Desktop Compositions

May 3 — 31, 2025
Field:

Installation, Performance

 Location:

Grand Luxe Hall, Western Front

 Time:

6:00 – 6:30 p.m. (May 3) / 1:00 – 6:00 p.m. (May 7 – 31)

Description:

Artist-filmmaker Holly Márie Parnell presented Desktop Compositions (2014–), a live video performance staged during her residency at Western Front. The work unfolds through the interface of a computer desktop, drawing from over a decade of Parnell’s personal archives and collected internet detritus. This iteration of the performance included samplings of pop songs about NATO and the EU by Mia Wennerstrand (as Kim Kaino Vieno), alongside fragments and sound samples from Graeme Arnfield and Frank Sweeney. The live performance also included contributions from drummer Phoebe Telfar and bass player Lucas Newhook, and ASL interpretation by Lisz Keallen.

Through rhythms of repetition and reassembly, Desktop Compositions acts as an inquiry into the chaos of our current moment and reflects on what forms might emerge in its place, asking: in a world that demands progress but offers little clarity, what does it mean to move forward? 

A recorded version of Parnell’s performance was staged as an installation in the Grand Luxe Hall from May 7 to 31, 2025, alongside her solo exhibition Cirrus in the gallery.

Video documentation is available upon request.

Presented with support from the Arts Council, Ireland; Canada Council for the Arts; the Government of Canada; and the Audain Foundation.

In the Grand Luxe Hall, a screen takes up the end with a projected image of sea anemone and two audio or video playback controls. People are seated on the floor in front and in seats along the sides. An ASL interpreter stands in a warm spotlight while watching the screen. Holly Márie Parnell sits in the back right, at a desk with laptop open, orchestrating the performance.
A projected video of a shared laptop screen shows multiple tabs open, the foremost an outdoor scene of four people standing on green grass but bent over at the waist, hands dangling near their feet. The other tabs images remain mostly obscured. Two playback controls are to the mid left, slightly overlapping but both playing. Shadowed heads of the watching crowd obscure the bottom of the screen.
In the corner of the darkened Grand Luxe Hall, elevated, sits Lucas Newhook playing the bass illuminated in blue spotlight. To the left, Holly Márie Parnell sits at a desk with an open laptop. Her hand covers her mouth in concentration as she gazes forward. A crowd sits in front, on the ground and in seats on the right side, watching ahead.
An ASL interpreter stands in a warm spotlight in the Grand Luxe Hall. Across the room, a red light shines on Phoebe Telfer as she plays the drums.The audience sits on the ground and in chairs lining the sides watching them and the projected screen stretching nearly the entirety of the back wall. The screen shows many tabs open on a laptop screen, and multiple playback buttons to the left. The foremost tab shows an ominous dark blue sky, punctured only by the long narrow reaching arm of a metallic structure.
A long dark hall extends ahead, where sits a crowd in shadow on the floor, and to the left and right side in seats. To the mid left, in a warm spotlight an ASL interpreter stands, dressed in black, hands raised. A projected screen dominates the back wall, multiple tabs are seen open, shared from a laptop screen, the most visible showing a harbor side, stacked with shipping containers of varying colours. A playback control extends across the bottom left of the screen.
A long hall extends, the seated crowd is in shadow, and the walls are illuminated in red cast from the projected screen seen at the end of the room. On this screen multiple tabs are open and layered, the frontmost taking almost the entirety of the screen and showing the corner of a room, with the corner of a bed, fragmented sheets and pillow. The image on the screen bathes the entire room in red light.
In profile, Holly Márie Parnell, seated at a desk in the Grand Luxe Hall, laptop open with a red abstracted image seen on screen. A geometric patterned array of green, purple, red and white lights dances on the wall behind. A crowd sits around looking ahead mostly in shadow.

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Captions:

Western Front is a non-profit artist-run centre in Vancouver.

We acknowledge the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and səl̓ílwətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations as traditional owners of the land upon which Western Front stands.

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