2021 Grad Show

Andrea Gardner

Media Arts

I am a multidisciplinary artist based in Calgary, Alberta. Performance and video are my usual mediums, though sometimes I work with traditional drawing and sculpture. I record videos of myself performing the labor of mental, physical, and creative upkeep. Through this I reflexively investigate my position within a body (not specifically a "woman's", white, or able body but simply a body which mediates between internal and external experiences) and as someone who hopes to make a living doing creative, fulfilling, things. I explore the qualities of labor such as duration, enjoyability, and physical exhaustiveness. Through this work, I critique the various forms of false consciousness and cognitive dissonance inherent in Capitalism. Capitalism promotes an increasingly technological world, at the expense of wild nature which is rapidly being destroyed due to its relentless excavation of profit. I also like to use video to explore human relationships to technology, specifically screens, by thinking of screens as being simultaneously a portal and a barrier. My goal is to find out how to create more authentic and anti-capitalistic connections with nature, and our complex internal worlds alongside a screen filled reality.

Photo image courtesy of Jemi Sian

Natural Techscape

VR Forest

Does it make a sound? This was recorded on the Douglas Fir Trail, off of the treaded path. Originally, I was trying to produce something like David Hockney's Four Seasons, a video collage of multiple views of the same subject. Before I collected the shots, I sat still to record some sound. Afterwards, I got up to record some shots and I noticed how funny and ominous the recording device and headphones looked amid the wild natural scape, missing a listener.

Screen Life In this video there are three screen recordings of me trying to gain a more intimate understanding of the park near my house through the tool of technology with varying degrees of success. I think this was an interesting exercise as someone who feels that excessive screen use in nature is offensive. I basically went about my normal walk, but took an active role in using these apps to understand the life around me. As a result, I got lost, and spent more time actually engaging with the nature.

Live, Laugh, Labor

Short Vids 2021

Here's a collection of performance/video works I did during 2021.