Mar­sha Pearce

As part of the Trinidad + To­ba­go Film Fes­ti­val 2012, sev­en evenings of screen­ings of new me­dia works were held at Medul­la Art Gallery in Wood­brook, Port-of-Spain. New Me­dia 2012, which ran from Sep­tem­ber 22-29, was a col­lab­o­ra­tive ef­fort be­tween the fes­ti­val and ARC Caribbean art and cul­ture mag­a­zine. The ex­hi­bi­tion was the sec­ond in­car­na­tion of a show­cas­ing of ex­per­i­men­tal video and films. This year's col­lec­tion fea­tured 58 pieces, the works of 49 artists.

The term "new me­dia" is a broad one and its de­f­i­n­i­tion can take var­i­ous routes but in one sense it points to a space of cre­at­ing and com­mu­ni­cat­ing where dig­i­tal tech­nolo­gies have chal­lenged and blurred the lines be­tween film, the­atre, sound and pho­tog­ra­phy. In such a space, new me­dia artists are in­ves­ti­gat­ing how tech­niques of mov­ing im­ages, sound, per­for­mance and in­stal­la­tion might be brought to­geth­er to speak to each oth­er in or­der to pro­duce new, al­ter­na­tive lan­guages for ex­press­ing ideas and con­cerns and rep­re­sent­ing con­tem­po­rary re­al­i­ties.

In talk­ing about new me­dia and artis­tic prac­tice, ed­i­tor-in-chief of ARC Hol­ly By­noe ob­serves that this com­ing to­geth­er of var­i­ous me­dia "sig­ni­fies the way tech­nolo­gies are in­flu­enc­ing and chal­leng­ing our modes of rep­re­sen­ta­tion... the col­lu­sion of these medi­ums are now be­com­ing the cor­ner­stone up­on which artists are try­ing to de­fine the larg­er struc­tures and sys­tems in which they ex­ist." The cre­ative look and feel of new me­dia pieces of­ten fall out­side what is con­ven­tion­al­ly un­der­stood as filmic fic­tion­al sto­ries or doc­u­men­tary pieces. By­noe said the New Me­dia event is "a way to en­vi­sion a greater form of sup­port for artists who ex­ist on the pe­riph­ery of what is de­fined as 'nor­ma­tive' and 'sus­tain­able' works. Usu­al­ly these artists are un­able to en­ter in­to for­mal gallery spaces as their works are con­trary to ac­cept­able forms of rep­re­sen­ta­tion that we have come to ac­cept as col­lec­tive so­ci­eties in the Caribbean."

For this year's event there was a call for en­tries. The cri­te­ria for mak­ing se­lec­tions in­clud­ed the re­quire­ment that the pieces be non-nar­ra­tive; works that had plots or sto­ry lines were not con­sid­ered. The di­rec­tor of the work al­so had to have a con­nec­tion to the Caribbean re­gion and its Di­as­po­ras. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, works al­so need­ed to ad­dress the Caribbean us­ing ex­pe­ri­ences as a ba­sis for con­fronting is­sues. The re­sult was a col­lec­tion that ranged from the hu­mourous to the se­ri­ous­ly con­tem­pla­tive. An ar­ray of pieces, of­fer­ing myr­i­ad per­spec­tives and tech­ni­cal ap­proach­es, were ex­hib­it­ed. Karen McLean's piece Oil and Wa­ter looked at how these two el­e­ments do not mix in or­der to re­flect on racial ten­sions while the work of O'Neil Lawrence, en­ti­tled Self Por­trait, ex­plored is­sues of mas­culin­i­ty and sex­u­al­i­ty through a fu­sion of still and mov­ing im­ages of him­self. The fes­ti­val and ARC mag­a­zine al­so part­nered with films4peace, an an­nu­al short film com­mis­sion ini­tia­tive by PUMA.Peace, which show­cas­es artists vi­su­al­ly in­ter­pret­ing the sub­ject of peace. Peace-themed works were there­fore al­so in­clud­ed in the New Me­dia screen­ings.