Femmes br@nchées #45 :: Women, Video and the Web

Groupe Intervention Vidéo and Studio XX is pleased to announce the launch of Women and Video on the Web, which will take place on December 18th. A collaboration between the two organisations, the project invited four women artists to participate in the creation of works that juxtapose approaches incorporating video and the Web.

Taking into account the reality of technological convergence which now orients digital productions, Groupe Intervention Video and Studio XX proposed to four women artists, the possibility to create works bringing together visions and practices around video and the Web. Out of this came critical and militant works, on questions of media representations, gender, space and militarization. Four voices, strong and uncompromising, which express different approaches and negociate these new conceptual zones linked to binary data and computerized procedures.

Diyan Achjadi
Once Upon A Time invokes a familiar language of fairy tales aimed at children. A pink house becomes the locus for a series of possible fictions. The main character is simply referred to as the girl. There are a number of figures in the site, all of which could inhabit this character. Who is telling a story, and whose story is being told?

Diyan Achjadi’s current work explores the gendered representation and use of militaristic attributes in news media, popular culture, and toys. She received an MFA in Print Media from Concordia University (2002) and is currently Assistant Professor of Visual Arts at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC).

Jody Bielun
LivingRooms is a touchable, responsive webspace that acts as a subversive critique on the ways that we live. The user explores a series of “rooms” whose names closely resemble the functions of rooms in a house (Eg. Room of Bathing, Room of Sleep, Room of Consumption, etc). As the user triggers changes and plays with her environment, things are also happening that are beyond her control and the environment is playing her.

Jody Bielun is currently working on a Master’s degree in Architecture at the University of Waterloo in Ontario. A recurring theme in her work is the exploration of the connections between nature, technology, the body, and architecture. Her work has been exhibited in Montreal, Toronto, Mexico, Italy, New York, and Ottawa.

pomgrenade
Balkan Mediations stems out of the many questions raised for North Americans by the 1999 NATO bombing of Kosovo and Yugoslavia in our current age of perpetual mediatised wars. Balkan Mediations takes the ironies of today’s intimate links between media and military technologies as its point of creative intervention, examining the incongruities and brutalities of a context in which, to paraphrase Bob Ostertag, we now use the same tools to play, create media, and kill.

pomgrenade has been active in experimental and documentary film and video production, community radio and sound, and all around media jamming and shit-disturbing since the past ten years. In her spare time, she pursues graduate work in media and communication studies, where she researches and publishes on the relationship between current media representations of immigration and the increasingly racist and exclusionary nature of Canadian immigration policy.

Mara Verna
Sarah Baartman (1789-1816), also known as The Hottentot Venus, was taken from South Africa and exhibited as a freak in Europe, until her death in Paris in 1816. Considered living proof as the missing link between the highest form of animal life and the lowest form of human life, renowned French scientist Georges Cuvier dissected her corpse upon her death. For the next 150 years, Sarah’s preserved brain, genitals and skeleton were on display at Le Musee de l’homme in Paris. In May 2002, Sarah’s remains were finally allowed to return home to her descendants for burial.

On location in South Africa and France this year, artist Mara Verna presents the culmination of her work surrounding this historical figure through the site www.hottentotvenus.com. The work will be presented in association with the traveling exhibition Rien n’a été perdu, which opened in Paris on November 22nd 2002 at La Vitrine Gallery. It will then be exhibited at La Centrale Gallery, Montreal, in February 2003. www.maraverna.com

The artists will be present.
Date: December 18th at 7 p.m.
Location: 5505 boulevard St-Laurent, suite 3015, autobus 55 (corner of St-Viateur and St-Laurent)
Free entry. The launch will be followed by Christmas festivities, with drinks being offered.

Information GIV : Chantal Molleur
c : giv@givideo.org / u : http://www.givideo.org/ / t : 514.271.5506
Informations Studio XX : Karen Wong
c : programmation@studioxx.org / u : www.studioxx.org/ t : 514.845.7934

Groupe Intervention Vidéo and Studio XX would like to thank the Canada Council for the Arts, the Conseil des Arts et des Lettres du Québec, le SODEC and for their generous contribution in making this event possible. They would also like to thank their members.