Excerpts from Multi-Channel Video Works
3 Artworks | 5 Minutes | 2019-2021
Featuring Excerpts from the Following Artworks:
The Art of Fugue, 2019
Five-channel Synced HD Video
Textural Stereo Sound
16'16" (seamless loop)
videoartfugue.com
The Art of Fugue is a multi-channel video featuring five women working in trade industries. The artwork is a chorus of female performers telling stories through the repetitive actions and movements of skilled work. Edited using the traditional musical structure of a fugue, each screen acts as a singular voice contributing to the artwork as a whole. Arranged and composed using a metronome set to 80 beats per minute and a 4/4 time signature, the framework and timing of each video component is highly intentional.
Similar to a musical composition, the videos harmonize in tone, texture, colour, rhythm and contour. The artwork is polyphonic, meaning there are multiple "melodies" that are simultaneously present. Highlighting women in trades is both an aesthetic decision and a symbolic choice. There is strength and resilience to be found in a performer whose work is in a typically male-dominated field. This contributes to the spirit of the video, with the intention of authentically capturing the tenacity and power of the female voice.
This Is for You (An Elegy for My Father), 2020
Three-channel HD Video with 5.1 Surround Sound
Featuring Julia McIntyre on Bass Trombone
9’10”
emiliecrewe.com/This-Is-for-You
This Is for You is an elegiac song featuring prominent Canadian bass trombonist, Julia McIntyre. Situated in an antiquated theatre in Winnipeg, Manitoba, the video drifts through a musical lament, followed by an ode of praise, and eventually concluding with a movement of solace.
The artwork is dedicated to the artist’s father, Murray Crewe (1960-2017), who was the longtime mentor of Julia McIntyre. A bass trombonist himself, he gifted his instrument to his student, Julia, after falling ill a few years before his death in 2017. As Julia’s physical breath moves through the instrument, the bass trombone becomes an extension of her body, and her musical voice reverberates in an empty theatre.
A now weathered object, the trombone itself holds physical remnants of the artist’s father. His fingerprints are embedded within the brass. Skin and oil residue is engrained throughout the instrument, showing decades of handling and wear. This Is for You is a narrative about memory, loss and wading through grief.
Joshua Watson’s Leg (In Four Movements), 2021
Three-channel HD Video
(In Four-Part Symphonic Form)
23’04”
joshuawatsonsleg.com
Structured as a four-part symphony, Joshua Watson’s Leg (In Four Movements), follows the pseudo-historical account of a grave accident resulting in the eventual anthropodermic binding of a disturbing “coroner’s report”. Bookbinder, Henry Newburn, comes across the body of Joshua Watson in the woods. Keeping time, Newburn drags the corpse back to his nearby workshop.
Bindery apprentice, Malin Sorsbie, prepares the body for the tanning process, while subtly tucking away a fractured shard of bone in her apron. As Henry methodically binds a leather book out of Joshua Watson’s skin, a process know as anthropodermic bibliopegy, Malin practices her calligraphy skills on scraps of paper.
Joshua Watson’s Leg (In Four Movements), 2021
https://emiliecrewe.com/Joshua-Watson-s-Leg
Joshua Watson’s Leg (In Four Movements) | 50 second excerpt
Three-channel HD Video
(In Four-Part Symphonic Form)
Vimeo Link: https://vimeo.com/479330407
23’04”
https://emiliecrewe.com/This-Is-for-You
This Is for You (An Elegy for My Father), 2020 | 45 second excerpt
Three-channel HD Video with 5.1 Surround Sound
Featuring Julia McIntyre on Bass Trombone
Vimeo Link: https://vimeo.com/391747842
9’10”
The Art of Fugue, 2019
Project Website: https://videoartfugue.com/
The Art of Fugue, 2019 | 5 minute excerpt
Five-channel Synced HD Video
Stereo Soundscape
Total Running Time: 16'16" (seamless loop)
by Emilie Crewe
Video Excerpts & Documentation
5.5 minutes duration; five artworks
(2014-2017)
Featuring Excerpts from the Following Artworks:
Tributaries, 2017
1.) Tributaries, 2017
HD Video
(Nine-channel Video Collage)
12:28mins
Tributaries is an experimental video collage that documents narratives of the past and present of the City of New Westminster, and its central location along the banks of the Fraser River. The video acts as a scrapbook of sorts, with the intention of evoking a collective historical identity and a sense of place within the audience.
The title, Tributaries, references a river, but is more of a nod to the concept of paying tribute to a larger entity. Comprised of several short montages of people, places and histories, the video as a whole represents a larger story of the area. It takes shape and flows, in a sense, like a river.
Featuring: Stephen Sawchuk (local resident & fly fisherman), Harry Vick (born & raised in New Westminster), Pat Downey (local resident & daughter of Lacrosse Hall-of-Famer, Ed Downey), The New Westminster Salmonbellies Lacrosse team (with Julian Brambleby as the Queen's Park Arena organist), Captain Mark MacKenzie and the The Beta Star Crew, Chief Rhonda Larabee (of the Qayqayt First Nation), and Fin Donnelley (Canadian Politician who swam the 1,325 km length of the Fraser River in 1995 & 2000)
*Commissioned by The City of New Westminster, BC, Canada. In partnership with the New Westminster Museum & Archives, The Fraser River Discovery Centre & the Arts Council of New Westminster.
This project is funded in part by the Government of Canada | Ce projet est financé en partie par le gouvernement du Canada
(A Sense of Place), 2016
2.) (A Sense of Place), 2016
HD Video
3:35 mins
Combining micro and macro images of Vancouver as a "coastal city", this video montage contrasts grand, scenic imagery with realistic (yet slightly dystopic) scenes of industry and shoreline debris.
From afar, Vancouver is an idyllic international city. It is host to films that portray it in an obscure approach, erasing its identity as a city with unique character and a checkered history. Up-close, small details are familiar to those who live here, who walk the coastline and see the city everyday. Little moments, such as toes in the sand, rocks and shells trickling along the shore, a lost sock, a forgotten tennis ball, or a sunken boat add to the sense of place that the viewer experiences.
Exhibited on six video screens in the downtown core of Vancouver, B.C., this temporary public artwork sought to give passersby a glimpse of their city; to bring them out of their daily routine and offer a quiet ebb and flow of city-scapes and somatic close-ups of the beach.
* Commissioned as part of the series, Coastal City, for the 25th Anniversary of the City of Vancouver Public Art Program
This Room/Patterns, 2017
3.) This Room/Patterns, 2017
Single-channel HD Video
(Nine-channel Video Collage)
14:42mins
Performed by Anne Hansen
An older woman feeds on what surrounds her . . . She makes things. She counts seconds as she presses flowers, cataloguing the petals in the dictionary. Keeping time, everyday iteratives are woven with fragments of the past. All the while, the outside world eludes as she is anchored to the 9th floor...
This Room/Patterns is based on the concept of a barnacle: an encrusted species, permanently attached. Depicted in the video is a hermetic, elderly woman reflecting on memories, antiquities and the space around her. Nine windows of moving images are arranged simultaneously to create a video collage.
My grandmother plays the role of the older woman. These are her artifacts, her histories and little moments. Some moments are staged; others are not. She can be heard playing the piano: gentle, elegant and not perfect.
* This Room/Patterns was screened as a public artwork in 2017 for 'Art on the Screens' at Celebration Square in Mississauga, ON, Canada, exhibited at Roman Susan Gallery in Chicago, IL, USA in 2017, exhibited as a looping installation for aDifferent Festival at aCinema in Milwaukee, WI, USA in 2018, and exhibited at Two Rivers Gallery in Prince George, BC, Canada from January to April of 2018.
SELF HELP, 2017
4.) SELF HELP, 2017
HD Video
Single-channel
Can be exhibited with or without sound
SELF HELP features close-up images of an assortment of books being "thumbed through". As the video progresses, the object of the book takes on a sculptural and landscape-like characteristic. As pages flip by, fragments of text are highlighted, offering the viewer a spontaneous poetic narrative. The audience may piece together snippets of words, creating a different viewing experience with each screening.
The title references the books that are in the video: a mixture of classic literature, non-fiction wilderness/travel, and self help books. Additionally, as each viewer pieces together little bits of text, a personalized element of the 'self' comes into play.
* Exhibited as a looping video installation at the University of Mary Washington Media Wall in Fredericksburg, Virginia, USA in March of 2018
Making Circles: The Chilkat Dancing Blanket, 2014
5.) Making Circles: The Chilkat Dancing Blanket, 2014
HD Video
2'47"
"In partnership with Reconciliation Canada, the City is supporting a Year of Reconciliation by acknowledging the negative cultural impacts and stereotypes that resulted from Canada’s residential school system, to witness the process of reconciliation and healing, and advance with a greater shared understanding of the historical impacts that have shaped the experiences of Aboriginal people to date."
- City of Vancouver
Making Circles: The Chilkat Dancing Blanket features an original Anislaga Chilkat Blanket, and the hands of Donna Cranmer (Kwakwaka’wakw), Master Weaver and Anislaga descendent. This particular style of weaving is passed on through generations and is the only known example of perfect circles being created in this format.
Produced in Alert Bay, British Columbia at the U’mista Cultural Society, the video documents the repatriation of a 100-year-old Chilkat Blanket to the Kwakwaka’wakw Nation.