Constance ARI

50/50+(dis)integration=HIATUS

The four artists participating in HIATUS came together as an international multimedia collective D Group in 2006 at a festival of international collaborations in the Czech Republic and named themselves after the flight boarding preference they were given on the way.

On this occasion D Group have split into two collaborative projects that are constructed using methods similar to the surrealists ‘exquisite corpse’ drawing game.

50/50 is a simple, call-and-response photographic game by SR and LMS where the artists, based on opposite sides of the world, send and respond to images by email to create a series of 'bi-valved' digital images. Simple rules define the boundaries of the game; each artists contribution remains unscreened and unexplained; it is an equitable process where trust must be given over to the other artists process and method of response.

(dis)integration is an audio work based on a similar, remote, call-and-response process by JYT and MW. The 1st artist produces 2 minutes of audio. The final 30 seconds of that audio is sent via a fileshare process to the 2nd artist. That artist makes a 2-minute audio response to that last 30 seconds and responds in kind. This process is even closer to that of the ‘exquisite corpse’ where each drawn contribution to an image, traditionally of a figure, is folded over leaving just a trace, from where the next ‘draw-er’ may continue.

D Group are Sally Rees, Lena Marie Stuart, Jean-Yves Thériault and Matt Warren. D Group met in Vancouver in 2000 but did not come together as a collaborative partnership until August of 2006, when CESTAs Sense of Fear festival in Tabor, Czech Republic offered the opportunity to act on some long-discussed and pre-developed ideas.

D Group collectively produce work in performance, video, web media, audio composition, installation and photography.

D Group prizes an extended hybridism: one that is present not only in the collision of differing practices, backgrounds and cultures but also in the fluid exchange of those practices amongst the artists themselves. All four members bring individual strengths to be utilized, exploited and adopted by other group members until, ideally, roles may become interchangeable and D Group operates as a fully independent unit.

Based on opposite sides of the globe (Quebec, Canada and Tasmania, Australia), D Group collectively search for opportunities to further develop works in intensive meet/work/exhibit summits, periodically somewhere in the world.