nostalgia (april 2001 to present)

“The picture of the world that’s presented to the public has only the remotest relation to reality…” – Noam Chomsky “In a colour fest of broken emulsions, the artist reconvenes a suite of feel good 50s adverts for a better life. A young boy on a bicycle, a blonde smiler on a tricycle, two men at a clothesline, the crisp border of neighborhood lawns appearing as if no one had ever set foot on them. The world is blank and the first line I lay across it is perfect, and then the second marks an intersection and the town is born. Everything recognizable as a picture arrives via drawings, stills, which are gathered here in a restless, teeming movement. Animation but not Saturday morning cartoons. “Mom waves good-bye to her two darlings at the front door. They have never had a problem because those words haven’t been invented yet. No shadows, no sense that there was ever a moment that wasn’t this moment. Whose nostalgia does this white world belong to? Whose idea of perfect is this? In the hands of the artist each frame has been stressed and fractured and re-presented with all of the fault lines clearly on display. Cohen liked to sing to us, ‘There is a crack in everything. That’s where the light comes in.’ The drunken band plays on, the strings staggered and staggering. Who will tell them to stop?” – Mike Hoolboom, 2007 Selected Screenings: International Film Festival Rotterdam, 2007; Festival du Nouveau Cinéma, Montreal, QC, 2006