MASTER | New Media Gallery

…a ghost never dies, it remains always to come and to come-back.”

Jacques Derrida, Specters of Marx

In the age of the influencer and the influenced ; of multiple truths, platforms and laws; of shifting and contested boundaries, bodies and borders, the practice of (cinematic) appropriation persists. Cultural theorist Jacque Derrida once called the persistence of elements that evoke the past, an hauntology…a play on the word ontology…the study of existence. (Cinematic) appropriation continues to persist, like all useful and valuable materials and strategies, as something artists can ream and roil; deform and detach… and mine for rich, ontological interpretations. These new works reflect questions and thoughts about the substance and meaning of the world we live in, or voice inner worlds of imagination and perception. As a supplement, cinema leaves behind an extraordinary trace, ready to be scraped, remixed and reactivated in increasingly new ways as new technologies and new ways of being emerge.

Each of the cinematic moments in this exhibition are borrowed from a master manipulator. Six artists from five countries use appropriated cinema from one celebrated Director. This filmic material is ripe with compulsion, dislocation and flawed humanity; a material identifiable for its memorable sound, colour, places, personalities and psychologies. Eight installations offer brilliant reflections and experiments in how AI metabolizes & dreams, robotic explorations of human potential, machines that struggle to identify human emotions, a rumination on marginalia, a series of imaginary journeys retraced, a startling, kaleidoscopic spectacle, a lock that connects time and space, and a monologue on television as a metaphor for human mortality. New and old soundscapes move us through memory, surreal repetition, uncanny voiceover, and underlying, base heartbeat.

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 14
1:00pm – 4:00pm  Exhibition Opening – 10th Anniversary  
4:00pm – 5:00pm  Artist Talks
We are delighted to welcome Scott Billings (Canada) and Daniele Puppi (Italy)
Anvil Theatre
Free – All Welcome