The desire to get back to nature sets up a false dichotomy between what we humans are and do and make, and what everything else on the planet is and does and makes. Not only that, it plants that divide deep within our being, cleaving the natural things like our bodies and all the delightful and disgusting things they do and make apart from the headier stuff like apartment buildings, circuit boards, and non-organic processed food. At a time when we Canadians emerge from our winter hibernation (the season that strips the natural down to its barest elements) and head out into parks, fields and hillocks to regain a sense of what it means to be whole, one wonders just how far back you have to go in order to truly get back to nature. I appalled my friends and family recently when I claimed to prefer walking around a city like Los Angeles to any hike through Algonquin Park. My argument (other than the fact that there are less mosquitoes) was that the urban landscape was just as full of wonder and just as much a part of our world as the wild. Maybe even more so. Not surprisingly, I was scoffed. If only Heather Phillipson had my back.
Heather Phillipson, sub-fusc love-feast
The London-based artist/poet is the creator of the room-filling video installation sub-fusc love-feast in Trinity Square Video’s brand new exhibition space. Presented in collaboration with the Images Festival, this three-screen projection plus gigantic and miniaturized photographic cut-outs of assorted animals (and wooden platform/hill-like thing) riffs on the idea of nature to highlight the myriad ways in which our sense of the thing and the thing itself (if such a thing exists and is accessible) diverge. The images of wildlife both on the screens and in the gallery are torn straight from the pages of children’s books or the footage of nature documentaries. There is a sanitized feel to these representations that clean up the raw messiness of nature (I’ve never seen a cleaner giant worm) to make them family friendly creatures of educational entertainment. Phillipson is planted firmly in the world of media saturated images and easily exploits our romanticized notions of Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom. I experience a twinge of self-realization as I flashback to the moment my childhood dreams of being an oceanographer were crushed when I realized biology class was nothing like Jacques Cousteau’s television adventures.
Heather Phillipson, sub-fusc love-feast
At one point, the narrator states, “I’m sorry; it’s not in my nature,” and out of that denial spirals a whole raft of contradictions. The wordplay and lo-fi editing combined with a kind of slacker cleverness is reminiscent of Emily Vey Duke and Cooper Battersby’s meditations on our affection for/alienation from our animal others. There isn’t as much of their anarchic edge and oblique sense of humour, so the video leaves me wanting, but the faux charm (my favourite kind) of sitting amidst a menagerie of laminated fauna is more than enough to justify a city safari in this direction.
Trinity Square Video: http://bit.ly/1WUItax
Heather Phillipson: sub-fusc love-feast continues until May 7.
Terence Dick is a freelance writer living in Toronto. His art criticism has appeared in Canadian Art, BorderCrossings, Prefix Photo, Camera Austria, Fuse, Mix, C Magazine, Azure, and The Globe and Mail. He is the editor of Akimblog. You can follow his quickie reviews and art news announcements on Twitter @TerenceDick.
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