News & Events

Shadow Machine

Co.ERASGA have recently completed another open public studio process of Shadow Machine in partnership with the Dance Centre as part of their 2010 open house and in celebration of the first national culture day across the country; Close to 80 people attended to see the studio showing.

Shadow Machine continues its research and creation moving towards opening night Oct 20, 2010 at W2 Storyeum

Shadow Machine began to return to life in the fall of 2009 through a creative process re- locating old materials for inspiration towards a new full expanded version, the first since it was first put to public in 2001 part of Industrial Ear festival produced by The Western Front.

Under the collaboration of media artists Carol Sawyer, Peter Courtemance, Ken Gregory and myself, Shadow Machine (first inception) came to life from our efforts to depict the relationships of machinery and body closely relating to the working class, builders and machinery workers that were once greatly part of our evolving industrial era in the turn of the century.

It would be one of my most memorable collaborative performance works,  not only deeply rooted in dance but also in observations and responses in working collaboratively with the other artists, their creative approaches in discourse, sounds, visuals, technological affinity and aesthetics to bring Shadow Machine to life.

As time passed, I have desired to re-visit the work to be part of Co.ERASGA’s repertoire.

In living and observing Vancouver, its changing states, ecologically and socially, have reminded me so much of work.

People building Vancouver to a new frontier, a bigger city, but also signaling the disappearance of a once working historical and industrial site; the ghost of the past and the busy builders of the new Vancouver.

An intense time for Vancouver, where working people seem everywhere to be building and occupying structure and new territories.  40-50 years ago people work inside factories and machineries employed and slaved in the labor of machineries to earn a living, these industries would build what would become a Vancouver today from its industrious saga.

As an artist, I slave and work for my art form; it is my work, this activity is rarely defined and missed at times by the public not realizing the amount of energy and labour in what goes on in making art beyond the facility of imagination.

For dance, the body is a machine that labours to bring the dance in space and in time amidst the multi-hours in studio and rehearsal to perfect a movement.

As Co.ERASGA completes its 10 years anniversary celebration, it is fitting to dive into shadow machine, a multi-media work, representing the past and acknowledging the present. 10 years of working and building Co.ERASGA meant a lot of effort and as today, when economical crisis for the arts is felt in our province, the creativity of Shadow Machine reveals to you the basic working method we all have.

A path, a true sense of a living entity as humans, to work, to live and progress.