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On March 23rd at the Blinding Light in Vancouver
8:30 PM, $5 admission
(+ $3 membership )
a one-time only performance
of
Evidence
Evidence is the most recent text by poet and
visual artist Mike
Schertzer
In
collaboration with Vancouver video artist Joel Snowden, Mike Schertzer
has created a series of
slide-collages from found sources and appropriated film trailers.
The images act as elaborations
on themes and obsessions that comprise
Schertzer's most recent
text, Evidence.
Those familiar with Schertzer's
work will find many labyrinths in which
they can comfortably lose
themselves. For those who are new to his work,
Evidence is sure unbuckle whatever has been restrained!
In
this performance Mike Schertzer will read excerpts from his text Evidence
while video images assembled
by Vancouver video artist Joel Snowden
are projected behind him.
These images are composed
of a set of slide-collages that
Mike has assembled from
film trailers, found slides,
and reproductions of his
visual art.
As well, Joel has created
some video interjections and has incorporated
the voice of Zoya Harris
and the very appropriate (and appropriated!)
music from Unwound, Low,
and Burning Airlines.
This event is basically a performance of a text but was designed to
be
much more than a simple
reading. As a writer, I have always found readings to be
deficient renderings
of the world and the energy delimited by the text.
I have finally come
to the conclusion that the fact that I always find readings
boring and banal is
because they are.
Reading is not boring or banal, but the public performance
of such an act is.
Therefore, I have created a presentation
which hopefully presents the complexity
and the peculiar energy
of the text in a clear and definitive manner. Concerning
the
aesthetics of the visual side of the presentation, I have always
resisted attempts at
hyper-technologizing my art practice.This means that I am interested
in leaving
traces of the creative act, stressing the artificial/constructed nature
of any image.
Although it is true
that the video was digitally edited, the source images were
primarily slide collages
which were glued together. These slides would make any
photographer cringe- they are scratched, covered in fingerprints (and
whatever
else was on the floor
of my studio!), and have been stuck together in a very rough way.
The slides were then videotaped and this live footage is what each 'still-image'
is.
There is movement in each 'still' but it is very subtle.
I must say, I always find a subversive thrill in taking the highly accomplished
photography found on
Hollywood film trailers (photographs which took tens of thousands
of dollars if not more to create) and then scratching them, or
bleaching them, or generally
messing them up.
It should be noted that my use of the
products of popular (American) films
does not represent any
attempt at re-defining or re-working the lexicon of popular culture.
I have no idea what these films are or are about. I never go to see
Hollywood movies.
I don't know who the stars are (other than perhaps their names).
I feel I am something
of an anthropologist (or a child!) holding up artifacts before
some
knowing public.
- M.S.
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