Database Imaginary

Organized by Walter Phillips Art Gallery and Dunlop Art Gallery. March 19, to May 1, 2005, at Central Gallery, and March 19, to April 26, 2005, at Sherwood Gallery.

Additional Information

Saul Albert, Heath Bunting and Kayle Brandon, Graham Harwood, Pablo Helguera, Lisa Jevbratt, George Legrady, Jennifer and Kevin McCoy, Antonio Muntadas, Edward Poitras, David Rokeby, Warren Sack, Marina Zurkow, Scott Paterson, Julian Bleecker, Cory Arcangel, Lev Manovich, Philip Pocock, Thomson and Craighead, Natalie Bookchin, Alan Currall, Cheryl L'Hirondelle Waynohtêw, Beatriz da Costa, Jamie Schulte, Brooke Singer, Angie Waller and Family Filter (Jonah Brucker-Cohen, Tim Redfern, Duncan Murphy).

Other associated events: Opening receptions and exhibition tour with Anthony Kiendl Saturday, March 19, 2:00 pm. Shuttle bus available. Panel discussion, Saturday, April 23, 2:00 pm, Regina Public Library Film Theatre

Database Imaginary presents 22 works produced between 1971 and 2004. The period of production of these art works is almost as long as the period in which the word database has been in use. It was only with the rise of computing and widespread access to vast quantities of organized information that the term database came to the fore in the popular imagination. The urge to organize, however, is a longstanding trait of human civilization. In this sense, Database Imaginary is less about databases than about the cultural moment when they became ever present. The artists engage imaginatively with the organization of data through their use of aesthetic, conceptual, social and political strategies. Their art works challenge us to understand database culture as a pervasive aspect of the contemporary environment and our lived experiences. Databases present us with a series of choices. It is up to us to choose whether or not and how to employ them.

Database Imaginary extends into the Sherwood Village Art Gallery with the installation of The File Room. This work by Antonio Muntadas includes an online database in a re-creation of an installation first exhibited in 1994 in Chicago. It consists of a room of file cabinets, and a table and computer station at which visitors can browse and contribute to the online File Room - an open and updateable catalogue of instances of censorship. Originally the installation had two essential roles, first as a metaphor for and a visual device to introduce the subject of the project - cultural censorship - and second, as a means of access to the internet, which was not readily available in 1990. Originally the goal of the installation was to raise questions, and to stimulate and provide reflection about censorship. The social, political and cultural intentions of the work remain unchanged today. Indeed, they are increasingly pertinent as fear, paranoia, and new forms of social control and ideological manipulation further constrain civil liberties and our lives in general. Antonio Muntadas was born in Barcelona, Spain in 1942. He has lived and worked in New York since 1971. His works have been exhibited throughout the world, notably at the Venice Biennale, Documenta VI and X, and in many public institutions including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Berkeley Art Museum in California and La Musée d'Art Contemporain de Montréal.

Antonio Muntadas, The File Room, 1994-2004.