Surreal Systems
April 30 – May 5
PDX Fest Video Installation Exhibit @ galleryHomeland
inside The Ford Building, 2505 SE 11th, (corner of 11th and Division)
Opening Night Party: Wednesday April 30, 6PM - 12AM
Viewing Hours: Thursday May 1 - Monday May 5, 12PM - 6PM
curated by Mack McFarland and Stephen Slappe
For the third consecutive year, Portland artists Stephen Slappe and Mack McFarland have put together an exhibition of video art for the PDX Fest. Surreal Systems glimpses at artists working within the wide field of video installation, featuring work from fourteen artists and artist teams from the USA and Europe. What creates a system? Who dictates the rules? And what occurs when the rules fails? These are a few of the questions posed by the work in Surreal Systems. This show promises Portland’s heaviest annual dose of installation-based moving images under one roof!
Installation, Sculpture, and Single Channel Videos:
untitled (sniper)
Lisa K. Blatt, San Francisco, CA
An investigation of perception and the intersection of nature and culture.
Cash Crop
Madison Brookshire, Los Angeles, CA
A simple score: when the loop is one frame long, it plays only once; when it is two frames long, it plays twice; three frames, three times; and so on.
Winter Tour (MO)
Terry Chatkupt, Portland, OR
Takes viewers through a dreamlike Midwestern landscape
Squeeze, Ripple, Unsqueeze
Ryan Dunn, Portland, OR
Focuses on the relationship between time and fluid motion.
Self-Haunted and Synthetic
Tannaz Farsi, Eugene, OR
Uses the tropes of viewing paradigms, memory, and objects to construct post-apocalyptic identities and relate the fantasy of viewing paradigms not only to the reflection of our image, but also the objects that construct memory.
On Off
Timo Katz and Jan Fuchs, Leipzig, Germany
There is no external observation; the film generates itself.
UberVision Prototype Demonstration
Karl Lind and Ron Gassaway, Portland, OR
PDX UberVision Reps Ron Gassaway and Karl Lind will be on hand to demonstrate this 21st century photobooth for the soul (and soulless)...
What We As Humans Trying Fallibly Forever
Jeanne Liotta, New York, NY
A single dissolve extracted from the media haystack of the mid 20th century. Ad infinitum.
Import/Export
Melanie Nakaue, Portland, OR
An examination of three different histories: the history of contract labor in Hawaii, the European conquest of the Pekingese dog, and the endangered and rare plant, the Silversword; in order to explore the relationship between history, colonialism, representation, and aesthetics.
The Glass Whale
Leif Peterson, Portland, OR
A fairytale set in a half remembered land hidden beneath the dust of forgotten and repressed memories. The story of a father who is cursed to become a whale and is saved by his son.
Inertia Machine I, Inertia Machine II, Entropy Machine I
Renée Rhodes, Seattle, WA
Elaborately structured cycles are set to be repeated infinitely. What then is yielded? Growth and new ideas or stagnant even paced existence? The games of human societies will perpetuate onward forever.
Standing in a White Room, with Clothes On, Looking
Brian Rush, Bellingham, WA
Culminates in a bizarre and fleeting moment of vulnerability.
2 Poems
Cat Tyc, Portland, OR
This piece is about the artists’ relation to their work & the world. Economy & connection. The speech that lives within us all.
Transmissions To The Universe
Jess Wheelock, Cleveland, OH
Transmissions to the Universe is an animation that transforms video diaries accumulated from YouTube into the broadcasted messages of astronauts drifting through the cosmic ocean. The video reflects the moments of humor, absurdity, hope and futility seen within the musings of these wayfaring pioneers.