ONE RANDOM YEAR
video installation by Bettina Forget
Is life a collection of random events or a story with a narrative? Bettina Forget's project
One Random Year explores this question. The artist took a one-minute video every day during
2011 and created a 365-minute movie of her life. The entire six-hour film will be screened at
Visual Voice Art Gallery daily from February 25 - March 24, 2012.
The movie
Bettina Forget's project One Random Year is an exercise in self-reflection while allowing strangers a peek into
her daily life. Says the artist: "Does my life have an over-arching narrative, one that Iím not seeing because Iím
in it but which may become apparent when I watch the movie? The format of film does suggest a narrative because
the medium itself is built for story telling. And we have a natural tendency to impose patterns and meanings onto
random events. But is my life entirely random?"
Referencing reality TV and docu-soaps, the One Random Year movie runs on Forget's old television set like a neverending reality show. The one-minute video clips range from straight-up documentary shots of cultural events and
mundane daily chores to artistic close-ups and mood shots. "I make sure that the minute I take is chosen spontaneously,
but that it also captures something representative of that day," says Forget, "like the fireworks on New Year’s Day,
or my first meditation class of the year, or the day of a vernissage in my gallery."
The installation
For the exhibition at Visual Voice Art Gallery the artist re-created a piece of her apartment by bringing some of
her own furniture into the exhibition space. You'll recognize her sofa and side-tables, plants, artworks and knickknacks from the videos. Visitors to the gallery are invited to settle in on her sofa and watch as much of her movie
as they like. In a comment book they can leave their verdict: life is random, or life is a story.
On the gallery's walls hang twelve daily calendars, one for each month. Each day is illustrated with a still from
the video. Visitors are encouraged to flip through the calendars, and by doing so a second, accidental narrative
is created by the sequence of the twelve images which are flipped open.
The Montreal All-Nighter event
During the Nuit Blanche à Montréal event, Bettina Forget releases the Twitter hashtag #ORYMtl. Gallery visitors
are asked to tweet their favourite day of the One Random Year movie (example: Feb 25 - #ORYMtl). After the
event Bettina Forget will select the twelve days which received the most tweets and create a movie using the video
clips of those days. The #ORYMtl video will be screened on the Visual Voice Art Gallery's YouTube video channel
as of March 1, 2012.
Bettina Forget
One Random Year
February 25 - March 24, 2012
Projections: Wednesday - Saturday
12:00 p.m. - 6:00 p.m.
or by appointment
Nuit Blanche à Montréal 2012
Saturday, February 25, 8:00 p.m.
until
Sunday, February 26, 2:00 a.m.
Édifice Belgo, 372 rue Ste-Catherine Ouest, #421, Montréal QC H3B 1A2
www.visualvoicegallery.com