Inevitably, it happens. Artists get together and say What can we do? Sometimes, it’s Let’s put on a show!
Sort of.
Hijack is the name of the collective because we want to make it our mission to “hijack” non-art spaces with temporary site-specific art events.
There is a lack of appropriate venues (read: free) to showcase the art work of our friends that no one else wants to show. It’s Toronto. We are young. The year is 2000. Our DJ friends just moved to a cheap space in a soon-to-be-fashionable area of town; the space is offered. The Western Compound is the name of the unassuming space. A flyer is designed.
Hijack is a newish example of local electronic / dance underground hooking up with artists working in other mediums. — Denise Benson, EYE Magazine (Mar. 22, 2001)
You see, it comes naturally to get my friends together so we can collectively throw some kind of theme party.
Art is always the mission and there are so many exciting ideas. For video-art, for example, is it possible to bind an evening of performances through a video projection narrative?
The place is crammed with paintings – variations of trees. The floor is covered with dead leaves that we collected from the streets. It’s November 11th and we have something planned for 11:11pm. It will be a very special screening by ESL. Something that will only happen once in a lifetime. There’s video of this somewhere, I’m sure. I will try to find it.
On screen: it’s the image of someone walking through the streets of Toronto with a divining rod. Then, at exactly 11:11pm, the same person from the movie, walks in from outside, into the room with the same divining rod! The music starts.
The main idea is to sync up action with the projection.
We play with this idea over and over again. For Hijack the Cinecycle, Elliot Brood sings solo while playing a banjo over 16mm typewriter lesson films projected from a real film projector. For Techno-Bondage at the Arlington Hotel, in Maynooth, performances are synced-up to seven television sets controlled by a maestro.
To top this, we plan an even bigger show for Toronto in a space called Federal Bldg (because the space is on Federal Street.) So, naturally, we dub our show Hijack the Federal Bldg until a very strange series of coincidences forces us to rethink everything…
— To be continued.
READ: How it went from Ground Zero to Zero [coming soon]