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  • Antonia Hirsch

    Antonia Hirsch is an artist whose work has been exhibited at ZKM Museum of Contemporary Art, Karlsruhe, the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Power Plant in Toronto, and the Contemporary Art Gallery in Vancouver, among others. Her work can be found in public collections such as that of the Vancouver Art Gallery, the National Gallery of Canada, and the Sackner Archive of Concrete and Visual Poetry, Miami Beach.

  • Andrew Klobucar

  • Lorna Brown

    Lorna Brown is a visual artist, writer, educator and editor, exhibiting her work internationally since 1984. Brown was the Director/Curator of Artspeak Gallery from 1999 to 2004 and is a founding member of Other Sights for Artists’ Projects, a collective of artists, architects and curators presenting projects that consider the varying conditions of public places and public life. She has taught at Emily Carr University of Art and Design and Simon Fraser University. Brown received an honorary degree from Emily Carr University of Art and Design (2015), the Vancouver Institute for the Visual Arts Award (1996) and the Canada Council Paris Studio Award (2000). Her work is in the collections of the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, the National Gallery of Canada, the BC Arts Council, the Surrey Art Gallery and the Canada Council Art Bank.

    Director/Curator of Artspeak 1999–2004.

Exhibitions

Pulse

ANTONIA HIRSCH
April 23–May 31, 2003

Pulse, a new installation work, combines several elements: a pseudo-scientific tool that suggests a medical diagnostic instrument or a navigational device, echocardiographic imagery, and sound. The apparatus invites the viewer to peer into its eyepiece revealing a radar screen. As the radar beam sweeps across the scope, it becomes apparent that the radar does not reveal geographical territory, but rather rhythmically animated images of the human heart.

The audio component is a live short wave radio broadcast of Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) and is clearly audible only in close proximity to the viewing device. Every minute, a voice announcement tells the time of day in Greenwich, England, and there is a ‘tick’ for each second. This broadcast can be received in nearly all parts of the globe. UTC is one of the coordinates referenced by the Global Positioning System (GPS) and follows the standard cartographic model, which designates Europe to be at the centre of the world. In Pulse, the contractions of the heart frequently appear completely synchronized with the time signal, until both beats drift apart again.

Antonia Hirsch’s recent work investigates the many paradoxes of time and the mechanisms employed to track and maintain this consensual fiction. The history of international time zones, and the world view inherent in the politics of their implementation, have been explored previously in Recovery, in which Hirsch captured twenty-nine minutes in a Winnipeg rail yard to ‘replace’ those lost in that city’s commitment to conforming to Central Standard Time.

Pulse furthers these interests by gauging the lapse and delay between the arbitrary construct of time, the momentary failures in the systems that measure it, and the bodily and geophysical terrain where time and technology play out their mechanisms of control.

Antonia Hirsch was born in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. Based in Vancouver since 1995, she has presented solo exhibitions across Canada, most recently at Gallery 44 in Toronto and Xeno Gallery in Vancouver. She has participated in numerous group exhibitions in Europe and in Canada; in 2001 her work Empire Line was included in the comprehensive These Days exhibition at Vancouver Art Gallery. Antonia Hirsch’s work is currently on show at the Art Gallery of Mississauga and will be featured in a solo exhibition at the Kitchener Waterloo Art Gallery later this year. In 2004 her work will be seen at the Saidye Bronfman Centre for the Arts in Montréal.

The artist acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts.

Postscript 08: Andrew Klobucar on Pulse (PDF)

Talks & Events

  • Publication Launch

    ANTONIA HIRSCH
    May 31, 2003

    Please join us for the premiere of a new book project: Lines Spoken For, by Antonia Hirsch. This publication is produced in conjunction with her exhibition Pulse running from April 26th to May 31st, 2003 at Artspeak.

     

Publications

  • Lines Spoken For

    LSF Front
    LSF spine
    LSF back

    Title: Lines Spoken For
    Category: Artist Book
    Artist: Antonia Hirsch
    Editor: Artspeak
    Design: Judith Steedman
    Publisher: Artspeak
    Year published: 2003
    Pages: 24 circular pages
    Cover: Paperback
    Binding: Single Bolt
    Features: Folio Box
    Dimensions: 16 x 16 x 1.5 cm
    Weight: 171 g
    ISBN: 0-921394-44-6
    Price: $5 CDN

    Designed by Judith Steedman in collaboration with Antonia Hirsch, this artist’s book uses a rotating binding system and circular pages to undo the logic of the structure of the book and remix notions of time and narrative progression. Together, the two components of Lines Spoken For contribute to Hirsch’s on-going investigation of the many paradoxes of time by questioning the consensual nature of pervasive systems regulating nearly all aspects of society.


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