Artists at Hotshot Gallery

Superexorcist
By Ulysses Castellanos
Three channel video installation and Performance, 2009

Superexorcist is a composite film that will be mixed live by combining William Friedkin’s The Exorcist with it’s sequel: Exorcist II: The Heretic

The Exorcist is one of the most compelling horror films ever created. In terms of its significance, it is second only to W.F. Murnau’s Nosferatu, A Symphony of Terror

Why is The Exorcist so important? Because as well as being a truly horrifying motion picture, its theme goes to the core of our humanity. The Exorcist is a study on Faith, the loss of Faith, and the regaining of Faith through an act of personal sacrifice. The film also deals, quite masterfully, with the battle between good and evil. Its message is that goodness will always prevail.

A little girl, the daughter of a famous movie star, is possessed by the devil. The mother of the girl lives a life of luxury and is not interested in matters of faith. Through a series of terrible incidents, the little girl becomes a foul-mouthed, blasphemous monster. The mother tries every avenue available through science to cure the girl, but without any success. Finally, in desperation, she turns to a priest: Father Karras. Dimmi Karras is a poor man. He is unable to care for his mother, and she dies in a poor house. The priest feels burdened by his work as a psychiatrist for the church, and loses his faith. The little girl’s mother begs father Karras to help her daughter, but Karras is skeptical. He is a man of science, and exorcisms are a thing that the church would rather not talk about. He is moved by the plight of the little girl, however, and agrees to assist the Exorcist in removing the demon from the little girl. A battle between the Exorcist and the demonic entity possessing the girl ensues, and the Exorcist is killed.  And then, through an act of selflessness, father Karras forces the devil to leave the little girl, and as he himself becomes possessed, father Karras plunges himself through a window onto the street below, where dies, a martyr.

In Exorcist II: The Heretic, the background to the original film is revealed. We find that the demon possessing the girl is called Pazuzu (an ancient Sumerian denizen of the underworld, which closely resembles our own image of the devil) and that the action in the film originates in Africa. The little girl is now a teenager, and through hypnosis, comes face to face with the demon. It is revealed that she is pure of heart, and as such, a perfect target for demonic possession. The sequel to the Exorcist is considered to be of much lesser quality than the original. It is, in fact, a blasphemy against the original film, which was masterfully crafted by William Friedkin from Richard Peter Blatti’s original novel. Nonetheless, Exorcist II: The Heretic features a stellar cast that includes Burt Lancaster and James Earl Jones. Whereas the original Exorcist does not satisfy our need for resolution, for a Hollywood ending (though the little girl is freed from her ordeal, Father Karras, the hero of the story, dies) The Exorcist II supplies the audience with a tidy explanation that is more science fiction than horror. In fact, The Exorcist II: The Heretic is not in the least scary.

It is my aim to combine these two films in order to create a “Superexorcist” that features a young, defenceless Regan, with a teenaged, evil Regan. By mixing the masterful original with its sub par counterpart, I aim to produce a tension between the polished and the unpolished, the past and the future, the pure and the impure, for the ultimate battle of good versus evil.

Superexorcist will be mixed live from the two films, and will be projected by two video projectors onto a single screen, running the entire length of the two films.

The Fall
Sweet art transformative Performance
By Theo Pelmus
Performance, and video projection, 2009

My process of work can be described as a continuous construction and deconstruction of identity. In my performances I create environments in which elements from sculpture, video and music fuse in unusual ways. Driven by the idea of reinventing body anatomy I use elements that either come from the live spectre (such as butterflies) or elements that imitate life (such as red liquid circulating through tubes imitating blood flow, or a self-portrait busts made from chocolate, sugar, ice cream). The video, sound and sculptural elements that I incorporate in my performances create an environment that is completed in a sensorial way by the public.
The Fall/Sweet Art Transformative Performance is part of a series of performances in which time marks stages of radical transformation/ transcendence. The performance consists in staging a metaphysical environment.
This performance is based on the idea of instability and constant movement. Everything is in a continuous shift. Worlds are fused one with each other in a crisis experience.  
The general setting of the performance consists of a 10 minute video-projection that appropriates footage from Andrei Tarkovsky’s last film The Sacrifice. The image is of a moving room as in an earthquake. Six characters interact with each other in a nervous state. At one point one of the women has a nervous breakdown. Writing appears and disappears on the video projection saying: Sweet Art Sweet Art, Eat me Eat me, Dissolve, Suck, Blood, Have a Candy Art, Crisis, Fall. In front of the video-projection there are three self-portrait heads made from sugar. The video projection screen has two tubes that are coming out of it attached to twenty-liter bags filled with coloured water (red and blue). I suck the water and let it run continuously in a transparent vase and in the self-portraits heads made from sugar. The water melts the sugar transforming the head sculpture into liquid. At the end I jump up and down with the head filled with water trying not to spill the water from it. I then fall down with it smashing it on the stage. The smashed and oozing water and sugar pieces audio-visually complete my fall. As the final gesture of the performance I give to the public candies made from the same type of sugar as the self-portraits.
With this performance I present a transitory and unstable experience where the self is in constant movement and transformation. The viewer experiences the ecstasy of the fall.  

Artists at Pixel Gallery

Faith Fighter
By Paolo Pedercini -Molleindustria
Interactive videogame installation, 2008

We can no longer consider videogaming as a marginal element of our everyday lives. In recent years, the turnover of the videogame industry has exceeded that of cinema, and there are a growing number of adult and female players. There are more frequent overlaps with other media: there are videogames for advertisements (advergames), for educational purposes and for electoral propaganda. How did videogames become such a central element of the mediascape? During the second half of the nineties, major entertainment corporations extended their activities in this sector and extinguished or absorbed small producers. Now videogames are an integral part of the global cultural industry, and they are in a strategic position in the ongoing processes of media convergence. These developments inhibit the political and artistic emancipation of this medium: every code line is written for the profit of a big corporation.
One solution: Gamevolution! We believe that the explosive slogan that spread quickly after the Anti-WTO demostrations in Seattle, "Don't hate the media, become the media," applies to this medium. We can free videogames from the "dictatorship of entertainment", using them instead to describe pressing social needs, and to express our feelings or ideas just as we do in other forms of art. But if we want to express an alternative to dominant forms of gameplay we must rethink game genres, styles and languages. The ideology of a game resides in its rules, in its invisible mechanics, and not only in its narrative parts. That's why a global renewal of this medium will be anything but easy.
Who we are Molleindustria is an italian team of artists, designers and programmers that aims at starting a serious discussion about social and political implications of videogames. This will involve media activists, net-artists, habitual players and critics and detractors of videogames. We chose to start with online gaming in order to sidestep mainstream distribution channels and to overcome our lack of means. Using simple but sharp games we hope to give a starting point for a new generation of critical game developers and, above all, to experiment with practices that can be easily emulated and virally diffused.

Faith Fighter is the ultimate fighting game for these dark times. Choose your belief and kick the shit out of your enemies. Give vent to your intolerance! Religious hate has never been so much fun.

Big Stories, Little India
www.savac.net/littleindia
By Collaboration between SAVAC and [murmur]
Artists: Amin Rehman, Ambereen Siddiqui, Avantika Bawa, Brendan Fernandes, Rashmi Varma and Zaheed Mawani
Multidisciplinary Art Project and online documentation, 2007-2008

Big Stories, Little India is a multidisciplinary art and audio project that is situated in Toronto’s Gerrard Street India Bazaar. Initiated by SAVAC (South Asian Visual Arts Centre) and [murmur], this project engages aspects of oral history alongside the process of art making. Through this collaboration, both SAVAC and [murmur] hope to highlight the otherwise absent histories from the Gerrard Street India Bazaar and to connect people to the stories and places they inhabit.

Commonly known as ‘Little India’, this diverse and diasporic South Asian market not only caters to Southern Ontario’s growing South Asian community, but is also more broadly known for its colourful and ‘exotic’ cultural milieu, namely, food and clothing from the South Asian subcontinent. Toronto’s Gerrard Street India Bazaar is the oldest “Little India” neighbourhood in North America. Located along six blocks between Greenwood and Coxwell Avenues on Toronto’s east side, what is not commonly known however are the stories of the first immigrants and their settlement in the neighbourhood as well as the shared experiences of newer visitors to the area. Apart from the gloss of fashion and food, the archive of knowledge is undocumented and only lives with the people who work and live near the Gerrard Street India Bazaar. Big Stories, Little India seeks to explore and expand on the stories of specific areas and the people connected to it.

Comprised of both audio recordings of stories, community workshops and site-specific artworks, artists Amin Rehman, Ambereen Siddiqui, Avantika Bawa, Brendan Fernandes, Rashmi Varma and Zaheed Mawani have created works that are informed by the oral stories they have collected. Located in various parts of the Gerrard Street east, these artworks use a variety of approaches to coalesce and visualize the stories around people’s experiences of the neighbourhood. Ranging from large vinyl texts, to site specific installations, to film and video projections, these artists have also collected stories and anecdotes from business owners, shoppers and the people who frequent and live in the neighbourhood. The story recordings are also made available to the public either via the internet or through the marked [murmur] locations in the Gerrard Street India Bazaar.

Through this website SAVAC and [murmur] are delighted to bring all the information collected through oral stories, community workshops and artist projects online. As a result, Big Stories, Little India will continue to engage a wider audience who will be able to connect and share their own stories of the Gerrard Street India Bazaar regardless of geographic location.

Mes/My Contacts
www.agencetopo.qc.ca/contacts/index.htm
By L’agence Topo
Curator and artist: Élène Tremblay
Artists: Marcio Lana Lopez, Maryse Larivière, Marie-Josée Hardy, James Prior
Web art project, 2007

The web lends itself easily to the constructed identity and brings up many questions as to what is true or false in the information offered by the people who stage it: the web has become a relational tool with which individuals try to forge closer relations.
Curator Élène Tremblay has invited four artists who have developed fictitious identities in their practices to create works where these probable identities could spread. Net surfers will be invited to discover them, to witness fragments of their life and to form relationships with them, in a context where certain doubts could arise as to the existence of these characters.

The artists, Marie-Josée Hardy, Maryse Larivière, Marcio Lana-Lopez and James Prior, pose as characters being telephoned by the owner of a lost cell phone. Their names, telephone numbers and other personal information appear on the menu of the cell phone, which serves as an interface to contact each of them, at least with the accessible elements of their personae.

Start Dreaming
By Eshrat Erfanian
2 channel Video Installation, 18 minutes, 2007

"Start Dreaming" is a commentary on our lived environment and its state of social psychology. Captions of residential neighborhoods in suburb of Toronto and pre war residential houses in Berlin, are juxtaposed with maquettes of
neighborhoods, which are randomly destroyed. These models are built with replicas of Bauhaus souvenir toy houses, from Bauhaus Archives in Berlin. The still-moving images of the residential neighborhoods is a homage to 60s / 70s cinema, e.g. Antonioni, and how the seemingly banal long shots are telling of something significant. These shots combined with the eeriness of being watched by a surveillance camera view, makes "Start Dreaming" explore our built environment, fear of destruction and its imposed paranoia. The utopian sound of the rain, interrupted by the sound of digitally layered 180 love songs, adds to the acknowledgment of our lack of ability to imagine a new utopia.

Sphere Line Cube
By Autotelic
Artists: Patricio Davila, Rob King, Ken Leung
Interactive installation, 2008

As a purely ludic experience, this installation invites the participant to create and play with a linear object that will live in a cube. Using an updated stereoscope viewing booth as the interface this installation recreates the setting of the Victorian-era science fiction story Flatland by Edwin Abbott Abbott and lets participants engage with these geometric elements, as environments, objects and controllers in the installation.