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Iain Baxter& |
| project: One Canada Video
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One Canada Video
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Video projection on
windshield, 100 h, vehicle, variable dimensions.
Iain Baxter& designed this road movie in 1967
and produced it two decades later in collaboration
with Louise Chance Baxter. By the time this cinematic
genre appeared—at more or less the same time
that the “global village” was coalescing—advances
in transportation had made it possible to travel
more easily across the continent, while modern communications
networks were delivering significant currents of
influence from other lands into Western homes. This
newfound mobility gave birth to what James Clifford
has called “traveling culture,” a concept
that is particularly useful for the definition of
culture on a global scale: culture no longer appears
static, but rather is continually traversed by movements
of people as well as by the flow of information
that plays such an active role in the transformation
of their cultural identity. Baxter& seized upon
this reality and set out to travel the distance
that separates the spaces and times of differing
cultures, which often had been rendered abstract
through the use of telecommunications. His road
movie documents, in real time, his and Louise’s
journey across Canada—from Cape Spear (New
foundland) to Long Beach (Vancouver Island, British
Columbia)—taking in images and ambient sounds
of the Trans-Canada Highway, the discussions they
had, the words of people they met, as well as the
silences between them, which open an introspective
window. This video is not only about places and
the people in them, but about the ineluctable passage
of time. |
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