Critical Writing Index

Video Works: Western Front Video

by Karen Knights

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 Kate Craig and 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

Cornucopia – David Kelln

J'aurais Dit Glenn Gould – General Idea

Individual Release – Robert Racine

Teaching and Learning as Performance Arts Part II – Tom Sherman

Variation of Discord and Division – Robert Filliou

Passports of Love – Mona Hartoum

Come Fly with Sonny Day – Andrew James Paterson

Bruja – Fraser Finlayson

Inner Landscape- Insight Image – Margaret Fabrizio

TLC – Ulrike Rosenbach

Breath – Elizabeth Vander Zaag

Fear of Blue – Margaret Dragu

Paradise Lost – Tom Dean

Mandala '82 – Kim Tomczak

El Nino – Ko Nakajima

Unbashed Heroics – The Canada Shadow Players

You Can't Drive a Car and Watch Television at the Same Time – Vaerkstedt Vaerst

Randy and Berenicci

Tom Sherman