SAW Video presents PUBLIC DOMAIN / REDUX The post‐earthquake screening

August 31, 2010 · Filed Under Blog, Festivals and Events

Public Domain / Domaine public
A media art commissioning project drawn from
Library and Archives Canada’s collection

SCREENING
Wednesday , 15 September 2010, 7pm
Library and Archives Canada Auditorium
395 Wellington St.
Free admission

OTTAWA – August 2010 – The June 23rd Val‐des‐Bois earthquake happened just hours before the premiere of SAW Video’s greatly anticipated national media art commissioning project, Public Domain. The tremors resulted in the temporary closure of the venue for SAW Video’s screening – the auditorium of the Library and Archives Canada. With the help of Facebook and other social media, the event was quickly rescheduled and took place the next day at 5pm at the Mayfair Theatre.

SAW Video is pleased to give the public another chance to view these groundbreaking contemporary video works with an encore, post‐earthquake screening taking place Wednesday, September 15, 2010 at the Library and Archives Canada auditorium, 395 Wellington St., at 7pm. Launched in June 2009, Public Domain is the first commissioning project of this scope undertaken by SAW Video. With the support of a grant from the Canada Council for the Arts Media Arts Commissioning program, SAW Video commissioned seven accomplished media artists working in Canada to create new video works using public domain films and videos footage found in the Library and Archives Canada. The result is Public Domain, a programme of six new videos that present a unique and valuable opportunity to contribute to the ongoing discourse around copyrighted images. According to SAW Video director Penny McCann, “Works that are in the public domain are, theoretically, free from copyright restrictions, however the process for obtaining permission for these ‘public’ works can be expensive and time‐consuming. The purpose of Public Domain was to offer media artists the opportunity and the resources to crack open the treasure chest of our national archives collection while at the same engaging in questions of which images in our collective past get archived and which do not.”

The seven Canadian artists chosen for this commissioning project present a variety of approaches and techniques to the use of archival documents. Steve Reinke (Chicago/Toronto), already known for the use of archival documents in his video essays, transgresses the nature of the archival images he employs by giving them a new context and a new meaning. Sara Angelucci (Toronto) links the fragility and physical evanescence of the image with the volatility of memory and identity. Maureen Bradley (Victoria) employs a feminist and political approach in the form of an essay which joins the force of documentary images with an investigation of family history. Gennaro de Pasquale (Montreal) collects images and sounds from multiple sources, which he then assembles in poetic video collages according to their formal and semantic properties. Suzan Vachon (Montreal) gleans archival collections looking for images with oneiric and evocative possibilities which she incorporates into her lyrical essays. The artistic duo Véronique Couillard and Ryan Stec (Ottawa) are particularly interested in the graphic qualities of analogue images, which they manipulate digitally using a process of live retouching and mixing that imparts a new rhythm and a new nature to the images.

List of works being screened:
Gennaro de Pasquale, Vortex, 12:08
Sara Angelucci, The Beauty Pageant News, 8:47
Suzan Vachon, chant [dans les muscules du chant], 23 :32
Maureen Bradley, Beyond the Pale, 16:00
Véronique Couillard/Ryan Stec, Library and Archives Canada Public Domain Reels Documenting Spots of Beauty and Interest in Ontario and Quebec Sometime Ago Remixed Today (VCRS): 19752010, 3:00
Steve Reinke, Not Torn (Asunder from the Very Start), 9:57
For more on Public Domain, visit www.sawvideo.com/publicdomain.