P r e / a m b l e: A 2 day festival of Art and Psychogeography NOVEMBER 1 & 2, 2003 Home Festival Overview Participating Artists Schedule of Events About Join the Mailing List Contact PRESENTED BY: Western Front Upgrade 2.0 Special Airplane Kate Armstrong Year Zero One OTHER LINKS: What is Psychogeography? Algorithmic Psychogeography Guy Debord's Theory of the Derive Why Psychogeography? Social Fiction Glowlab Psychogeography.net	Eliza Fernbach T A L K : Rushing to your Death Western Front Date: Saturday, November 1, 2003 Time: 2 pm Eliza Fernbach will appear at Pre/amble to talk about her installation "Rushing to your Death", which was presented in Rennes, France in 2001. Eliza Fernbach's art transforms her personal world of myth and fable into images and objects. It is an invitation to the public to pause along life's journey. Fine art and digital art practices are combined to reveal thresholds. The central investigation of the work is the consideration both mathematical and philosophical, of the elusive halfway point of a life. Mathematically, the turning point that separates two halves of a life can only be calculated at death. Yet Philosophically, there are people who never truly live the second half of their spirit lives. This type of existence or grey blur is addressed directly in the installation "Rushing to your Death?" a combination of linen sculptures, motion sensors and a Flash Animation driven by a measurement of time spent in the installation. In provoking a pause Fernbach seeks to separate the blur into its primary colors; each a moment of life, a day, a new vista. "Out of the darkness of morning I live through the colors that lead me into the complete white of another night. Am I at the end of the first half of my life? The beginning of the second? Or exactly in the middle? Which half of your life are you living?" -E.F. BIO: Eliza Fernbach was born in Berlin, Germany. She has lived in Canada, Singapore, France, the UK and the US. Wanderlust is a forceful theme in her work. Fernbach studied Philosophy at McGill University in Montreal and upon graduation in 1991, she traveled to Singapore to present her one woman multi-media show "A Quest For Man". In 1995 her short film "Baggage" won acclaim at the New York and Avignon film Festivals. A culmination of her dreamlike approach to the themes of travel and spirituality, "Baggage" marks the real beginning of Fernbach's oeuvre. In the US she was the first director to use the PAWS camera system seen in the Matrix movies. Her short film "Temps Suspendu" follows on "Baggage's" examination of the human adventure as a journey and explores the possibility of pausing life's timeline. The most profound influences on Fernbach's artistic enquiry were her own immunological illness and her mother's sudden death from brain cancer. A lengthy period of convalescence and grieving inspired work concerned with the soul, and the speed of a life. At the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Rennes, France, Fernbach delved into cyber culture as part of her ongoing enquiry into the "halfway points of life". The theme of her graduate thesis exhibit titled "Rushing to Your Death?" is the focus of her current work. Fernbach has worked at the Pompidou Center in Paris in the New Media department as well as at Rhizome.org in New York where she assisted in the curation of the show Net Ephemera in 2001. Currently Fernbach is preparing a site-specific work "Echo de La Fuite" to be installed in Tourouvre, Normandy as well as a work for St Francis Church,Hoboken titled "Measuring Sorrow". Eliza Fernbach Rushing to your Death