GO FISH
Nettie Wild & Scott Smith
Video triptych | 14 minutes, looped | 3 channel output
When: Feb 16–19 // 5:00 – 9:00 PM
Where: The Fairmont Empress Hotel - 721 Government Street
GO FISH is a moving painting, a kaleidoscopic and immersive sound and video installation splashed across three adjacent screens. It is set inside the annual natural phenomenon known as the Pacific herring migration, when hundreds of millions of herring return to the Salish Sea to spawn, chased by hungry birds, mammals and the fishing fleet who hunt them.
There are no interviews and no narration. Filmed underwater, topside and from the air, GO FISH envelops the viewer in the natural wonder of this annual spectacle. The story becomes a kaleidoscope of images and sound, framing the familiar with an unfamiliar frame.
GO FISH seeks to bring a curious lens to capture the poetry and complexity of one of the greatest shows on earth.
A recipient of the 2023 Governor General’s Award in Media Arts, Nettie is recognized as one of Canada’s leading documentary filmmakers. Her production credits include KONELINE: our land beautiful (2016), FIX: The Story of an Addicted City (2002) and A Place Called Chiapas (1998). Nettie’s more recent work embraces digital art installations. She directed Uninterrupted, projecting images of wild salmon onto Vancouver’s Cambie Bridge. The international art magazine Wallpaper* called Uninterrupted, “one of the world’s must-see public art installations of 2017.” In 2021, Nettie moved into Virtual Reality when she and her crew created UninterruptedVR. She is currently editing Klavierklang -- an experimental music video. GO FISH is Nettie's first triptych.
Nettie Wild
A graduate of the Canadian Film Centre in Toronto, Scott Smith launched his career in Canada with two award-winning feature films, rollercoaster (2000) and Falling Angels (2003), and has since developed a broad-based directing career in film and television. His documentary project As Slow as Possible (2006), re-introduced him to the camera-based work that he began his career with and the opportunity to return to this early love of photography, was what compelled him to join Nettie as co-director and primary cinematographer of GO FISH. As a part-time resident of Hornby Island, B.C, Scott embraced the opportunity to turn his lens on the natural phenomenon happening every year right outside his front door.