Sean Snyder, Schema (Television), 2006-2007. Installation view. Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery, Concordia University. Photo: Paul Litherland
Conversation
Friday, September 11, 5 pm
Anne Goldenberg, Matt Pagett, and Sean Snyder discuss the works in the exhibition and their respective practices.
Anne Goldenberg is a transdisciplinary researcher, dancer and multimedia artist interested in the political, epistemic and poetic aspects of collaborative platforms and participative devices. She holds a PhD in Communication and in Sociology and wrote her thesis on “The Negotiation of Contributions in Public Wikis.”
workingstill-stillworking.net
hackingwithcare.in
Matt Pagett is a translator, and digital grassroots organizer. He holds a PhD in French Studies from the University of Pennsylvania.
Sean Snyder takes the global circulation of data as the raw materials for his artistic practice. Researching algorithms and unknowns, his work dissects the aleatoric use of databanks and publicly attainable information, producing unexpectedly (and subjectively) interconnections between memory and materiality.
mnemosynedrone.info
At the Gallery / Free admission
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Lecture
Joan Fontcuberta | “The purge of the images”
Tuesday, September 22, 5 pm
At a time when so many images circulate and fascinate, precisely because they are so toxic and nasty, Sean Snyder carries out what could be thought of, in the clinical sense, as a purge. In the exhibition, he demonstrates this through the fundamental recognition of the raw materials of visual information (ink on paper, celluloid, magnetic tape, algorithms and pixels) and his handling of the rhetorics of persuasion.
Curator Joan Fontcuberta discusses his interpretation of the works in the exhibition.
Joan Fontcuberta (Barcelona, 1955) has developed an artistic and theoretical practice, which focuses on the conflicts between nature, technology and truth. He has had solo shows at MoMA and the Art Institute of Chicago among others, and his work has been collected by institutions such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Canada, and the Centre Georges Pompidou. Fontcuberta was the 2013 recipient of Hasselblad Foundation Award and has published a dozen of books about aspects of history, aesthetics and epistemology of photography.
fontcuberta.com
At the Gallery / Free admission
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Screening
Wednesday, October 7, 5 pm
Local TV News Analysis
Dara Birnbaum and Dan Graham
1980, 61:08 min, color, sound.
* Location: Room EV 11.705
EV Building, Concordia University
1515 Ste-Catherine West, 11th floor
Metro Guy-Concordia
The video that has been preserved on DVD by Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI) is a collaborative project by Dara Birnbaum and Dan Graham produced by A Space in Toronto in 1980 investigating form and content of local television news. In short, the video dissects the simultaneous realities of the studio where the production occurs and the domestic environment where the broadcast is received in one composite frame.
Sean Snyder suggested screening Local TV News Analysis in the course of formulating his contribution to the exhibition. The document deconstructs the transmission and reception of information. In his opinion, the experiment mirrors social media marketing strategies inherent in the dissemination of artistic practice today. The location of the screening is in a university seminar room.
Unlike the streamlined production of Local TV News Analysis, today a flood of data is at the disposal of the public as raw material to be reshaped as people desire. Realistically, this transpires rarely. For example, the social media tool Periscope offers a real-time perspective on what the consumer chooses to transmit. Receivers of visual and audio data are left to decode information circulated, placing the power in the hands of the consumer. In this particular social media environment, the audience is provided with the option to interact with the interface. If people like what they have turned into their positive response is graphically acknowledged with hearts.
Free admission