HUB [2000]

• Single-channel digital video | 00:25:50 | Colour | Stereo |English| 4:3 

• Mixed media installation: Multi-channel digital video projections - colour - 4:3 | Six-channel audio | Other materials: video monitors, dual-sided projections screens, electronic components, multiple powered audio speakers | installation configuration and dimensions: variable

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VIEW : https://vimeo.com/144958537

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HUB is a single channel video work, and a related multi-channel video installation that reflects on transnational displacement by examining the transitional architectural space of airports, and positing these as places for the fluid inscription of the personal and the political. HUB suggests that within the context of transnationalism, the idea of home is perhaps better represented by mobility itself and the sense of being ‘between’ places, rather than being rooted exclusively in one place and, by extension, to one identity. The idea of home as a type of 'betweeness' is, in a traditional sense, an impossible space, but it is precisely this impossibility that necessitates a new way of thinking about belonging. HUB uses the transitory space of the airport—defined by comings and goings—to introduce the notion of disappearance as an articulation of shifting ideas about displacement, belonging and identity. HUB proposes that we think of the airport as both a home and a place of disappearance—not in the sense of vanishing, but rather in the sense of transformation. Here, home and belonging are no longer necessarily articulated by territorial sovereignty as they are in traditional notions of nation and nationalism, but rather are embodied in displacement itself.

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HUB was cited by the publication ARTFORUM (New York) in their 'Best of 2001' international survey (selected by James Meyer, curator - National Gallery of Art, Washington)

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              "A compelling examination of the most fraught and contemporary experiences: air travel. Occasional voice-overs discussing the fragmented, global subject sound               like notes taken during a Homi Bhabha lecture. And yet, HUB achieves a visual grain and intensity that persuasively captures the alienating effects of travel in an               increasingly mobile society. The final shot of an airplane wing lifting above the runway into a thicket of clouds, accompanied by Di Stefano’s dramatic narration,                 is a small tour de force."

 

              James Meyer, curator of modern art, National Gallery of Art (Washington DC)

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DISTRIBUTION  

Video Data Bank (Chicago) www.vdb.org

V-Tape (Toronto) www.vtape.org

 

SHOWN  

Kassel Documentary Film Festival. Kassel, Germany [2001]

Para/Site Art Space. Hong Kong, China [2001]

Rymer Gallery - School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Chicago, IL, USA [2001]

Ellen Art Gallery - Concordia University. Montréal, Canada [2001]

Visible Evidence Conference. Brisbane, Australia [2001]

Transmediale - Media Arts Festival. Berlin, Germany [2002]

Festival De Imagen. Bacarena, Portugal [2002]

Central Station. Cape Town, South Africa [2002]

Documentary Matters Conference. Auckland, New Zealand [2002]

e-Vision, Wellington, New Zealand [2003]

Poetics of Exile Conference. Auckland, New Zealand [2003]                  

New Zealand Art Biennale, Govett-Brewster Art Gallery. New Plymouth, New Zealand [2004]

OFF LOOP Festival. Barcelona, Spain [2006]

Distance: Performance over distance. Stoke-Newington International Airport, UK [2010]

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WRITING

Maeve Connolly, 'Life in a Departure Lounge'. Transit, The Fringe Festival, Dublin, 2004
William McAloon, 'The Arrival Lounge'. The Listener, Auckland, 2005
Simon Rees, 'Changing Address'. Visit, Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, 2005

Alice Ming-wai Jim, 'Screen Structures: Media Art in Hong Kong.' Hong Kong Arts Council, 2004

James Meyer, 'Top Ten of 2001'. ARTFORUM, 2001​