Video

The New Freedom Founders: Attention Public

Emily Vey Duke and Cooper Battersby

2004, 10:00 minutes, colour, English

TAPECODE 618.07

Attention Public is a 10 minute experimental narrative which tells the story of Karen Annasdaughter, a young woman who was raised by a group of radicals in the woods of Nova Scotia.

With this project, we aim to clear a psycho-spiritual space for the viewer which was not cleared before. We want this space to contain empathy (identification) and joy. We want to achieve, in the making of the works, a sensation of ecstatic transformation, because it is our conviction that if such a sensation is present in the making of the works, that sensation will become available to the viewer.

In order to clear this new space, we must not default to familiar tropes. The work must seem mostly unfamiliar, even uncanny. It cannot, however, be so unfamiliar as to repel the viewer. Offering the viewer a place to sit between convention or cliché and confusion, boredom or repulsion is our project with The New Freedom Founders.

We know we are destined to mostly fail, but we believe that by simply representing our attempt, we will in some measure reach our goal.


Attention Public is one segment of a musical video-art science-fiction trilogy entitled The New Freedom Founders.

Rental and Sales

Single Screening Rental

$140.00

Educational Purchase DVD (Bluray +$15)

$260.00

5 Year Educational Streaming License, Digital File with DVD Circulation Copy

$550.00

Gallery Exhibition and Installation, complete Media Request form for quote

Institutional Archival Acquisition, complete Media Request form for quote

Curators and programmers, please contact distribution@vtape.org to receive a login and password to preview Vtape titles online.

Screening and exhibition rentals and archival acquisitions include public performance rights; educational purchases or licenses include rights for classroom screenings and library circulation. When placing an order the customer agrees to our general online terms and conditions. Payment (or a purchase order number) and a signed licensing agreement must be received before media can be shipped to the client.