VIVO Programming for Spring Fever

changeXchange

VIVO’s SPRING FEVER program – changeXchange – looks at the international video exchange network initiated by Intermedia member, Michael Goldberg in 1971, “Matrix,” the first international conference of “alternative” videomakers (Vancouver 1973), and the subsequent incorporation of the Satellite Video Exchange Society, now known as VIVO.

This international network of non-commercial video producers, community activists, and artists working with the first amateur portable video, strove to connect communities expousing alternative lifestyles, educate populations across borders, share aesthetic and technical experimentation, and to democratize the medium.

SCREENING | March 30, 7pm ​
Elephants: 70’s Video from the International Exchange Network

Our screening title references “Me at the Zoo”, the first video uploaded to YouTube on April 23, 2005. The video’s 19-seconds of banal observations on elephants by co-founder Jawed Karim launched the second online video-hosting platform in six months, the first being Vimeo on October 1, 2004.

Four decades earlier, non-commercial videomakers, desirous of a pre-internet mechanism for global outreach, were challenged by the physical realities of the media and an absence of efficient tools for networking. In Vancouver, this led to the creation of the Video Exchange Network and ultimately, the Satellite Video Exchange Society.

Elephants features excerpts of video from the collection at the Crista Dahl Media Library & Archive, specifically those gathered at the 1973 Matrix Conference and works circulated through the Satellite Video Exchange Society’s first Video Exchange Tape Catalogue. Documentaries, Video Art, how-to’s, and ruminations on tecnhnology, including:

“The Bust of Timothy Leary” 1971, Eldridge Cleaver & G. Pignolet
“Mae Brussel Conspiracy” 1972, Sue Fox
“Louie” 1970, Brian MacNevin
“Video Art” 1973, June Boe
“Second Electronic Visualization Event” 1977, Tom Defanti
“What is Technology” 1973, Video Ring
“Image Manipulation” 1973, Stan Fox
“Post Cards” 1972, Pete Berg
“Statics Of An Egg” 1973, Fujiko Nakaya

More works are being digitized and the list will be updated as they are completed.
All works are from the video collection of VIVO’s Crista Dahl Media Library & Archive.

EXHIBITION | March 30-31, April 4-8 11am-6pm ​
of cabbages and catalogues: Matrix and the Satellite Video Exchange Society

of cabbages and catalogues is an archival exhibit drawn from the collection of VIVO’s Crista Dahl Media Library & Archive. It looks at the 1971 Video Exchange Network initiative of Michael Goldberg under the auspices of Image Bank; Vancouver’s 1973 MATRIX Conference, organized by Michael Goldman and Trish Hardman; the formation of Satellite Video Exchange Society and the establishment of the Video Inn Library. Featuring original textual materials, audio recordings, Matrix photographs by Kazumi Tanaka, and videos from the collection.

A VIVO Co-Production
SYMPOSIUM | April 8, 10am-5pm
Underground in the Aether: Conversations on connectivity, selfhood, and telecommunications.

As part of Vancouver Independent Archives Week, and in response to the exhibition Hank Bull: Connexion.
Organized by Joni Low and Robin Simpson (Doryphore Independent Curators Society)

Keynote: Hannah B. Higgins, professor of art history, University of Illinois at Chicago.

Underground in the Aether is a symposium conceived in response to the themes of collectivity, selfhood, and changing technologies as advanced in the exhibition Hank Bull: Connexion. The exhibition covers the 1970s to the mid-1990s and brings together a collection of material traces in order to explore Bull’s role as a connecting figure between international artist-run communities and networks. Out of Bull’s and others’ collective and performative experiments in communication-as-art and social sculpture emerged glimpses at world-building projects modeled through shifting forms of individual identity and community. Presenters are welcome to expand on these ideas by way of their current research. Our aim is to articulate a wider history of artistic activities within mediums now supported by the internet, social media, and mobile devices. The symposium may also serve as an exchange on the methodological challenges that arise in our attempts at retrospective readings and correspondence with communities and networks now fixed within a collection or archive. What forms did networks adopt as artists navigated an increasingly globalized and media-saturated world? How did these mediums allow for Fluxus-minded activities, the exploration of different ways of being, and new social forms? How does one locate and cast the connecting or
mediating figures within archives and networks? The underground transposed into the aether alternates between manoeuvres that attempt to evade control or that concede to immersion as a
means of living through it.
Introduction: Elisa Ferrari and Karen Knights

Presentations by:
Vincent Bonin Independent Curator
Allison Collins Media Arts Curator, Western Front
Luis Jacob Artist, Curator, Writer
Jee-hae Kim University of Cologne, Germany
Felicity Tayler Concordia University, Montreal

Lunch and refreshments served.

For more information visit: www.doryphore.ca/aether

Organized  with the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, Burnaby Art Gallery, Or Gallery, and VIVO Media Arts Centre.