NETWORK CONSCIOUSNESS: screening of Light On (Flash Light), 2013 by LUIS JACOB
Tuesday, November 12th, 5 pm - 8 pm
In collaboration with Vidéographe
Guest Curator: Felicity Tayler
SBC Gallery of Contemporary Art, in association with Vidéographe and Vithèque, presents a one-night event at SBC on Tuesday, November 12th at 5:00 pm to launch Vidéographe’s Network consciousness, a series of multi-venue exhibitions that compliment an online video program. In a time when virtual environments are omnipresent, artist and independent curator Felicity Tayler attempts to link physical and online events.
This one night event presenting a new work by Toronto artist, Luis Jacob, is unique and limited in time and space, but nonetheless will be shared, or networked, over time to a wider audience who is also undergoing a similar experience in other locations and on different platforms.
The program was first introduced on Videographe’s on-line platform www.vitheque.com on Thursday October 24th. Network consciousness is a selection of videos evoking metaphors related to the concept of network. Including La Consommation (1973) an animated educational video produced by the anonymous collective Bloc Coop, and Réaction 26 (1971) by Charles Binamé which blurs the distinctions between the natural and built environment. Simon Brown, Darsha Hewitt, Skawennati and Marisa Jahn’s work will be also presented in the program. Luis Jacob’s recent work Light On (Flashlight) (2013) returns to the concept of the network as an activity of circulation.
Network consciousness will also include the presentation of events from Saturday, February 8th to Saturday, March 8th at Art Metropole (Toronto) and on Wednesday, February 19th at Residency Unlimited (Brooklyn).
Felicity Tayler provides a reflection on our relation to representations of contemporary networks, highlighting this influence on our daily thoughts and behaviors. The concept of network has long been used to describe the tangle of technologies of transportation and communications, and proves today is pervasive due to social media and other technologies that augment our lives.
Network consciousness
One-night event at SBC Gallery of Contemporary Art
Tuesday, November 12th at 5:00 pm
An excerpt from the curatorial text for the larger project
Finally, Light On (Flashlight), (2013) by Luis Jacob returns to the concept of the network as an activity of circulation, and video as one of many means to weave a social fabric by extending a shared experience through space and time. Joyful children play with flashlights, creating ephemeral ties amongst themselves through a game of light and mirrors. Suddenly, they shine their lights on the person holding the camera, and we realise the camera is not simply an observer, but has been a participant all along. And we, as viewers, are not simply observers either. In the darkness of the gallery space, the video creates social bonds between us – through our shared activity of looking, aesthetic debate and gossip, as the case may be. We may be gathered together for only one night, but we share the experience with a larger public existing elsewhere who have similarly participated in different places and on different platforms. But Jacob also reminds us that between the ties that bind us together, there are holes in the network, space for other metaphors to gain hold of our imagination. In a small room adjacent to the main event, two videos offer us a quiet, contemplative atmosphere to slip away into without leaving the festivities. Theory (2002), shows us three young people who aspire to replicate the ideal forms of Henry Moore’s modernist sculptures. Their failure to repeat the forms recalls that in all analogic thought, parallels are not perfect. The apertures of the sculptures suggest there are further holes to slip through… Read more
More information
Luis Jacob :
http://www.canadianart.ca/artist/luis-jacob/
http://birchlibralato.com/artists/index.php?artist=16
Vidéographe :
Image credit: Light On (Flashlight), 2013, video still. Courtesy of the artist.
