VIVO is pleased to present a time-based sound and video installation by artists Kristen Roos and Ross Birdwise, in the soon-to-be vacant 1965 Main St. building (a space that has served as the organization’s base over the past 20 years).

This installation presents discoveries made by Roos and Birdwise during their three month residency* working around and within the centre’s re-location. Materials intrinsic to the organization’s existence and renewal over time have been retrieved and animated. Acting both as witnesses and investigators the artists have examined the experience of VIVO in its accomplishments, anxieties and precariousness through the individual lenses of the current members of the management collective.

This reflective process speaks to both the socioeconomic climate of the city and the embedded, shifting role of artist-run-centres. Posing questions about VIVO’s institutional history and its political agency, this exhibition might provide glimpses into things that can only be found in the glitches, noises, faulty systems and problematic conditions of institutions. Perhaps it is in these unstable, contested spaces and states that possible futures can sometimes be glimpsed.

As VIVO prepares its departure, 1965 Main St. becomes a momentary laboratory, storage facility, moving company, studio, haunted house, shrine – and the only site for this terminal installation.

* See  On The Move Call for proposals disseminated by the Events+Exhibitions Department Nov. 2013-Feb. 2014

Artists Statement
“A tradition of supporting artistic dialogues and alternative voices also speaks to the impact of socioeconomic changes and urban development. What is the role that VIVO has historically taken when responding to global socioeconomic forces, and what is the role it will take as an organization that is once again a victim of these changes? This history, and VIVO’s current situation will be reflected on while researching and creating work for On the Move. We are also interested in the history of VIVO’s funding. Who supplied it, how was it accessed, how much of it was there, and what agendas were being promoted, not only by VIVO, but by the funders themselves? We will be accessing VIVO’s archives and documenting, in a creative way, the daily goings on at VIVO (using the mediums of sound and moving image). This approach addresses VIVO’s past, present, and its transition to the future, and the documentation will become raw material for a time-based sound and video installation to be shown inside 1965 Main Street once the space is vacant. The installation will be a spectral presence in an empty space once teeming with activity.” (April 30, 2014)