MAI (Montréal, arts interculturels), 3680, rue Jeanne-Mance, bureau 103
Montréal, QC

GALLERY Tuesday to Saturday – 12 pm to 6 pm FREE

Faster, Higher was originally commissioned to coincide with the Beijing 2008 Olympics. This five-screen work includes montages of Olympic archive material and rarely-seen Chinese documentary footage spanning the last century intercut with filmed sequences shot by the artist in the areas around the London 2012 Olympics site. In light of China’s voluntary self-exclusion from the Olympics between 1948 and 1980, and the avowed apolitical idealism of the latter as a global brand, Faster, Higher seeks to suggest commonalities in visual and cultural rhetoric, and resonances between notions of nation and sport, patriotism and physical endeavour, opening with the rituals and symbols of national ceremony and international unity: flags jostling along a succession of parades, processions punctuated by the release of doves and balloons. Ultimately, the work explores questions of spectacle and its construction, as well as collective identity and the glorification of individual performance.

Faster, Higher