Taking Time

Canadian pianist Eve Egoyan’s husband, David Rokeby, is one of Canada’s most innovative video artists. The two have recently collaborated on an extraordinary project which ArtSpring is privileged to present on Saturday, February 22.

Over the course of a year, Rokeby recorded 750,000 images of Montreal cityscapes, the camera moving slowly day by day capturing light and weather amid buildings and trees. From these images he has edited a work called Machine for Taking Time, a meditation on the nature of time. We see snow turn to leaves, leaves turn to light, light turn to shadow on rooftops and walls. This prolonged meditation is accompanied by Egoyan’s performance of an equally contemplative work for solo piano, Simple Lines of Enquiry, composed by the late Ann Southam.

The whole performance is extraordinary – an hour-long journey into the heart of stillness and movement, of time and its simultaneous evanescence and fixity.

Why should you come to see/hear the work performed live?

a) Because it is unlike anything you have ever experienced. It will be stunning on ArtSpring’s big screen.
b) Because it brings together two of Canada’s most extraordinary artists in work beyond the boundaries of the ordinary.
c) Because it will be a wonderful companion piece to Eve’s more conventional piano recital the previous evening.

If you attend Eve’s Friday, February 21 recital, we invite you to Machine for Taking Time/Simple Lines of Enquiry for free. Just bring along your ticket stub from the recital.

Tickets for only Saturday evening are available for $15 for adults and $5 for youth from the ArtSpring Ticket Centre 537-2012 or online.

Here is a short excerpt from David’s Machine for Taking Time video: