description

Suit of Armour is a collaborative media installation by Camille Turner and Nancy Paterson. Stemming from a series of conversations about our shared interest in female identity and representation, it explores sex, beauty and racial myths encountered by a black Canadian girl and the various conflicting messages which attempt to define who she is and where she belongs. This vulnerable teenaged girl is full of hope, dreams and youth and has only her skin to protect her, a “suit of armour” shielding her from the voices which surround her and words that mould her developing identity. Suit of Armour is a poignant, personal piece stemming from our discussions about female identity and representation with Nancy Paterson and inspired by my early formative years growing up in Canada. Its a universal tale of coming of age and following one’s hopes and dreeams, learning to hear one’s own voice amidst the myriad of voices that surround her and words that mould her developing self identity.

The style of the work is organic and non-linear. In combination with video, we work with digitized photographs, collaging various elements, applying effects, adding music, readings from texts and phrases from conversations. The result is output to DVD in random order as short clips of moving images similar to stop motion animation at a very slow frame rate.

the artists

Nancy Paterson is an electronic media artist working primarily in the field of interactive installations. A visiting Artist at the School of Communication Arts (Seneca@York, Toronto), her mediaworks have been exhibited at venues such as SIGGRAPH, ARS ELECTRONICA and ISEA. Details regarding guest lectures, exhibitions and published essays are
available at: www.vacuumwoman.com

Camille Turner is a Toronto-based media/performance artist and cultural producer. She is a founding member of Year Zero One, a media arts collective which acts as a network for the dissemination of net.art and digital culture. She has presented her collaborative projects, community engagements, public performance and digital interventions at venues such as: Dak’art lab 2004, La Biennale de l’art Africain contemporain, Senegal and Skinning our Tools: Designing for Context and Culture at the Banff New Media Institute. She was a visiting artist at Interaktions-Labor, an experimental media arts research lab in an abandoned coal mine in Gottelborn, Germany and The Container Project, a mobile media arts lab in a shipping container in rural Jamaica initiated by mervin Jarman from the (h)activist collective, Mongrel. Camille is currently artist-in residence at Central Neighbourhood House, a social agency in downtown east Toronto.