Jillian McDonald
Total Eclipse and the Heart
Résidence
26 mai au 15 juin 2025


VERSION ORIGINALE
Filmed in New York, Quebec, Greenland and other locations, the experimental video Total Eclipse and the Heart is inspired by 2024’s Totality. During an eclipse gone wrong, characters are drawn into nature, and disappear into oblivion by sinking in ponds and crumbling to dust.
Inspired by the writings of A. Laurie Palmer in The Lichen Museum and Donna Haraway in Staying with the Trouble, scenes take the point of view of mosses, lichens and fungi. A colossal 3D moon hovers inside and out, asteroids float by, and the sun morphs from one strange version to the next. The video alternates between live action and footage generated by artificial intelligence technologies, including deepfakes and prompt-based video. A percussive soundtrack combines percussion, drone sounds, analogue radio, and popular music referencing the moon.
BIO
Jillian McDonald is a Canadian artist living in New York. Exhibitions and screenings were held at Undercurrent, Air Circulation Galleries in Brooklyn; The Art Gallery of Regina in Saskatchewan; Régart, La Bande Vidéo, and AxeNéo7 in Québec; aCinema in Milwaukee; Philip Steele Gallery in Denver; and The Esker Foundation in Calgary. She has mounted performances for 50 to 1000 performers in natural and urban settings in Tempe at The Arizona State University Art Museum, in Sweden in collaboration with Lilith Performance Studio, and in Toronto at La Nuit Blanche. A CBC IDEAS documentary profiles her videos, which were also reviewed in The New York Times and Canadian Art. Critical discussion appears in The Transatlantic Zombie by Sarah Lauro and Deconstructing Brad Pitt, edited by Christopher Schaberg. Awards include grants from The New York Foundation for the Arts and The Canada Council for the Arts, and participation in numerous international residencies such as Wave Farm in Acra, NY, The Arctic Circle Expedition in Svalbard, Norway, The Headlands Center for the Arts in California, the Glenfiddich Canadian Art Prize in Dufftown, Scotland, and The Banff Center for the Arts in Alberta, Canada. In 2024, she is a New Works resident at Harvestworks in New York.