Canadian Art

• Home
• Online
• See It

Images Festival: Rising to the Occasion

The 22nd annual Images Festival kicked off last week in Toronto, and it’s hardly let up since, running a busy program of parties, openings, screenings and performances that leaves one wondering about the potentially habit-forming effects of contemporary film and video.

As of press time, there’s only a few days left in the fest—but still plenty, of course, to see.

On Thursday evening, Althea Thauberger’s Chelsea Girls Warhol redo has its Toronto premiere alongside Ian White’s performance Ibiza: A Reading for “The Flicker.” Thursday night also sees an opening for “The Communism of Forms,” an exhibition of music-video art at Red Bull 381 Projects. The exhibition is created in collaboration with the Art Gallery of York University, where one can see the premiere of a work by internationally known violin-pop maestro Final Fantasy.

Artist Rabih Mroué, Images executive director Scott Miller Berry & Images board co-chair Tori Allen / photo Henry Chan

Crowds are likely on Friday evening when New York video-game-art wunderkind Cory Arcangel gives an informal multimedia lecture. (Last month’s Artforum featured Arcangel in conversation with Dara Birnbaum.) Lecturing in tandem with Hanne Mugaas, Arcangel will discuss the current state of contemporary art on the internet. Finally, on Saturday night, a festival collaboration with Toronto alt-music series Wavelength will showcase the Los Angeles–based REDCAT picks Cloud Eye Control.

Internationally prominent artists form an impressive portion of this year’s fest, particularly in its gallery programming. Prix de Rome winner Sung Hwan Kim shows at Gallery TPW to May 2, while Portugal’s Venice 2009 representatives Pedro Paiva and João Maria Gusmão show quirky, alchemical films at Mercer Union to April 18. “Welcome to the Terrordome,” to April 12 at the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, features Iraqi-born artist Wafaa Bilal and New York’s Mark Essen, currently featured in “Younger than Jesus” at the New Museum. Both artists use video games to explore the “war on terror.”

Further, Documenta 2007 and Carnegie 2004 alum Harun Farocki shows at Prefix to April 25.

Sung Hwan Kim & dogr (David Michael DiGregorio) In the Room 3 2006 Performance still / photo Mieke van de Voort

For those who can’t make it to the shows, there’s a couple of online goodies from Brooklyn-based artist Ben Coonley. One is an homage to J.J. Murphy’s classic 1973 film Print Generation, which deconstructed film imagery by reprinting reels over 50 times. Coonley does something similar with flash video, a preferred YouTube format, ripping, saving and uploading a single video 1,000 times. His videos indicate, perhaps, where Images might consider going in the future—if, perhaps, online parties were any bit as fun as in-person ones.

Artist Mark Essen & Images programmer Jacob Korczynski / photo Henry Chan

Subscribe to Canadian Art today and save 30% off the newstand price.