On view: Thursday 21 May – Thursday 11 June, 2015
STATEMENT:
Standard Play is a series of imaginative conjectures based on memories of adolescent rituals of media consumption. The installation offers three interpenetrating scenes: two sisters have fallen asleep with the TV on (Sleepers); distorted voices offer an expressionistic tour of the inside of a VCR (Head Cleaner); and a supernatural feminine being appears as an apparition (Quantum Feminist Sanctorium). Materials and objects, in varying physical or mediated transfigurations, pervade each scene, as relics from one moment in a transformation from girlhood to womanhood. Tongue-in-cheek commentary on entertainment technology’s fraught relationship to individual agency and identity, and its role in the standardization of expression and behavior, underlies a loosely suggested coming-of-age narrative.
Hand-drawn and digital animation, analog video effects, re-photography and video feedback transform images issuing from an apparently malfunctioning machine. The reflective surfaces of TV screens are implicated as projections onto glass within miniature sets.
BIO:
Emily Pelstring is an artist and animator who obtained her BFA from Rhode Island School of Design in Film/Animation/Video, and her MFA from Concordia University in Studio Arts. Emily’s work has been shown internationally in galleries and festivals, including Transmediale (Berlin), Seoul International New Media Festival, L’Alternativa Independent Film Festival (Barcelona), Antimatter Media Art Festival, Ann Arbor Film Festival, Pop Montreal, and the FoFA Gallery. Past commissions include 3D concert visuals for Aids Wolf’s performance at the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, and music videos for many artists including U.S. Girls and Slim Twig. Her music video for Yamantaka // Sonic Titan’s “Hoshi Neko”, co-directed with Ruby Kato Attwood, was a top 10 finalist for the Prism Prize for Best Canadian Music Video of 2012. Emily often collaborates with Jessica Mensch under the moniker Inflatable Deities, and with Katherine Kline as The Powers.
www.emilypelstring.com
Quantum Feminist Sanctorium (video sculpture):
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- Head Cleaner (single-channel animation, stills)
Sleepers (video sculpture):
For more info please refer to: www.emilypelstring.com/STANDARDPLAY.html
All documentation courtesy of the Artist.
Thank you to Centre for Art Tapes for your technical support.