02 Apr 2010

23rd Images Festival at the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art

Cinema X: I Like to Watch

Carlos Aires/ Regina Galindo/ Bruce LaBruce/ Anetta Mona Chisa & Lucia Tkacova/ 
Dani Marti/ Erwin Olaf/ Steve Reinke & Jessie Mott/ Santiago Sierra

Curated by Paco Barragán

April 2 - 11, 2010

Opening reception: April 3, 8 - 11 p.m.

Presented in conjunction with the 23rd Images Festival (Canada)

Capitalism, with the aid of the state and the church, has traditionally exercised a strong pressure on heterosexual marriage in order to secure the necessary labor forces. But now sexuality as reproduction is giving little by little way to sexuality as desire, and marriage as a fundamental institution of society is de–institutionalizing itself. Society changes and so do its conventions. In his interesting book On Seduction Baudrillard already commented in 1980 that, after the liberation of its discourse, there was nothing so insecure as sex, and that its liberation also meant its indetermination. When there is no lack, no prohibition, and no limits, we lose clear references.

Selected by Madrid and Miami-based curator Paco Barragán, Cinema X: I Like to Watch, examines diverse perspectives on sexual representation. Bruce LaBruce will exhibit his first pornographic film shot in Toronto; Australian artist Dani Marti explores S&M and web dating; Dutch artist Erwin Olaf delves into voyeurism and transvestitism; Czech artists Anetta Mona Chisa & Lucia Tkacova recreate a pornographic film in which one of the artists adopts the classical male posture; Spanish artist Santiago Sierra explores the complex dynamics between capitalism and sex; Guatemalan artist Regina Galindo puts her own body at risk with vaginal surgery; Spanish artist Carlos Aires reveals the viewer’s ignorance of a dark room, and Canadian artist Steve Reinke and American artist Jessie Mott collaborate to explore human sexual desires through an animated fable.

“Sexual expressions like voyeurism, onanism, S&M, transvestitism or dark rooms” –writes Barragán- “are the reflection of our contradictions with regard to sexuality, while they embody the times and society we live in.  Perhaps we should ask ourselves if our promiscuity is a defiance of sexual repression or just a submission to its consumerist variant.”


Untitled Seven
Emma Hart & Benedict Drew (U.K.)
April 2 - 11, 2010

Opening reception: April 3, 8 - 11 p.m.

Programmed by and presented in conjunction with the 23rd Images Festival (Canada)

Emma Hart and Benedict Drew began their collaboration in 2005 at the "Soundtrack" event in London. Their Untitled series of works that they have developed since then explores and destabilizes moving images, sound and performance. By inverting the technologies used to create and project images, Hart and Drew create anarchic systems which make the process of their creation explicit.

For their debut exhibition in Canada, Hart and Drew will present Untitled Seven, a new installment in this series that exists both as a site-specific installation as well as a live performance within the MOCCA main space.

For the live performance of Untitled Seven, viewers will be confronted with an installation of audio-visual equipment re-purposed to play musical instruments. This mechanical orchestra includes a stack of DVD players striking the keys of a keyboard, a film projector beating on a snare drum, and a moving disco light strumming a guitar. The live performance is documented by small concealed spycams and projected live as a single channel video, but the cameras are at the mercy of instruments played by the live performers. As Drew and Hart create sound, they also affect the cameras’ relay and playback.