Gina Czarnecki - Spine
2 – 12 March 2006
AV Festival
Civic Centre Bell Tower
Newcastle upon Tyne, UK
28 Jun – 23 Aug 2006
Laneways06
Union Lane
Melbourne, AU
Spine is a new commission by Gina Czarnecki, produced as a large‐scale moving image installation. The work premiered in Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, during March 06, as a twelve‐metre high projection onto the Civic Centre building in the town centre, as part of the AV Festival 06.
In summer 06, Spine [1.2] was presented in Melbourne as a six‐metre high screen installed in a narrow city centre street, as part of the Laneways06 public arts project.
As in the artists’ award‐winning audiovisual work Nascent, Spine takes raw footage of improvised and choreographed performance by Australian Dance Theatre, to which Czarnecki applies compositional techniques in the editing stage. The result is a powerful and compelling hybrid of visual art, experimental media, technology and dance.
Spine presents a visual and visceral journey through and about being. Images of dancers’ bodies combine and mutate, creating a hypnotic, intricate visual landscape. The imagery evolves from complex masses of cell-like structures, to graceful friezes of bodies whose movement is distorted in time, creating tableaux breathtaking in beauty and rich in texture. Eventually, the intertwined bodies resemble a new life form, observed like a biological sample in flux, multiplying, mutating.
Developed in collaboration with biotechnologists, computer programmers, dancers and sound artists, Gina Czarnecki’s recent works confront issues surrounding the convergence of biology and technology and the possible corruption of the human genetic mix.
Produced by Forma
Commissioned by AV Festival 06 and supported by Arts Council England
Laneways06 presentation of Spine [1.2] supported by the City of Melbourne
Photo: Mark Savage (L)
