Pubdate: Thu, 07 Oct 2004 Source: Georgia Straight, The (CN BC) Copyright: 2004 The Georgia Straight Contact: http://www.straight.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1084 Author: Robin Laurence DMT SUBJECTS SEEK BLISS, FIND GUMMY WORMS Jack Goldstein Under Water Sea Fantasy, Jeremy Shaw DMT at Presentation House Gallery Until October 24 The entrance to DMT, Jeremy Shaw's eight-monitor DVD installation, is so dark that it is disorienting. It's even more disorienting coming out than going in--appropriate enough, given the psychic and perceptual dislocations that are represented here. Simultaneously broadcast from eye-level monitors in the installation's black-walled, low-ceilinged, octagonal room, eight young men and women (including the artist) trip on the synthetic hallucinogen DMT (dimethyltryptamine) while the unmoving video camera records their experiences. Eyes closed, eyelids fluttering, heads rolling back and forth, they undertake brief, ecstatic journeys into the beyond. Subtitles on each screen counterpose the subjects' post-trip attempts to describe their essentially nonverbal experiences. "I was sorta, like, whoah...like, what's going on..." "It is like melting...like this buzzing is kind of in you..." "I don't even know how to describe it....Holy shit....It was all gummy worms and the most vibrant colours..." Sighs, groans, hyperventilation, and each subject's chosen background music contribute to the textured sound environment within this cocoon of altered perception and near-terminal inarticulateness. Shaw, aka March 21, is a fast-ascending Vancouver media artist and electronic musician with a standing interest in representing youth subcultures. Here, he has assumed the academically trendy model of artist-as-researcher, and his project suggests a pseudoclinical or mock-anthropological study of recreational drug use among a particular subgroup. (There's an implication of privilege: DMT is expensive; six of the eight subjects are white; all look preppily fresh-faced and well-groomed.) In the exhibition brochure, curator Helga Pakasaar describes DMT as the synthetic version of ayahuasca, which, "in its natural form, is used as a spiritual device by shamans in South America for coming of age rituals". Pakasaar's observations about the deep differences between the uses of ayahuasca and DMT are absolutely germane: although Shaw's subjects may experiment with the drug recreationally, they cannot duplicate its original cultural significance. In traditional tribal societies, as religious historian Mircea Eliade observed, initiation rituals employ the ecstatic trance to enact a symbolic journey of suffering, death, and resurrection. The journey is made in the company of a spirit guide, helper, or guardian and culminates in the entrance of the initiate into either adult society or the shamanic vocation. In Shaw's "study", there is no social or religious context to hook the experience onto, no supernatural animals and beings to coalesce as guides out of the trippers' formless hallucinations. Thus, the trivial analogies to, say, gummy worms, and the inability to meaningfully describe inchoate perception and sensation. The profane never transforms into the sacred--although one of Shaw's subjects, a woman who thrashes, howls, and drops out of view of the camera, later attempts to align her drug experience with a book she's read about ecstatic trances and visions. What DMT conveys is not only the inadequacy of verbal language but also a sad sense of disconnection from community and belief. Still, this woman brings off the work's best line: "You're on these Web sites and you're, like, wow, you make shitty art....You really can't distinguish between trend and archetype." Although it is presented here as a separate and distinct exhibition, Jack Goldstein's experimental film Under Water Sea Fantasy enters into an inevitable dialogue with Shaw's installation. With its brilliant and bleached-out colours, shifting forms, fluid movement, and otherworldly sounds, Goldstein's continuously looping, six-and-a-half minute film can itself be read as an ecstatic journey. Instead of the archetypal cycle of birth, death, and rebirth, however, we seem to be watching a vast, primordial round of creation, destruction, and oblivion, inspiring both awe and existential dread. Unfortunately, we're experiencing the film at a remove from its context, too--from Goldstein's life, times, and multidisciplinary career. During the 1970s and '80s, he produced sound recordings, still photography, performances, and paintings as well as film. However, the local viewer can't draw immediate comparisons between the present film and his other works, nor place it within the ambit of his avant-garde themes and strategies. Goldstein was born in Montreal in 1945; his art education and tumultuous career took place in and near Los Angeles and New York, where he cycled in and out of acclaim, obscurity, and despair. Despite a recent revival, his work is infrequently shown in this country. Goldstein began Under Water Sea Fantasy in 1983, set it aside, and finally finished it in 2003, shortly before his death. Montaging and altering found footage of erupting volcanoes, underwater life, and a much-accelerated lunar eclipse, Goldstein gives a knowing nod to Hollywood and the notion of the spectacle. But he also, Pakasaar argues, employs a small scale and a gallery setting to explore the pictorial rather than theatrical aspects of his medium. Much more eloquently than Shaw's stoned subjects, Goldstein seems to be describing the ineffable, from primordial cataclysm to the oblivious void. Except for that weirdly concrete title, he does so without the obstacle or compromise of verbal language. - ---