Trinity Square Video, Images Festival & Vtape present the 2023 Video Fever Screening
March 30th, 2023, 7PM @ Bachir/Yerex Presentation Space (Vtape/4th floor), 401 Richmond St. West
Featuring works by Gladys Lou, Terry J. Jones, Rojin Shafiei, Rennie Taylor, Xavier Wehrli, Susannah Haight, Xingtian Gong, Simon Ruscinski, Jinyan Zhao, Roderick Mackinnon, Tram Anh Nguyen, Brigita Gedgaudas, Nala Haileselassie, and Yuqing Li.
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, Images Festival, and Vtape staff and programming committee, this showcase provides a glimpse of what is on the horizon of video-based practices in contemporary art.
For our 11th edition, we are presenting this year’s showcase in person at 401 Richmond in Bachir/Yerex Presentation Space (Vtape).
The works in the showcase are experimental and multidisciplinary – including elements of animation, performance for the camera, glitch art, experimental fiction and documentary, and archival footage.
ARTIST BIOS
Gladys Lou
Gladys Lou is a Hong Kong-Canadian artist and writer completing a BA in Art & Art History and Psychology in the joint University of Toronto Mississauga and Sheridan College program, with a Certificate of Curatorial Studies. She works with experimental media including video and sound to challenge the boundaries between visual art and performance. She is a member of the Power Plant’s RBC Emerging Artist Network 2022-2023, and she has interned at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC with the Time-Based Media working group. Gladys was awarded a Fulbright scholarship with a placement at the University of Washington, where she had studied Digital Art and Experimental Media.
Terry J. Jones
Terry Jones is a Haudenosaunee/Seneca filmmaker who is currently studying for his MFA in film production at York University. Terry’s short films (narrative, documentary and experimental) have screened and won awards at film festivals around the world including his short doc “Soup For My Brother” winning Best Documentary at the Liverpool International Film Festival in the UK. Many of Terry’s films are distributed through the Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Centre in Toronto.
Rojin Shafiei
Rojin Shafiei (b.1993) is an Iranian interdisciplinary artist/filmmaker living and working in Toronto. Rojin received her BFA in Intermedia from Concordia University in 2017 and currently, she is a MFA candidate in Film Production at York University. She has screened her work internationally in various festivals such as les Rendez-Vous du Cinéma Québécois (Canada), Festival International de Vidéo de Casablanca (Morocco), Limited Access Video Festival (Iran) and Instant Vidéo Numériques et Poétiques (France). In 2019 she was the Venice Lands Art Prize candidate in Treviso, Italy and she won the grand prize of Startupfest/Artupfest section in July 2018 for her piece “I wait for the time.”
Rennie Taylor
Rennie Taylor is a multidisciplinary artist based in Montréal and Toronto. His practice focuses on the everyday with an emphasis on nostalgic signs and symbols found in popular culture. Engaging in the practices of photography, filmmaking and collage, he explores themes of consumerism, the handmade and obsolescence. He investigates decay within technology which corresponds to his material manipulation of celluloid, ephemera and found objects. He received an Ontario College Diploma in Fine Arts at Centennial College and a BFA with Distinction in Photography at Toronto Metropolitan University. Rennie previously served as a board member at the8fest Small Gauge Film Festival.
Xavier Wehrli
Xavier Wehrli is a twenty-one-year-old filmmaker from London, Ontario. With a background in visual painting and illustration, Xavier’s initial foray into the industry was as the storyboard artist for two feature-length films. It was during this process that he discovered his passion for video and has been directing his own experimental shorts ever since. Xavier is currently getting his undergrad in film production at Toronto Metropolitan University where he continues to make films which bridge the gap between narrative and experimental storytelling. After graduation, Xavier hopes to bring these passions to the film industry at large.
Susannah Haight
Susannah Haight is a Multidisciplinary artist based out of Montreal & Toronto. With her roots in Dance, Susannah grew up performing on stage, focusing her attention on expression through movement. She attended high school at Etobicoke School of the Arts, graduating as a recipient of “The Edward Lam Memorial Scholarship”, presented by internationally acclaimed Canadian design firm Moss & Lam. Susannah Completed her post-secondary education at École de danse contemporaine de Montréal in 2017.
Upon graduating She has had the pleasure to work as a freelance dancer with Compagnie Marie Chouinard, Martin Messier’s, Caroline Laurin Beacage, and Andrea Pena. Currently, Susannah is working on developing her skills not only as a performer but as a filmmaker & choreographic director. Susannah has since then been commissioned by various Fashion brands such as Palomawool (Barcelona, Spain) and KARA handbags (New York, USA) to create, direct and perform in her own short experimental dance films which were then used as advertisement on social media platforms. Most recently Susannah participated in L’interface, an online residency focused on dance artists who create digital mixed-media performance work.
Currently Susannah is working on receiving her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Film at Ryerson University School of Image Arts.
Xingtian Gong
As an architecture and visual studies student, Xingtian Gong, has been practising her skills at the University of Toronto for about four years. With her studies at the Daniels Faculty and her drawing skills with nine years of Chinese painting experience in China, her work focuses on introducing traditional art in a new medium.
The study at Daniels Faculty encouraged Xingtian to explore using different mediums that allowed her to incorporate into traditional Chinese art. She used the lens to record her paintings with traditional Chinese artistic techniques and tell stories behind these paintings in the form of animation, exploring and challenging the extent of the integration of new mediums and traditional artistic techniques.
Simon Ruscinski
Born and raised in Hamilton, Ontario, Simon Ruscinski is a filmmaker. His fictional and non-fictional works currently operate as filmic time capsules; formally and thematically striving to make the pain of everyday life serve some higher purpose. His films, Urban Planning and Premium Pornography, both won the Future of Film Showcase People’s Choice Award for their respective years (2020 and 2022). His short film, HOCKEY, screened at Trinity Square Video’s Video Fever 2020. Simon is currently a Master’s student at York University.
Jinyan Zhao
Jinyan Zhao is a Chinese multidisciplinary female artist. Her practices often explore the transformation of her fictional illusion into reality. Photography and moving images are the main media through which Jinyan captures her perception of the world. She collects objects and seeks to use a variety of materials in sculpture and installation making. Her earlier experiences influence her thinking and creation of art, reflecting on the issues of gender and equality in the 2000s society.
Roderick Mackinnon
Roderick MacKinnon is a First year MFA candidate in the Interdisciplinary Art, Media and Design Master’s program at OCAD University. Roderick is a recent grad of OCADU’s Integrated media BFA program where he developed an interest in non-linear, experimental moving image work using analogue photographic processes. Continuing his lens based practice at OCAD in the IAMD MFA program, he is currently working with photo emulsion transfers and Xerography to explore the materiality of memory.
Tram Anh Nguyen
Trâm Anh (also known as Andy) Nguyễn (he/him) is a visual artist specializing in experimental and documentary filmmaking based in Vietnam and Toronto. As a Southeast Asian trans person, he wishes to continue in creating more projects that reflect on gender and cultural identity, and in portraying themes of vulnerability and memory into his work. He is most currently known for his short films: “Hoa”, “it’s a girl!”, “heroes”, and “to boyhood, i never knew him”.
Brigita Gedgaudas
Brigita Gedgaudas is an emerging, interdisciplinary, trans*, and diasporic-Lithuanian artist working in so-called Toronto. Exploring interconnections between experimental realms of dance and the digital, their practice asks questions regarding how cultural heritage, nature, and technology impact the formation of the self. Brigita’s work has been shown at Ada Slaight Gallery, the Bentway (in collaboration with Hercinia Arts Collective), and will be hosted at Diasporic Futurisms database, “Temporal Tempest” (curated by Vanessa Godden and Adrienne Matheuszik). He is part of the Wha*cking community in Toronto, and is a member of the performance collective, PriXm.
Nala Haileselassie
nala haileselassie (b.2001) is a multidisciplinary artist from tkaronto completing her bfa in film studies at toronto met university. working from the lineage of black feminist film and experimental documentary, her research is focused on cultural and collective memory, and the relation between the two as a child of migrants. nala looks to rework narratives surrounding diasporic identities through complicating personal archival materials.
Yuqing Li
Yuqing Li is an amateur art producer who is a third-year student at the University of Toronto, minoring in Studio Art. Her love for drawing since childhood has always made her brushes a way to record the world and speak her mind. This is her first attempt at animation, insisting on the most “repetitive” and “monotonous” way of hand-drawing frame by frame to show her deep passion for art.
Image: Jinyan Zhao’s Am I a silly putty, 2022