Over the past fifteen years, Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller have created, separately and together, sound pieces and visual installations of increasing sophistication that change the way we relate to our immediate surroundings. Their characteristic, disturbing manipula-tions of reality in personalized spaces are rapidly earning these two artists a significant reputation both in and outside the arts community.

The multimedia, cinematic experience of Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller's The Paradise Institute alters our understanding of a familiar experience - the movies. Because movies must be accessible to a wide audience, they are not overly personal or poetic. The Paradise Institute eliminates this distancing by inviting visitors into the balcony seats of a "movie theatre." Wearing headphones, viewers watch a turbulent 13-minute film, with rapidly changing images and a vaguely threatening plot. The binaural sound is punctuated with interruptions from the "audience."

Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller have created a highly charged atmosphere that immerses the viewer in a reality not quite separated from that which we believe we live in - a space between two states of consciousness that we usually do not distinguish until we are suddenly jolted awake.

Ultimately, the genius of The Paradise Institute lies in the continual opposition of the artifice of the cinema experience and personal perceptions, and the fleeting revelations of reality. Visitors to the National Gallery of Canada will have the opportunity to be a part of this intriguing experience from June 28 to September 2, 2002.