David MC Miller - Appointments
David M.C. Miller - appointments
Appointments, Ecphore Exhibition, City Club, Halifax, 1985
One of eighty portrait photographs, "appointments", clipped from The Globe and Mail.
The City Club, a former social establishment for men during the late 19th and early 20th century, catered to a rising business class. The building opened briefly for one week to host a cultural event.
Nested between the National Film Board of Canada building to the south and the main regional theatre, The Neptune Theatre to the north, the ruinous City Club building became a provisional site for intervention and a metaphor for urban loss and recovery.
Appointments drew these three discreet architectural sites--but socially and historically related spaces--together.
Each day for one week, I collected portraits* published in a national newspaper (The Globe and Mail), cut them out, rephotographed them, placed the clippings within a room installation in the former mens club and, at night, projected them from the National Film Board (NFB) onto the Neptune Theatre siding. The slide projection was continuous. The loop began with two images repeated, one following the other. By the end of the week, 80 portraits had been collected and projected this way.
*Appointments is the term used by the Globe and Mail newspaper to distinguish portraits they publish that announce the recent appointment or promotion of a person within a company or an institution.
Room installation: original newspaper clippings (Appointments).
Continuous Projection: from the NFB to the Neptune Theatre, nightly.
