Session 40 | Daniel Barrow
Winnipeg Babysitter
On November 27, 28, 29, 2025 at 7 pm
Limited seating, first come, first served!
90 minutes
In English
Free
Paying bar from 6 to 7 pm
Free popcorn
Artist's merch
In the late ’70s and throughout the ’80s, Winnipeg experienced a “golden age” of public-access television. As a condition of their broadcasting licence, cable companies were obliged to give airtime to anyone with a creative vision. Winnipeg Babysitter is an archival project and a live performance that travels through this almost lost history. Daniel Barrow showcases a collection of broadcasts, arduously put together by the artist, with the help of TV fans and enthusiasts while living and working in Winnipeg. Accompanying the compilation, full of outrageous personalities with bizarre eccentricities, pre-internet and proper to the era, Barrow uses overhead projection to footnote the videos. In doing so, the artist provides biographical or anecdotal context, but also a kind of recognition and admiration for these local stars of the past.
Over the last twenty years, Daniel Barrow has used obsolete technologies to present pictorial narratives by merging the methods and cultural histories of cinema, comic books, animation, shadow puppetry and magic lantern shows. Barrow is best known for creating and adapting comic book narratives to “manual” forms of animation by projecting, layering and manipulating drawings on an overhead projector in live performance contexts. Their works have been presented at The Walker Art Center (Minneapolis), The Museum of Contemporary Art (Los Angeles), The International Film Festival Rotterdam, The Portland Institute for Contemporary Art’s TBA Festival, and the British Film Institute. Barrow is the winner of the 2010 Sobey Art Award and the 2013 Glenfiddich Artist In Residence Prize.
Dazibao thanks the artist for their generous collaboration as well as its advisory committee for their support.
Dazibao receives financial support from the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, the Canada Council for the Arts, the Conseil des arts de Montréal, the ministère de la Culture et des Communications and the Ville de Montréal.
Dazibao acknowledges that it is located on the unceded territory of the Kanien'kehá: ka Nation and that Tiohtiá:ke / Montreal is historically known as a gathering place for many First Nations, and today, is home to a diverse population of Indigenous as well as other peoples. Guided by ethics of respect, listening, and awareness, Dazibao commits to a continued reflection regarding the deep-rooted and systemic challenges tied to accessibility and inclusivity in the arts and beyond, and endeavors to apply such reflections to all aspects of its activities and governance.