Eva Grant: Mechanism
Residency period: April 19 – July 13, 2023
Mechanism from Eva Grant on Vimeo.
Mechanism is an experimental film which features a single character transforming into four comedic archetypes, randomly generated from over 150 terms derived from genre film, fashion, queer camp, web culture, and pop psychology. Mechanism explores the ways in which laughter can be divorced from humour, particularly for those for whom laughter is both the only escape and the damning symptom of hysteria, malaise, and malevolence.
Presented as part of the 2023 AGO x RBC Artist-in-Residence Program. Artists were asked to respond to the theme of humour, and to share with us what makes them and others laugh, and to consider if laughter is merely a physical response or something more? Artists were encouraged to work with concepts or materials that offer surprising, absurdist or playful engagements and consider how humour might bring people closer together.
Photo Credit: Berkley Vopnfjord, 2022
Eva Grant is a bilingual filmmaker operating at the intersection of queer and BIPOC storytelling. She is an enrolled member of the St’át’imc Nation and is also of South and West Asian and European descent. She studied literature and philosophy at Stanford University, and her multimedia projects have been supported by the CBC, ReelWorld Screen Institute, BIPOC TV and Film, TELUS STORYHIVE, ImagineNATIVE, the Indigenous Screen Office and the Canadian Media Fund.
