Thursday, September 22nd, Bestway, 11:00 PM
Presented with the collaboration of Neutral Ground, Regina and the Saskatchewan Arts Council
As the entity Turner Prize*, artists Jason Cawood, Blair Fornwald and John G. Hampton explore the mysterious, social and translative properties of the "creative act". Using performative photography, sound manipulation, and live interactions, they explore the intangibility of dreams and ideas through their origin (dreamers and artists) and their destination (images and writings). It is the interstices, the shifts and intangible spaces between ideas and representations, which motivate their practice. Their investigations into this liminal space utilize the language of Jungian dream analysis and interpretation, ritual and magick, and appropriate the aesthetics of mid-century pop psychology and psychedelia. Recent performances and exhibitions include Mind the Gap! (Ottawa Art Gallery, 2011 and Dunlop Art Gallery, Regina 2009), Invocation of the Hidden Secret (1) (Queer City Cinema, Regina 2010), Summer of Dreams (Videopool, Winnipeg 2009), in//stall (Lane Level Projects, Regina 2008), and Infinite Exchange Gallery (ZERO01 Biennial, San Jose, 2008).
Invocation of the Hidden Secret
Turner Prize* extracts the dreams of various individuals using psychiatric equipment, meditation practices, cleansing rituals and incantations. The symbology and esoteric imagery of this information is distilled into visual manifestations of the dreamers' psychological states. In Invocation of the Hidden Secret, this process is shared with an audience. It is both a theatrical re-staging of a dream ceremony and an exercise in producing a collective dreamstate among both performers and audience members. Turner Prize* gratefully acknowledge the support of the Saskatchewan Arts Board, the curatorial support of Brenda Cleniuk and the participation of the guest performers.
Invocation of the Hidden Secret involves ritualized dreaming sessions. Using a variety of technologies, ranging from the outdated to the fictitious to the contemporary, Turner Prize* will assist the participants with dream recall while projecting the experience of dreaming to a live audience. The ceremony conducted around the dreaming subjects draws its inspiration from a variety of cultural and spiritual practices from the 20th century: Oblique references are made to pagan ceremony, drug culture, 60s occult ritual, new age philosophy, scientific experimentation, and living theatre. The performers will be required to use an antiquated psychiatric device (The "Mind's Eye Plus") that uses modulated frequencies of light and sound, transmitted to the dreamer via goggles and headphones, to alter brain activity, producing a meditative or dreamlike state.