Knot Commissions
In the lead up to the launch of SAW Video Media Art Centre’s new exhibition venue, Knot project space, a series of short videos by three Ottawa artists was commissioned to play on various public screens throughout the city. The artists each took the venue’s name as a point of departure, to reflect upon notions of entanglement, intersection, tension and compression that the formation of a knot brings to mind.
Molly Teitelbaum: Loose Ends
@ Plant Bath Recreation Centre
December 16th, 2017 - January 7th, 2018
I've been encountering a lot of knots these days. I put a knot or two in my dog’s leash when I tie her up outside while I grab my morning tea. Last month, I borrowed a necklace from someone I don't know very well. There was a knot in the fine gold chain before I even got to wear it. I didn't tell her, but when I returned it last week I made sure it was unknotted. Every Monday on the soccer field I put my hair up using a thin elastic, but half the time the hair tie breaks. They're very cheap, and I have lots of hair. At least two consecutive knots are required to fashion a new, makeshift elastic from the limp one. In Loose Ends, I am hyper-aware of both the subtlety and the essence of a gesture. The constant in this piece is the notion that these small acts, in series, demonstrate the ways in which a knot comes to be: pulling, weaving, moving, twisting, poking, fastening, loosening, pushing, and leaving. - Molly Teitelbaum
Lesley Marshall: Knot #1, Knot #2
@ University of Ottawa
January 14th. 2018 - January 27th, 2018
Lesley Marshall’s The Knot are short conceptual performance videos where friends were asked to brush, comb or touch their hair like in a hair advertisement. A very simple act and yet a very charged act depending on the perspective and experience. Contemplating daily routines and providing little context, the interpretation is left to the viewer and how they feel about what can appear to be a banal activity or symbolic act.
Phil Rose: Digitali(s)
@ Arts Court Public Hallway
January 27th, 2018
Knots abound. Long ago at Scouts I’d stare in awe at the knot chart. Knots wove nautical, or maybe mountaineering, fantasies (knots also lurk in the more shadowy corners of the fantastical). Practical, tonnes of uses … and beautifully intricate designs in and of themselves. Digitally demanding to execute their patterns. There’s a Knot of snakes, a thousand-eyed writhing mass of slippery elongated forms, community on steroids. Then there’s the knot of clothes that emerges from the washer. And the delicate task of its disentanglement. Knots bind, literally and figuratively, often for good, sometimes for worse. The hands in this piece might … touch on (with apologies) this complexity. Here they come together to weave varying knots of harmonious interaction, as well as more chaotic communal configurations of dynamic energies and urges – this might be a hazy outline of my proposition for the space to be known as the Knot. - Phil Rose
Originally from Ottawa, Ontario, Molly Teitelbaum is a Canadian filmmaker and visual artist. She holds a BA in Art History and Political Science from McGill University (2013), and an MFA from Parsons (2015). She was a participant at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (2015), and was an artist in residence at The MacDowell Colony (2016) and Yaddo (2017). She currently lives and works in New York City. Teitelbaum's work explores being female in the 21st century, shedding light on the concerns, preoccupations, and desires of a woman in this moment. She has a somewhat prurient interest in the lives of others, and her work retains a strong voyeuristic component. She brings to the fore what is taboo and off limits by drawing viewers' attention to that which we're not supposed to look at, such as a paucity of hair on a man's head, or a plethora of hair on a woman's upper lip.
Lesley Marshall is an intermedia artist currently working as a producer and consultant for independent audio visual projects and promotional media through MAVNetwork in Ottawa. An award-winning filmmaker and graduate of the University of Ottawa with a major in communication with specialization in media, Lesley has worked as an independent curator (Available Light Screening Collective, Arboretum Festival); promoter, booker, filmmaker, musician, and performance artist under the name LesleyDemon and Lesley 666; instructor and committee member of SAW Video Media Art Centre, Lesley also screams in the band Bonnie Doon. Music videos made by Lesley have been featured on Vice, Exclaim!, Brooklyn Vegan, Aux, Rookie Mag, Stereogum, Clash Mag and UPROXX etc. In 2016, Lesley completed a residency at Artscape Jibralter Point to complete her first 16mm film commission with the Windows Collective “Getting Ready Montage 1 and in 2017 Lesley was awarded a mentorship grant with the City of Ottawa to study large format intermedia work in Montreal.
Phil Rose has been active in the Ottawa/Gatineau media arts community for over twenty years. His single-channel videos, installation work and photography has been exhibited in Canada and internationally. From 2007-16 he was the video technician at the Centre de production Daïmõn (Gatineau) working with a diverse group of artists on various aspects of video projects. He has served on the Boards of Saw Video and Daïmõn and was the Coordinator of the Available Light Screening Collective for more than fifteen years. As owner of Cinetronic he has worked with media artists, arts and non-profit organizations and documentary producers in a variety of production-related areas.