Antenna

The theme of the exhibition Terms of Use is how technologies affect our individual and collective identities. This essay proposes a reflection on that theme through the concepts of materiality and immateriality. Materiality refers to our bodies and physical environments, which in turn allow us to access the immaterial dimensions of our beings, such as our imagination, dreams, rational consciousness, and spiritual life. The works of two artists, Mara Eagle and Shanie Tomassini, are particularly eloquent in how they explore the impact of technology on our bodily and spiritual existences.

In many ways, conventional advanced technology reinforces the separation between mind and body, between the material and the immaterial—a reality that these artists resist in their work through their experimental approach to technology.

Unholy Ghost by Mara Eagle, addresses the material and immaterial dimensions of the cycle of life and death. The video piece presents the figure of a pregnant woman in an exposed CGI environment partaking in a virtual reality (VR) experience that allows her to wander through a cemetery. Unholy Ghost contains a material anchor with an installation of four 3D printed ceramic cherub sculptures. 

These sculptures make the link between our physical world and the one experienced by the figure in the video, who wears a VR headset. The sense of physicality is heightened by the low camera angle, and the slow way in which she navigates the environment, caressing the grass, flowers,  and headstones. The natural ambient soundscape also contributes to grounding the experience in the outdoor environment of the cemetery.

Through the mediation of video and VR, amplified and distorted sounds are inserted in addition to slippages and glitches in the image, creating an atmosphere of eerie disquiet as we experience the spiritual and physical manifestations of a cemetery. The sound of the pregnant woman’s heartbeat, and the cherub sculptures bathed in red light, contribute to the unsettling atmosphere.

Paired with Unholy Ghost is an installation in two parts by Shanie Tomassini, titled Lueurs d’écrans sous un ciel sans lune (or Screen Glimmer Under a Moonless Sky). The installation contains a series of different sculptural elements that evoke the artists’ relationship to nature, and the seen and unseen. They also evoke a spiritual relationship between the artist and the elements. In the first part of the installation, there are two imposing sculptures framed by a cascade made of ball chain that strongly evoke a sense of touch. The craters we see on the surface of the sculptures are modelled after impressions left in clay by the artist’s hands that have been digitally enlarged and abstracted. Despite the artist not being present, these human traces of the labour of sculpting, which are often hidden in many works, draw attention to the origins of how these objects came to be.

[1] « La théorie de la Fiction-Panier », Terrestres, octobre 2018. Traduction par Aurélien Gabriel Cohen de “the Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction”, extrait de Ursula K. Le Guin, Dancing at the Edge of the World: Thoughts on Words, Women, Places, Grove Press, 1989.
https://www.terrestres.org/201...

Movements: Terms of Use is a tool designed by the PHI Foundation’s Department of Education to encourage visitors to develop and elaborate on some key concepts of the exhibition Terms of Use.