The live event and video program were streamed on September 18th starting at 7 PM EDT.
The 2021 Video Fever Showcase includes works by James P. Hoban, Kalina Nedelcheva, Christina Oyawale, Weibin Wang, Gustav Bulzgis, Evgenia Mikhaylova, Sadaf Khajeh, Jean-Pierre Marchant, Racquel Rowe, Liam Mullen, Hanna Peters, and Noah Hanyue Qin.
Video Fever is an annual showcase of cutting-edge video works produced by undergraduate or graduate level student artists across Ontario. Selected by a jury composed of Trinity Square Video’s and Vtape’s staff and programming Committee, this showcase provides a glimpse of what is on the horizon of video-based practices in contemporary art.
For our 9th edition, we are presenting this year’s showcase online as a Listening Party, hosted by editor and fiction writer Christine Malec! In preparation for the Listening Party, a committed group of staff and members participated in a series of workshops to develop audio descriptions for each video work in the showcase, lead by Inclusion Service Provider, Trainer and Consultant Kat Germain.
The works in the showcase are experimental in creation and multi-disciplinary – including elements of animation, performance for the camera, experimental fiction and documentary, and appropriation of archival footage. In a similar vibe, our approach in training, generating, and applying descriptions was experimental in structure. We were excited to learn about the standards and procedures of audio description, which was new to the group, so please enjoy our first attempts in tackling the practice.
Great appreciation goes to Kat Germain for the continual direction and education and to Christine Malec, Camille Craig, Ramya Amuthan, Jennifer Brethour, Milena Khazanavicius, and Scott Yamamura for the generous guidance and consultation!
Artist Biographies
James P. Hoban
I am a filmmaker and actor based in Kingston, Ontario completing my fifth and final year at Queen’s University, majoring in Film and Media. Currently, I am working on establishing a small Kingston-based videography/filmmaking company called Sneezing Dog Productions, before setting my sights on Toronto and further pursuing a professional practice within the Canadian Film Industry. I love seeing people’s stories come to life and helping them do so, which is the basis for my next proposed project. I am presently working with a member of the LGBTQ+ community to create a film using their screenplay.
Kalina Nedelcheva
My practice starts with ballpoint pens, India Ink, acrylics, poetic verse, Illustrator/Photoshop, bass guitars, synths, pianos, and photography. That is, I am a visual artist, poet, and musician, but also a graduate student in curatorial practice at OCAD U. I have just discovered the magic of video editing practically, although I’ve had an avid interest in the medium for a long time. Nothing inspires me more than a good film/short/video and I can certainly talk someone’s ear off about that.
Christina Oyawale
Christina Oyawale (they/them) is a lens-based Tkaronto/Toronto artist and designer, studying Photography Studies at X University*. They are interested in exploring themes that center the experiences of queer identities and marginalized communities. Many of their projects are documentations of radical occupation of space pertaining to the human condition, in regards to human growth, rebirth, and investigations of self.
Weibin Wang
Wang Weibin is a filmmaker currently based in Shanghai, China, and a graduate of York University in Toronto, Canada. His films explore concepts of in-betweenness, memory, history, and tensions in the every day that cannot be resolved.
Evgenia Mikhaylova
Through the use of video and installation, my work examines the nature of language, systems, and sensorial experiences that impact our perception. Video expands the possibilities for multiple points of sensory connections while installation acts as an ecstatic eruption of communication-immersive, overwhelming, and unapologetically immediate.
Sadaf Khajeh
Sadaf Khajeh is currently a candidate for the MFA in Documentary Media at Ryerson University. In 2018 Sadaf was awarded a grant from the Chang School Creative Hub for her documentary project “Sarko: His Story…” which is an ongoing multimedia project that focuses on people that frequent city centres (specifically Toronto and Tehran) and are often labelled as homeless but are rather living breathing monuments of metropolitan cities in that they are a part of every citizen’s collective experience and memory. Through her narrative, Sadaf continues to explore the sociocultural dynamics that surround her as an independent female immigrant in Canada. Currently for her Master’s Thesis project Sadaf is exploring the culture around death and mourning in Iran and her relationship with it through family archival footage.
Jean-Pierre Marchant
Jean-Pierre (JP) Marchant is a recent graduate of the MFA program in film at York University. His films, which span multiple genres, are concerned with things that grow in the ‘spaces in between’: between capitalist promises and suburban disappointments, urban landscapes and their hinterlands, personalities in conflict, and diasporic lives and the memories left behind. Marchant’s most recent work uses found and archival footage, his parents’ home movies, narration, and remediation to tell stories that complicate conventional narratives of trauma, Latin American migration, and exile.
Racquel Rowe
Racquel Rowe (she/her) is a Black, queer, femme interdisciplinary artist from the island of Barbados living in Canada. The notion of compulsory visibility and subverting dominant ideologies, is essential to Rowe’s practice. As a Black artist engaging in critical conversations around race, culture and gender, has furthered her own ability to understand and break away from colonial representations. This process of decolonisation does not come easy, even when work is created to challenge colonial and racist narratives, the critical language necessary to talk about the complexities presented does not always exist. Rowe explores the way history has shaped modern-day depictions of Black women, culture, and thus how these things affect her lived experience. She considers performative action as a form of exploratory, open-ended research that is constantly evolving.
Liam Mullen
“My practice focuses on the synthesis of sound, image, and text, to generate discussions, prompt questions about intimacy, relationality, knowledge maintenance, and translation. Most recently, my work has been rooted in my research in Sound Studies, site-responsive practice, and the materialization of sound.”
Hanna Peters
Often working with video, my pieces capture youth culture. I find that I’m able to create my best work when they’re conceptual; the idea of having different components align with each other and come full circle puts me at peace with my art. My other projects consist of short films that are built from my poetry or spoken word with visually impactful imagery to support them. In general, they touch on ideas of love or self-reflection. I’m often inspired by music, having most of my pieces stem from songs that influence me to write about the same subject or similar themes.
Noah Hanyue Qin
Noah Hanyue Qin is a multidisciplinary artist, currently learning and practicing in Toronto, Canada. From an early age, Qin learned drawing and Chinese ink and encountered theatre and acrobatics, which has provided the base for her multimedia aesthetic. Qin works in sculpture, painting, drawing, and video production. As a Chinese international student, feminist, and member of the LGBTQ+ community, she is interested in creating emotional experiences by altering different popular culture tropes. Her practice explores subjects of self (cultural)-identification, gender, mental health, and sexuality.