In the video, the image of the hand- on a clock, on a metronome, the hands of the artist’s family members, the hand of an open-source robot, persists as a motif of measured work and care. Throughout the hypnagogic landscape of the video, the associative and symbolic imagery aims to complicate these themes- it proposes a subtext that allegorizes the movement within moving images to diasporic experience. The Protagonists is a conflation of themes surrounding the intersections of cinema and conflict, time and labour, memory and representation. The Protagonists - Gabi Dao, Canada, 2018, 8 minutes The fly in this film can be approached as a living being, a metaphor for human desire to reach beyond, and a state that demonstrates the capacity to move between the realms of life and death. Creating an exterior, beginning from within.Ī Study of Fly - Cherlyn Hsing-Hsin Liu, USA, 2018, 13 minutesĪ Study of Fly is a reflection on the relationship between insect, human, environment, and the universe. Untitled Anaglyph 3D for 2 16mm Projectors (work in progress) - Christina C. Each work searches over the terrain of the invisible, looking into experiences we cannot claim as our own, yet completely come to find have defined our existence.
The films investigate lost histories that examine communal absence, questions of belonging and ecosystems of inherited traumas that are a direct reaction from colonized oppression. These environments span from the political to the personal and observe how memory and family lineage impact the reality of our current occupied landscapes. The exploration of landscape reflected in the study of a fly to the audio visual discovery of childhood memory through internet archives Ghostly Matters will dissect personal histories that function as questions to larger systematic ideologies that control our present terrains. This year's Biennial is being held in Ott's honor at numerous international locations. In the summer of 2018 Sabina Ott passed away leaving behind a legacy of radical energy, caring magic, and deep community. The 20 Terrain Biennials grew to include host locations all over Oak Park and Chicago with many national and international locations as well. Ott staged the month long public art event asking her neighbors to host artists she invited to exhibit in the biennial. In 2013 Ott created the Terrain Biennial. Over the course of seven years Ott invited over a hundred artists to exhibit site specific works in her front yard and on the porch at her home in Oak Park that she shared with her husband and author John Paulett. Terrain Exhibitions was founded in Oak Park, Illinois by artist Sabina Ott in 2011 with a spirit of profound generosity, and community building.
Ghostly Matters part of the Terrain Biennial | 2019