Althea Thauberger, not afraid to die, 2001,
Single channel projection 16 mm to DVD,
Edition of 3, 7 minutes, 20 seconds. Image courtesy of the artist.

New! Explore our additional resources
for this exhibition, including a blog
post by Curator Crystal Mowry and 
community responses generated by the 
Feedback Loop on Intersections>

Althea Thauberger: not afraid to die

March 27 - June 5, 2011
Co-presented by the Open Ears Festival
of Music and Sound.

Opening Reception: Sunday, March 28, 2 p.m
New! View the opening event coverage on Free-Admission>
New! Take a behind the scenes mini tour on YouTube>

Be a part of the Feedback Loop. Visit our blog to find out what others are saying and add your own impressions of not afraid to die>

KW|AG is pleased to present Althea Thauberger as part of the 2011 Open Ears Festival of Music and Sound. Recognized as one of Canada's most diverse and adventurous musical events, the Open Ears Festival celebrates the act of listening through innovative programs, from guided sound walks to multi-media performances.

Vancouver-based artist Althea Thauberger has internationally produced and exhibited work which typically involves collaboration with a group or community. The end result of these collaborations usually takes the shape of performances, videos and photographs. Thauberger gravitates towards groups of people who often exist in some form of social seclusion. Through the constraints inherent in her work, Thauberger illuminates the tension between the coercive and voluntary actions we undertake in our everyday lives. Utilising almost-exclusively nonprofessional performers such as Canadian tree planters, U.S. military wives and male youth in the German civil service, Thauberger creates complex documents of self-expression and isolation.

As a part of the Open Ears Festival, KW|AG will present Thauberger's not afraid to die, an early video piece which first introduced the tense relationship between sincerity and performance so palpable in her current work. Central to this piece is a young woman seated in front of the Northwest Rainforest Diorama at the Royal B.C. Museum in Victoria. She is clad in a gore-tex jacket, dressed for adventure despite the static representation of nature behind her. The "silence" that we typically expect of museum spaces is replaced with a series of artificial ambient sounds, birds chirping and planes flying overhead. The young woman remains silent, except for the sounds she makes while she consumes a snack. A haunting voice, the artist's own, interrupts the near-silence with a folk-song. A portrait of both a vital subject and the strange world that surrounds her, not afraid to die offers us a delicate balance between uncertainty and fearlessness.

Thauberger's work has been commissioned and exhibited by major museums and galleries across the world. In 2009 she participated in the Canadian Forces Artists Program and travelled to the CFB in Kandahar, Afghanistan where she worked on a collaborative photography project with military members there. KW|AG will be working with Thauberger on a new
commission as part of our ongoing Parochial Views series. Watch this space for further information on how you can participate in this project.