"Master" Opening at the New Media Gallery

In the age of the influencer and the influenced ; of multiple truths, platforms and laws; of shifting and contested boundaries, bodies and borders, the practice of (cinematic) appropriation persists. Cultural theorist Jacque Derrida once called the persistence of elements that evoke the past, an hauntology…a play on the word ontology or the study of existence… questioning if there is a fundamental substance, and whether or not things are real. (Cinematic) appropriation continues to persist, like all useful and valuable materials and strategies, as something artists can ream and roil; deform and detach… and mine for rich, intrinsic interpretations. These new works reflect the world we live in, or they voice inner worlds of imagination and perception. As a supplement, cinema leaves behind the extraordinary trace, ready to be scraped, remixed and reactivated in increasingly new ways as new technologies and new situations emerge.

The cinematic moments in this exhibition are borrowed from a master manipulator. Six artists from five countries use appropriated cinema from one celebrated Director; a material that is ripe with compulsion, dislocation and flawed humanity; a material identifiable for its memorable sound, colour, places, personalities and psychologies. Eight extraordinary installations offer imaginative reflections on how AI metabolizes & dreams, a robotic exploration of human potential, AI that surveils human emotions, a rumination on filmic marginalia, a series of imaginary journeys retraced, a hypnotic spectacle, a lock that connects space and time, and a monologue on television as a metaphor for human mortality.

‘The Director’ is a character at once fictitious and real; a surveilling presence confined to a small screen. The exhibition design references a cinematic totality confined (and perhaps liberated?) by its domestic setting. Each new soundscape moves us through an iterative process of memory, surreal repetition, uncanny voiceover, and base heartbeat.

MASTER marks a decade for New Media Gallery. Six artists from around the world appropriate the films of one celebrated director to create startlingly new interpretations. The works span a quarter century (2000 – 2024) with two early works reconstructed or remastered. Over the past decade New Media Gallery has presented the work of more than 200 international artists in 35 group exhibitions, representing over half a century of extraordinary artistic accomplishment in new media.