Knot Project Space hosted Laura Taler as the first artist in its new residency initiative, Expanded Practice. During her residency, the Ottawa-based artist primarily experimented with the presentation of her new multi-channel work Song Two: El Adios in advance of her exhibition of Three Songs at Carleton University Art Gallery in summer 2020.
Expanded Practice
Expanded Practice was Knot Project Space’s three-week intensive artist residency, offered to producing members of SAW Video Media Art Centre to expand the scope of their projects beyond the screening environment and into installation/exhibition formats. The resident artist was provided with a fee, a materials budget, unlimited access to the project space and an array of audio-visual equipment for the duration of their residency, during which they are invited to experiment with the spatial orientation of the moving image, the distribution of sound, and other tactics for presentation and audience engagement. Through an emphasis on open, hands-on technological play and frequent discussions with Knot Project Space’s curatorial staff, the Expanded Practice residency sought to create a collaborative environment in which the artist strategises with the art-space around the materiality and physicality of video and sound.
In order to sustain an open, tangential structure for artistic experimentation, there was no final public exhibition attached to artist’s participation in the Expanded Practice residency. Instead, the public was invited to visit the space during a series of “Drop-In Sessions” throughout the artist’s residency period to view the work in an in-progress and modular state. The artist or curatorial staff was present at each of these sessions to contextualise the work for the visitor and frame the trajectory of their spatial explorations.
Laura Taler
Romanian-born Canadian artist Laura Taler began her career as a contemporary dance choreographer before turning her attention to filmmaking and visual art. Throughout her career Taler has explored the links between movement, memory, and history by using cinematic and choreographic devices to articulate how the body is able to carry the past without being oppressed by it.
Related Programming
Dialogue: Laura Taler + Gunnar Iversen. June 27, 2019. Knot Project Space.