From: Thomas Beard (email suppressed)
Date: Mon Feb 16 2009 - 13:42:22 PST
Light Industry
220 36th Street, 5th Floor - NEW SPACE
Brooklyn, New York
http://www.lightindustry.org
Winnipeg Babysitter
Tuesday, February 17, 2009 at 7:30pm
Curated and performed by Daniel Barrow
When SHAW cable purchased Winnipeg's local cable station VPW, a rumour was
circulated that SHAW had destroyed the public access television archives and
were systematically dismantling the public access services. Shortly
thereafter, Daniel Barrow began researching, compiling and archiving a
history of independently produced television in Winnipeg, Manitoba. In the
late '70s and throughout the 80s, Winnipeg experienced a "golden age" of
public access television. Anyone with a creative dream, concept or politic
would be endowed with airtime and professional production services.
A precedent that went far beyond standard television formula was set in the
late '70s when the infamous Winnipeg performance artist Glen Meadmore sat in
front of a television camera and silently picked at his acne for 30 minutes
each week in a program called The Goofers (later The Glen Meadmore Show).
Winnipeg Babysitter traces this and other unique vignettes from a brief
synapse in broadcasting history when Winnipeg cable companies were mandated
to provide public access as a condition of their broadcasting license.
Because, the local public access archives were destroyed programs could only
be found in the VHS collections of the original producers. In cases when
these producers did not save their own work, Barrow had to rely on
television collectors, fans and enthusiasts. In this regard, Winnipeg
Babysitter is an archival project that restores a previously lost history.
Daniel Barrow travels to each screening providing an overhead projected
commentary/context, tracing the histories of public access television in
Manitoba, and describing the various and outrageous biographies of each
television producer and personality. Winnipeg Babysitter is a program that
requires 2 screens: the video projection on a main theatre screen, with
Barrow's hand crafted, overhead-projected liner notes on an adjacent,
smaller screen. This style of commentary is deliberate; it is less intrusive
and more respectful of the video images than a voice-over. In this regard,
Winnipeg Babysitter is also a documentary, curatorial, and performance
project.
Featuring:
Survival (Greg Klymkiw and Guy Maddin 1982-87), features Maddin's earliest
recorded performances
Metal Inquisition (Fearless Pig and Terrible Dog, 1986)
Delirious Photoplay (Myles and Drue Langlois of the Royal Art Lodge 1999)
The Pollock & Pollock Gossip Show (Natalie and Ronnie Pollock 1986-89)
and many more.
Winnipeg-based artist Daniel Barrow uses obsolete technologies to present
written, pictorial and cinematic narratives centering on the practices of
drawing and collecting. Since 1993, he has created and adapted comic book
narratives to "manual" forms of animation by projecting, layering and
manipulating drawings on overhead projectors. He variously refers to this
practice as "graphic performance or manual animation." Barrow has exhibited
widely in Canada and abroad. Barrow is the 2007 winner of the Canada
Council's Victor Martyn Lynch-Staunton award and the 2008 winner of the
Images Festival's "Images Prize". Barrow is represented by Jessica Bradley
Art + Projects, Toronto.
--- Made for TV: The Collected Works of Tom Rubnitz Wednesday, February 18, 2009 at 7:30pm Introduced by Charles Atlas No videomaker captured the spirit of the East Village 1980s demimonde better than Tom Rubnitz, who teamed up with the looniest luminaries of downtown New York to create his incomparable oeuvre of live-action cartoony capers. For over a decade until his death from AIDS in 1992, Rubnitz turned his cameras on clublandıs most bedazzled, from drag royals like RuPaul, the Lady Bunny, Hapi Phace, Lypsinka and Taboo! to choreographer Michael Clark, musician John Sex, and lavender wit Quentin Crisp. Tackling the tube from all angles, Rubnitz sends up cooking programs, movie ads, music videos and kid's shows; his PBS-broadcast Made for TV parodies the entire cable age by channel-flipping Ann Magnuson through a series of schizophrenic spoofs. More recently, Rubnitzıs legacy has unexpectedly invaded the post-television landscape. Clips of his videos on the internet have created a new surge of interest in Rubnitz among electric youth: not only has Pickle Surprise! been viewed thousands of times online, itıs also spawned a wave of fan remixes, remakes and tributes. Today, his work might be seen as a precursor to the digital psychedelia of Paper Rad or Ryan Trecartinwho, not incidentally, has literally added Rubnitz to his list of YouTube favorites. Tonightıs screening offers viewers a chance to venture beyond these bootleg samplings, serving up a heaping helping of Rubnitzıs most outrageous works in all their day-glo glory. "Inimitable and ineffable, Tom Rubnitz's glitter-dusted videos distill the sensibility of a generation of TV babies whose venue of choice was the Pyramid Club rather than the Whitney Museum." - Amy Taubin "Brilliant as they are lovable as they are hilarious, these videos are simply dynamite. It was impossible to 'take notes' while watching them for review; their uncanny, anarchistic vinegar encourages one to throw away the writing pad. And when this short, shining, miracle hour was over I was dashed, inconsolable." - Warren Sonbert The Mother Show, 1991, 4 mins Uncover...Me!, 1988, 2 mins Made for TV, 1984, 15 mins Summer of Love, 1989, 30 secs Hustle with My Muscle, 1986, 4 mins Bump and Grind It, 1986, 3 mins John Sex: The True Story, 1983, 4 mins The Drag Queen Marathon, 1986, 5 mins Pickle Surprise!, 1990, 1 min Chicken Elaine, 1983, 1 min Strawberry Shortcut, 1989, 1 min The Fairies, 1989, 5 mins Love Is the Message, 1990, 4 mins Wigstock: The Movie!, 1987, 21 mins Tickets for all events - $7, available at door. __________________________________________________________________ For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at <email suppressed>.