the beginning of the middle of the end
// 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 was an immersive two-channel video installation that fused together short cinematic fragments, meticulously scavenged from a variety of film and television texts, in order to draw attention to, and potentially trouble, the cliched representations and progressivist illusions that have come to overdetermine visions of futurity on a suffering planet.
The installation was created using a range of audio and video sampling techniques — cuts, repetitions, glitches, superimpositions — in order to decontextualize and amplify a selection of cinematic moments wherein filmic cliche and narrative tropes are employed to cue the audience as to what is to come (i.e. that interior shot of a car when you know the characters should have their eyes on the road… the impending car crash is palpable). However, in this instance, the clips were combined and repeated without ever reaching any sort of “break” or climax, leaving the audience stuck in a perpetual state of disquieting middle-ness. This sense of middle-ness was refracted though the installation of the work itself, which was projected on two double-sided screens and staggered so that audiences could access a range of perspectives through their own self-situating.
Special thanks to Catlin W. Kuzyk (co-composer and sound engineer) and Dara Humniski (building and installation help).
Installation view at Stride Gallery, 2016