H EIDI PH ILLIPS CO LLIN ZIPP

Above: Archive, Collin Zipp. Below: Revival, Heidi Phillips. All photos: scott stephens
HEIDI PHILLIPS
REVIVAL
ARCHIVE
COLLIN ZIPP
aceartinc.
MARCH 13 - APRIL 10, 2009
CRITICAL DISTANCE VOL 14:5
“S
oul” is an insipid word these days. Its meaning has gone soft,
linked as it is to clichés about eyes and books about chicken
soup. “Soul stirring” is employed much too liberally in the blurbs
of dust-jackets and movie reviews, indicating a collective impression
that soul is a place provoked, like the painful tickle of a bumped funny
bone, when the world, bathed in light, becomes unbearably pretty. But
the soul in Phillips’ work, Revival, is not merely a place somewhere in
the body where beauty and sublime moments are palpable. In a manner that is spiritual without being overtly religious, Revival describes
the soul as residing in a much further place. ARCHIVE
Collin Zipp
REVIVAL
Heidi Phillips
A RESPONSE BY
Sarah Swan
Revival, Heidi Phillips
In Phillips’ installation, six rickety 16 mm film projectors sit on the floor,
their lengths of film stretched high to reels on the ceiling. If the wonky,
tipped projectors are anthropomorphic, these tall stretches of film are
their deliberately exposed, strung out innards. The six crooked, overlapping projections that surround the viewer are a near hypnotic flickering
of the elements of hand processed colour printing; fractured black and
white negatives, sprockets, and bleach stains shift and collide with occasional bursts of cyan, magenta and yellow. Despite brief moments of
luminous colour, the imagery in Revival creates a dark and murky atmosphere, much like the grainy and mysterious life transferred to screen
via ultrasound.
Phillips’ found footage compilation does not play like carefully crafted art,
rather it plays like the process itself; a series of accidents, discoveries and
chemical experiments. A big-bellied rescue helicopter hovers in the air,
sometimes receding, sometimes approaching, but never quite touching
down. A crowd of hands waving slowly in the searchlights are waiting to
be rescued, their posture also reminiscent of the raised hands of a holy
spirit revival meeting. This loose narrative of rescuee and rescuer seems
to ask, What if the soul is a massive, spreading wasteland? What if its
more than a sub-sternal sensory pad that tingles like a bumped funny
bone? What if it is really a depraved, dark place that needs saving?
Phillips’ process, that of manipulating old films abandoned in the bins
of thrift stores and giving them a new, albeit scratched and distressed
existence, fits hand in hand with the fact that the old projectors were
given a deliberate, central focus in the installation due to their susceptibility to collapse. But if the film projectors are as much a character in
the work as the content of the film itself, so are the walls of surround
sound. Weaving in and around the chronic tickity-tick of the projectors,
the chopping helicopter blades change speed and pitch as they recede
and approach, at times providing a bass-y, grounding presence. Sound
bytes taken from Werner Herzog’s “Little Deiter Needs to Fly” float in
Revival, Heidi Phillips
from above, and when brought together in Phillips’ artist book, read
like the transcribed nightmare of a solemn omnipresent narrator.
This is basically what death looks like to me
It was like an all mighty being as it came out
Floating along in a
real thick medium
The emotional thrust of the soundtrack happens in one achingly contained moment. Twenty seconds of soaring operatic melody, barely
enough to create a brief hopeful reprieve from the screen’s ominous
glow. Though the projections are not time based, the moment can be felt
as epic, a climax of the spiritual ecstasy longed for when experiencing a
Revival, Heidi Phillips
Archive, Collin Zipp
dark night of the soul. It is of existential significance perhaps, that Phillips’
helicopter never lands, and that the hands continue to wave, as if in trance,
seemingly forever.
Move from the soul to the realm of science, where Collin Zipp’s work
archive resembles a sort of cryptic museum collection, at once an homage to the beauty of the natural world and a testimony of its slow demise.
The collection consists of 12 movable elements, rearranged by the artist
throughout the duration of the show. The collection’s stacked bee hives
are totemic, yet as each layer is swathed in plastic they, along with the
sealed mason jars of honey and wax, have a suffocated, hushed feel.
Indeed, all the objects in Zipp’s collection resonate quietly, especially
the three vestigial harpoons wrapped in twine and burlap, reminding
of both Beuys and Christo. The objects’ stillness is emphasized by their
Archive, Collin Zipp
placement next to the movement on the video terminals, one depicting
a frenzy of bees and the other slowly lurking shapes at the bottom of an
ocean. Most the the objects in archive are mounted on wooden scaffolding and appear to be randomly placed, as though taken posthumously
from the basement storage of some obscure naturalist and given a good
dusting. A wall sized grid of bird photographs is incomplete, its empty
spaces indicating a failed or extinct species. But the most effective elements in the collection are those that are the most subtle. A black and
white photograph of a hooded figure lilting across a barren landscape
could be a man in the garb of beekeeper or an astronaut on a distant
planet. A faded blueprint of the dotted lines of a boat’s sonar, the undulating line of a sepia tinged seismic graph, and the sparse dots that are
the animated migration patterns of birds are all beautifully, minimally
graphic. The viewer may not know the exact meaning or purpose of what
they are seeing in these documents yet a careful, alternative understanding can still be achieved. There is poetry in science, in the precision and
delicacy of our measuring instruments and tracking technologies. And
yet, Zipp’s work is not a one-off statement. It is more like a conversation between two parties, with humankind’s appetite and appreciation
for beauty and technology on one side and the negative effects of this
hunger on the other. It is the dialogue too, between the nearly reliquary
pieces in the collection and the more modern technologies that saves
the work from becoming a heavy handed environmentalist lecture. This
nuanced language is especially important in a culture already saturated
with ‘green’ planet friendly vernacular. A table of obsessively rendered
wire sculptures encapsulates the dialogue perfectly. These small twisting
Archive, Collin Zipp
shapes, like black calligraphic doodles come to three dimensional life,
resemble cell phone towers but are arranged like a herd of animals on
a field. When crouched at eye level, it is possible to see in the sculpture
an exquisitely austere, apocalyptic landscape. This is why in the objects
Zipp has archived there is both lament and intrigue.
Archive, comprised of mostly found objects, is somewhat of a departure for Zipp, who has gained some notoriety for his video based work.
It is interesting to note that in the trajectory of his, as well as Phillip’s
art, there is a new leaning towards experimentation with non-video
media and heightened tactility. And both artists’ latest offerings are
laced through with a dark and beautiful doom.
aceartinc.
2nd floor, 290 McDermot Ave. Winnipeg MB R3B 0T2
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Critical Distance is a writing program of aceartinc.
that encourages critical writing and dialogue about
contemporary art. The program is an avenue for
exploration by emerging and established artists
and writers. Written for each exhibition mounted at
aceartinc. these texts form the basis of our annual
journal Paper Wait.
aceartinc. is an Artist-Run Centre dedicated
to the development, exhibition and dissemination of contemporary art by cultural producers.
aceartinc. maintains a commitment to emerging artists and recognizes its role in placing
contemporary artists in a larger cultural context. aceartinc. is dedicated to cultural diversity in its programs and to this end encourages applications from contemporary artists
and curators identifying as members of GLBT
(gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender), Aboriginal
(status, non-status, Inuit, Métis) and all other
cultural communities.
aceartinc. gratefully acknowledges the generous
support of associate members and donors, our
volunteers, the Manitoba Arts Council, The Canada
Council for the Arts, Media Arts and Visual Arts Sections, The City of Winnipeg Arts Council, WH and
SE Loewen Foundation, the Winnipeg Foundation,
The Family of Wendy Wersch, Kromar Printing, and
the Sign Source.
Above: Revival, Heidi Phillips. Below: Archive, Collin Zipp.