30 Years of Japanese Video Art July 13, 2006

Screening Japanese Video Art from Vancouver’s oldest collection.

Thursday, July 13th, 2006, 8:30pm (doors, 7:00pm)
Video In Studios
1965 Main Street
Admission: $5-7 sliding scale at the door
Info: 604-872-8337, [email protected] or www.powellstreetfestival.com

Video In & Powell Street Festival Society present:

From their beginnings in 1973 at 261 Powell Street, the Satellite Video Exchange Society has acquired a collection of countless Japanese works. In this evening celebrating 30 Years of Japanese Video Art (as part of the 30th anniversary of the Powell Street Festival), Video In provides access to these tapes as well as a catalogue compiling their Japanese video collection at their present location (Video In Studios 1965 Main Street).

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Mrs. Murayama peels the plastic cover off a pack of wieners. She cuts them into even, small pieces. Mama prepares breakfast with all the patience and love one can put into shelling sausages out of a blister pack. A television set and a VCR fill a third of the dining table. Mama switches the TV on, her sleeping son appears on the screen: “Time to wake up Hideo dear.” Mrs. Murayama has to put all her effort into arousing her grownup son. Her obsessive trials to take control over Hideo’s life are limited. The glass of the monitor averts any direct access.

One of the early Japanese works in video art, Mako Idemitsu’s Hideo, It’s Me, Mama (1983) deals with the doubtable role of the mother in modern Japanese society. The intense debate striking Asian gender roles and relationships within family hierarchies is as typical for Japanese media art as the tender beauty of the simplistic works of Keigo Yamamoto from the 70s. Japanese video art is unique and diverse; some works are thought provoking, others demonstrate playfulness and experimentally.

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Visit the Powell Street Festival. Program schedule available online at www.powellstreetfestival.com in July.

Media Contact: Julie Gendron, 604-872-8337 or [email protected]

Video In Studios gratefully acknowledges the financial support of the Canada Council for the Arts, B.C. Arts Council and the City of Vancouver.

Official Website: http://www.videoinstudios.com