Eastern Bloc

UPCOMING

22 February 2012
DATA : SALON IV
Cynthia Naggar / Edwin Janzen

This fourth installment of the Data : Salon series presents the work of two artists working in audio/visual installation. Cynthia Naggar presents "Mille mots valent une image," an interactive installation making use of an old typewriting machine. Through her work, she establishes a correspondence between an obsolete device and live video feedback, aiming to create a link between the written and the visual symbol. Edwin Janzen presents "Projects : Lost Islands," an immersive installation embedded in the universe of fantasy and horror film, where the public is surrounded by four projection surfaces. Together, these fragments call upon the viewer's imagination, who is thus invited to construct their own narrative or simply remain fascinated by the intrinsic poetry of the moving images.

7pm



26 January – 8 February 2012
FAUX LAB
Members of Foulab

An exhibit featuring the work of members of Foulab, a Montreal-based hacker space. “Faux Lab” explores the notion of hacker identity through a collection of electronic and web-based installations. At the core of the exhibit are questions of surveillance mechanisms in a digital era, the uses and misuses of technological re-appropriation, virtual communication methods, and community-building through anonymity.

Vernissage: 26 January, 6pm – 9pm
Artist talks and roundtable discussion: 28 January, 2:30pm
Workshops: 4 February, 2:30pm (@ Foulab)
Finissage: 4 February, 7pm (@ Foulab)
Gallery open: Tues – Sun, 12pm – 5pm

www.foulab.org

CALLS

DÉPARTEMENT DES NUISANCES PUBLIQUES

Deadline: 30 January 2012

Department des Nuisances Publiques is an experiment in collaborative art making, public intervention politics and experimental documentation practices. This project demonstrates the versatility of electronic arts in triggering actions and reactions between objects and ideas, creators and users. It has research, production and exhibition components, grouping emerging artists with mentors in the field to create new boundary stretching works.


PRIM / EASTERN BLOC JOINT RESIDENCY

Deadline: 12 January 2012

Prim and Eastern Bloc are teaming up to offer a joint residency to an emerging media artist for the production and exhibition of a project in the media and/or digital arts. Prim will offer the selected artist access to its high-end equipment as well as technical guidance throughout the production and postproduction periods; Eastern Bloc will offer its exhibition space as well as expertise and support in the installation, promotion and documentation of the exhibit.


DATA : SALON

Ongoing call

From September 2011 until June 2012, a monthly event, informal in nature, will showcase the works in progress of Eastern Bloc’s current and potential members. Participating artists receive immediate feedback from the public, are given access to the centre’s exhibition spaces, our technical resources, the team’s expertise and a wide range of documentations services and marketing tools. Please submit your proposal – in the fields of New Media and digital art – at any time during the 2011 – 2012 season.

BLOG

26 January 2011

As artists, Duke and Battersby seem invested in the concept of intimacy. Their collaborations, which began as art students at NASCAD in the early 1990’s, speak to the rawness of human interaction and to the transcendent power of art. I've gone to see their work as part of the Sobey Prize exhibit, at the Montreal Museum of Contemporary Art, twice now and each time have left feeling haunted.

A video installation that alternates between an animated narrative of love, denial and taboo and a haunting song set to what appears to be of found footage of a woman and her cats, is housed in a wonderland of miniature glassed in dioramas. The effect is haunting. You’ve entered a world where nature is a little bit controlled and people are more than slightly out of control.

In one half of the video a woman named Farrah and her ape-lover Meema detail the trials, tribulations and positive aspects of their very public relationship. At one point, the groundsman at the park in which the pair met describes the nature of the relationship, saying Meema is the smarter of the two as she learned Farrah’s mother tongue and adapted to her needs. The video forces the viewer to question our understanding of power and to dissect our concept of love. In the other half, a woman sings to us a lullaby about her failures and successes, while capturing cats and suffering their wrath (made visible by the scratches on her bare arms). We watch helpless as the woman... more[+]