WEBVTT 1 00:00:05.213 --> 00:00:08.633 My name is Rosamunde Bordo. I'm an interdisciplinary artist, 2 00:00:08.967 --> 00:00:12.470 and the exhibition that I'm presenting at Western Front is called "Magic Show." 3 00:00:13.304 --> 00:00:18.852 The project is part of a larger ongoing project called "The Denise File," 4 00:00:18.935 --> 00:00:22.313 which I've been working on since 2018. 5 00:00:23.314 --> 00:00:29.863 I talk about this work as a serial and surreal work of detective fiction. 6 00:00:31.156 --> 00:00:35.744 So "The Denise File" started by finding a box of postcards, 7 00:00:35.785 --> 00:00:39.914 and they're all addressed to the same woman named Denise. 8 00:00:39.914 --> 00:00:44.627 I was interested in how all of this correspondence is directed at Denise, 9 00:00:44.669 --> 00:00:47.756 but how I only know about her through these fragments, 10 00:00:47.756 --> 00:00:50.049 and through the words of others who are writing to her. 11 00:00:50.133 --> 00:00:56.765 I started to think about responding to the postcards through a kind of investigative process. 12 00:00:56.973 --> 00:00:59.976 The idea of the postcard being a one-way correspondence, 13 00:00:59.976 --> 00:01:03.605 and then myself responding to that through art practice. 14 00:01:04.063 --> 00:01:07.484 Through uncovering and producing evidence, 15 00:01:07.525 --> 00:01:12.489 I've been learning and uncovering and creating Denise. 16 00:01:12.697 --> 00:01:17.827 She's paradoxically becoming more fictive while also becoming more real. 17 00:01:18.286 --> 00:01:22.415 Each iteration or exhibition is its own new investigation. 18 00:01:22.415 --> 00:01:27.879 So with "Magic Show," my investigation kind of sets up the detective 19 00:01:27.962 --> 00:01:31.925 and the magician and the artist as three sort of coordinates. 20 00:01:32.884 --> 00:01:35.720 It was kind of coming together in this way through the objects 21 00:01:35.720 --> 00:01:40.141 and how an object in "The Denise File" is kind of operating 22 00:01:40.141 --> 00:01:44.729 on these different levels of being evidence and a conduit of some kind. 23 00:01:45.480 --> 00:01:52.237 So with "Magic Show," I chose to respond and communicate more directly with Denise. 24 00:01:52.821 --> 00:01:56.241 The postcard in question, it was a bit of an anomaly in the collection 25 00:01:56.241 --> 00:01:59.702 because it's one that was written from Denise. 26 00:02:00.203 --> 00:02:05.917 This one kind of stood out to me because suddenly I saw her handwriting and her gesture. 27 00:02:06.793 --> 00:02:08.545 I traced her signature. 28 00:02:08.628 --> 00:02:15.093 I fashioned it into wax and then cast it into silver as a nameplate necklace. 29 00:02:15.802 --> 00:02:21.975 The video work in the back space is projected onto a tabletop. 30 00:02:22.475 --> 00:02:26.229 And there's a tarot reading that's taking place. 31 00:02:26.479 --> 00:02:31.901 So we just see the hands of the tarot reader and then of the seeker. 32 00:02:32.318 --> 00:02:35.280 The necklace itself, it's again a piece of evidence, 33 00:02:35.280 --> 00:02:39.868 but also is used in the tarot video as a sort of vehicle for psychometry. 34 00:02:39.900 --> 00:02:45.164 The tarot reader takes that necklace and holds it and is able to feel the energy from that. 35 00:02:46.624 --> 00:02:49.586 [from "Tarot in D-Minor"] Ah. And this belongs to someone else, someone close to you. 36 00:02:49.627 --> 00:02:50.503 It's not family. 37 00:02:51.379 --> 00:02:54.132 (Rosamunde) In this way, there's this sort of tether to the real, 38 00:02:54.132 --> 00:02:57.010 but it's also this fiction that's being presented. 39 00:02:57.010 --> 00:03:01.222 But it's not obvious necessarily what's real and what's fiction. 40 00:03:01.598 --> 00:03:03.308 Through this reading of the cards, 41 00:03:03.308 --> 00:03:07.228 there's maybe some interpretation that's possible of the works in the gallery, 42 00:03:07.478 --> 00:03:08.980 of how they relate to each other. 43 00:03:10.440 --> 00:03:15.194 The way that I approach making and artwork is through investigation. 44 00:03:15.236 --> 00:03:20.783 So learning a new process, for instance, is a kind of act of uncovering. 45 00:03:21.576 --> 00:03:28.958 Something like glassblowing or woodworking has all of these material and procedural constraints 46 00:03:28.958 --> 00:03:32.712 that you have to work with and learn in order to make something new. 47 00:03:34.297 --> 00:03:35.882 So I wanted to work with glass, 48 00:03:35.924 --> 00:03:40.345 and I was connected with this scientific glassblower at UBC. 49 00:03:40.929 --> 00:03:45.141 It's been a really fascinating journey over the last eight months. 50 00:03:45.183 --> 00:03:48.561 From knowing nothing at all to making the works that are in this show. 51 00:03:49.020 --> 00:03:52.732 It was definitely a challenge because the way that glass behaves, 52 00:03:52.774 --> 00:03:59.113 it's very magical, but it is difficult and you're using your body in a whole new way. 53 00:03:59.322 --> 00:04:01.574 The sculpture is called "Communicating Vessels." 54 00:04:01.616 --> 00:04:06.663 It's one piece of glass in the shape of a pentagram that's all interconnected, 55 00:04:06.663 --> 00:04:11.584 so the tubes are all connected together, and then there's five vessels. 56 00:04:12.961 --> 00:04:16.422 The sculpture contains a mixture of chartreuse, 57 00:04:16.589 --> 00:04:24.430 an alcohol that's made up of 130 herbs and plants and produced by monks in Chartreuse [mountain range] in France. 58 00:04:24.472 --> 00:04:28.101 And it was apparently, so the lore says, given to them by an alchemist. 59 00:04:29.394 --> 00:04:33.439 Having filled it with liquid, I've noticed that it's got its own language going on. 60 00:04:34.148 --> 00:04:37.443 So if I lift one little lid up, liquid will rise there, 61 00:04:37.443 --> 00:04:39.821 it will descend in some other part of the pentagram, 62 00:04:39.821 --> 00:04:41.406 I can't predict where it's going to go. 63 00:04:43.032 --> 00:04:46.327 There's another glass work in the "Karmic Cleanse" piece. 64 00:04:46.327 --> 00:04:51.165 The "Karmic Cleanse" is a video and sculptural work. 65 00:04:51.207 --> 00:04:56.462 It's the first work that you see when you enter Western Front, just outside of the gallery. 66 00:04:56.796 --> 00:05:02.427 There's a strange brew and just beyond it, if you look in certain light, 67 00:05:02.427 --> 00:05:06.097 there's this glass sculpture that kind of emerges and disappears. 68 00:05:06.431 --> 00:05:11.644 There's two works in the show that are a little bit different from the others 69 00:05:11.728 --> 00:05:15.815 in how they're operating, sort of architectural interventions. 70 00:05:16.024 --> 00:05:18.276 One is a two-way mirror. 71 00:05:18.860 --> 00:05:22.613 On one side you can see through it, and on the other side you see yourself reflected. 72 00:05:24.240 --> 00:05:29.287 The other element in the space is, there's a filter on the window which is 73 00:05:29.287 --> 00:05:35.668 mimicking the color of iolite, which is a stone that has a whole host of metaphysical properties. 74 00:05:35.960 --> 00:05:41.924 It was apparently used by the Vikings to navigate, and it's also the colour of dusk. 75 00:05:44.010 --> 00:05:49.265 The journey of making "Magic Show" has been kind of like any detective case. 76 00:05:49.265 --> 00:05:55.104 You don't actually know what the next step is necessarily or how it's going to come about. 77 00:05:55.730 --> 00:06:01.360 There is a sort of momentum that was generated with the project, spending five days a week 78 00:06:01.360 --> 00:06:05.698 in a glass shop, a tarot reader, jewelry casting, all of these things. 79 00:06:06.491 --> 00:06:11.704 The challenges come out of kind of throwing myself into always the unknown. 80 00:06:12.705 --> 00:06:16.751 Rather than trying to be really masterful with every new process I do, 81 00:06:16.751 --> 00:06:22.215 I'm kind of willing to be an amateur at it, but work really hard at getting it to the place 82 00:06:22.256 --> 00:06:24.550 that feels complete for the work that I'm trying to do. 83 00:06:25.093 --> 00:06:28.513 It's just integral to how I work and to how "Magic Show" operates, is that 84 00:06:28.596 --> 00:06:32.683 it had to be interdisciplinary, it had to be across all of these different materials 85 00:06:32.683 --> 00:06:37.605 because each one brings with it its own meaning, its own history, its own presence. 86 00:06:38.231 --> 00:06:41.943 I always want to sort of position the viewer to be a detective. 87 00:06:42.485 --> 00:06:45.488 I go about creating the work in this mode of 88 00:06:45.571 --> 00:06:49.575 investigator detective, but I also want to invite the viewer to do that work too.