Laser Show - Amphibian Regalia

Personal Regalia for multimedia performance, Dance Party, VJ armour.

Each of these 4 pieces is made of or contains elements of family heirloom that has been passed down to me.

 Regalia Mode

     Laser Show - Hand me down Louiseville Slugger, Horsehair, acrylic.

                       Laser Show is a commonly used baseball term for when a team is hitting  

                       the "light out," or rather getting multiple runs. I also like to use lasers in daily

                       life.

                 

Hand Me Down Welding Mask, Gifted fake moustache and Unibrow, Barbie Arms, Yellow Cedar tongue. - The Light Blocker

Hand me down License Plate, Horse Hair, Gifted wooden and bone beads

  

Regalia for everyday performance. Regalia with personal attachment. Non-constrictive to medium.

Sideways Days

It's a full moon.

I am posting up some new work here ----> Everyday Dream


This piece everyday dream is made with live-visual tools, collage techniques and some editing in final cut pro.

I have been dealing with the aftereffects of another car accident. I've been associating work with pain a lot over the last couple years. Making work. Aggravates the embedded pain. Rest just seems to let it settle in even more so the only thing to do is keep moving.

Everyday Dream is cut into 3 pieces and is meant to be seen projected as part of a live performance and/or installation. It begins in the mountain, and travels to space and into the water...all places where I seek clarity or separation from the technological world.

The Buffalo in this piece comes from a clip of Eadweard Muybridge's studies on movement. I have been very interested in his work and his studies in pseudo-science. Muybridge was involved in a deadly train accident as a young man and suffered brain injury. This injury had negative consequences on his health and demeanour, but it also seemed to open a portal. After the accident he became an artist, photographer, wanderer, and a showman amongst other things. I am able to relate to this in some sense. I have been a few accidents and have also had brain injuries...(not nearly as severe as Muybridge's). These bruises in my brain and the pain I have been dealing with have definitely had an effect on my work. I am hesitant to over-intellectualise my work and process, I am relying a lot more on intuition and inner-vison. Some people have joked that they need to be on the meds I have been prescribed to "get" my video work. That's cool. I don't always "get it" myself. I am learning by just engaging and doing.

I don't have a cultural connection to the Bison, yet I feel an affinity towards this animal. I have had dreams of them and walked amongst a field of glowing buffalo bones. In North America the Bison were hunted to the brink of extinction purposely in order to control Indigenous populations. I think today when we look at the salmon runs on the coast we can see the parallels. Not only have Salmon been over-fished, they also deal with the negative effects of fish farms (sea lice) and pollution (warming water temps).

I will add some more text on this piece later...but feel like I should shut my eyes and sleep. Manifesting dreams of thunderous hooves and renewed cycles and rejuvenated rivers.

Below are some stills from this piece.

    

Audio Credits
Lost in the Woods - Deano
Emu Chase - Impossible Nothing
Give You the Moon - Tikawa

Visual Credits and thank yous 
Chris Bose - Salmon run
Eugene Boulanger - Rifle Shot
Darwin Frost and Amede Keats - Mountain
Nasa - Space
Eadweard Muybridge - Bison     

Update

2 Worlds

I've been working mostly with digital media installation and performance the last few weeks and learning more about the history of projection based installations. I will post a link on vimeo with clips of some of the new media I am working with, but here are some stills from an event I was part of last weekend in Victoria at the Royal BC Museum as part of the Two Worlds Media Performance series. 

I was asked to do a solo multimedia performance, but I wanted to bring along Skookum Sound System. I have been working with the Skookum collective for the last year and half and we have been getting more opportunities to perform in diverse spaces. We did a 30 minute audio-visual performance in the museum. My part in the performance was creating and performing the live-visual aspect of the show and setting up the visual installation. We performed in what is called the First Peoples Gallery. As you will see in the images it is a room filled with totem poles, masks, regalia, tools, canoes etc. When I was first asked to do the show I went to a meeting in the Gallery. The Two Worlds show was presented as an opportunity for the artists to speak back to the spirits in the room.

Traditionally many of the items in that room, especially the masks would not be out on display. Usually masks are kept in boxes and their spiritual potential is unlocked in live ceremony. I left that first meeting at the museum feeling kind of sick. This is usually how I feel when I see a West Coast Native "exhibit." It was an honour to be able to perform in that space, but there was also a heaviness. Feeling the history of these pieces and how they were procured and the manner in which they are publicly presented, which is directly linked to colonization and the "vanishing race" theory that was so prevalent at the time.

In my original plan I wanted to map light onto each totem pole to acknowledge their life. I was unable to do this though, as there were still quite a few rules of the museum to deal with. I was able to install projections onto the petroglyphs that were on either side of the room near the ceiling. It created an interesting texture with the moving images on top. I would like to work on projecting onto areas that aren't just flat white screens some more after this initial effort.

I've also attached a few digital collages I have worked on. I find that I start making these when I am wanting to get an idea out quickly. I sometimes turn this work into a bigger visual image, collage or painting....and sometimes they just die in my computer.

Two Worlds Poster

Two Worlds Performance - Alligator Tears Dance Ghost - Photo by Mark Gauti

Two Worlds - Rainbow Dance - Photo by Mark Gauti

Two Worlds - Skookum - Photo by Mark Gauti

Two Worlds - Alligator Tears Dance Ghost - Photo by Mark Gauti

Two Worlds - Propaganda - Photo by Mark Gauti

The Lone Ranger and John Wayne Ghost World Dance Battle - Digi Collage

Idle No Moe - Digi Collage

I don't like to define myself as an artist based on on single medium. I have been mixing digital media, performance, painting, collage and anything else I can get my hands on or try. I was told that I would eventually choose 1 or 2 mediums.  That prospect seems suffocating to me. It may mean I never master any one technique or medium, but I also don't believe in the concept of mastery. I think once you call yourself a master your practice then stagnates, because you believe you are at the pinnacle with nothing left to learn or explore. The word I use for my practice is "Wuulhu." which comes from the Wuikila language meaning "to fuse together." Traditionally this word may have been used for tool making or painting, or perhaps it had spiritual connotations - fusing to the supernatural. I use this word today to wrap my methods, ideas, symbols and actions into one process. I feel the message and the media can interact equally and the chosen medium can in turn be fused with others...continially remixed, re-fused and recombined and subtracted.

https://vimeo.com/57101918 Here is a link to a piece I am working on. Sala = Patience is a short video that has been used as part of a live audio visual performance and as a digital installation.