Zero Hour, 2015

Public Studio - Toronto, Canada
Elle Flanders - Toronto, Canada
Tamira Sawatzky - Toronto, Canada
Carol Weinbaum - Toronto, Canada
Josh Schonblum - Toronto, Canada
Brandy (Han) Yee - Toronto, Canada
Anna Friz - Toronto, Canada
Lili Houston Heterich - Toronto, Canada

New Media Installation

Apocalyptic prophecies reflect a coming to an end but are also revelatory, disclosing a kind of truth. While modernity gave rise to a new cluster of apocalyptic narratives, our post 9/11 world faces anxieties that have generated new utopian and dystopian accounts looking for answers.

While tales of the apocalypse clutter and disorder all histories from the Americas through the Arab world, each have their distinct voice - all of them can be reconnected to struggles against an outside force – a state terror that has had disastrous effects on lands and lives – from economic ruin to climactic devastation.

Zero Hour gathers the cosmos and reflects not the stars of the northern hemisphere, but rather the weather it has disrupted and the words that come back in protest.

In Zero Hour, Public Studio invites renowned artist Etel Adnan – Lebanese essayist, painter, poet and philosopher, whose works include The Arab Apocalypse, Premonition and Sea and Fog – to work in collaboration creating a newly commissioned poem set to a video projection on a dome, of current weather patterns and climactic disturbances taking place in the southern hemisphere. 

Public Studio is the collective art practice of filmmaker Elle Flanders and architect Tamira Sawatzky. Their practice employs a diverse range of media resulting in large-scale public art works, films, immersive installations and socially engaged projects. Their work has screened and exhibited internationally including: the Museum of Modern Art; Berlin International Film Festival; The Toronto International Film Festival, the MOCCA and the Incheon Biennial. 

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90 Queen's Park

This project is both indoors and outdoors.