15 Jul 2009

Wondermare at apexart

WONDERMARE
curated by Susan McIntosh and Albert Wilking

Be part of the cast of an interactive film epic where expectations are challenged and realities are remade.

Wondermare is based on the notion that much of the behavioral conditioning programmed in our subconscious is the unhealthy byproduct of a world out of balance, a 'house of cards' on the brink of catastrophe; the truth of which is obscured from us by our own myopic pursuits and illusions. The exhibition uses as its setting the story of Alice in Wonderland precisely because it contains anecdotes about the rites of passage into adulthood. The tale consistently resists an easily defined linear structure and at the same time confronts the confusing and often nonsensical rituals that we must travel through in order to obtain a civilized or adult persona in the world we see through our looking glass.

It is the task of the new hero and heroine to navigate these roles and unfamiliar channels and at last emerge from this illusion forging a new personal and social consciousness. As such, Wondermare will seek to unravel these narrative notions by asking you, the gallery visitor, to become a participant in your own story, choosing to play a role of your own and allowing your voice to emerge through the process. We ask you to 'pick a card,' and answer a question against a live camera in front of a green screen. The green screen will allow us, in a final edit, to place you anywhere and against any backdrop. The narrative of the story will no longer stay fixed and instead a new plot will be enabled as you become the star and a new film emerges from each interaction. As you become part of this video installation, Wondermare will ask you to reexamine and redefine your relationship to the world and the stories you have spun, internally and externally.

Immersed in an eight-screen video landscape, gallery visitors will feel compelled to address the parts of themselves that are hidden, repressed and denied. As an interactive exhibition, the show creates the opportunity for a psychological rebooting or do over, where visitors will have another chance at addressing their own rights of cultural passage that they may or may not have gotten right the first time around.

It is time to fall down a rabbit hole, to play a new role and forge a commitment to a different reality.

Welcome to Wondermare.