Jana Sterbak
Jana Sterbak | Czech Republic/Canada 1955 | From here to there 2003 | Six-channel video installation on server: 12:30 minutes, colour, sound | Purchased 2004. The Queensland Government's Gallery of Modern Art Acquisitions Fund | Collection: Queensland Art Gallery
Jana Sterbak
Canada b.1955
From here to there 2003 (installation view)
Edition 1/4
6-channel video installation:
12:30 minutes, colour, sound
Purchased 2004. The Queensland Government's Queensland Gallery of Modern Art Acquisitions Fund
Collection: Queensland Art Gallery
Jana Sterbak
From here to there 2003
Jana Sterbak was born in 1955 in Prague, Czechoslovakia, but now divides her time between Montreal, Canada, and Barcelona, Spain. Sterbak's work encompasses sculpture, photography, performance, video and installations, and engages particularly with questions of desire, constraint, the body and technology.
From here to there 2003 was filmed by a Jack Russell Terrier called Stanley who was fitted with the latest in lightweight medical camera equipment. He capers in the snow and through the brush on the banks of Montreal's St. Lawrence River.
It is Stanley's curious, restless point of view that we see multiplied across six video projections. This 'cyborg' dog-camera blurs the boundaries between human and animal, nature and technology.
The soundtrack to the work combines Stanley's vocalisations with the 1955 recordings by Glenn Gould of J.S. Bach's Goldberg Variations. Simultaneously funny and exhilarating, From here to there raises questions about human and artistic perception, replacing them, albeit temporarily, with a technologically-enhanced terrier.
