VIVO Media Arts Centre Exhibition
Disrupting Currents: Catch + Release, an art exhibition in VIVO Media Arts Centre, Vancouver, BC took place in April, 2010. The exhibition included sculptures, a multi-channel video, and an interactive and immersive projection by Ruth Beer in collaboration with Kit Grauer and Jim Budd.
In the exhibition, a series of geologically-inspired sculptures, excerpts of interviews displayed on stacked video monitors, and an interactive component focus on the coastal salmon fishing industries as a means for conducting research into the geocultural history and future of Canada’s West Coast region. The exhibition includes projected visual translations of real-time data from NEPTUNE, Canada’s underwater ocean observatory in the Strait of Georgia and the Pacific Ocean west of Vancouver Island. The visual patterns of the gallery transmission are disrupted by visitors’ presence, underscoring the relationship between our present ecological circumstance, our history and our impact on the future. The accumulated scientific data in the projection echoes the implied accretion of mineral material in the sculpture formations and the diverse perspectives on the salmon industry presented in the multi-channel video, referring to both cultural and geological time.
The multi-channel video reflects the non-linear and artistic approach Beer has taken towards researching the region. Salmon is the ecological and economic catalyst of our region, and as such, it was used a departure point to create a diverse social portrait of contemporary Steveston. The video clips displayed on nine monitors were culled from interviews with people of diverse background relating to the history of the region. These fragments represent a portion of the research being conducted to create a complicated and kaleidoscopic view of the region.
