Valérie Blass, Alex Frost, Myfanwy MacLeod, Aurie Ramirez, Kevin Schmidt, Michael Snow, Nicole Wermers, Ashes Withyman Unexplained Parade, Part Three February 9–May 11, 2019
Since the Bauhaus, the two formerly antagonistic camps propagating purely aesthetic versus purely utilitarian value have been conflated and reborn in the commercial and all but perfect circuit of production and consumption. Our current world is characterized not only by the levelling of differences between categories of objects but also by the levelling of access to design for different social classes. Design has long since ceased to be the preserve of the wealthy few who can afford to have their homes comprehensively designed from their (now increasingly rare) roof tiles down to the (progressively obsolete) light switch. On a sharply descending scale of quality, design today is available to everyone—or rather, everything is called design. … The Bauhaus marked a shift from the political economy of the product to the political economy of the sign. Within capitalist modernity, the ensuing processes, such as the substitution of the product by its packaging, have further fueled the inflation of design and its definition.
—Nicole Wermers, 2011
On March 27, Judy Radul presents Michael Snow’s Standard Time (1967) and La Région Centrale (1971) as part of DIM Cinema at The Cinematheque, Vancouver. In addition to the screening of these two films, there will be a recorded discussion between Radul and Snow as part of Catriona Jeffries’ recent relocation. The gallery’s inaugural exhibition, Unexplained Parade, features each gallery artist inviting a companion artist to exhibit work. Radul’s invitation was to Snow, who has worked for decades at the leading edge of experimental film and visual art. His remarkable works with automated camera motion are particularly relevant to Radul’s recent video installations. Her research into Snow’s oeuvre has led to a new sculptural work, Reading Pavilion for Cover to Cover (2018), a built environment reflecting on the recto-verso media specificity of Snow’s 1975 artist book Cover to Cover. In Standard Time, Snow’s short, hypnotic “home movie,” a waist-high camera pans around a living room. His spectacular LaRégion Centrale—“unequivocally the Canadian avant-garde great’s crowning achievement” (Barbara Goslawski, Canada on Screen)—was shot in a remote, otherworldly region of northern Quebec, using a pre-programmed robotic camera apparatus capable of moving in any direction.
