The Phoenix Portal (2005), digital video still
After the Rainbow (2009), excerpt
The Time that Remains (2012), digital video still
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Soda_Jerk
Dark Matter
DARK MATTER (2005-2012) is an ongoing series of video works that are informed by research into the intersection of cinema and cultural theories of hauntology. Begun in 2005, each work in this cycle takes the form of a séance fiction, where encounters are staged between the past and future selves of a deceased screen star. Dark Matter includes the video installations The Phoenix Portal (2005), After the Rainbow (2009) and The Time that Remains (2012).
In accompaniment to the exhibition Soda_Jerk will perform the video lecture performance The Carousel on the 24th of January in The Substation performance hall.
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THE PHOENIX PORTAL (2005)
Single channel video installation
Dur: 4.56 mins
Colour, sound, 16:9
A young River Phoenix from the film Explorers (1985) opens a wormhole to contact his older self in My Own Private Idaho (1991). Irrevocably haunted by the death of Phoenix in 1993, this work summons the paranormal power of recorded media to reanimate the dead.
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AFTER THE RAINBOW (2009)
2-channel video installation
Dur: 5.42 mins
Colour, sound, 4:3
Through a re-imagining of the initial sequence of The Wizard of Oz (1939), the fantasy world of cinema and the reality of Judy Garland’s sad life collide. Instead of taking Dorothy to Oz, the twister transports a young, hopeful Garland into the future where she encounters her disillusioned adult self.
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THE TIME THAT REMAINS (2012)
2-channel video installation
Dur: 11.56 mins
Black & white, sound, 4:3
Joan Crawford and Bette Davis perpetually wake to find themselves haunted by their own apparitions and terrorised by markers of time. Isolated in their own screen space, each woman must struggle to reclaim time from the gendered discourses of ageing that conflates older women with a sense of expiration and invisibility.
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Soda_Jerk is a two-person art collective that works with sampled material to construct rogue histories and counter-mythologies. Taking the form of video installations and live video essays, their archival image practice is situated at the interzone of experimental film, documentary and speculative fiction. Formed in Sydney in 2002, Soda_Jerk are currently based in New York.
Soda_Jerk have exhibited and performed internationally. Upcoming exhibitions in 2015 include: Tongue Stories, Pioneer Works (New York), Festival of (In)appropriation, Egyptian Theater (Los Angeles). They will also undertake a 2-month European Media Arts Network residency at FACT (Liverpool), and a 5-month studio residency on Governors Island (New York) awarded by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council.
