VIDEO
PROGRAM BY LISA STEELE & KIM TOMCZAK (TORONTO) :
DESERTED STREETS AT MIDDAY. UNREST, NOT YET VISIBLE.
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Leslie
Peters
beautiful lies
2004, 12:00, English, color
It is a rural landscape that lacks bucolic grace,
instead one fraught with menace and fear. Here the
camera tracks, ever an outsider in the world of dusk
and dawn as Peters reveals the lies – ever so
fragile and poignant – in nature itself.
Toronto based artist Leslie Peters has been actively
working in video, multi-channel installation, curating
exhibitions and coordinating cultural events since
completing her studies at the Ontario College of Art
and Design in 1997. Leslie is a founding member of
the curatorial collective VVV. Her work was the featured
Spotlight Canadian Artist at the 2004 Images Festival.
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Daniel
Cockburn
Stupid Coalescing Becomers
2004, 2:31, English, color
Daniel Cockburn, Toronto-based moviemaker and writer,
received his B.F.A. in Film & Video Production
from York University in 1999 and has since made films
and/or videos commissioned by LIFT, Trinity Square
Video, Charles Street Video, and Vtape. He curates
film and video both independently and as a member
of the Pleasure Dome programming collective, and has
written extensively on media arts.
Things were simpler when time went in only one direction.
Or so says the wry dyspeptic narrator who laments
the frame of mind that can reverse effect and cause
with the push of a button.
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Jeremy
Bailey
Strongest Man
2003, 4:33, English, color
Jeremy Bailey completed his undergraduate work in
Visual Studies at the University of Toronto in 2002.
He is currently pursuing his MFA in Video Art at Syracuse
University where he programmes for SPARKVIDEO, a local
and international video series in Syracuse. He is
a founding member of the 640480 Collective
There is such exquisite pleasure in the pain that
we must almost turn away from this real-time performance,
but we don’t. The camera is the culprit here
– as well as the mirror. And his face has the
mask of desire inscribed on it. Make me, make me tonight.
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Deirdre
Logue
THAT BEAUTY
2003, 1:28, English, color
Deirdre Logue is an independent curator and a film,
video and performance artist living and working in
Toronto. She was the Executive Director of the Images
Festival of Independent Film and Video from 1995 to
1999 and currently is the Executive Director of Canadian
Filmmakers Distribution Centre. She actively curates
video and also plays bass in Toronto’s all chick
band Messy.
She’s the dancing girl and she’s all open
– right down to the raw dendrites, exposed to
the pain and humiliation of life in the abrasive lane.
She’s all beauty in its most delicate form,
pure animal.
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Jennifer
Norton
Excess
2002 1:20 color
In this animated self-portrait, the artist’s
face is a mirror, reflecting back the madness surrounding
acceptance and rejection. What happens when we see
too much?
Jenn Norton graduated from the Ontario College of
Art and Design in 2003, receiving the OCAD medal for
outstanding achievement in Integrated Media.
Her video work incorporates animation, sculpture and
set design. She has curated several events including
an outdoor film festival in Tampere, Finland, where
she studied for an exchange year.
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Steve
Reinke
Anthology of American Folk Songs
2004 27:45, English, colour
Steve Reinke received a BFA from York University and
an MFA in Visual Art from the Nova Scotia College
of Art and Design. His video works include The Hundred
Videos, completed in 1997, and widely exhibited internationally.
He has edited several books on film and video through
YYZ and Pleasure Dome and Coach House Press is releasing
a new book focusing on his own work this fall. Steve
currently lives in Chicago and is Assistant Professor
of Film/Video at the University of Illinois.
A bracing and stern examination of the American psyche,
post 9/11, locates those traditional “American
values” of faith, hope and charity squarely
within the intersecting spheres of intolerance, hate
and stupidity. A tour de force by the master of montage.
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Benny
Nemerofsky Ramsay and Cooper Battersby
Untitled*
2004 10:00, English, color
Born in Montreal, Benny Nemerofsky Ramsay is a Berlin-
and Toronto-based artist whose single channel video
work has screened across Canada and Europe. His major
survey of his work “Neverending Song of Long”
was featured at Plug In ICA, Winnipeg, summer 2004.
Cooper Battersby has worked collaboratively with Emily
Vey Duke since June 1994. They work in printed matter,
installation, curation and sound, but their primary
practice is the production of single-channel video.
He is currently living in Halifax.
We are not far from mutation, nor will we ever be
allowed to forget our origins. As the egg divides,
so goes the species. This beautiful collaboration
between performance and editing marks the frail boundaries
between the what-is and the what-might-be.
* a 640480 commissioned project performance by Ramsey,
editing by Battersby
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Emelie
Chhangur
Quenched
2003 6:00, English, color
Emily Chhangur graduated from the University of Toronto’s
Visual Studies Programme in 2003. She was the director
of Propeller Centre For the Visual Arts in Toronto,
the Assistant Curator at the Power Plant and currently
holds this position at the Art Gallery of York University
as well as taking on independent curatorial projects.
Her artwork focuses primarily on video, performance
and installation.
We know not what we resist until the limits are exceeded.
In a breathless performance work, the artist places
redemption squarely on the side of perversion and
the line to be crossed. Let a thousand transgressions
bloom. |
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