Multiscreen Film Installations Opening: Unity Island (2023) and Last House (2010) by Carl Lee
January 18 @ 5:00 pm – 7:30 pm
Please join Termite TV at [location] on Sunday, January 13, 2025 from 5-7:30p for the opening of Carl Lee’s multiscreen film installations Unity Island (2023) and Last House (2010). Both of these three-screen installations take a personal, intimate approach to interpreting the built environment and how it changes over time.
Unity Island (2023, 3-channel 16mm film to digital projection, 13:30 loop, stereo sound)
Unity Island is a landscape study of a ¼ mile stretch of land between Niagara River and Black Rock Canal at the border of Buffalo, NY and Fort Erie, Ontario. A railroad crosses the island from Canada to the US passing by a park visited by picnickers, bicyclists, and fishermen. Freight trains cross the canal lock via a swing bridge which rotates open for boats and the occasional freight ship. The 19th century infrastructure of railroad and swing bridge and the placid public park belie the island’s past as a garbage dump for the city of Buffalo. A hill, from which you can get a 360° view of the island, the city, the river, and the highway, is located on the former site of the incineration plant. I’ve been taking my dog, Augie, for walks there for years. Time frames overlap and his in-the-moment wanderings act as a guide.
Last House (2010, 16:30 loop, 3-channel projection, stereo audio)
When I first moved to Buffalo I was struck by the everyday beauty of the many single-family homes that make up a large part of the city. The iconic image of the house seemed to have endless variation, each a unique instance with their own histories. If houses are containers for our memories, the structures within which so many minor and major domestic events take place, then each week in this city a collective amnesia grows block by block: a city disappears before our eyes. The demolition of these structures – by design or accident – and the speed, indifference, and violence with which it takes place; the transmutations of scale, space, and time – is breathtaking, tragic, and full of contradictions. Last House is an inquiry, part document, part memorial, to this changing built environment.
Carl Lee, an early member of Termite TV, is a media artist living in Buffalo, NY. More information can be found at carljlee.com.