<p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Arial"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><b>RENDER @ University of Waterloo</b></span></p>
<p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Arial; color: #008181"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><b>Susan Detwiler: <i>dogswalkme</i></b></span></p>
<p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Arial; color: #830000"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><b>Crystal Mowry: <i>Twilight of an Empire</i></b></span></p>
<p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Arial"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><b>January 8th through February 14th, 2009</b></span></p>
<p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 16.0px Arial"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><b>Opening reception: January 8th from 5 - 8 pm</b></span></p>
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<p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Arial"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><b>RENDER</b> is pleased to present two new solo projects by Susan Detwiler and Crystal Mowry. Detwiler's <b><i>dogswalkme</i></b> and Mowry's <b><i>Twilight of an Empire </i></b>continue <b>RENDER</b>'s strategy of commissioning artists to develop new works through an informal residency program, to critically engage with the history of gallery and museum practice, and to respond to social, cultural and environmental dynamics in the Waterloo Region. These new projects are the result of an ongoing dialogue that will continue with Detwiler developing a second site intervention for the University of Waterloo campus in the fall of 2009 and Mowry producing a new work for the atrium of the UW School of Architecture. </span></p>
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<p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Arial"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px">Susan Detwiler lives in a rural area on the edge of a maple forest. Her art practice is based on her interactions and observations in the surrounding natural environment. For years she has maintained a daily walking practice which takes her through feral field, swamp and woodlot. With <b><i>dogswalkme</i></b>, Detwiler continues to explore the terrain at the fringes of development: the farm fields, fallow land and abandoned industrial sites often ignored or left idle within the intense suburban sprawl and urban infill of the region. Detwiler's valuing of these places as sites of potent personal engagement runs in stark contrast to the dominant definition of land use "value" in the area. Working with simple head-cam technology (carried by herself and her dogs) Detwiler's multi-perspective video records the complex interactions between artist, dogs and the landscape they traverse. The placement of the head-cams frames part of their faces making them appear like peculiar creatures in a strange terrain. There's a magical, otherworldly quality as they maneuver through forest, field and quarry with no clear sense of purpose or destination. Detwiler offers a psychogeographic exploration that challenges current land use practice and positions the pace of the body, the cadence of unaided human movement through the landscape, as the critical platform for understanding the immediate environment.</span></p>
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<p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Arial"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px">Crystal Mowry's <b><i>Twilight of an Empire</i></b> is inspired by a number of historical accounts of Ota Benga (later known as Otto Bingo), a Congolese Pygmy brought to the United States at the turn of the 20th century with the purpose of being in an Anthropological display at the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair. But it was the month of September in 1906 when he lived among the chimps and orangutans in the Bronx Zoo that will always be the most curious part of his story. For that brief month he attracted thousands of visitors to the zoo and incited hot debates about race in America. </span></p>
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<p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Arial"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><b><i>Twilight of an Empire</i></b> is an open-back diorama comprised of essentially two versions of the same scene, separated by conflicting sight lines. There is the diorama/object version and the live video signal visible on a monitor. Neither the diorama, nor the video stream, aim to provide a factual account of the story. Rather, Mowry hopes to situate viewers somewhere between the lived event and a document.</span></p>
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<p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Arial"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px"><b><i>Twilight of an Empire</i></b> is a bit like a set for a film of overlapping moments in history that implicate ideas of savagery and civilization. As with her earlier works, Mowry is interested in the discrepancies between different accounts of historical events, and the room that can be created for uncertainty depending on how the event is framed. Within <b><i>Twilight of an Empire</i></b> is an unlikely mash-up of architectural structures: a larger Victorian Glass House (inspired in part by a 1905 image of the Atrium at the Bronx Zoo) houses a modernist "monkey house" which borrows characteristics from the architecture of Le Corbusier and a Robinson Crusoe inspired treehouse. </span></p>
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<p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Arial"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px">Contact:</span></p>
<p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Arial"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px">Andrew Hunter, RENDER Director/Curator</span></p>
<p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Arial; color: #000099"><span style="text-decoration: underline ; letter-spacing: 0.0px"><a href="mailto:renderprojects@gmail.com">renderprojects@gmail.com</a></span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px color: #000000"> </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Arial"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px">or</span></p>
<p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Arial"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px">Barbara Hobot, RENDER Curator in Residence</span></p>
<p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Arial; color: #000099"><span style="text-decoration: underline ; letter-spacing: 0.0px"><a href="mailto:renderevents@gmail.com">renderevents@gmail.com</a></span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px color: #000000"> </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Arial; color: #000099"><span style="text-decoration: underline ; letter-spacing: 0.0px"><a href="http://www.render.uwaterloo.ca/">www.render.uwaterloo.ca</a></span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px color: #000000"> </span></p>
<p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px Arial"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px">519-888-4567 x33575</span></p>
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