video
14MIN,58SEC
2006
Dan Carter donated his answering machine to a secondhand store.
Dan Carter did not remove the cassette tape.
So I took it.
This film is based on the messages.
FROM ALEX TO ALEX
VIDEO
6MIN, 11SEC
2006
In the fall of 2003 I found a letter on the Winston Churchill Blvd QEW overpass.
It was labeled From: Alex To: Alex.
This is a film based on the contents of that letter.
DO GOOD
video
10MIN,38SEC
2009
I catalogued my family’s home video collection.
I came across videos of my sister and I in Brownie and Girl Guide ceremonies.
It made me want to DO GOOD.
It made me want to invite others to DO GOOD too.
Five Brownies created new badges.
Each Brownie made a video that explained what was required to earn her badge.
PLEASURE DOME
video
12MIN 26SEC
2010
Very
little is publicly known about what is inside Pleasure Dome. This
broadcast was made to learn more about Pleasure Dome from those who
inhabit it.
It
is clear that there are a number of things that have found their origin
in Pleasure Dome but have never escaped Pleasure Dome. We asked the
inhabitants to share some of Pleasure Dome’s idiosyncrasies. The content
for this broadcast was determined by a lottery system. The first ten
names drawn and the idiosyncrasy highlighted by that individual,
determined the broadcast’s focus. We hope this approach has created an
objective look at a very singular place.
HUNGRY KITTY
video
28 SEC
2011
Hungry
Kitty is the first installment of Kobayashi’s YouTube Diptych series.
By carefully reshooting YouTube videos from the perspectives of animals,
babies and other beings, Kobayashi experiments and playfully
reinterprets the gaze of YouTube videos.
DEFENSE MECHANISM ou MÉCANISME DE DÉFENSE (excerpt from performance documentation)
20 minute live performance
2012
In
her French debut, Kobayashi invites us into her imagination through her
one woman show, produced especially for Ca Tremble. Kobayashi combines
consumer security surveillance technology with her ensemble of
characters and a collection of tenderly-curated narratives. The
presentation resembles a box of Allsorts Licorice - colourful, nostalgic
and difficult to predict.
This performance was developed at a 2012 residency at Les Subsistances, Lyon France.
HOW TO BREAK INTO A MOTEL
video
2009
30 SEC
A collaboration by Alison S. M. Kobayashi and Gintas Tirilis.
In the cold winter of 2008 Gintas Tirilis and Alison S. M. Kobayashi explored the
Mississauga, Etobicoke suburbs desperately in search a warm place where they could
smoke cigarettes. What the pair discovered was a strip of motels along Lakeshore Blvd,
just on the edge of Toronto, abandoned. Further exploration into these dilapidated
structures became a nightly routine as they dared to gain greater access and eventually
decided to remove some of the discarded vestiges for preservation.
CURRENT WORK
3 MIN SAMPLE
www.asmk.ca
BIO//
Alison S. M. Kobayashi is a
visual artist working in video, performance, installation and drawing.
She was born and raised in Mississauga, Canada and is currently based in
Brooklyn.
Her
interest in found narratives resulted in two video works, From Alex To
Alex and Dan Carter. Finding a lost letter in the first case, and a
discarded answering machine tape in the second, Kobayashi imagines
identities for each person mentioned in the narrative and then performs
all the roles herself. In 2006 she won the TSV Artistic Vision Award for
Best Local Short Film at the Toronto Reel Asian Film Festival and in
2007 was awarded the Mississauga Arts Award for Best Emerging Artist.
Her films have been shown in Canada, the U.S., France, Germany, Spain,
the Netherlands and Hong Kong.www.asmk.ca
