Projected every night of the Festival onto the façade of the Drake Hotel, the new work from Radical Friend (Los Angeles-based directing duo Kirby McClure and Julia Grigorian) randomly collages images from contemporary mass culture’s darker expressions — murder, bikers, deserts — into a hypnotic, dystopic, multi-layered projection wall.
Future Projections
Sweat
Radical Friend combines commercial media practice — advertisements and music videos —
with haunting gallery-based installations. Their new work, Sweat, presented every night of
the Festival on the exterior of the Drake Hotel, collages images from contemporary mass
culture's darker expressions — murder, bikers, deserts — into a hypnotic, dystopian, projection
wall. This rational but random universe conjures up the internal brain functions of
Cronenbergian heroes, as their neurological mechanisms become increasingly compromised.
The images suggest a journey towards a cybernetic “ singularity, ” denying human
emotion and mythologizing the union of man and machine. Variations of intensity between
hard-cut, aggressively paced barrages and moments of peace and image clarity suggest this
union is unfinished, fragile, and susceptible to internal implosion.
NOAH COWAN
Presented in collaboration with The Drake Hotel, 1150 Queen Street West. Video installation, runs every evening September 5 - 15.