Ian Haig film Chronicles of the New Human Organism 30 June

Chronicles of the New Human Organism Ian Haig 2010

CHRONICLES OF THE NEW HUMAN ORGANISM

dorkbot cbr and ccas bring you a film and talk by
IAN HAIG

Thursday 30 June 6PM Canberra Contemporary Art Space Galleries Gorman House Art Centre Ainslie Avenue Braddon
bring cushions

Ian Haig works at the intersection of visual arts and media arts. His work explores the strangeness of everyday reality and focuses on the themes of the human body, devolution, abjection, transformation and psychopathology, often seen through the lens of low cultural forms.

His work has been exhibited in galleries and video/media festivals around the world. Including exhibitions at: The Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne; The Experimental Art Foundation, Adelaide; The Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Melbourne; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Artec Biennale – Nagoya, Japan; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Art Museum of China, Beijing and The Torrance Art Museum, Los Angeles. In addition his animation and video work have screened in over 120 Festivals internationally. In 2003 he received a fellowship from the New Media Arts Board of the Australia Council.

Chronicles of the New Human Organism
Short synopsis: part history, sci-fi / apocalyptic warning, contemporary spirit world, sect, nature documentary, post new age, futuristic vision, pseudo science, cult, mondo, recruitment, crank sci -fi, junk science, discovery channel from another dimension, educational video – exploring the extremes and the outer limits of human belief systems…
“Imagine putting a video camera into the hands of a Death Valley outsider artist convinced that the mother ship is about to land at any minute, and that when it does a new phase of human evolution will begin. Chronicles of the new human organism is such a film.

Taking the form of the nature documentary exploring the strangeness of the world around us as a starting point – Chronicles of the new human organism takes the viewer on a journey through a range of ideas, systems of knowledge and questions relating to the origins of the human species, the significance of the reptilian mind, new forms of human sexuality, parasites, the communication with the dead, and alien evolutionary technology.

The work references and cannibalizes ideas derived from Al Fry, JG Ballard, Rudolf Steiner, Wilhelm Reich, The Heavens Gate cult, Carl Sagan and Oscar Kiss Maerth. Delivered with a portentous, yet strangely soothing voiceover, Chronicles of the new human organism re-interprets the history of visionary thinking about the human species through the po-faced filter of Erich Von Daniken’s Chariots of the Gods and the shockumentary style of Mondo Cane.

One of the aims of Chronicles of the new human organism has been to make a work that defies categorization or another way of looking at the categorization of the human itself. It is a perverse and compelling hybrid of educational video, new age recruitment campaign and cult manifesto: the Mondo movie genre with a good dose of pseudo science.
The sound and music for the video was composed by PH2 (Philip Brophy and Philip Samartzis). Like the visuals, it draws on a range of references in its production from Jerry Goldsmith sci-fi scores such as Logan’s Run to pulsating electronic noise from Forbidden Planet and textural location field recordings of some of the weirdest places on the planet”. – Darren Tofts