Vtape x Vidéographe

On September 26, 2024 at 7 pm
— Facebook event

As part of the dv_vd series, Vidéographe and Vtape, in partnership with Dazibao, join forces to celebrate the richness and diversity of video art practices in the Montreal and Toronto scenes. This program brings together nine works from their respective collections, created by eleven emerging artists. Through this joint initiative, Vidéographe and Vtape aim to highlight and continue their longstanding collaboration.

Program — 70 min.

Fiorella Boucher et Laura Criollo-Carrillo, Ko pyhare, para siempre (2022) — 5 min.

Child of two worlds that do not speak to each other, a girl speaks to her mother and her grandmother. She travels through the dilated space of origins, impostures and wounds.

Gladys Lou, Am I Human? (2022) — 1 min. 37 sec.

Am I Human? is a post-human exploration of data, artificial intelligence, and surveillance using video and sound. The glitch on screen disrupts communication and reflects my questioning of the challenges of being human within normative cultural standards.

Antoine Amnotte-Dupuis, Hommage à Rose Drummond (2023) — 12 min. 23 sec.

Composer Jean Derome and his ensemble pay vibrant tribute to the prominent Quebec land art artist Rose Drummond through a collection of whimsical, ready-made songs brought to life by reassembled 16mm family archives and altered filmed performances.

Lillian Ross-Millard, Horse in Motion (2022) — 10 min. 17 sec.

A figure walks through a digitally saturated landscape on a quest to find her grief, using old phone photos and videos as landmarks to help her navigate. This piece explores an amnesiac experience of loss, inspired by the artist’s fragmented experience of grief and melancholia during and around the pandemic.

Jules Ronfard, En attendant Lolo (2022) — 8 min. 

On a country road, a couple gone for a ride on a scooter find themselves immobilized after running out of gas. While waiting for their friend Lolo, a philosophical discussion ensues.

Emily DiCarlo, The Propagation of Uncertainty (2020) — 5 min. 50 sec.

Emily DiCarlo’s three-channel video installation, The Propagation of Uncertainty, explores the friction between what she terms “the infrastructure of time and the intimacy of duration.” The work focuses on time frequency standards and how our accelerated, networked world relies on the foundation of Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). While airports, stock markets, and telecommunications operate through precise temporal orchestration, UTC reigns as an authoritatively omnipresent force that, in reality, is far from absolute.

Valeryia Naboikina et Malte Leander, Mindscapes (2023) — 8 min. 40 sec.

The notion of escapism refers to the tendency of individuals to retreat from the customary challenges of life into the comforting, yet deceptive, embrace of fantasy. Through a multidimensional exploration, this film maps a journey that encompasses the transformative phases of departure, immersion, and return.

Samy Benammar, Kauaʻi ʻōʻō (2023) — 3 min. 48 sec.

In 2000, the International Union for Conservation of Nature declared the Kauaʻi ʻōʻō officially extinct. All that remains of this endemic bird from the eponymous Hawaiian island is a recording of its song by ornithologist David Boynton. Between the territories and the treetops, the artist is still hoping to find a trace of the extinct birds.

Tram Anh Nguyen, Hoa (2022) — 14 min. 24 sec.

In Vietnamese, “hoa” means flower. It is also the first name of the filmmaker's bà nội (paternal grandmother). Before developing memory disorders, his grandmother, Tuyết Hoa, wrote an autobiographical book about her life and its events. The book, translated from Vietnamese, is titled Memories of Tuyết Hoa and subtitled When My Country is Peaceful: Memoirs of a Saigon Female Student. She now reads this book every day in her home in Hanoi.

Incorporated as a non-profit organization in 1983, Vtape is one of Canada’s leading media arts distributors. Its distribution catalog includes more than 6,700 independent artworks by about 1,500 Canadian and international artists, spanning the years from 1969 to the present. In addition, Vtape provides public access to a large collection of research materials on video art and artists, and runs a restoration and digitization service for artists, museums, galleries, arts organizations, and other clients.

Established in 1971 in Montréal, Vidéographe is an artist-run center dedicated to the research and the dissemination of moving image practices. This includes experimentation in video art, animation, digital arts, documentary, essay, fiction and dance video.