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Richard Kerr
House Arrest
March 1 - 31, 2013

The Montreal-based filmmaker and visual artist Richard Kerr has been an important presence in Canadian avant-garde cinema for three decades. Since his initial filmmaking forays as a member of the mythic “Escarpment School,” Kerr has proven to be a protean filmmaker of his generation. Beginning with poetic documentaries, (Hawkesville to Wallenstein, Canal); progressing to the multi-part experimental narratives (on land, over water…six stories); political essays (last days of contrition, Cruel Rhythm); structural landscape films (Plein Air, The Machine in the Garden); autobiography (never confuse movement with action, a.k.a The Hemingway project); found footage montage (collage d’hollywood); Richard Kerr has mastered many genres. Following a transitory, mid-1990’s sortie into dramatic fiction (The Willing Voyeur…), Kerr reconditioned his artistic practice by including installation work, digital video “sketching” and the motion picture weaving project.

As a media-maker, who now divides his time between digital video and object making, Richard Kerr embraces the processes of intuition and stream of consciousness, valuing spontaneity above all else while testing fresh forms and holding the material realities of media in the highest regard. He is also a teacher, a professor in the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada.

House Arrest, 2012, 20 minutes

House Arrest is at once literal, metaphorical, and phenomenological. It is a work that Kerr wants read as an open visual text. Being under house arrest provided the content, (home) and structure for the “daily practice” of recording. His intention was to design a camera and apparatus that would break from the conventions of everyday videography; a visual system that would evoke a physical and perceptual impact; an accelerated and experiential cinema.

Courtesy of the artist

Curated by Tom Sherman