The Contact Zone

The second program began with three videos by Kevin Jerome Everson including his 2007 short According to… which consists of three stories of murder, apparently decades old,  each told twice and punctuated by scenes of an elderly man collecting his newspaper from his front porch. The stories are represented as news reports, whether or not the incidents described and footage accompanying them are complete fictions or actual events, I’m unsure. I’m inclined to think they’re a combination, consequently pointing both to how the reporting of current events ought to be received with a critical eye, but also how that reportage becomes part of history, a history that can be mined to unearth new histories. Rea Tajiri’s History and Memory came to mind.

The Contact Zone Crew performance was probably one of the most anticipated events of Signal + Noise 2009, and the Wayde Compton and Jason de Couto did not disappoint. The half hour of turntable-based sound poetry saw a minimum of audience fidgeting and during the Q&A Compton and de Couto were complimented for several things including their commitment to crate digging, rather than staring into laptops.  This element of commitment is something I spoke about more generally with sound artist Sara Gold (whose work appeared in the Immortal Noise program) earlier in the week. In conversation with Gold the commitment admired was related to endurance over time, performances over hours or days. I wondered about how perhaps this element of commitment and endurance that impresses audiences has to do with legitimizing work in this age of appropriation, if it somehow makes up for the loss of Romantic or Modern notions of originality and newness. Though some might argue that those notions have been challenged, not excised, and that when appropriated elements are combined by artists such as Compton and de Couto, with thought and sincerity, something new does emerge.  

credit: Sarah Young

Michael Bell Smith | Chapters 1-12 of R. Kelly’s Trapped in the Closet Synced and Played Simultaneously | 2005 | 4:22mins | BetaSP | USA

Kevin Jerome Everson | Undefeated | 2008 | 1:30mins | 16mm/DV | USA | Canadian Premiere