BNMI Co-Production Archives 'O'

Objects of Ritual

Objects of Ritual is a multi-interface installation piece originally created for The Banff Centre's Art and Virtual Environments project. The piece was conceived as a theatrical work on the nature of virtual reality. It argues that virtual reality is not a new idea, but one whose roots are centuries old. Using the “Story of the Cave” from Plato's Republic as a basis for this argument, Objects of Ritual seeks to create a complex and ambiguous reflection on the nature of technology, power, reality, and personal discipline.

Co-producer: Will Bauer (Edmonton, Canada) and Steve Gibson (Victoria, Canada), 1995
Format: VR Installation

Observer/Observed and Other Works

The main aim of this piece is to study the structural relationships of video and words using the English language. Based on the feedback system of video, the system is assigned into the relation of the observer and the observed using the words ‘I’ and ‘You’. The concern is the structure of ‘seeing’ involved for both the observer and the observed as in a sentence of ‘I see you’ which is posited by the closed-circuit system of video. Takahiko Iimura and Kazuyo Yasuda are both pioneer artists of Japanese experimental film and video and have developed numerous exhibitions in Japan, the United States, and in Europe.

Co-producers: Takahiko Iimura and Kazuyo Yasuda (Tokyo, Japan), 1998
Format: CD-ROM and DVD, Length: 22 minutes

Oculus Project

Though availing themselves of 21st century technologies, Lynn Lukkas' multi-disciplinary work in the Oculus Project manifests one of photography's oldest urges – an essential fascination with the unseen. Lukkas combines the ancient appetite for vision with modern Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) systems to allow her to record precisely where in the world she is, bodily, at a given instant, in four dimensions. This interactive project uses sensors to read body function, which releases a voltage signal, which in turn triggers images on database. This installation was a co-production with the The McKnight Foundation and the Walker Art Center in Minnesota.

Co-producer: Lynn Lukkas (Minnesota, United States), 2001
Format: Installation

Opening Night

This is a film within a film – a short fiction within a longer documentary entitled The Former Mrs. Butterfly. The documentary and the short film are woven together, refer to each other, and both deal with, in their native languages of teaching and fiction, issues of voice. This theme is explored in performance, emotional, and metaphysical terms. The short fictional film Opening Night explores what happens inside a singer’s mind the moment before she opens her mouth to sing in an opening night performance. The notion of risk, of taking the leap of faith required of any artist during performance, is a central question in the film.

Co-producer: Julie Trimingham (Calgary, Canada), The Banff Centre Theatre Arts and Music and Sound, 2001
Format: Video, Length: 67 minutes

other Business

Other Business is a short video that explores sexual identity and gender themes within the context of female contact sport video. This short film emerges from several bodies of interdisciplinary work to comment on couplings of women and violence, as well as empowerment and behavioural stereotypes. This all-female cast investigates different relationship dynamics between themselves and their place within a larger social and popular culture context. These women act as predators and prey, righteous idealists and hypocrites, mainstream male fantasies, and fetishized perversions.

Co-producers: Christine Kirouac and Michael Stecky (Winnipeg, Canada), 2002
Format: Video, Length: 12 minutes