Video Works: Western Front Video
Video Guide, 1985, v. 8, no. 1, pp. 4-5
Knight makes evident the remarkable contributions of Vancouver Based center ‘Western Front Video’ to video art practices. The center was founded in 1973 by eight artists who “wanted to create a space for the exploration and creation of new art forms”. (http://front.bc.ca/) The center, established soon after the emergence of the Portapak, began producing an impressive number of works, allowing them to stand at the forefront of these experiments with video as an artistic medium.
The ‘Video Works’ screening, organized by the center and curated by Colin Griffiths, offers a diverse line up of 22 video works of local artists closely connected to the center, and range from Cornucopia, an intellectual study by General Idea, to the video verite style documentaries of art happenings in 1979, Relican Wedding and Mondo Arte Cabaret. While the direct communication of artist to viewer remains an important strategy throughout these video works, the medium's influence is always present and questioned, rooted within the dialogue. This is evident in Kate Craig’s work, Delicate Issue, where she initiates and carries out a closely intimate relationship with the camera, treating it as witness and confidant, while philosophizing the physical limits of the medium itself, questioning its capabilites as a vent.
The show also featured performance driven works by Mona Hartoum and Andrew James Paterson, which thrive on the fusion of performance and video, "..never allowing the performances to lose the video or the video to dominate the performances. (Knights, 4) Dada and absurdist driven work is also ever present at the Western Video Front, producing the compiliation tape Canada Shadows.
ITEM 1985.113 – available for viewing in the Research Centre
Videos, Artworks and Artists Cited
Delicate Issue – Kate Craig
Sax Island – Hank Bull
David Kelln
Cornucopia – General Idea
J'aurais Dit Glenn Gould – Robert Racine
Individual Release – Tom Sherman
Teaching and Learning as Performance Arts Part II – Robert Filliou
Variation of Discord and Division – Mona Hartoum
Passports of Love – Andrew James Paterson
Come Fly with Sonny Day – Fraser Finlayson
Bruja – Margaret Fabrizio
Inner Landscape- Insight Image – Ulrike Rosenbach
TLC – Elizabeth Vander Zaag
Breath – Margaret Dragu
Fear of Blue – Tom Dean
Paradise Lost – Kim Tomczak
Mandala '82 – Ko Nakajima
The Canada Shadow Players
El Nino – Vaerkstedt Vaerst
Unbashed Heroics – Randy and Berenicci
You Can't Drive a Car and Watch Television at the Same Time – Tom Sherman