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Let's Get Small | Two unsettling voyerustic images from David Hoffos' video installation Scenes From The House Deam, Phase Two: Airport Hotel.

This week Jill and Mandy delve into the fantastical world of David Hoffos, who gave a fascinating talk last Friday at the Harcourt House Arts Centre.

Jill: Much of Edmonton’s film and art enthusiasts huddled tightly inside Harcourt House’s main gallery space Friday evening to hear David Hoffos talk about his world, his life, his work, and his magical dioramas. Was it worth such close quarters, Mandy?

Mandy: Absolutely. David Hoffos is a wonderful public speaker. I remember going to a talk he gave at the university a few years ago, and having my mind and eyes exploded by his work for the first time. He uses techniques from all over the creative map, fusing film, sculpture, audio, and installation to create some very true and yet otherworldly experiences. Hoffos is currently teaching a workshop at FAVA, and this artist talk was arranged partly to complement and anticipate the art that would come out of that class and be featuring in its corresponding exhibition.

Jill: The lecture spanned Hoffos’ entire career; he even showed some work from his childhood. He expressed his longtime love of cinema and his early desire to attend film school; when that didn’t work out for him, his second choice was to go to art school and pursue the moving picture through those channels.

Mandy: He’s an artistic hybrid — film and visual art, together at last. It was great to see that earlier work, where young Hoffos is using his childhood toys to make these super-developed environments. This is a part of why I think I like his current work so much. Looking at his film/light installations is like this very intense examination and celebration of some specific aspect of life, whether it be a supernatural event or a banal, repetitious activity. There’s always that sense of wonder — not just at the activity, but at the ability to make something about it as well.

Jill: Yeah, it reminded me how I don’t really give film enough credit. I have a hard enough time wrapping my head around simple two-dimensional object-making, never mind documenting three-dimensional objects and projecting them onto two-dimensional surfaces. But Hoffos uses film the way a more conventional artist would use paint ... that is, if paint could change itself and flicker over a continuous loop.

Mandy: What, paint doesn’t do that? I guess I’ve never actually screamed and tried to run out of the room because of a painting. Hoffos makes these phantom viewers for the gallery space, who are often undetectable until you notice that flicker or break the connection between projector and surface. And because of the dark environment his dioramas require, not to mention the eerie mood that envelops the space, they are very convincing.

Jill: There’s something about the way Hoffos uses film to do these things that really plays to our sense of anxiety and curiosity. It’s no secret that humans like to watch television for hours on end when given the chance; why is this? I think it’s interesting how he uses this sense of the two-dimensional/three-dimensional world that we find so much more fascinating than our own world, which moves in much the same way, and how he creates these other worlds that feel so much more intimate and perhaps more real than our own.

Mandy: He does have a special ability to capture the narrative power that exists within images, to manipulate and recreate aspects of our shared cultural understanding. Even when he depicts futuristic cities or mass destruction, the individual is always there, experiencing the same boredom, fear, love, and anxiety that we do. The strangeness of their environment makes these interactions seem all the more real.

Jill: I think my favourite thing about Hoffos is that he still makes things. He makes his dioramas, his backdrops, his sets and scenes and miniatures — I think it’s hugely important that handmade objects play a big role, even in his final product.

Mandy: Tiny little houses with trees and bikes and cars! Except, you know, the house is on fire. It’s just so good. I feel like Alberta is lucky to have this guy around.

Jill: We’re also lucky he’s so enthusiastic about coming back here and sharing his talents with us through lectures and workshops. We hope he’ll keep returning for quite some time.