INTO THE CITY: Site Interventions in 80’s Toronto

INTO THE CITY: Site Interventions in 80’s Toronto - film installation work by Rebecca Garrett

CFMDC is excited to present INTO THE CITY: Site Interventions in 80’s Toronto - film installation work by Rebecca Garrett, hosted for FREE on CFMDC.tv. Curated by Jorge Lozano and Alexandra Gelis and supported by the Canada Council for the Arts. This program features documentation of Garrett's installations Project for a Divided House, Crazy Jane and the Torrent Men, and a moment of pure feeling. Available on demand at CFMDC.tv from August 13th - August 26th, 2021. About the projects: Project for a Divided House (1981) is an installation consisting of four super 8 film projectors with film loops projected onto walls constructed to duplicate the existing walls, and then shifted slightly to create a doubling in the experience of the space. As the viewer moves through the space they became aware of speakers embedded in the constructed walls, containing sounds recorded during the building of the walls. This site-specific installation was in a gallery located in an old Victorian house in downtown Toronto, typical of the settler colonial architecture that defines the history and character of the core of the city. The piece was a response to a social history that was, at the time, obfuscated and erased. Crazy Jane and the Torrent Men (1986) consists of two large, rear-projected screens, ten feet high and sixteen feet wide. The screens are placed parallel to each other, four feet apart, forming a corridor-like space. The viewer stands between the two screens, and can only look at one screen at a time; there is no position from which one can step back and view the whole piece from some vantage point outside of it. The twelve-minute 16mm film is comprised of three pairs of shots, filmed in real time and unedited within each scene. The piece articulates a metaphysical or philosophical dilemma about having to choose between being inside something or being outside watching it - between living life or observing it. a moment of pure feeling (1989) is a 16mm film loop installation with Eiki arc projector, copper plumbing, reservoir, pump, and large glass. a moment of pure feeling responded to environmental and political issues embedded in an industrial building at Lansdowne and Dupont streets in Toronto. In 1989, the General Electric factory was empty due to contamination by toxic waste such as PCBs, and stood as a haunted monument to the transition from an industrial to a digital economy. A group of artists who were looking for alternatives to the established gallery system organized an exhibition in the space. a moment of pure feeling occupied two rooms in the former factory. About Rebecca Garrett: Rebecca Garrett is a Toronto-based artist whose award-winning experimental videos, installations, and community video projects have been exhibited at numerous venues in Canada and abroad. Garrett has worked collaboratively and/or collectively with many groups and individuals in Canada, the USA, Zimbabwe, and Kenya, and has taught at York University, the University of Toronto, and the Ontario College of Art and Design. Her work expresses a long commitment to naming economic, colonial, and social injustices, and building relations of exchange and reciprocity. More info: www.rebeccagarrett.ca About ConverSalon: ConverSalon is a collaborative project supported by collective labour and desire for community, engaging in an economy of exchange of knowledge and care, and does not receive public funding.The idea is to have fun, share food, and engage with critical ideas, to create non-institutional ways of showing artists’ projects. More info: https://conversalon.org/