The Beginning of the Middle of the End
// Two-channel Audio-video Installation, 2016 // Presented at Stride Gallery as part of the Visual Arts Programming at Sled Island 2016, Calgary, Alberta //
The Beginning of the Middle of the End is an immersive audio-video installation that explores the affective experience of living at the threshold of collapse—amidst the exhausting movements, precarious flows, and suffocating postures of contemporary life. Fusing cinematic fragments scavenged from film and television, the installation amplifies and distorts familiar narrative tropes—those clichéd cues that prime audiences for what’s to come (the lingering shot before the car crash, the anticipatory swell of music). Using cuts, repetitions, glitches, and superimpositions, these moments are decontextualized and repeated, denying resolution, climax, or closure, leaving viewers suspended in a state of perpetual disquieting middle-ness. Projected on two double-sided, staggered screens, the work invites audiences to navigate shifting perspectives, disrupting linear visions of futurity on a suffering planet.
Presented in partnership with Stride Gallery and funded by the Edmonton Arts Council as part of the City of Edmonton’s Art of Living cultural plan. Special thanks to Catlin W. Kuzyk (co-composer and sound engineer) and Dara Humniski (installation support).
Installation view at Stride Gallery, 2016