The discussion will take place in English.
As part of their dv_vd events, Vidéographe and Dazibao are pleased to present a discussion between Donigan Cumming and Mike Hoolboom on the subject of Cumming’s video work from 1995 to the present.
Following this conversation, The Unrelenting Eye, a program of works by Cumming will be available to view online through Vithèque. This program demonstrates some of the ways in which the artist undermines the documentary form from within. The radical nature of the situations he films, the affirmed staging, the direction given to the actors on the screen, the use of self-filming, and the explicit reference to filmmaking processes are some examples of his strategies.
► Link to the program The Unrelenting Eye on Vithèque [+]
PROGRAM
My Dinner with Weegee, 2001, 36 min 26 s
Wrap, 2000, 3 min 30 s
Shelter, 1999, 3 min 22 s
The Seven Wonders of the World, 2018, 18 min 59 s
The event accompanies the launching of Body-to-Body: The Works of Donigan Cumming, the first in a series of new publications and digital boxsets edited by Vidéographe. Comprising all 26 videos made by Donigan Cumming to date, as well as images of his installations, photographs, drawings and collages, this publication takes an interdisciplinary approach in order to highlight the common threads that unite the artist’s different bodies of work. It also comprises essays by Zoë Tousignant and Fabrice Montal, which examine Cumming’s work in the context of art and film history, an audio interview with the artist by Jean Perret, and a number of sound works.
The texts and documents selected evidence Cumming’s creative fervour and his constant desire to destabilize and to relentlessly draw on the margins of society and of what is watchable, as well as on his own works.
The production of this publication was made possible thanks to the support of the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec.
BIOGRAPHIES
Donigan Cumming is a Montréal-based artist whose multimedia practice includes photography, sound, video, drawing, text and collage, among other mediums. His works address themes such as the body, the boundaries between truth and fiction, taboos of representation, and social engagement.
Cumming began his career making sound installations and photographs in the 1980s. Early solo exhibitions included Reality and Motive in Documentary Photography (1986) and Moving Still (1999). In 1995, he began to work with video and in 1996 he was awarded the Telefilm Canada Award for Best Canadian Discovery (Festival du nouveau Cinéma, Montréal, 1996). His work has been shown in Canada and abroad, including at the New York Video Festival, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Museum of Modern Art. He has had numerous monograph exhibitions and retrospectives. His work has been the subject of much critical analysis and has been referred to in numerous theoretical works and reference books. His photographic and video work has been acquired for the permanent collections of museums and institutions in Quebec, Canada, and around the world. donigancumming.com
Mike Hoolboom began making movies in 1980. Making as practice, a daily application. Ongoing remixology. 100+ movies, many redacted. Since 2000 a steady drip of bio docs. The animating question of community: how can I help you? Interviews with media artists for 3 decades. 30 books, written, edited, co-edited. Local ecologies. Volunteerism. Opening the door. mikehoolboom.com
