David K. Ross
Photo: Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, avec la permission de/ courtesy of Guy L’Heureux
As Sovereign as Love, 2017
Video projection, 12 min, sound
In this film, a camera-mounted drone follows the original path of the Minirail, an elevated monorail that moved visitors across the Expo 67 site. Using technical and geological data extracted from engineering drawings, the drone could potentially have retraced the exact path of the Minirail, but it meets with disruptions─trees, electronic interference, security regulations─which effectively structure the film. The narrative arc and voice-over text are drawn from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s Terre des hommes, which inspired Expo 67’s theme and became its subtitle, Man and His World. By overlapping the highly poetic prose of 1939 and the landscapes of 2017, Ross creates an uncanny conflation of the past, present and future in his two independent views of the site. “As Sovereign as Love depicts the former Universal Exposition site as it exists in 2017, long denuded of its ebullient technological proclamations, robbed of the elevated rail line, emptied of the throngs and lacking its many architecturally innovative pavilions. The drone captures a landscape filled not with fifty million visitors, but with trees that are fifty years older. It documents a space dominated not by avant-garde architecture, but by empty grandstands and portable storage sheds. It portrays a topography animated not by scientific advances, but by algae-filled ponds and the occasional birder.” (D. Ross)
Acknowledgments: Independent Filmmaker Assistance Program, National Film Board of Canada; CINEMAexpo67
About the Artist
David K. Ross was born in 1966 in Weston, Ontario. Ross’ work is concerned with the processes and activities that enable cultural activities, infrastructural monuments and architectural structures to exist. His works have been exhibited in major institutions in North America and Europe and are included in private and public collections including the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, and the Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montreal. His films and video installations have been featured at CineMarfa, Marfa, USA (2012); Le Mois de la Photo à Montréal (2013); the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, Chicago (2014); and in the Toronto International Film Festival, Wavelengths programme (2015).
Events
EXHIBITION VISITS AND ARTIST TALKS
Artist talk with David K. Ross Thursday, August 3, 2017 at 6pm at the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal