Timelords, 2015, Tasman Richardson, Screen Capture
Saturday July 13, 9:30 – 10:00pm > Tasman Richardson, A/V Performances, Main Stage, Durham Conservation Area
“Timelords” is a live video collage performance that creates a musical composition entirely made from the source sounds of hundreds of video clip fragments. By scavenging VHS footage of vintage production company logos and internal VCR mechanics, the piece evokes nostalgia and the tactile experience of obsolete media. Clips from seminal films like Orpheus, Vertigo, La Jetée, Brainstorm, Videodrome, The Lawnmower Man, and Strange Days are interwoven to explore themes of time travel, identity, and the human psyche.
Sound bites from Marshall McLuhan interviews anchor the piece in media theory, emphasizing how our tools of communication shape our experience of reality. The juxtaposition of screaming fans adds a layer of chaotic human emotion, contrasting with the mechanical properties of video recording.
Through this collage, “Timelords” seeks to reflect on how media technologies extend our senses, distort our perceptions of time, and externalize our memories, transforming both individual and collective consciousness.
Temple, 2012, Tasman Richardson, Screen Capture
Temple, 2012
live a/v performance
17min
Video, larger than life, killed the radio star and out-staged the performer. Marketing and brands mingle with signs and sigils. A torrent of iconography and semiotics are arranged live to produce breakcore entirely from video clip edits. A séance of spectacle for a post-faith, post-flesh world.
Tasman Richardson began in 1996 by pioneering his audio/visual cut up method known as Jawa. He co-founded the FAMEFAME media arts collective in 2002 and launched the international a/v tournament Videodrome with cohorts Jubal Brown, Elenore Chesnutt, and Josh Avery. In 2011 he launched the international, live, abstract, anonymous showcase The New Flesh.
His practice expanded to immersive installation with his 2000 sq ft Necropolis, Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, Toronto, 2012, Karsh-Masson, Ottawa, 2015. He bookended his critique of mediated gaze with the 2000 sq ft Kali Yuga, Arsenal Contemporary, Montreal, 2019, Toronto 2020.
His themes to date have been a critical response to recordings which he dubbed “contemporary necromancy”, social media as a “voluntary panopticon”, and video as “a soul without a body”.
His collected observations of media and memory are published by Impulse(b) the book Objects In Mirror launched in Toronto, Berlin, and Izmir.
This programming is presented by Words Aloud: Arts Performance Edition, and curated by the Fabulous Festival of Fringe Film.
Cette programmation est présentée par Words Aloud: Édition performance artistique, et organisée par le Fabulous Festival of Fringe Film.
Fabulous Festival of Fringe Film 