electronic shamanism

"It is through the flesh that we will make the metaphysical manifest in our spirits."
- Antonin Artaud

ELECTRONIC SHAMANISM
Jackson 2bears & Ted Hiebert, Joseph Lefevre & Martine Koutnouyan, Geoffrey Pugen and Alyce Santoro

Curated by Min-Jeong (M.J.) Kim.

Alyce Santoro's Satellite Dish Hat

Opening Reception: Friday, January 23, 8pm
Exhibition runs January 23-February 28, 2009
InterAccess Electronic Media Arts Centre, 9 Ossington Ave, Toronto

InterAccess is pleased to present Electronic Shamanism, an exhibition of four interactive electronic media art works from Victoria, Toronto, Montreal and Texas that incorporate kinesthetic interaction and a wide range of sensorial engagements to examine the similarity between the shamanic experience and our interactions with high technology. The works in the exhibition also consider technology as a vehicle and mediator of shamanistic experiences, bringing spirituality and technology together, combining age old rituals and emergent media.

Please join us on Friday, January 23 at 8pm for a special opening reception, with an interactive performance by Victoria based artists' Jackson 2bears and Ted Hiebert.

More about the works in the exhibition:
Bringing together contemporary techno-cultural studies and indigenous teachings, 2bears and Hiebert's (Victoria) performance Electronic Shamanism is a study in the manifestation of an alternative self through the application of technology and trance. The performance incorporates experimental sound and video, brainwaves, neurofeedback and hardware self-hypnosis techniques to create an ever-looping process of self evaluation and activation.

Joseph Lefevre & Martine Koutnouyan's (Montreal) The Shaman's Space is an interactive web installation that prompts gallery goers to take on the role of shaman: they wander through this cyber realm, meet spirits of the past, become friends with a family of Siberian bears, beat on caveman drums and float through the air. This uncanny yet welcoming world converges with reality through links acting as mediators connecting the human and the sacred, the real and the imaginary.

Toronto's own Geoffrey Pugen's Aerobia is a whimsical interactive piece that seeks to identify a person's inner animal and manifest it spiritually and physically. Participants enter a lycra-enclosed cocoon-like structure where they are prompted to discover their inner animal through a video that is reminiscent of a 1980s instructional workout video. This playful piece promotes the rediscovery of human beings' primitive urges to revisit their deepest subjective animal desires.

Finally, Texas based Alyce Santoro plays with notions of past lives and other world life. With Sonic Dress, communication with the past is made easy through this playful piece created out of woven audio cassette tape that, when rubbed with a special glove, culls forth voices of other times. Likewise, in Satellite Dish Hat, the participant is able to connect with otherworld beings through pseudo scientific interaction. For Santoro, anything in our everyday life can be interacted with as a sacred object that inspires us spiritually and connects us with the spiritual world.

For more information about the exhibition, please go to: www.interaccess.org.

InterAccess Electronic Media Arts Centre
9 Ossington Avenue
Toronto, Ontario M6J 2Y8
Canada
T +1.416.599.7206
F +1.416.599.7015
help(dot)me(at)interaccess(dot)org