Curated by Cecilia Araneda
For the 2014 WNDX Festival – opening Wed Sept 24, 2014 at Urban Shaman Gallery
Among the key concerns that Scott Benesiinaabandan (Anishinaabe) examines through his art practice are subconscious ways of knowing. He uses technology not only as a means of unearthing the latent memory of biology and geography, but also increasingly to both interpret and re-interpret it. Working principally in photography and media art, Benesiinaabandan’s investigation is rooted in the potential of unearthing memory as a mechanism of decolonization.
The video work included in Memetic Drive has been achieved through various computer programming techniques, including slit scanning, processing-based programming, sensors and arduinos, among others. Through his work, Benesiinaabandan frequently uses found landscapes as the source for uncovering the collective unconscious.
– Cecilia Araneda
Urban Shaman: AND (Artist New Dimension) Gallery
Time Scan Mount Royal – 3:00 mins, HD, 2014
An investigation of Montreal’s Mount Royal (Hochelaga) achieved over time using slit scan animation, seeking to awaken quiescence.
Psychic History (Black and White Rotating) – 2:34 mins, HD, 2013
Created through a new media residency at OBx, this process-based work examines the idea of the collective unconscious, evocative of the use of hypnosis as a mechanism to re-program consciousness.
A Psychic History / Blood Memory of Home – 2:51 mins, HD, 2013
An examination of the inter-relativity of collective consciousness, history and the future, using scan technologies to bridge the distance between photography and video.
Intransit – 7:29 mins, HD, 2013
A rainy summer prairie landscape, in movement and in transit
Urban Shaman: Exterior Wall, McDermot Ave
Blood Memories (Winnipeg) – Outdoor Loop, HD, 2014
Benesiinaabandan’s Blood Memory works are generative video studies of specific geographies that seek to reveal the collective unconscious of a space. Blood Memories (Winnipeg) has been created in advance on the screening site, to project a conceptual memory back onto itself over the course of hours.