gina czarnecki - infected
Infected, 2001
DV Cam displayed as single-channel DVD projection; stereo audio
7 mins; colour
Collection: Australian Centre for the Moving Image
Courtesy: the artist
contents: essay | artist's bio | artist's statement
For many viewers of Infected, it may be easier to imagine our bodies being transformed into gorgeous blurs of light through a process of digital imaging than to imagine undertaking the sheer physical work and dedication needed to become a dancer. The svelte and muscular body of Iona Kewney moves with a level of animalistic coordination most of us only possess in dreams, or in our mind's eye as we flail around in a nightclub. Like a cat flung into cyberspace she twists and turns, landing deftly on her feet, her pale body generating rhythmic and sensual energy in the spinning black circle of the picture frame.
Artist Gina Czarnecki writes, 'Infection implies that the infected initially is pure and that the infector is external and impure', but which is which? The video begins in darkness; a small streak of light expands into a series of more complex shapes, eventually revealing itself as the body of the dancer. The image manipulation techniques that the artist has used turn the dancer's movements into blurred and stuttering visions of multiplicity, warping and stretching gestures until flesh takes on an almost liquid appearance. Is this a futuristic vision of the human body infiltrated and changed, 'infected' by biotechnology, or is the reverse happening? Is the human body, the warm-blooded body of sinews and emotions, infecting the 'pure' light of technology?
The tension between the idea of the body existing in a state of nature, which must be preserved at all costs, and the idea of the body as part of an ongoing technical evolution is escalating in current debates around genetic science. As the CEO of Advanced Cell Technology said recently, 'Ultimately the dream of biologists is to have the sequence of DNA, the programming code of life, and to be able to edit it the way you can a document on a word processor'1. Infected investigates the possibilities of such editing, the result is at once beautiful, disturbing, and at times confounding. Viewers may struggle to determine which movements on the screen are created by the dancer's skill and which by technical intervention; the line between natural and constructed is difficult to define. According to film director David Cronenberg, the definition is effectively redundant: 'Technology is us. There is no separation. It's a pure expression of human creative will... And if it is at times dangerous and threatening, it is because we have things within us that are dangerous, self-destructive and threatening...'2.
1 McKibben, B., 'Condemned to be Superhuman', The Age, 5 August 2003.
2 Blackwelder, R., 'Metaphor Man', Spliced, 1999, from http://www.splicedonline.com/features/cronenberg.html,
accessed 9 August 2003
1965 - Born in Immingham, England; lives and works in Melbourne, Australia
Gina Czarnecki is a British new media artist whose hybrid artworks result from intersections of film, video and computer-generated imagery. Until recently she headed the postgraduate course in Electronic Imaging at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art, Dundee. She has taught film, animation and digital media, and curated programs for festivals in the UK and Europe. Czarnecki recently relocated to Melbourne.
A recipient of the prestigious Creative Scotland Award, Czarnecki's work investigates the ways in which elements of the human are manipulated and controlled by the social, economic and political realities of the contemporary world. Beginning her career as an animator, Czarnecki embraced new media technologies, producing installation works such as Versifier, which was exhibited at ACMI as part of Remembrance + the Moving Image. Her recent works include single-screen film/video, photographic and installation formats.
Filmography
~ Zero, 2001, video, 5 mins
~ Infected, 2000, video, 7 mins, collaboration with Iona Kewney, Dancer
~ Borderline, 2000, video, 9 mins
~ Bath, 1996, video, 3 mins
~ Desire.1, 1995, video, 5:30 mins
~ Forum, 1992, video, 10 mins
~ Tattoo, 1991, film and video animation, 6 mins
~ Moral Judge, 1987, 16mm animation, 5 mins
~ Alias Lalias Crispis/Machinations Symbolics/Paintbox, 1992, computer animation, 4 mins
~ Parade, 1987, 16mm animation, 4:30 mins
~ Transparent D, 1987, 16mm animation, 4 mins
~ Façade, 1987, 16mm animation 4:30 mins
Screenings
~ Sundance Film Festival, Sundance, United States, 1997
~ Cannes Film Festival, Cannes, France, 1997
~ Lesbian and Gay Film Festival, London, England, 1997
~ London Film Festival, London, England, 1997
~ Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Edinburgh, Scotland, 1993
~ Visual Art Festival, Wroclaw, Poland, 1993
~ The Sheffield Media Show, Video Positive Liverpool, England, 1993
~ Feminal Cologne, Germany, 1992
~ London Film Festival, 1992
~ Southampton Film Fest, England, 1990
~ Millennium New York, United States, 1990
~ Hayes Film Festival, Buffalo, United States, 1990
~ Hamburg Short Film Festival, Hamburg, Germany, 1990
~ Institute of Contemporary Art, London, 1989
~ A.V. Festival, Amsterdam, Netherlands, 1988
~ Creteil Festival, France, 1988
~ Oberhausen Film Festival, Germany, 1988
Exhibitions
~ Infected, Microwave Festival, Hong Kong, 2001, Peterborough Museum and Art Gallery 2003, The Place Theatre, London 2002, UK Tour 15 venues throughout the UK 2002/3, British Council Showcase selected works 2003/4, Infected, New Moves, National Review of Live Art, Glasgow, 2000
~ Silvers Alter, Arts Catalyst Production, Clean Rooms, 2000 Oldham Museum and Art Gallery Natural History Museum London 2003
~ Arteries, Swipe 2000, Dorset, 2000, Visual Research Centre, Dundee Contemporary Arts, Scotland, 2001Infected Still, New Moves, Glasgow; Centrespace, Dundee Contemporary Arts, 2000
~ Versifier, Ferens Gallery, Hull, 1998
~ Stages, Elements, Humans, Cooper Gallery, Dundee; Tullie House, Carlisle; ISEA, Liverpool; Arthouse, Dublin; Ars Electronica, Linz, Austria, 1998, Seafair 2000
~ Homo-cyte, LUX, London; Image Forum Festival, Tokyo, Nagoya, Osaka, Japan; Brighton Cinematheque; Experimenta Media Arts, Melbourne; Station Arts Electronique, Rennes, France, 1998
~ Spaces Unseen, Spaces Unspoken, Spaces Between, The Arches, Sheffield, 1994
~ Façade, Millenium, New York; Shaffy Studios A.V. Festival 88, Institute of Contemporary Arts London, 1987
Awards
~ Fleck Fellowship award. Banff New Media Institute Banff Centre Canada, 2003
~ SAC/ National Lottery Creative Scotland Award, 2002
~ South East National Dance Agency Audience Award for Infected, 2002
~ Alt W Award, 2002
~ Arts Council of England National Touring Award, 2001
~ PVA Media award, 2000
~ Year of Photography and Electronic Imaging Award, 1998
Selected bibliography
~ Mediazentrum (design and delivery of exhibition and workshop), Innsbruck, Austria, July 2000
~ 'Video Lounge' (curator and animateur of a series of regular monthly programs of media art), Dundee Contemporary Arts Cinema, 1999-
~ 'Art and Science - The Biological, The Chemical and The Mechanical' (curator of film and video program), 44th International Short Film Festival, Oberhausen, 23-28 April 1998
~ 'Video, Technology and the Documentation of Reality' (curator of program of video art), Cooper Gallery Dundee, 1998
~ 'Keep Watching the Skies' (initiator, fundraiser and curator of an event that included film, video, installation, sound, photography and performance that merge to create hybrid combinations), Venue, LFMC, Camden, London, 1994
~ 'Authenticity of the Image - The Concept of Reality and Electronic Photography', in Coil - Journal of the Moving Image, Spring 1995
~ 'Women on the Verge of Technology' (speaker; conference paper published in Coil - Journal of the Moving Image 1995), July 1994
~ Experimental Film Workshops (British representative, radio broadcast interview and debate), Oberhausen, Germany, 1990
~ 'Towards a New Understanding' (paper on education and training in film and video), B.F.I. New Directions, 1990
Website links
Gina Czarneckís web page at the University of Dundee, including CV
http://www.imaging.dundee.ac.uk/people/gczarnecki/index.htm
UK art site featuring Infected
http://www.forma.org.uk/artists/artists_gina.htm
Gina Czarneckí's work Versifier featured in ACMI's 2003 exhibition Remembrance + the Moving Image
http://www.acmi.net.au/remembrance/flash.html
Documentation of exhibition Silvers Alter created by Gina Czarneckí
http://www.silversalter.co.uk
I initially wanted to work with a contortionist to expand upon the idea of questioning where the physically possible stops and the digitally manipulated begins - asking the audience to consider what is real, what is not, and does this matter? I wanted no reference to (worldly) physical space or clothing that would enable the audience to socially place or classify the performer. She is naked and androgynous. Technically I wanted to follow a similar journey to the content: from the real, unaltered, uncut state to the multi-layered single-field edited complexity. I wanted to achieve the illusion of flicker movement at 50 fields per second, whilst keeping with the slow stretches of the soundtrack. Making Infected I refer to as a kind of tapestry: weaving the threads of source and its stages of manipulation together carefully to construct the picture. The piece is almost entirely made in the post-production, with only a few of the source images used as they were filmed. All the imagery is made from Iona's body image.
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