The Language of Mesmerization / The Mesmerization of Language

Here are notes and images from The Language of Mesmerization / The Mesmerization of Language, originally created in 1986 as a slide dissolve installation, then adapted for the web in 2004.

In the original work, commissioned by Helga Pakasaar and Keith Wallace for the Broken Muse exhibition at the Vancouver Art Gallery, some slides were hand made from sepia prints on mylar which were to fade with exposure to light, others used photographic film such as Panatomic-X black & white film slides, and colour Ektachrome slides, as well there was a brief audio component not included in the web version.

The web version can be accessed through the Morris and Helen Belkin Gallery web archive or the QR Code at the gallery.

The original audio file from the installation which accompanies Part Three in the slides below, can be heard here: 

Images photographed by Laiwan on location in Suomenlinna, Finland in 1986.

Thanks

To curators Helga Pakasaar and Keith Wallace for supporting the creation of the original work in 1986 for the exhibition Broken Muse at the Vancouver Art Gallery.

To Jessie Caryl for curating this web version for Re-Reading the 80s: Feminisms as Process in Vancouver, at the Belkin Satellite Gallery in 2004. 

And to Susan Lord for her 1986 translation of Sappho Fragment 31 from Greek into literal English.