WALKING AND BEING
Curated by Grant Guy
Friday, November 14
EM Media
Considering the extraordinary activities of our daily lives, sometimes stopping to smell the flowers means having to land head first in the flowerbed. Going from Point A to Point B is one thing, but forgetting about Point B altogether is more challenging than we might think.
"You might go for a walk," says Winnipeg artist Grant Guy, "or go just to smell the flowers. But the flower might take you to a butterfly, and the butterfly might take you to a ladybug, and so on. And that’s what being is all about."
An installation artist, video curator and artistic director of Winnipeg’s object-puppet company Adhere and Deny, Guy admits he’s not a big fan of action (or action flicks). He has, however, become somewhat of a specialist in experimenting with time, space and stillness, which is why Video Pool (a nonprofit Artist-Run Centre dedicated to independent video, audio and computer integrated multimedia production, in Winnipeg) asked him to curate Walking and Being, a collection of short videos on those two themes.
"Some of the videos have a meditative or contemplative quality about them," describes Guy. "It’s about being aware of the moment, as in the simple act of walking, and to be cognizant of that rather than, for example, where you are going. It’s an awareness of the silence, of yourself and of your mental state".
The experimental videos raise the bar on consciousness, using a contemplative style more popularly known in the work of some of Guy’s favourite filmmakers – Ingmar Bergman, Akiri Kurosawa, or Andre Turkovsky. Guy assembled the collection mainly from Video Pool submissions over the last two decades, each offering their own calibre of stillness and tranquility.
"I’m bringing something to it that may not have been there when the filmmakers produced it," says Guy, "but there are hints of it within the work – an aura that they imbue out to us. The idea when watching is not as much to entertain the eye but go inside a bit."
The series begins with the exact opposite of stillness. In Grant Poier’s untitled short, one body runs back and forth across a field, while another repeats his walk in a film studio. The film’s endless repetition, spattered with free-flowing text, at once creates the desire for stillness in a never-ending and unsettling world of activity.
The most meditative (and almost hypnotizing) highlights in the series include Jack Lauder’s Porch, a one-view perspective of sunrise to sunset in the woods using a backdrop of familiar sounds. The film at once reminds us of those blissful moments when our minds go blank, our worries disappear and we are drawn into the view before us. Terry Billings’s Memory / Loss explores our gradual destruction of nature itself, while Erika MacPherson’s Phantom Pains juxtaposes statues and still-life photography with movement in a ritualistic contemplation on life and death. Appearing in Guy’s place to present the collection is video artist Nicole Shimonek, whose short film Winter rounds things out on a more humorous note.
It’s not surprising that many of the short films take place in picturesque landscape environments, juxtaposed with technology-based images of chaos. Assembled, the shorts can’t help but instill a more static, meditational effect on the viewer – that moment of focus when we forget about time while the world around us keeps revolving. For the spectator used to special effects and action-heavy adrenalin, Walking and Being plays heavily on patience and relaxation.
"It’s about anything that busts your ego," Guy comments. "It’s easy to be hesitant about this kind of stuff, but incredible when you keep your mind open to that sense of being, and allow yourself to take this journey instead of being suddenly swept away from some action or value which we normally see on screen."
If you avoid horror movies because they scare you, consider this: sometimes the hardest film to watch is the one about ourselves. Walking and Being may seem like foreign escapism to some, but it’s an excellent test of our ability to smell those flowers. |
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