Encounter with Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller

20 November, 2014 - 5:00 p.m.
Place
Nouvel Building, Auditorium 200
In collaboration with
Janet Cardiff & George Bures Miller. The Marionette Maker, 2014
Janet Cardiff & George Bures Miller. The Marionette Maker, 2014

This encounter serves as an introduction to the site-specific installation The Marionette Maker (Palacio de Cristal, from 19 November to 16 March, 2015), and the work of Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller as a whole, with both artists engaging in conversation with João Fernandes, the curator of the project and deputy director of the Museo Reina Sofía.

The work of Canadian artists Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller transforms the perception of time and space through the imperceptible use of contemporary technology in sound and image. Their installations recreate complex narrative spaces, where field recordings, audio guides, moving images and sculptural elements submerge the viewer in an unsettling and unpredictable experience. Halfway between film and literature, between theatre and performance, Cardiff and Bures Miller recover illusionism and immersion from mass media. Yet, far from replacing or cancelling out reality, their works awaken intense sensations and memories in the visitor, reconnecting experiences and reality in their most lived and unstable states.

Janet Cardiff (Brussels, Ontario, Canada, 1957) and George Bures Miller (Vegreville, Alberta, Canada, 1960) won the Special Award at the 49th Venice Bienniale in 2001 as they represented their country with the audiovisual installation Paradise Institute. They have also exhibited at numerous museums and arts centres, including the National Gallery of Canada in 2002, the MACBA in Barcelona in 2007, Modern Art Oxford in 2008, the Museum of the Contemporary Art, Helsinki, and dOCUMENTA (13), Kassel, in 2012 and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, in 2013.