"Vortex" is an experimental video that combines fragments of films from different genres (fiction, documentary, reportage, animation, etc.), most of which date from the early twentieth century. "Vortex" brings to mind the tumultuous movement of an overflowing waterway. In its disquieting bubbling over, this whirlpool blends the still and troubled waters of the past. The intermixed archival images give a painterly texture to this river, perturbing time and space and generating its own chronology on the surface of history. Carrying, shifting, buffeting, blending, undoing, transporting, drowning, sucking up. Neither cataclysm nor apocalypse. "Vortex" is a condensation of events, a mass of information in which several phantoms rise up: war, conquest, colonisation, progress, modernity. "Vortex" is a loop, a Möbius strip, a dog biting its tail. Despite this tumult, we will not plunge deeply into obscurity and the lower depths. A breath of exoticism leads us elsewhere: to the surface of the world. How can we forget the smiles of these people on a beach? These men and women who play at disappearing before our eyes? These trains, these boats, these planes that play at being fast, at defying time and space by taking other paths. Writing the history of "Vortex" is like typing “What’s happening here?” into Google and then pushing 'enter'.

Name
Gennaro De Pasquale
City, Province
Montreal, QC
Bio

Multimedia artist Gennaro De Pasquale was born in Bisceglie, Italy, in 1969. He lives and works in Montreal, Canada. He completed his fine arts studies in France. He has participated in many individual and collective exhibitions and was initiator and curator of the Post-Audio Esthetic project at the Clark Gallery in 2000. He has shown his works in Europe, Canada, Asia, United States, Brazil, Chile, and Japan. He participated in the exchange between Clark Centre and the Glassbox gallery, shown at the Québec national museum of Fine Arts, and conceived and directed the net art project Post-Audio NetLab. In 2006, he curated the project Post-Audio_DVD, a compilation of audiovisual works created by Montreal artists. De Pasquale has been particularly interested in the representation of sound through images, objects and installations, as well as in sound as matter, language, and autonomous art work. His artistic exploration draws inspiration from a reflection on the impact of technological innovations on our perception of time, the spaces of transmission and socialization.

Year Produced
2010
Genre
Original Media