Metalized Precipitation, Seven Billion Individual Diamonds of Untenable

by Noel Bégin

February 4 - 28, 2015EMMEDIA Gallery | 351 - 11 Ave SW

EMMEDIA presents

Metalized Precipitation, Seven Billion Individual Diamonds of Untenable is the third work in a four-part series by Calgary-based artist Noel Bégin. Like previous installation pieces in the series, an image is composed on the gallery wall through the careful layering of multiple slide projections. The exhibition at EMMEDIA will include over eighteen slide projectors set on plinths within the space, each projecting a digital photo shot by the artist that has then been printed and re-photographed on slide film.1 The work distances itself from material fetishism, both in its mixed association with the analogue and in its functional relationship to the digital.

The slides largely document ubiquitous outdoor spaces in the city of Calgary, photographed by the artist on recent winter evenings. These are un-staged quotidian scenes; a schoolyard fence, a snowy pile of discarded garden furniture and children’s toys and snow-heavy trees. There is a familiarity and a strangeness to these images. With exceptions, it is not the landmark as such that is recognizable, but the tone of the cityscape that they depict. Under the cover of snow, largely absent of human figures, the projected image feels quiet in the singular way that winter is at night. Us winter-dwellers know that in this moment, it is possible to see the everyday differently.

Metalized Precipitation, Seven Billion Individual Diamonds of Untenable functions more as a rhetorical statement than a title. Is the seven billion referencing Earth’s current human population, a perhaps ecologically untenable number? As a possible reference to this scale of multitude, it contrasts with the sense of absence in this winter scene. But this solitude is also interrupted by the viewer due to the installation’s material configuration; the projectors are placed on plinths away from the wall, so that the viewer must interrupt their path to move within the gallery. There is potential for agency in this discomfort, as the body can be positioned to block or isolate specific projections.

Excerpt from digital sketch, 2015, ~ 13.4 m x 2.75 m

The instability of the image is also reflected in its composition. Shot from different perspectives, the layering of these discreet winter scenes creates a kind of precarious horizon in the composite image, an intentional approximation that is unstable even before the viewer’s disruptive entry. Artist and author Hito Steyerl writes that the stable horizon, a classic example of linear perspective, “is calculable, navigable, and predictable. It allows the calculation of future risk, which can be anticipated, and therefore, managed.”2 The intentionally faulty sense of linear perspective in Bégin’s work perhaps speaks to an unsettling of the kinds of perceived certainties named in Steyerl’s text. But this should not be mistaken for a paralyzing uncertainty. Instead, the work literally requires us to step in.

- Jacqueline Bell

1 Conversation with the artist, January 17 2015.2 Hito Steyerl, “In Free Fall: A Thought Experiment on vertical perspective,” e-flux 24 (2011), http://www.e-flux.com/journal/in-free-fall-a-thought-experiment-on-vertical-perspective/

About Jacqueline Bell:

Jacqueline Bell is a writer and independent curator currently completing a curatorial practicum at The Banff Centre.

Excerpt from digital sketch, 2015

SCHEDULE OF EVENTS:

Exhibition: February 4 – 28, 2015 (Tues-Sat, 12-6PM)As part of the Exposure Photography Festival | www.exposurephotofestival.com

Opening Reception: February 4, 2015 @ 7-9PMAs part of the Particle + Wave Media Arts Festival | www.emmedia.ca

Artist Talk: February 28, 2015 @ 2-4PMAs part of the $100 Film Festival | www.100dollarfilmfestival.org

Location: EMMEDIA – 351 11 Ave SWFREE admission

403.263.2833 | www.emmedia.ca | programming@emmedia.ca

Black

CMYK

Pantone

About Noel Bégin:

Noel Bégin is a practical observationalist within the field of contemporary art, working spatially with objects, all manner of projected media, and performance. Noel has exhibited and/or curated installation, performance, and media art with the 2013 Alberta Biennial of Contemporary Art, PARTICLE + WAVE Festival, Art Gallery of Calgary, the Glenbow Museum, Banff Centre, the Mountain Standard Time Performative Art Festival, the Art City Festival and Calgary area artist-run centres including EMMEDIA. Noel has served on the board and committees of numerous artist-run centres in Calgary.

Noel Bégin, self portrait, 2015

Cover Image: Synopsis excerpt from digital sketch, for FFWD Weekly, 2015