Cloud of Pages explores the interdependent and complex relationship of history, archive, memory and power dynamics. We are both avid collectors of cultural artifacts and specimens of mineral, botanical, animal and industrial origins; objects that stare at the vestiges of a recent or distant past, with a story to tell. The video performance questions the personal objectivity of archivists, and even the act of recording sight and sound while paradoxically creating an archive of the moment on film while writing our own history.
As the unblinking 360° eye of the camera observes from above, a sequence of rehearsed and improvised gestures, synth manipulations, and reiterated questions is performed. A century-old book is opened, pages are torn and burnt. Questions are exchanged via intercom, while we search for answers in a cloud of pages, challenging the association of power, memory, archive, and history.
Yen-Chao Lin is a Taipei-born Montreal-based multidisciplinary artist. Having grown up in a multifaith family, she is interested in religion, spirituality, divination arts, dowsing, occult sciences, oral tradition, folklore, ecology and power.
Oliver Lewis is a Montreal-based media artist, sound designer and composer. His electroacoustic practice reshapes familiar sounds and instruments into abstract sonic labyrinth, using a process of field-recording, digital dissection and analogue processing.
Through means of intuitive play, collaboration, scavenging and collecting, Yen-Chao and Oliver’s hybrid practice often incorporates both analogue and digital technologies, such as stop motion animation, homemade instruments, samplers, field recordings and synthesizers; creating installations, performances, electroacoustic music, and experimental films. Their works have been shown at Antimatter [Media Art] (Victoria), Berlinale, Centre A (Vancouver), Edinburgh International Film Festival, Festival du nouveau cinéma (Montreal), Hong-gah Museum (Taipei), OBORO (Montreal), TIFF Lightbox (Toronto), among others.
