E.V.E Absolute Matrix

2009, 48:00

E.V.E Absolute Matrix is constructed from 86.400 carefully chosen and manipulated video frames from the 5 hour video footage of a studio performance with Toronto musician Eve Egoyan playing Inner Cities, a contemporary 5 hour epic for solo piano by composer Alvin Curran.In this video we see a woman’s head/face persistently and over an extended period of time betraying a multitude of shifting facial expressions slowly moving into an inward mirror image of itself.

Because we see solely the seamless, claustrophobic and morphing close-up of her head/face, and occasionally her bare shoulders, we can only speculate about her activity and remain in uncertainty – or – create our own narrative. (In actuality she is playing the piano, but the viewer will never see this, or recognise the sound as the music). Within the extended time and as the performer responds to the impetus of the music she is playing, or becomes aware of the camera, or is affected by fatigue, her expressions shift and change. The longer we look at the face the more it hovers between momentum and documentum in the extended process the head/face assumes a monumental, iconic, near saintly quality, until at one point the head/ face disassociates from the real.

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS
HD video projector
media player
5.1 surround sound system with optical input
8 speakers and 1 subwoofer or headphones
polished floor
chairs
small table with a jug of water and glasses (provided by artist)

EXHIBITIONS AND PUBLICATIONS
2012 La Nuit des Museés, Canadian Cultural Centre, Paris, France
2010 Musée Quesnel Moriniere: Triennal[e], Coutances, France
2010 Macdonald Stewart Art Centre, Guelph Canada
2010 Macdonald Stewart Art Centre publication, essays by Gary Michael Dault and Sewil Otosed, Toronto Canada
2009 Toronto International Images Festival, Trinity Square Video, Toronto Canada

essay about E.V.E

Images from Macdonald Stewart Art Centre, Guelph Canada, 2010