Latin American Video Art in the VIVO Media Arts Archives

Library Media Showcase & Archival Displays

Onsite: May 24, 5pm – May 26, 5 pm PDT
Online: Media Showcase only. May 25-May 28.

About the Latin American Materials at the CDMLA

Spanning more than five decades, VIVOs Latin American holdings offer a broad range of Latin American content from producers across the Americas. The collection contains experimental videos by established artists such as the U.S.-based-Cuban-born Maria Magdalena Campos Pons and Tony Labat, Chilean Lotty Rosenfeld, Mexican Ximena Cuevas and emerging producers featuring Venezuelan Valentina Alvarado, Brazilian Cynthia Domenico and Mexican Emilio Rojas, among others. It offers documentation of artistic residencies, exhibitions and cross-cultural exchanges that contest dominant histories of colonialism and eurocentric geographic boundaries imposed on Indigenous communities, including the work of Hopi filmmaker Victor Mayaseva, U.S.-Based Cuban-born Raul Ferrera-Balanquet, Mexican Melba Alfaro and Hunkpapa Lakota filmmaker Dana Claxton. It also contains audiovisual records on a range of social movements and feminist initiatives, including Karen Ranucci’s 1980 collection of independent media producers from Mexico, Brazil, Peru, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Panama, Uruguay and Chile. Other highlights from the collection include work by U.S- based 1970s feminist initiatives advocating for Latina women’s rights in the San Francisco Bay Area. The Media Showcase featured a selection of these in VIVO’s.

Other materials in the archives trace the relationships between this artist-run centre and artists, independent producers, and sister-organizations around the world. These include directories, artists and activist files, exhibition and distribution catalogues, event promotional material, correspondance, photographs. Related materials are also found in our Special Collections, in the fonds of Sara Diamond and the Women In Focus Society. Archival Displays of a selection of these materials was featured in the VIVO lobby and the Crista Dahl Media Library & Archive research room.

Media

Archival Displays

Vitrine 1 | Connections

The impetus behind the establishment of the Satellite Video Exchange Society (SVES) was the facilitation of an international exchange of “alternative information” on videotape. The rise of portable video dovetailed with international solidarity movements.   

Vitrine 1 features examples from the SVES Fonds of its activities and connections to Latin American educators, galleries, artists, and political movements from 1972 to the early 1980s. This correspondence came to SVES through exposure to the Video Exchange Directory (1971-1978), Video Guide Magazine (1978-1992), and ads placed in popular “alternative video” publications, such as Radical Software. The right half of the vitrine features publications from the Sara Diamond Fonds produced in solidarity with Latin American struggles and / for Latin American communities, primarily produced in Canada. 

1)Correspondence from: Argentinian writer, poet, and journalist, Miguel Grinberg (1937-2022); American David Reed (1948-) during his time in Peru organizing workers and using popular education techniques inspired by Paulo Freire’s work; and Marisa Pecanins, art film director.

2)South America listing from the 7th International Video Exchange Directory, Satellite Video Exchange Society, 1977.

3)Promotion sent to SVES from Mexican video artist, Pola Weiss Álvarez (1947-1990); brochure and correspondence regarding Memória do Corpo and Por Mario Carneiro by Lygia Clark, Galeria de Arte do Centro Cultural Cândido Mendes, Rio de Janeiro, 1985.

4)Correspondence from Amigas des AMES (Asociación de Mujeres de El Salvador), 1984.

5)Revolution: Socialist Party of Chile (Canadian “exterior representation”), 1976.

6)Venceremos Vol. 1 No. 6, Vancouver, Dec-Jan, 1976

7)Examples of Aquilazze: A Magazine for Latin American Women, Vancouver, 1990s.

8)Priorities: A Publication of the N.D.P. Women’s Committee, mid-1970s. The BC NDP is formally affiliated with the federal New Democratic Party and serves as its provincial branch. They briefly held power between 1972 and 1975 but would lose to the Social Credit in 1975, not gaining power again until 1991.

Vitrine 2 | Women, Art & The Periphery / Mujeres, arte y periferia

The Women, Art & the Periphery / Mujeres, arte y periferia exhibition was conceived during a period of right-wing entrenchment and political aggression against marginalized communities across the country. It opened in November 1987, one month after the re-election of the provincial Social Credit Party led by a new kind of populist, William “Bill” Vander Zalm, and four years after the largest labour protest in British Columbia history. The Solidarity Movement of 1983 united workers across trade unions against anti-union and anti-human rights legislation introduced by the Social Credit Party, but ultimately failed the majority who had supported it. At the same time, the actors claiming they were the “moral majority” were seeking to reverse the rights won by women and 2SLGBTQA+ communities. 1987 was also a critical year in the fight against censorship legislation from all levels of government impacting feminist and queer artists, and HIV/AIDS educational efforts. These works from Chile, while produced in a more threatening context, reflected and pushed forward local conversations, provided blueprints to creative and action, as well as inspiration. The works were also relevant to the local discussion on issues surrounding First Nations representation and media.

9)Catalogue: Bandes Video du Brésil et Chili, 1-30 Septembre, 1985, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Montréal. Curator of Chilean video, Colin Campbell (Toronto). Curator of Brazilian video, Anna Bella Geiger (Rio de Janeiro). This exhibition inspired Sara Diamond to create Women, Art & the Periphery (WAP) in Vancouver. The exhibitions and residencies in 1987 at SVES featured only women artists from Chile and was organized by Women in Focus and Video In.

10)Margins and Institutions: Art in Chile Since 1973. Nelly Richard, Experimental Art Foundation for Art & Text, 1986. Art In Chile: An Audiovisual Documentation, a publication from Richard’s 1986 Australian touring exhibition. The exhibition of slides and video documented art and interventions in Chile since the fall of Allende.

11)Women, Art and the Periphery / Mujere, Arte y Periferia: An Exhibition of Thirteen Chilean Artists’ Contemporary, Multimedia Works, Women in Focus Society. Exhibition catalogue. November 11-December 19, 1987.

WAP was a series of multimedia events conceived and curated by Sara Diamond featuring contemporary art by Chilean women who played an active role in unofficial culture developed in Chile after the 1973 military takeover. In the fall of 1987, Video In hosted the residency of Chilean artists Diamela Eltit, Nelly Richard, and Lotty Rosenfeld which included workshops, community meeting, an installation, and art actions by Rosenfeld. The Floating Curatorial Gallery at Women in Focus presented multimedia works by thirteen Chilean contemporary artists, co-curated by Eltit, Richard, and Rosenfeld. Other events included Rosenfeld in-residence at Western Front, Eltit’s talk at La Quena Coffeehouse, and several lectures at local universities.

12)Various associated events with WAP: Women Writing in Chile by Diamela Eltit, a lecture presented as part of SFU Colloquium Series; The Front newsletter promoting Lotty Rosenfeld’s media artist residency at the Western Front, 1987; Idera newsletter on International Events, October-November, 1987; Lotty Rosenfeld’s itinerary during her residency in Vancouver.

13)Video Out Distribution video stills from productions by Sandra Quilaqueo, Sybil Brintrup, Magali Meneses, Patricia Navarro, and C.A.D.A..

14)Photo documentation of Lotty Rosenfeld’s video installation at Video In. Composed of two video components: The Disappeared Ones, Today and Yesterday and Pity the Conquered. Rosenfeld juxtaposed the disappearance of thousands of Chilean since Pinochet’s rule with the genocide of the Indigenous “Onas” (Selk’nam) people.

15)Photo documentation of Lotty Rosenfeld’s Art Action Cross intervention on Georgia Street in front of the Vancouver Art Gallery, housed in the former Vancouver Law Court building and located in the heart of Vancouver’s business and commercial core, on unceded xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) territories, Vancouver, Canada, 1987.

15)Text and photo documentation of Lotty Rosenfeld’s Art Action Sound intervention at the Vancouver Courthouse.

Vitrine 3 | Portapak 

16)Sony Video Camera AVC-3400 No. 49903. Sony Videocorder AV-3400 SN 46720. The Sony Portapak was the first portable video recorder. Introduced to a consumer market in 1967, it had a transformative impact on artists and filmmakers. The Sony Portapak was a popular and early medium of choice for artists and was critical to the development of Intermedia, Metro Media Society, Video Inn, and Western Front. It was also used extensively by First Nations and educational institutions across the province. 

17)The Accessible Portapak Manual, Michael Goldberg, publisher Satellite Video Exchange Society, 1976. An educational instructional manual on the use of the Portapak published in English and French. It was illustrated with photographs, video stills, and drawings by local artists, providing updated information similar to the iconic Spaghetti City Video Manual (1973). 

4 | Reading & Viewing Space

Catalogues & Directories | SVES Publications, SVES Space and Time Collection, Women In Focus fonds
Exhibition and distribution catalogues featuring Latin American media and artists; International Video Exchange Directories; Women, Art & the Periphery catalogue.

Video | Triangulation of Desire/ Return to the Pleasurable (A032, A061, A097)
Guadalupe Martinez at thirstDays
VIVO Media Arts Center, 2017

For thirstDays#12 Martinez responds to elements found in the CDMLA. Drawing found elements found in folders A032, A061, A097, Martinez creates a sequence of gestures from the work of artists such as Lygia Clark (Brazil), Ana Mendieta (Cuba/US), Marie Orensenz (Argentina), and inserts herself within the archive’s narrative by reenacting, documenting and incorporating these gestures to it. The work animates actions, contexts, geographies, and histories in a juxtaposition that addresses presence and absence of bodies interjecting the archive’s historicity.

Research Room | Political Publications from the Sara Diamond Archives

Why are there Latin American materials in my archive?

By Sara Diamond 

I was a socialist and feminist activist who supported international solidarity from a young age. Like many of my peers we looked to the Allende government in Chile as a beacon of democracy and egalitarian social change. Chileans visited Vancouver and Toronto and shared their stories. Chilean culture was rich and prolific as was culture from Argentina and other countries in Latin America, so I also responded to the music, art, cinema of these countries. I planned to move to Chile and be part of this significant transformation. When the coup occurred on September 11, 1973 I was horrified as were so many progressive people around the world, as word traveled about the torture of people in the stadium and the brutal nature of the regime and as we mourned the loss of the Chilean experiment and considered the implications for other democracies. I decided to travel to Chile and other countries in Latin America, which I did in 1974, turning 20 in the desert town of Arica in the north of Chile. I spoke with people who had survived the coup, whose family members were missing, who were in the resistance. I photographed a camp in the north. I also spent time in Argentina and Uruguay, the latter also a dictatorship, the former (“El Processo ” 1976 – 1983 or the Dirty Wars) wobbling on the brink.  When I returned to Canada I was deeply committed to telling the stories of the people and the challenges to democracy that were occurring in Chile and then Argentina, and supporting refugees. I worked with the solidarity movement in Canada and hoped to support a return to democracy and socialism. I followed arts and culture inside the dictatorships and initiated the Women, Art and the Periphery exhibition and visit of Chilean artists with Video In and Women in Focus. 

When I was at The Banff Centre, after the dictatorships ended, I organized residencies for Argentinian artists with funding from ex-patriot Argentineans who had returned to support the rebirth of their country and its culture. In the 1990s I participated in a regular Argentinean workshop that supported new media artists from Peru, Chile, Mexico, Brazil and Argentina. The Banff New Media Institute was home to artists and scientists from Brazil and other countries in Latin America and also had a strong relationship with Cuban artists and organizations. In 1995 I began my decades of research with Brazilian scientists and new media creators. While I was president and vice-chancellor, OCAD U continued to build and strengthen research relationships with universities throughout Latin America. 

It is for these reasons that my archives hold materials from the resistance movements of Latin America and from the Latin American and international political left that consider the present and future state of Latin American countries through the 1970s and early 1990s.  The Banff Centre holds archival materials about Latin American artists, new media contributors and scientists from 1992 onwards. 

[Contributions from the Sara Diamond are also represented in Vitrine 1 and 2.]