Event overview
Organised by the Department of Art, artist, film-maker and essayist Jon Rafman will speak on his recent work.
Jon Rafman is a Montreal-based artist, filmmaker and essayist. Mixing irony, humor and melancholy, Rafman’s work explores the paradoxes of modernity. Well known within the digital community, his work is informed by the rich potential provided by contemporary technology in its possibility for celebrating and critiquing contemporary experience. As an artist whose subject is the human experience, he captures the human in a wide variety of potentially alienating contexts. “My work explores the paradoxes of modernity. In 2008, a year after Google sent out an army of hybrid vehicles bearing nine cameras on a single pole to photograph the world, I began an exploration of this new virtual world, and was fascinated by how powerfully Street View photographs can represent our contemporary experience, the conflict they can express between an indifferent robotic camera and man’s search for connectedness and significance. The photos underscore the tension between an uncaring camera and man’s need to interpret his experience. While celebrating and critiquing modern experience, the technological tools themselves show how they can estrange us from ourselves.”
Jon Rafman received his BA in Literature and Philosophy from McGill University in Montreal, QC in 2004, and his MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in Chicago, IL in 2008. Rafman has exhibited his works across the US, Canada, Italy, Sweden, Germany, France, Spain, the Netherlands, Japan and Russia. Recently, Rafman’s work was included in “Collective Identity,” a group exhibition at the Museum of Canadian Contemporary Art (MOCCA) and presented as a feature show of the 2012 CONTACT Photography Festival at Angell Gallery in Toronto, the 2012 Moscow Photo Biennale, the 2012 Hong Kong International Art Fair, the New Museum, New York; American Medium, New York, Scaatchi Gallery, London and China Art Objects, Los Angeles. Rafman’s ‘Nine Eyes of Google Street View’ has been featured in Modern Painters, Frieze, Der Spiegel, Libération, The New York Times, The Guardian, and Harper’s Magazine.
Dates & times
| Date | Time | Add to calendar |
|---|---|---|
| 24 Apr 2013 | 5:30pm - 7:00pm |
Accessibility
If you are attending an event and need the College to help with any mobility requirements you may have, please contact the event organiser in advance to ensure we can accommodate your needs.
