That Other Hunger
2022
Commission: score and sound installation for Vanessa Brown
Score and four-channel sound installation for Vanessa Brown’s solo exhibition. Canada Council commission
Richmond Art Gallery, September 10 – November 6, 2022
Sound commission for Vanessa Brown’s solo exhibition That Other Hunger at the Richmond Art Gallery: a score for Brown’s video work and a four-channel sound installation, made with modular synthesizer and digital instruments. The works explore the ‘hole’, gravity and upended time, from geographic craters, black holes, portals and voids to inner and outer worlds, ‘longing and escape, respite and refuge’, and the ‘spaces between the real and the fantastic’ (Brown/RAG).
Adapted for Twilight Flowers, Patel Brown, Montreal (April 6 – May 20, 2023) and >>>000 / Gravity, Centre national de l’audiovisuel (CNA), Luxembourg (May 6 – August 20, 2023).
From the exhibition text by Zoë Chan:
“The idea of the hole is a potent point of access for Vanessa Brown’s solo exhibition That Other Hunger, which features a series of video works, textiles, sculptures, and commissioned sound works by collaborator Michelle Helene Mackenzie. Brown mines the depths of this surprisingly rich subject matter in her eclectic research that includes the Pantheon’s oculus, geographical craters, caves, black holes, and the body’s orifices.
Reflecting on the themes that flow through her multifaceted new body of work, Brown describes an early enthralment with the Looney Tunes portable hole. In this animated universe, the hole alternates between objecthood and void. In its object state, it can be picked up and placed or thrown like a disc against a wall. In its void state, it offers the immediacy of moving seamlessly from one dimension to another, a channel across time and space.
Inspired by such collapses of physical and temporal boundaries, Brown invites us on a journey through the portal of That Other Hunger. Brown offers reflections on such questions as the relativity of time in conjunction with the very human desire to stop its passing. As much a philosophical and existential voyage as it is an artistic one, That Other Hunger oscillates between inner and outer worlds, transforming the hole into a powerfully imagined site of longing and escape, respite and refuge.” — Zoë Chan
Film and score available on request: mhmackenzie@gmail.com.
Video stills © Vanessa Brown, 2022.