Grand Gestures

Reflecting on the rapid obsolescence of video technology, grand Gestures, memorializes and commemorates the vain attempts we make at preserving our memories.

People make 'home movies' in order to create permanent reminders of moments they might otherwise forget. More often than not, it is the video itself that replaces the actual memories, and it is only through this medium that moments can be (re)experienced at all. Pushing at the possibilities of video as a memorial object, grand Gestures consists of three linked projects - installations at TPW, TSV and in public spaces along Queen St West. Each project uses the aesthetics of public memorials and museums to discuss the preservation of video and its inherent value system.

Exhibition Details
September 6 to October 13, 2007 Opening Reception: Thursday September 6, 2007 5:00 to 7:00 at Trinity Square Video 7:00 to 9:00 at Gallery TPW

Public Sites Map

View a map with the sites of 640 480's memorial plaques.

MAP

Media Coverage

640 480 Speaks, View on Canadian Art, August 29, 2007

Part One: Trinity Square Video

The Trinity Square Video component will be an installation of hundreds of wearable memorial pins made out of VHS tape, that visitors are encouraged to take with them as a memento of the project. People can choose to wear them or leave them at the public sites of the plaques.

Part Two: Public Sites

TThe public component consists of ten 'memorial' style plaques interspersed along Queen West between TSV and TPW. Each bronze plaque will contain a partial transcription of a personal video that has been created on Queen St., which 640 480 sourced from youtube.com. By memorializing these banal and inconsequential videos with such markers of public remembrance, 640 480 draws our attention to the fleeting nature of video.

Part Three: Gallery TPW

Video has proven one of the greatest aids in the effort to preserve precious memories. However these attempts at immortality will ultimately be defeated by both time and technological progress – eventually the tapes used to record video break down physically.

640 480 proposes that these aging videocassettes be transformed into the strongest natural material in the world: a diamond. Memories are wrested free from the burden of decay and transformed into a beautiful object of great symbolic, aesthetic and cultural value.

In a high-nitrogen, low-oxygen environment, carbon is captured from – in this instance – the 'cremated' remains of a videocassette tape. The carbon from these cremains is converted into graphite that is placed in a diamond synthesis press. Here the carbon is exposed to 5.0-6.0 Gigapascals of pressure and temperatures that reach 2000° Celsius – mimicking the terrestrial conditions that would naturally produce a diamond. After approximately 24 weeks, an actual diamond is formed.