Sharon Kahanoff
Sharon Kahanoff is a filmmaker, artist, writer and educator. Her works have been exhibited in both cinemas and galleries locally and in the U.S., and she has published in exhibition catalogues, art magazines and other art publications. She is a sessional instructor at Simon Fraser and Emily Carr Universities, a volunteer and board member of Artspeak gallery, and she sits on the program advisory committee at Cineworks. Her interests include the performance and theatricality of social relations in contemporary re-enactment art, and the philosophies and ethics of time expressed through the moving image.
ISABELLE CORNARO, KEREN CYTTER, CHTO DELAT / WHAT IS TO BE DONE?, TARJE EIKANGER GULLAKSEN, SUSAN HILLER, UNA KNOX, ELIZA NEWMAN-SAUL
November 18–January 16, 2010
Underground Man is a project that consists of performance, film screenings, conversation, and a publication that takes method acting as a starting point. This way of acting or dealing with form, language, and representation is one of the most discussed methods in theatre and film, but within contemporary art it is applied in a more disguised (or natural) manner. This project, a case study of sorts, questions if method acting is a way to curb the self within a highly constructed and staged society. How do we act and how do we look at what is depicted?
The title refers to Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground in which the author portrays humans as irrational, uncontrollable, and uncooperative. The novel was considered a forerunner of existentialist thought and conjures up notions of going undercover in order to find information, to move in a space between the collective and the individual, off stage and on stage, between visibility and invisibility, and to be able to stage a context for oneself in order to act upon freely.
In trying to find a new language to discuss the way we live and work, method acting is a metaphor not only for actors. With this in mind, it allows the self to respond differently and flexibly in new situations. But it requires a fine balance between memory and the present—bridging expressions between nature and artificiality, subject, and object—to create radical breaks with the past for the sake of continuity. What becomes visible and what stays invisible? How do we choose?
As method acting requires the use of the self for the sake of external representation, the artists in this project respond to thoughts on form and method, surface and interior, and incorporate performance and film.
MATILDA ASLIZADEH
September 6–October 11, 2003
Sunday is a single channel DVD projection seven minutes in duration. In a highly artificial composite of scenic highway viewpoint and beach, groupings of swimsuit-clad young people gossip, flirt and roughhouse. Each group of characters appears to be oblivious to the goings-on around them, their interactions self-contained elements that occur simultaneously, in a staging reminiscent of the dense and lush allegorical landscapes of Peter Breugel. Boys tussle again and again, and the repetition of this sequence seems more menacing each time. A couple tease each other endlessly with playful aggression; petty judgements are repeated until their meaning shifts. Drawing upon concepts of spatial montage, Sunday presents these staged banalities as discrete concurrent narratives, emphasizing the physical proximity and psychological distance of contemporary culture. As the sequences elapse in independently revolving loops, the gestures and phrases form a vocabulary of filmic performance and an index of specific place and time. In combination, the work disrupts the single point of focus for the viewer’s attention, in much the same way as the television news, advertising or the internet presents us with a pastiche of time and space references in one compressed glance.
Postscript 10: Sharon Kahanoff and Bronwen Payerle on Sunday (PDF)
RENSKE JANSSEN, SHARON KAHANOFF, ELIZA NEWMAN-SAUL, JUDY RADUL
November 21, 2009
Public conversation between Renske Janssen, Eliza Newman-Saul, Judy Radul and Sharon Kahanoff. The subjects will range from work descriptions and anecdotes to contemplation on the power of representation and the potential of suspense.
Underground Man is a project that consists of performance, film screenings, conversation, and a publication that takes method acting as a starting point. This way of acting or dealing with form, language, and representation is one of the most discussed methods in theatre and film, but within contemporary art it is applied in a more disguised (or natural) manner. This project, a case study of sorts, questions if method acting is a way to curb the self within a highly constructed and staged society. How do we act and how do we look at what is depicted?
The title refers to Dostoyevsky’s Notes from Underground in which the author portrays humans as irrational, uncontrollable, and uncooperative. The novel was considered a forerunner of existentialist thought and conjures up notions of going undercover in order to find information, to move in a space between the collective and the individual, off stage and on stage, between visibility and invisibility, and to be able to stage a context for oneself in order to act upon freely.
In trying to find a new language to discuss the way we live and work, method acting is a metaphor not only for actors. With this in mind, it allows the self to respond differently and flexibly in new situations. But it requires a fine balance between memory and the present—bridging expressions between nature and artificiality, subject, and object—to create radical breaks with the past for the sake of continuity. What becomes visible and what stays invisible? How do we choose?
As method acting requires the use of the self for the sake of external representation, the artists in this project respond to thoughts on form and method, surface and interior, and incorporate performance and film.