emma Joye Frank | 2019 | 00:02:16

Proximity is an improvised experimental short contrasting memory with reality, land and development. Our narrator and impromptu tour guide leads us on a sunny walk through the city, recalling her home in the K’ómoks Valley and overlaying those memories over the city landscape.

About the Artist

Emma was born on the K’ómoks First Nation Reserve in 1994. She spent her childhood being raised in Port Alberni, disconnected from her culture. Just before high school, Emma moved with her family to Victoria. After graduation, she was invited to the Tribal Canoe Journey to Bella Bella in 2014. This experience was pivotal in reconnecting Emma to her culture. Since then, she has pursued filmmaking as a way to express her perspectives as an indigenous person. During a Youth Media Project at the Comox Valley Art Gallery Emma created Hase’- Breath of Life. She also made this doc to educate folks about the K’ómoks Estuary: Project Watershed and at Reel Youth Invention Film Camp she created: Beachwalker with original music/vocals & performance! Emma recently moved to Vancouver to explore her creativity as an artist: musician, performer, filmmaker, facilitator.

We Love Me - Naween Noppakun
A still image from Naween Noppakun’s We Love Me. In the image is the interior of a camper van. Windows on the right and back of the van are covered by a dark fabric shade pulled across. A child sits with their knees and arms brought in towards their chest at the back of the van. The child wears shorts and a t-shirt with flip flops while a yellow long sleeve shirt is draped over the child’s head and shoulders, obscuring their face. It is dark inside the van with plastic bags and food wrappers spread about. The floor is stained by what looks like blood. Over this still image is a sentence written in Thai with the English translation below. The English translation reads “EVEN KILLING-OUR-WHOLE-FAMILY-WHO-CARES”. The words are highlighted by blue as if leading the viewer in a karaoke sing along.
Naween Noppakun, We Love Me, 2017, film still. Courtesy of the artist.

We Love Me

Naween Noppakun | 2017  | Thailand | 00:13:17

“The heavily compressed time and space where all survival images from my memory live in. They are from all available media from past to present, from others’ eyes and voices and also mine. Perhaps, after watching the film, what might be left in our memory could be the ‘Real Happiness of Thai.’  The one which we cannot talk to, but perceive.”

About the Artist

Naween Noppakun is a Bangkok-based moving image artist and filmmaker with a background in music and sound design. Growing up amidst the rapid urbanization of Bangkok, Naween recognizes himself through the modulated rhythm of the city. His first two short films – When Her Light is Extinguished (2012) and We Love Me (2017) – have won multiple international awards and screened at film and video art festivals around the world. His third short, Crazy Lotus was selected for development in the Berlinale Short Form Station 2020.

Reclamation - Melissa General
A still image from Melissa General’s Reclamation. In the centre is a person with dark hair standing in a body of water facing out to sea. The person is wrapped in a bolt of red cloth which trails along behind them in the water and onto the beach sand. The water is still aside from very small breaks at the shore. In the distance is nothing but water meeting the sky.
Melissa General, Reclamation, 2014, film still. Courtesy of the artist.

Reclamation

Melissa General | 2014 | Duration: 6:26

Each of Melissa General’s works is made on—and reference her connection to—Six Nations of the Grand River territory. As a Six Nations member currently living in Toronto, General centres her practice on connection to place and relationship to the land. In her 2015 work Nitewaké:non, General examines the constant pull she feels to return home. Unearthing a long bolt of red cloth she had buried, General wrapped herself in the cloth, breathing in connection with the knowledge held in the land. The series of photographs that make up the work show General wrapped in the cloth, standing among the bushes, on the land of her ancestors. As she smells and feels and sees the land, General activates its memories and its knowledge, acknowledging those who call her back to Six Nations.

About the Artist

An image of Melissa General. Melissa has long dark brown hair with bangs across her face falling just above her eyes. She is looking into the camera and is smiling. She wears a black and white horizontal striped shirt and has dark eyeliner on her eyelids to accent her eyes.

A photo of Melissa General. Courtesy of the artist.

Melissa General is a Mohawk artist from Six Nations of the Grand River Territory. She is a graduate of the Ontario College of Art and Design and received a Master of Fine Arts degree from York University. She is a multidisciplinary artist working in photography, audio, video and installation. Her practice is focused on her home territory of Six Nations and the concepts of memory, language and land. Her artwork has been exhibited at the Art Gallery of Southwestern Manitoba, Lamont Gallery, Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art, Harbourfront Centre, Stride Gallery, Gallery 101, Gallery 44 Centre for Contemporary Photography and has been included in the 2016 Contemporary Native Art Biennial in Montréal. She is a Hnatyshyn Foundation REVEAL – Indigenous Art Award laureate and was named as the 2018 Ontario Arts Council Indigenous Arts Award Emerging Artist Laureate.