Close Encounters: The next 500 years is an art exhibit happening down here in our little city right now. If you can, go have a look at the work. It is all by contemporary aboriginal artists who are peering into the future, or back from the future, or from outer space.
One piece explores the on-line world of internet gaming and avatars from a Native perspective. The episodic videos depict characters in a virtual, 3D world, as they interact with each other and the "environment". The artists question the place of their "real-world" traditions in a future transformed by technology and made up of other worlds.
Another video installation is projected onto a screen in a bare white room. Getting closer to the flickering colours and shapes it becomes apparent that some of the video is leaking through the screen to the wall behind. Then it becomes clear: this video is being projected onto a screen made out of white feathers.
The beautiful intermingling of vision, ceremony and alternate reality in this show is profound. This is not to say that the gallerists have done anything particularly earth-shattering or different. The set-up is what gallery-goers would expect: clean, clear, well-lit. But the work itself does what well-made art should. It allows you to visit mystic places, to go on a trip, to take a vision quest. I give it a billion stars.
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