Derek Hunter is an interdisciplinary visual artist, environmentalist and whirling dervish, living and working in Vancouver, British Columbia. He graduated from NSCAD with a BFA, and is now pursuing his MFA at Simon Fraser University. He frequently collaborates with New York based artist Mary Mattingly, as well as with his wife and partner Mira Hunter. His most recent piece Time Machinefeatures 65 disposable cameras fixed to a 350 degree rail made from reclaimed lumber, activated by electromechanical solenoids. The photographs, which feature Hunter's wife Mira who is a second-generation whirling dervish, are animated in a sequence, giving the audience the visual experience of revolving around a whirling dervish, caught in a single moment. The images, often displaying unusual exposure disturbances anomalies, are scanned and made into two films which will play simultaneously within a wooden yurt, installed at the SFU School for Contemporary Arts exhibition space at 611 Alexander Street in Vancouver.
07.08
>The end of something beautiful (it was all recycled): Thank you Ron, Eric, Kierin.
>I am working on the first draft of my MFA thesis this week. M. has just sent off an email to Dr. Oruç Güvenc, to request his approval to include an excerpt of the track Allah, Allah, Allah from his album with Tümata, Ocean of Remembrance (which can be listened to and purchased through iTunes), on the promotional DVD documenting the Time Machine project . Much like my intention to harness the inherent capacity for restorative healing through the meditative act of Mevlevi Whirling, Dr. Güvenc's album was designed to cure mental illness. Time Machine is coming down this week. M. has been busy researching the next film installment she has dubbed Time Bomb. So far she wants it to be viewed from inside an artificial cave. We are planning to film in Nevada, the Badlands of Alberta and industrial wastelands around British Columbia. The plan is to illustrate a playful revenge by Mother Nature on the future humans of the world, complete with vindictive moss with a mind of its own and animals crafty enough to fashion guerrilla incendiary devices.<top>
-Photo of Drumheller from the CBC website, film still from Der Rechte Weg by Fischli/Weiss, polaroid of the Black Rock Desert in Nevada courtesy of the artist.
05.08
-Excerpt film stills from Time Machine, 2008.
>The opening for Time Machine was exceptional, several people reported or witnessed tears as they watched the piece from inside the yurt. M. , her father and I stayed up all night finishing the rounded central bench, cleaning the space and working on the details. It turned out to be a really wonderful space to simply be in. I managed to nap for half an hour inside the yurt before the opening. M. made a tiny animation sequence called The Happiest Molecule of All, that could be viewed from the outside of the structure, as if you were peeking into a small Sema (the traditional Mevlevi whirling ceremony). The stop motion animation minatures were roughly crafted from packing tape, floral wire and paper. Several people, even established artists, mistook the animation for a film of a real Sema, which was surprising.<top>
The Happiest Molecule of All(duration 8:13), a tiny stop motion animation loop of an imaginary sequence of Sema, the traditional ceremony of the Whirling Dervishes. The soundtrack for the installation of this tiny loop was a zikr from the stunning album by Oruç Güvenc & Tümata, called Ocean of Remembrance. This film was created for Time Machine. It was viewed on a tiny screen through a crack on the exterior of the wooden yurt in the installation.<top>
Can't view flash? Follow the link to view the tiny film on Youtube.
>Making a yurt and a show to go with it. Thank you Peter, Kierin, Ron, Kara, Brian, Karen, Leander, Jordan, My Parents, Sally, Karilynn, Vivian Girl, and of course my wife Mira. Thank you White Monkey Studios, Kyla of Limelight Floral Design, Asha of Asha Hair Studio, SFU, the list could go on, I am so grateful. <top>
-photos by Mira Hunter.
04.08
>It was in the afternoon, M. and I carried the camera arc into Stanley Park in Vancouver. We chose an area away from the public foot paths, that had been cleared by the catastrophic storms of 2006. The camera rail that the 65 cameras are attached to, was designed to separate into 4 sections. I walked behind M., watching her balance a section of the rig on each shoulder. She is already wearing her sikke (tall Mevlevi camel felt hat) and her tenure (traditional Mevlevi dress for whirling) under a grey jacket. I wanted to shoot in Stanley Park, as I thought it was a place in Vancouver that needed help. Time Machine relates to an earlier project that M and I worked on with her father, my whirling teacher, Raqib Brian Burke. The Public Whirling Project, was about bringing the restorative charactor of the practice of whirling to places in need of it. The original session took place in Vancouver's Lower East Side, a neighbourhood mired by human hardship. It was documented by my brother, photographer Jordan Junck. An original form of whirling in Turkey was thought to have been practiced by nomadic tribes as a healing ceremony. In the tradional whirling posture, both arms are raised, with the right palm facing up, while the left palm faces towards the ground. Divine energy is believed to cycle through the right palm, heart, exiting out the left palm into the physical universe. After the storms levelled much of the city's great park, both M. and I had wanted to whirl there. M., who was born in Vancouver, had spent much of her childhood exploring the duck ponds, rose gardens and seashore of Stanley Park. We chose a hidden place in the woods to set up the camera rig. The ground was uneven from all the degrading fallen branches, upturned trees and thriving underbrush, but M. managed to whirl anyway, tearing holes in the soles of her traditional winter Muslim prayer slippers. Her shoes filled with earth as she moved in a careful circle, surrounded by the cameras. A pond had formed where a large tree had been uprooted. Skunk lillies had started to bloom out of the mud. During our session, we saw two Canada Geese fly through the trees and perch on some high branches. We could see their long necks through the greenery. Then they were disturbed, and took to the air making a lot of noise. On a return pass over our clearing, we could see just 30 feet above our heads, that they were being pursued by a large bald eagle. An hour later, they returned alone to roost in the same tree. <top>
-photos of Public Whirling Project by Jordan Junck.
>It was a warm, windy Sunday. M. and I had decided to go down to the industrial park near the Neptune Coal Terminals on the North Shore of Vancouver. We had borrowed a truck. As the cameras are assembled in a circle, the locations have to be carefully chosen, as to provide some cover for me to hide while each shot is being taken. The sessions are often laborious, as each shot is just a fraction of a moment compared to the time that it takes to forward all of the 65 cameras to the next frame. We chose a location near a large series of grain elevators. There was also a slag pile great enough to conceal the truck, and a bundle of oil soaked track lumber that I could hide behind. Beautiful, green, wheat grass was sprouting along the train tracks, and had attracted hundreds of birds. Among them were several mating pairs of Canada geese. They would fly from down the train tracks, where they were grazing on the new grass, over where we had set up the camera rig, to a shallow pond of water that had formed in the uneven gravel of the industrial park. M. was excited to try to get a shot with the great birds. She had meticulously pressed all her ceremonial clothes the night previous, which we didn't always have the chance to do. Everything was set up, everything ready, but nothing would work. We tried for hours to find which connection was faulty, but were eventually escorted out by the port security before we could take a single picture. It was weeks later when it had stopped raining that we could return to the location. This time I had gone over every electronic component to make certain it would work. My brother, Jordan Junck, came to help document and subsequently act as a bird wrangler. He took some incredible pictures of the shoot, and even managed to coax the bathing Canada geese to fly through the shot. There is one series where you can just see them flying behind M.'s whirling silhouette. <top>
>The next film was made by M. last summer with Jarret Gibbons, and was her first stop motion experiment.
Kaçi, The Goat Head Princess. The beginning of a multi media project I am working on in collaboration with Mercan Dede currently dubbed 'The Enchanted Forest/Buyulu Orman/Efsun Orman.' It is going to be a futuristic story about evolution, metamorphosis and most importantly, hope.<top>
