Vtape launches online screening series with Tamami Asada’s Screaming Videotape #2

Screaming Video #2, Tamami Asada, 1996

Vtape presents

TAMAMI ASADA, Screaming Videotape #2, (1996)

The first in our on-line screening series selected by Vtape staff,
Dustin Lawrence, Technical and Distribution Coordinator.

REFLECTION / REFRACTION
A WEEKLY SCREENING SERIES @ www.vtape.org
Click on Vimeo

April 3 – 9, 2020

As we – like most of you – are working from home, we wanted to find a way to keep the amazing artists’ titles we distribute in circulation. While festivals and other screening venues are cancelling or postponing their events, Vtape is still doing business with clients in educational and cultural institutions who are ordering titles that we provide from our remote server. Likewise previews are available for viewing through our portal so programmers and curators and researchers have access to the work of Vtape artists.
For access: wandav@vtape.org

But we wanted more. In 2011, Vtape presented a daylong festival and party called CARRIED AWAY (an occasion to celebrate the Premier’s Award we had just been awarded). Our staff made selections and wrote personal statements about each work. It was a beautiful day of screenings, snacks, and conversation followed by a lovely party.

Well, given our social isolation, the snacks and party are out, BUT…

With REFLECTION / REFRACTION we are doing a virtual version of this love letter to our artists. Every Friday we will launch a title selected by one of the Vtape staff accompanied by a personal statement as to why this work speaks to each person. Atomized as we are – isolated from each other, separated from the works of art that we love – we will launch the artworks on Vimeo on our website so that you can see a new title each week. Expect each to arrive on Friday morning.

REFRACTION – the fact or phenomenon of light, radio waves, etc. being deflected in passing obliquely through the interface between one medium and another or through a medium of varying density.

Passing obliquely through, reflected but not accurately, seeing as artists often do what is not obviously visible. This series speaks to the times we are in – not directly, but there. As Dustin Lawrence, says about this first section:

“I often find myself staring out the window, trying to watch the world outside but instead catch myself staring at my own reflection. My reflection always seems to stare disapprovingly, cold eyes and a straight mouth. I feel like I don’t know this person staring back.

“Having haunted me ever since my first viewing, Tamami Asada’s Screaming Videotape #2, made me realize how many others must feel this same way. Looking into mirrors, windows, spoons and wondering who is this staring back? Are they the one screaming? Or is it me?

“Though I don’t struggle personally, or rather openly, with my own mental health, I can feel the separation, the divide between us. Myself and my reflection. I’m trying to understand what it is that connects us. I’m trying to see who I am – really am.”
– Dustin Lawrence, Vtape, Technical and Distribution Coordinator

An Ojibway of Saugeen First Nations raised off-reserve in southern and northern Ontario, Dustin Lawrence graduated from Toronto Film School with a diploma in Film Production in 2015. Soon after he worked in Production and Post Production for Big Soul Productions Inc. (2015-2017) most notably as the Digital Asset Manager and Assistant Editor for season 2 and 3 on Derek Miller’s The Guilt Free Zone (APTN), as a first Assistant Camera and Digital Asset Manager on the CBC Short Doc The Secret Path: In The Classroom and as an Assistant Editor on the digital content for APTN’s docu-series AskiBoyz.

He has held full-time positions at the imagineNATIVE Film and Media Arts Festival as the Industry Assistant and is currently the Technical and Distribution Coordinator at the artist-run distribution centre Vtape, where he works closely with artists on the presentation/distribution of their work.

In 2018 he was the cinematographer for Artist Judith Schuyler’s Experimental Short Film Onyota’a:ka khale Tsi’tkaluto which premiered at the 2018 imagineNATIVE Film and Media Arts Festival.

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Vtape acknowledges the generous support of all of our funders including The Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council and the Toronto Arts Council.

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