Quartet for the Year 4698 or 5760: improvisation for four projectors
Quartet for the Year 4698 or 5760: improvisation for four projectors
Laiwan (Vancouver) in collaboration with Lori Freedman (Montreal)
Quartet for the Year 4698 or 5760 is a multi-media installation that uses film, audio, live performance, music improvisation and computer media. This multidisciplinary installation marries visual arts and new music, two disciplines that have collaborated for many years at Open Space. Quartet explores time and space as well as the presence/absence of cultural histories within a critique of the limitations of machines. Moreover, it addresses themes of contemplation/spontaneity, temporality/duration and bodily presence (live music)/ mediated absence (on film). As a whole it is a collaboration in which the framework created by the visual artist and the improvisational abilities of the musician allow for an exploration of the fleeting nature of improvisation and the relationship of body and machine.
Laiwan is an interdisciplinary artist, writer and activist whose work is based in poetics and philosophy. Some of her past media work includes the video "Remotely in Touch" (1998) and the gallery installation "Machinate: a projection in two movements" (1999) which includes the film piece 'Kiss'. She has participated in various Web festivals and has presented lectures at sound festivals and conferences about consciousness of bodily relations to technology. Her writing can be found in various art and community publications and there are two catalogues of her work Seek: Books and Collages (1998, Galerie Articule, Montreal) and Distance of Distinct Vision (1992, Front Gallery, Vancouver).
Lori Freedman is internationally recognized for her work in contemporary, improvised and electroacoustic music. She frequently works in multidisciplinary projects collaborating with dance, theater and visual artists. Among many projects she has created two soundtracks: for Erika MacPherson's film Disobedience and for the video/performance work by Shawna Dempsey and Lorri Millan, The Headless Woman. She has commissioned 30 composers to write music for her and has a discography of 25 commercially available recordings, including her solo CD HUSKLESS! Lori Freedman Live in Concert. Her second solo recording À un moment donné (Ambiances Magnétiques) will soon be released in the fall of 2002.