Deep into data
Isa Tousignant
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Lungs-London.pl, by Graham Harwood
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Database Imaginary introduces the latest, greatest artistic subculture
Database Imaginary wins the prize! The latest show at the Liane and Danny Taran Gallery is the first, the very first, among the masses of digital artworks and exhibitions I've seen (not to say suffered through) in my many years at this job, that has actually interested me. And it isn't the most likely result, either. Curated by Sarah Cook, Steve Dietz and Anthony Kiendl for the Banff Centre for the Arts, Database Imaginary is a show in which every work is a database. Well, more specifically, each is a database, or refers to one, or, as in the show's more visually striking piece, Lisa Jevbratt's Interface: Every, colourfully illustrates a database's components. Not necessarily a recipe for excitement.
But the show has the advantage of operating on a very perceptive premise. The curators have rightfully discerned database art as an existent subculture. Little did most of us know that this most elementary entity of data organization was the source of inspiration to enough artists to fill a whole exhibition - 23, to be precise. They come from all over the world, and range in preferred media from binary data read through Quicktime (as in Cory Archangel's works, dispersed throughout the gallery) to wood (as in Pablo Helguera's Memory Theatre, a totemic installation that poses as the database of icons representing our "universal" knowledge).
One failure on the curators' part, or the gallery's, concerns the actual exhibition design, which lacks the vivacity needed
to animate the space. The show could easily feel like an obstacle course of computer terminals. Nevertheless, the strongest works do manage to break through that tendency.My favourite? Graham Harwood's beautifully lyrical Lungs-London.pl, in which he reprises William Blake's 1792 poem London in Perl, the script used for web development, to include disparate databases of facts relating to the poem's contents (war, children's health stats, etc.). It's witty, and gorgeously executed, and best of all... it's on paper! And it's in a frame! Not so digital after all.
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While you're at the Saidye, make sure to take a gander downstairs at their Espace Trois gallery, where you'll find the work of sculptor Claudine Ascher and the photography of Lisa Waite in Confined Spaces. Waite deals with the age-old and still-intrinsic theme, inspired by the medium of photography, of the public versus the private, which she explores through 16 shots taken on public transport and a series of 35 SX-70 Polaroids of storefront mannequins that charismatically play with the notions of who's the voyeur and who's being watched. And kudos for the imaginative hanging techniques! Check it out before Feb. 28.
Digital Imaginary
At the Saidye (5170 Côte-Ste-Catherine), to April 2
Don't miss a talk by Dot Tuer on March 16 at 6 p.m.
Database art has been held from view long enough. In this period where one feels threatened by the upsurge of the steel starched collar art venues that advertise accept trendy venues when subcultural work peeks through, it's a breath of fresh air. I have been aware of the use of art to embellish web page based information, appreciate the use of layout in some and attractive focal points in others. Let the digital imagry continue to allow the artist more freedom of expression. So as not to by shy about its existence, how about the words database espressionism to describe the art form.
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Martin Dansky
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