The Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery is pleased to present the online catalogue, Judy Radul: World Rehearsal Court, of the exhibition presented at the Belkin Art Gallery from October 9 to December 6, 2009. In 2010 the exhibition traveled to the Generali Foundation in Vienna, Austria and to Media City Seoul in Korea, and in June 2011 it will be presented at the Henie-Onstad Kunstsenter in Oslo, Norway.
World Rehearsal Court is a large-scale installation that draws on Radul’s research into the role of theatricality and new technologies in the court of law. Based on trial transcripts from International Criminal Tribunals, the exhibition presents a series of pre-recorded courtroom scenes, an evidence room, objects, and a series of computer-controlled live cameras that feed to an array of monitors that turns the gallery into a theatrical and cinematic space.
“World Rehearsal Court repeats and mimics the way visual technologies are gradually colonizing the courtroom, mirroring the mirrors and screens of the court,” writes Costas Douzinas, Professor of Law and Director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities, University of London in his catalogue essay. “Scholarly discussion of the judicial visual,” he continues, “has mainly addressed the veracity and trustworthiness of images as evidence. But the pluri-visual staging of World Rehearsal Court is much more important. It goes to the heart of law’s iconoclasm, its enduring suspicion of images.”
One of the highlights of this free, online catalogue is a video walk-through and audio commentary of the exhibition with artist Judy Radul and Scott Watson, Director and Curator of the Belkin Art Gallery. Designed by Jeff Khonsary and Courtenay Webber of The Future, the catalogue features video documentation of the courtroom drama, over one hundred installation images, and provocative essays by Scott Watson, Costas Douzinas, Anselm Franke, curator and writer based in Brussels and Berlin, Sharon Kahanoff, Vancouver-based filmmaker, artist and writer, and artist Judy Radul.
Biography
Judy Radul was born in Lillooet, British Columbia and lives and works in Vancouver. She received her MFA from Bard College, New York (2000). A consideration of forms and conditions of performance informs her practice which has recently focused primarily on video installation. In October 2009 Radul’s large-scale installation, World Rehearsal Court, involving live and prerecorded video, was presented as a solo exhibition at the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery at The University of British Columbia. Other recent solo exhibitions include Catriona Jeffries Gallery, Vancouver; Oboro Gallery, Montreal; Presentation House Gallery, North Vancouver; and The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery, Toronto. Radul’s work And So Departed (Again) was part of the 2004 Videodreams: Between the Cinematic and the Theatrical at Kunsthaus Graz, Austria. Her major five-channel projection installation, Downes Point, was shown in the 2005 exhibition Intertidal: Vancouver Art and Artists at the Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst (MuHKA) in Antwerp, Belgium. In 2008 the Vancouver-based Kootenay School of Writing commissioned a new video work (Touch Theatre Flood Judgment) from Radul for their Positions Colloquium. In the 2009 exhibition All that is Solid Melts into Air curated by Dieter Roelstraete in Mechelen, Belgium, Radul’s 1999 work In Relation to Objects was shown. Judy Radul teaches at Simon Fraser University.
This project is made possible with the support of the British Columbia Arts Council and the Canada Council for the Arts. The international tour of World Rehearsal Court is supported by the British Columbia Arts Council’s Touring Initiatives Program.
For more information contact
Naomi Sawada
[email protected], tel: (604) 822-3640
Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery
University of British Columbia
1825 Main Mall, Vancouver, B.C.
www.belkin.ubc.ca