Lisa Lipton: Soon All Your Memories Will Be With Me

Art Gallery of Alberta July 20 - October 20, 2019

“The giant Earth ship ARK… drifting through deep space over 800 years into the far future.

Its passengers, descendants of the last survivors of the dead planet Earth, locked in separate worlds heading for destruction… unless three young people can save…

The Starlost.”1

In 2375, with notification that planet Earth was headed for destruction, humanity built a spacecraft called The Ship Ultimo. The ship contains various domes or biospheres, housing people of different cultures; their goal, to find a new world to inhabit. This ship is generational and hundreds of years have passed since it set out on its voyage. Many aboard the ship believe that they live on a planetary surface; knowledge of their respective, simulated environments escapes most of the inhabitants. The original pilots suffered an unimaginable tragedy and the ship is now on a collision course toward a star. The inhabitants of each biosphere risk certain death unless a small group of individuals can unseal their fate. The primary characters—Reka, Gray and Dare—discover a doorway that leads to the inner workings of the ship and realize that their world is not as it seems. As simple peasant farmers, they rebel from their biosphere’s cultural conventions by escaping the world they know. Their journey challenges others aboard the ship to question their reality in order to save humanity.

Soon All Your Memories Will Be With Me is Lisa Lipton’s latest exploration into Cordwainer Bird’s 1973 Canadian-produced cult science fiction series The Starlost.

Lipton’s exhibition is both an immersive installation and film set for a pseudo fan-fiction extension of the original television series. The subtext of the project uses science fiction as a vehicle for social criticism, while its broader scope uses drama and satire to present a subverted critique of nationhood, governance and the present-day political climate of social unrest. Having already completed the first video episode of the series at the Illingworth Kerr Gallery (Alberta University of the Arts, Calgary) in 2018, this will be Lipton’s second installation. It will showcase one of The Ship Ultimo’s many biospheres, SORAA. 1

Soon All Your Memories Will Be With Me, 2019. Sculpture, electronics, video, sound. Courtesy of the Artist.

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In the introductory lines of Lipton’s script, SORAA is introduced as a refuge for deep contemplation. “Variations of projected light illuminate the interior of a grey room,” it begins. The script continues: Two figures sit on opposing benches, their eyes focused on separate glass monitors housed within a central geometric structure. Hypnotized by the dancing arcs of coloured light that fill the screens…2 “Light,” wrote the artist Thomas Wilfred, “is the silent universal expression of the greatest force our senses can grasp.” 3 To pay attention to a ray of light, Wilfred thought, was to crane one’s neck down the corridor of the cosmos. It was to treat light not as an arbiter of clarity, but as an agent of contemplation.

This work proposes a futuristic space where light acts as that agent, confounding perceptions of reality rather than confirming them. One might ask, how a room so inspiring of dreamy imagining could help dissolve the collective delusion experienced by those aboard the ship? Would this area be used to placate one’s self and distract from impending destruction? Or could it be used it to contemplate action and how to reroute? Imagine yourself as having the responsibility of warning the last remaining human descendants that they are headed to destruction. How would you use this environment to prepare?

Lipton’s biosphere contains a sculptural structure housing two abstract light compositions. Such kinetic light works, known as Lumia, were first developed by the artist, musician and inventor Thomas Wilfred. In 1921 Wilfred created the Clavilux, a cabinet to display Lumia: “the use of light as an Independent art-medium through the silent visual treatment of form, colour and motion in dark space with the object of conveying an aesthetic experience to a spectator.”4 Wilfred thus produced art with light as a sculptable medium, not simply light displayed as a scientific phenomenon.

It was his intention that the mobile cabinet—known as the Clavilux Junior—would be in every home much like the radio or gramophone.5 The imagery featured on this proto-television was abstract; the intent was imaginative and contemplative.

The popularity of Lumia in the 1920s coincided perfectly with the general public’s interest in and acceptance of scientific advancements of the time. In the early 1900s, Albert Einstein developed the theory of general relativity that theorized 4

Soon All Your Memories Will Be With Me, 2019. Lumia component. Courtesy of Artist.

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Soon All Your Memories Will Be With Me (detail), 2019. Sculpture, electronics, video, sound. Courtesy of the Artist.

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how light travels in space, how celestial bodies influence the trajectory of light and the speed of light. Proof of this groundbreaking theory came during a total eclipse in 1919 and was news around the world.6 This meant that most people had some rudimentary knowledge of or newfound interest in the way light functions as well as in the fields of astronomy, cosmology and space in general. Einstein’s famous equation is also the primary theory around which all speculations of space travel must be built and the hurdle that many science fiction civilizations have overcome to allow for travel in deep space and between planets.

The visual references for Lumia are cosmic. Aurora borealis dancing in the northern sky, the simple touch of sun on your skin, the play of sunlight through the leaves of a tree, a shooting star, clouds of interstellar dust or exploding supernova and nebula clusters. The rhythmic flow of light is meant to encourage focused viewing, providing a window into interstellar landscapes.7 There is something primal, spiritual and universal in Lumia. Their undulating movements offer a clear link between mesmerically gazing into a flame and contemporary infatuation with screens of any type.

The act of watching Lipton’s Lumia is like looking through the window of a spaceship or peering through the lens of a telescope. In Soon All Your Memories Will Be With Me one can imagine that the images are a live feed of the celestial formations that The Ship Ultimo is traveling past. The central focus of this exhibition is Lipton’s 12-sided structure on which two screens display variations of imagery based on the same theme, like viewing the same nebula from two slightly different perspectives or peering into two possible alternate realities. These scenes are never visible at the same time and the correlation between each always eludes the viewer.

The objects seen in the Lumia do not appear two dimensional like images projected onto a screen or viewed on a monitor. Rather, the Lumia are optical illusions that have volume within an expanse that has depth. An electronic soundscape offers the backdrop for philosophical contemplation and encourages viewers to draw new forms of knowledge out of this ether. Four channels of audio create different possibilities for the intersection of sounds throughout the space. The audience is immersed in the experience as light and sound evolve, like a mantra repeating, slowly changing over long periods of time.

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Soon All Your Memories Will Be With Me (detail), 2019. Sculpture, electronics, video, sound. Courtesy of the Artist.

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By way of old technology, Lipton’s exhibition asks us to consider our contemporary conditions and reflect on what has really changed. If all plots seem to make the inevitable careen into the melt of destruction, can any solution be found along this deathward trajectory? Might there be something to be learned beyond the margins?

Narcissus marveled at the beauty of his reflection in the pond and ultimately died.

In staring through the window of the Lumia we see something unlike life in the refractions. We see neither the forest nor the trees.

Endnotes 1 From the opening narration of The Starlost, created by Harlan Ellison (as Cordwainer Bird), CTV, 1973-74.

2 Lisa Lipton, Soon All Your Memories Will Be With Me (draft of Episode VII, 2019), 1.

3 Thomas Wilfred, “Lumia: The Art of Light” (unpublished manuscript, 1945-47), 66.

4 Michael Betancourt, Thomas Wilfred’s Clavilux (Rockville, MD: Borgo Press, 2006), 16.

5 Keely Orgeman, LUMIA: Thomas Wilfred and the Art of Light (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017), 24.

6 Lizzie Buchen, “May 29, 1919: A Major Eclipse, Relatively Speaking,” WIRED, May 29, 2009, https://www.wired.com/2009/05/dayintech-0529/.

7 Orgeman, LUMIA, 26-30.

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Soon All Your Memories Will Be With Me (detail), 2019.

Sculpture, electronics, video, sound. Courtesy of the Artist.

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ARTIST’S BIOGRPAHY LISA LIPTON Lisa Lipton is a visual artist, musician and director who received her B.F.A. from NSCAD University and M.F.A. from the University of Windsor. Her practice has spanned various directorial and curatorial roles, focusing on ideas surrounding collaboration and social interaction in film, installation, performance, theatre and music. She has exhibited her work nationally and internationally and her nominations include both the short and longlists for the Canadian Sobey Art Award prize. Originally from Halifax, Nova Scotia, Lisa Lipton is currently based in Calgary, Alberta, where she is an Assistant Professor in Sculpture at the Alberta University of the Arts (formerly known as Alberta College of Art + Design).

WRITER’S BIOGRPAHY LINDSEY SHARMAN Lindsey V. Sharman is Curator at the Art Gallery of Alberta. She has studied Art History and Curating in Canada, England, Switzerland and Austria, earning degrees from the University of Saskatchewan and the University of the Arts, Zurich. From 2012-2018 she was the first curator of the Founders’ Gallery at the Military Museums in Calgary, an academic appointment through the University of Calgary. Her primary area of research is politically and socially engaged art practice. Curatorial projects of note include TRENCH, a durational performance

by Adrian Stimson; Felled Trees, an exhibition deconstructing national identity at Canada House, London; Gassed Redux by Adad Hannah; and the nationally touring retrospective The Writing on the Wall: Works of Dr. Joane Cardinal Schubert.

LIST OF WORKS

Soon All Your Memories Will Be With Me, 2019 Sculpture, electronics, video, sound Courtesy of the Artist

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Organized by the Art Gallery of Alberta. The RBC New Works Gallery features new works by Alberta artists.

Initiated in 1998 and named the RBC New Works Gallery in 2008, this gallery space continues the Art Gallery of Alberta’s commitment to supporting Alberta artists.

Š Art Gallery of Alberta 2019 ISBN: 978-1-77179-031-4 Editor: Danielle Siemens Design: Charles Cousins Photography: Charles Cousins Essay: Lindsey V. Sharman Printing: Burke Group Printed in Canada The Art Gallery of Alberta is grateful for the generous support of our many public and private donors and sponsors, as well as the ongoing support of the City of Edmonton, the Edmonton Arts Council, the Alberta Foundation for the Arts and the Canada Council for the Arts.

Cover Image: Soon All Your Memories Will Be With Me (detail), 2019. Sculpture, electronics, video, sound.

Courtesy of the Artist.