Grand Gestures: An Exhibition in Three Parts by 640 480 video collective is showing at Gallery TPW, Trinity Square Video (TSV) and the public space in between.

September 6 – 13 October, 2007.

Each of the three projects uses the aesthetics of public memorials and museums to discuss the preservation of video and its inherent value system.

Beginning at TSV with an installation of hundreds of memorial pins made from VHS tape that recall Memento Mori, the visitor will then walk to Gallery TPW. Along the route ten “memorial” style bronze plaques have been installed, each containing a partial transcript from a personal video (sourced from Youtube). Finally, at Gallery TPW, these ‘throw-away’ memories are preserved into an everlasting state – as diamonds.

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Rafael Lozano-Hemmer. Image: spots-berlin.de

Mexican-Canadian artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer spoke with VoCA about his 6-piece exhibition as Mexico’s representative at the Venice Biennale, and about his 200,000 watt interactive light sculpture Pulse Front: Relational Architecture 12 for Luminato festival in Toronto this week.

Rafael Lozano-Hemmer is representing Mexico at this year’s Venice Biennale (June 10 – 21 November, 2007). The exhibition will consist of 6 large-scale installations in the Palazzo Van Axel, a 15th-century gothic landmark bordering the Chiesa Santa Maria dei Miracoli, in the vicinity of the Rialto Bridge.

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A puppet in the image of artist Rirkrit Tiravanija.
Image: visualarts.walkerart.org/the artist

VoCA caught up with Thai artist Rirkrit Tiravanija on the eve of the opening of his exhibition at OCAD’s new Professional Gallery.

Tiravanija is known in contemporary art circles world-wide. He won the Guggeheim’s Hugo Boss prize in 2004 and was featured in the New Yorker magazine in October 2005.

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CAROLEE SCHNEEMANN is an internationally recognized multidisciplinary artist, one of the main players in the feminist art movement of the 1960s and 70s. She lives in upstate New York but keeps a studio in Montreal.

She is perhaps best known for her 1975 performance Interior Scroll, where she stood naked on a table and painted her naked body with mud. She struck several poses while reading aloud from a paper scroll as she slowly extracted it from her vagina.

Carolee Schneemann, Interior Scroll, 1975. Image: caroleeschneemann.com
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