Becoming ... considers architecture and changing urban environments. The video installation juxtaposes traditional views and housing styles with the radically new designs appearing in four major urban centres, Vancouver, Montreal, Toronto (Canada) and Berlin. Jokes focusing on professional practitioners are interspersed amongst the city views. Distinct sound from each urban centre accompanies the four videos.
In each of the four individual works that comprise Becoming ..., every shot is a fixed camera frame that presents a dialogue between old and new elements of the built environment in each of the four cities. Each shot suggests juxtaposition unique to these locales.
"The work of Lisa Steele and Kim Tomczak, in view of material built up during a twenty-year period (...), also proves to be strikingly open. As such, it entertains various approaches to interpretation. Since the medium favored by this pair of Canadian artists is video, employed as a vector of social documentation it might easily be seen as a contribution to 'guerilla TV' to borrow Marita Sturken's concept: an exploration of video's documentary potential to counteract the information conveyed by the major media."
From Paul Ardenne: "Trouble Tracked to the Depths of the Body/
L'Inquietude pistée jusqu'au fond des corps – before I wake.", collection Esplanade, Centre culturel Canadien, Paris, 2003
Canada 2008, 4-channel HD video installation
Lisa Steele was born in 1947 in Kansas City, Missouri and is a Canadian citizen. Kim Tomczak was born in 1952 in Victoria, British Columbia. They live and work in Toronto, Canada. They have worked exclusively in collaboration since 1983, producing videotapes, performances and photo/text works. Their exhibition This text/that image/these words/those pictures, comprised of two multi-part photo text works produced while in residence at the Akademie Schloss Solitude, is currently on exhibition until March 8, 2009.
Presented in collaboration with the Embassy of Canada.
Lisa Steele & Kim Tomczak
Becoming ...
4-channel HD video installation
Canada 2008
