Restream is a series of degraded screen recordings, expanding on the artist’s longstanding exploration of online conspiracy cultures and the trajectories of capitalist alienation that they index. Displayed on an aging computer monitor, the video is composed of slow, flickery footage of a gloved hand fishing a ghoulish rubber mask out of a swampy body of water. The subtle narrativity of the work expands on details from another of the artist’s works, a longer essay/fiction film titled Salvage Archives, in which a protagonist becomes drawn into an online conspiracy group intent on interpreting patterns of waste in the Canadian Great Lakes. A static mouse cursor hints at an invisible viewer, poring over each protracted frame of this obscure video, looking for details that may not be present. Following the conspiracists in Salvage Archives, who ultimately mistake the systemic waste of capitalist productive systems for the secret messages of an evil cabal, these video meditate on the desire for meaning-making, and how this desire is thwarted and denatured by late-capitalist alienation.

ABOUT THE ARTIST Miles Rufelds is an artist, filmmaker, and researcher based in Toronto. He holds a Master of Visual Studies in studio art from the University of Toronto, and a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Ottawa. Rufelds’ research-based practice mixes archival investigation with strategies of speculative- and para-fiction, considering how forms of narrativity mediate the effects of material power structures. His projects often focus on stories where histories of science, industry, labour, and war intersect with artistic, political, or esoteric subcultures. Rufelds has participated in exhibitions and screenings nationally and internationally, including the Art Museum at the University of Toronto, the Blackwood Gallery, the Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery, PAVED Arts, the Art Gallery of Hamilton, the Karsh-Masson Gallery, ArtworxTO, and the SIM Gallery.