Self
MAINSTREETERS: Taking Advantage, 1972-1982 surveys the history of a gang of Vancouver artists who lived and worked together in drama, excess, friendship and grief. From 1972 until roughly 1982, they lived along Main Street, the traditional dividing line between the city's working-class immigrant eastside and its more affluent westside. Core members––Kenneth Fletcher, Deborah Fong, Carol Hackett, Marlene MacGregor, Annastacia McDonald, Charles Rea, Jeanette Reinhardt and Paul Wong––engaged in ambitious collaborative media and performance work that charts the rapidly shifting social terrain of the city.
Editor
The Hotel featured 12 site-specific performances and art installations created by Wong, which wowed the thousands who attended. This 17-minute video is both document of and art which captures the manic beauty and chaos of Wong’s mise en scène event.
Director
The Hotel featured 12 site-specific performances and art installations created by Wong, which wowed the thousands who attended. This 17-minute video is both document of and art which captures the manic beauty and chaos of Wong’s mise en scène event.
Paul / The Hotel Director
The Hotel featured 12 site-specific performances and art installations created by Wong, which wowed the thousands who attended. This 17-minute video is both document of and art which captures the manic beauty and chaos of Wong’s mise en scène event.
Director
Recorded in Vancouver, Round Trip takes you on a car ride that starts on Main Street, goes through downtown, the west end, Stanley Park, and then retraces its route back to Main Street. Composed as a visual journey, Round Trip makes use of video mixing mimicking the visual qualities of the club-sound experience.
Executive Producer
Ooooo Canada is a 30-minute edited version presenting highlights from the five-hour live webcast on February 13,2010. Ooooo Canada was the first in a series of five site-specific projects presented during the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter games in Vancouver. The broadcast was co-hosted by Skeena Reece and Paul Wong. It is an alternative critique of corporate, mass, pop and nationalist culture in the 21st century. Reece and Wong provide illuminating, personal, political, aboriginal, and comedic perspectives.
Director
Ooooo Canada is a 30-minute edited version presenting highlights from the five-hour live webcast on February 13,2010. Ooooo Canada was the first in a series of five site-specific projects presented during the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter games in Vancouver. The broadcast was co-hosted by Skeena Reece and Paul Wong. It is an alternative critique of corporate, mass, pop and nationalist culture in the 21st century. Reece and Wong provide illuminating, personal, political, aboriginal, and comedic perspectives.
Host
Ooooo Canada is a 30-minute edited version presenting highlights from the five-hour live webcast on February 13,2010. Ooooo Canada was the first in a series of five site-specific projects presented during the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter games in Vancouver. The broadcast was co-hosted by Skeena Reece and Paul Wong. It is an alternative critique of corporate, mass, pop and nationalist culture in the 21st century. Reece and Wong provide illuminating, personal, political, aboriginal, and comedic perspectives.
Director of Photography
In vertical split screen we see and hear two shifting views of the artist entering and exiting via a set of swinging doors. Going in and out of the light the top frame sees the performer in a wide shot, the bottom frame in medium range.
Director
In vertical split screen we see and hear two shifting views of the artist entering and exiting via a set of swinging doors. Going in and out of the light the top frame sees the performer in a wide shot, the bottom frame in medium range.
Director
Excerpts featuring Paul Wong as the Wiry Man in Season 3, Episode 19 of the X-Files (1996). Part of Paul Wong’s ‘5’, a series of site-specific events and installations commissioned by the City Of Vancouver 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Public Art Programs.
Wiry Man
Excerpts featuring Paul Wong as the Wiry Man in Season 3, Episode 19 of the X-Files (1996). Part of Paul Wong’s ‘5’, a series of site-specific events and installations commissioned by the City Of Vancouver 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Public Art Programs.
Director of Photography
At the 2002 Talking Stick Festival in Vancouver Paul Wong recorded Rebecca Belmore’s performance VIGIL. The unedited document and excerpts have been used by Belmore in various ways. 8 years later Wong edits his short version of this seminal performance and recording.
Director
At the 2002 Talking Stick Festival in Vancouver Paul Wong recorded Rebecca Belmore’s performance VIGIL. The unedited document and excerpts have been used by Belmore in various ways. 8 years later Wong edits his short version of this seminal performance and recording.
Director of Photography
Icon of Jesus is marched through town in the days leading up to Easter.
Director
Icon of Jesus is marched through town in the days leading up to Easter.
Director
Abandoned pool used by skateboarders. Remnants of former yacht club on the Salton Sea, Mojave Desert.
Director
Projected onto 8’ weather balloon. Recorded at Joshua Tree National Park. Part of the Scorched series.
Director of Photography
A foreign landowner negotiates with the locals and oversees digging of a well on his property.
Director
A foreign landowner negotiates with the locals and oversees digging of a well on his property.
Director
Dedicated to all who have risked climbing, and to those who have fallen by choice, circumstance or by accident. Mixing of original, found, and appropriated footage.
Director
Inspired by the Australian Banyan tree commonly known as the Strangler Fig, the site-specific mash-up used appropriated material from popular culture related to strangulation, suffocation, hanging and auto-erotic asphyxiation.
Director
Installation featuring flowing, erupting, bubbling lava projected on water, rocks and Koi fish.
Director
Two seminal moments of recent media history are presented side by side. The closing scene from the film Enter The Dragon* starring Bruce Lee are juxtaposed with the first segment from the Opening Ceremonies of the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics.
Director
Approx. 6000 images, 1000 still photographs a minute flash on and off the screen. A year of pictures mash into an intense viewing experience. Using the iphoto software, Last Year is the result of compiling all 2009 photographs from several different computer sources onto one central database. The images were put into ‘a chronology’ according to iphoto logic. Part journal, part diaristic we see Wong’s incessant recording of everyday life from Chinese New Year celebrations in Vancouver, Beijing Olympics, artists, art exhibitions, architecture, friends, family, New York streets, parties, music concerts, film festivals, Calgary Stampede, Pride Parade, Toronto moments.
Editor
"Paul Wong’s Mahjong is rooted in the visual and oral sensuality of the game–the saturated colours of green in the game pieces and table top, the characters and names, floral patterns and coloured numbers on the dice and game pieces. It is this rich iconography that allows the participants to invent their own rules and play the game according to the images at hand." - Jordan Strom
Director
"Paul Wong’s Mahjong is rooted in the visual and oral sensuality of the game–the saturated colours of green in the game pieces and table top, the characters and names, floral patterns and coloured numbers on the dice and game pieces. It is this rich iconography that allows the participants to invent their own rules and play the game according to the images at hand." - Jordan Strom
Director of Photography
In picture-in-picture style Wong has structured four recordings made in the Sonoran and Mojave deserts of Southern California. Recorded in the blistering heat of July he positions the natural and man’s failed attempts to exist in this unrelenting climate. Against the background of the ravine he positions the study of an empty swimming pool. The graffiti covered pool used by skateboarders was part of a short-lived yacht club. Another study is that of abandoned habitats and trailer parks on the shores of the Salton Sea. These play alongside images of the Joshua Tree.
Director
In picture-in-picture style Wong has structured four recordings made in the Sonoran and Mojave deserts of Southern California. Recorded in the blistering heat of July he positions the natural and man’s failed attempts to exist in this unrelenting climate. Against the background of the ravine he positions the study of an empty swimming pool. The graffiti covered pool used by skateboarders was part of a short-lived yacht club. Another study is that of abandoned habitats and trailer parks on the shores of the Salton Sea. These play alongside images of the Joshua Tree.
Director of Photography
Mixing together of Pantages’ Implosion of a longtime down town east side landmark: the Woodwards building, with Wong’s Downtown Eastside alleys.
Director
Mixing together of Pantages’ Implosion of a longtime down town east side landmark: the Woodwards building, with Wong’s Downtown Eastside alleys.
Director of Photography
The artist records everyday activities in the streets and alleys around the Main and Hasting Street intersection. On the right, the view is from a fixed camera positioned on top of a dashboard in a moving car. On the left, he walks with a handheld camera with a wide angle lens. Along the way he encounters a street artist, engages with two women in Pigeon Park, crack users, dealers and homeless people.
Director
The artist records everyday activities in the streets and alleys around the Main and Hasting Street intersection. On the right, the view is from a fixed camera positioned on top of a dashboard in a moving car. On the left, he walks with a handheld camera with a wide angle lens. Along the way he encounters a street artist, engages with two women in Pigeon Park, crack users, dealers and homeless people.
Director
Friends and family members buried and cremated at Mountain View Cemetery. Ross Charles Haynes (1981-2000). Katherine Alma Erickson (1918-2003). Elsie Dunnet Sage (1915-2008).
Director
Custer’s Last Stand. Sitting Bull Wins. Recorded in South Dakota.
Director
On the right stills and video of the 2009 Canadian Rockies International Rodeo in Strathmore, Alberta. On the left stills and titles/text of rodeo bronzes from the Glenbow’s collection. Wong’s work is an impressionistic portrait, which explores this alternative part of Alberta’s history. It is not meant to be a documentary/literal portrayal of the gay rodeo but rather it situates it in the context of the story of the west and the construction of identities. Wong’s work uses these frozen gestures to explore the complexities of gender and sexuality. In-relation-to the bronzes, the videos introduce movement to their very static image and highlighting our constantly evolving and shifting society.
Director of Photography
Storm, quite simply is a video recording of a car ride at night in hurricane forces. This is visual art that delivers us from the purely visual back to the world of the physical experience with all our senses awakened. Instead of bringing us the installation photographic image – or the digitally enhanced photographic simulation – these artists direct us from the world of images to the world of things, inviting us to grapple with them at first hand.
Director
Storm, quite simply is a video recording of a car ride at night in hurricane forces. This is visual art that delivers us from the purely visual back to the world of the physical experience with all our senses awakened. Instead of bringing us the installation photographic image – or the digitally enhanced photographic simulation – these artists direct us from the world of images to the world of things, inviting us to grapple with them at first hand.
Editor
Dennis and Barb McDonald are empty nesters from the suburbs. On this day they get legal possession of their new house. They have privately purchased the burned out house directly from its owner. John Jeffery grew up in this house. He has been living on the property since the fire destroyed the house a year ago. John is the last of the old families with deep roots still on the street. He is now surrounded by recent neighbours who are more interested in retrofitting character homes than the people who live in them.
Director of Photography
Dennis and Barb McDonald are empty nesters from the suburbs. On this day they get legal possession of their new house. They have privately purchased the burned out house directly from its owner. John Jeffery grew up in this house. He has been living on the property since the fire destroyed the house a year ago. John is the last of the old families with deep roots still on the street. He is now surrounded by recent neighbours who are more interested in retrofitting character homes than the people who live in them.
Director
Dennis and Barb McDonald are empty nesters from the suburbs. On this day they get legal possession of their new house. They have privately purchased the burned out house directly from its owner. John Jeffery grew up in this house. He has been living on the property since the fire destroyed the house a year ago. John is the last of the old families with deep roots still on the street. He is now surrounded by recent neighbours who are more interested in retrofitting character homes than the people who live in them.
Director of Photography
The muse performs Dog Eat Dog. In altered and real-time he presents a dark and light side of innocence.
Director
The muse performs Dog Eat Dog. In altered and real-time he presents a dark and light side of innocence.
Editor
Running In A Maze features an abstracted video of young women and men playfully chasing one another in a maze created by artist Charles Rea. The layering of architectural forms and spaces in conjunction with abstracted text creates a visual labyrinth in which multiple mirrored surfaces collide. Wong’s video documents Rea’s Mirror Maze, an installation consisting of symbols and patterns painted onto large convex security mirrors. The mirrored planes and cryptic text used to decipher information reference modern information systems and other myriad forms of technology. Splicing and fusing of architectural forms and transparent walls in this maze simulate an environment of reflected and reflecting surfaces that parallel Wong’s interest in discovering his own identity.
Director of Photography
Running In A Maze features an abstracted video of young women and men playfully chasing one another in a maze created by artist Charles Rea. The layering of architectural forms and spaces in conjunction with abstracted text creates a visual labyrinth in which multiple mirrored surfaces collide. Wong’s video documents Rea’s Mirror Maze, an installation consisting of symbols and patterns painted onto large convex security mirrors. The mirrored planes and cryptic text used to decipher information reference modern information systems and other myriad forms of technology. Splicing and fusing of architectural forms and transparent walls in this maze simulate an environment of reflected and reflecting surfaces that parallel Wong’s interest in discovering his own identity.
Director
Running In A Maze features an abstracted video of young women and men playfully chasing one another in a maze created by artist Charles Rea. The layering of architectural forms and spaces in conjunction with abstracted text creates a visual labyrinth in which multiple mirrored surfaces collide. Wong’s video documents Rea’s Mirror Maze, an installation consisting of symbols and patterns painted onto large convex security mirrors. The mirrored planes and cryptic text used to decipher information reference modern information systems and other myriad forms of technology. Splicing and fusing of architectural forms and transparent walls in this maze simulate an environment of reflected and reflecting surfaces that parallel Wong’s interest in discovering his own identity.
Editor
Sally is a portrait, a love ballad. The artist gazes at beautiful Sally as she relaxes in her bathrobe in the sumptuous suite of the China Club in Beijing. Always behind the camera, Wong is uninhibited as ever as he crafts an intimate portrait. Recorded in Hong Kong and Beijing.
Camera Operator
Sally is a portrait, a love ballad. The artist gazes at beautiful Sally as she relaxes in her bathrobe in the sumptuous suite of the China Club in Beijing. Always behind the camera, Wong is uninhibited as ever as he crafts an intimate portrait. Recorded in Hong Kong and Beijing.
Director
Sally is a portrait, a love ballad. The artist gazes at beautiful Sally as she relaxes in her bathrobe in the sumptuous suite of the China Club in Beijing. Always behind the camera, Wong is uninhibited as ever as he crafts an intimate portrait. Recorded in Hong Kong and Beijing.
Self
Sally is a portrait, a love ballad. The artist gazes at beautiful Sally as she relaxes in her bathrobe in the sumptuous suite of the China Club in Beijing. Always behind the camera, Wong is uninhibited as ever as he crafts an intimate portrait. Recorded in Hong Kong and Beijing.
Director of Photography
A couple of bumbling guys on a dark road in Nicaragua spot a snake. They bound after the serpent that has slitered into the tall grass. Using bare hands they seize the Diamondback Rattler.
Director
A couple of bumbling guys on a dark road in Nicaragua spot a snake. They bound after the serpent that has slitered into the tall grass. Using bare hands they seize the Diamondback Rattler.
Self
A couple of bumbling guys on a dark road in Nicaragua spot a snake. They bound after the serpent that has slitered into the tall grass. Using bare hands they seize the Diamondback Rattler.
Director
Crack induced euphoria amplifies a sexually charged environment. The cameraman is implicitly involved in the activities of two men in tightie-whities (one black/one white). Described by viewers as both horrific and so full of humanity. This work is not what-it-seems, or is it?
Director of Photography
Crack induced euphoria amplifies a sexually charged environment. The cameraman is implicitly involved in the activities of two men in tightie-whities (one black/one white). Described by viewers as both horrific and so full of humanity. This work is not what-it-seems, or is it?
Self
Crack induced euphoria amplifies a sexually charged environment. The cameraman is implicitly involved in the activities of two men in tightie-whities (one black/one white). Described by viewers as both horrific and so full of humanity. This work is not what-it-seems, or is it?
Editor
The artist records himself at home proudly indulging in the happiness of a drug (heroin and cocaine) inspired perfect day. The music of Lou Reed: Heroin and Perfect Day. Recorded on Sunday – edited on Monday. Be Happy.
Director of Photography
The artist records himself at home proudly indulging in the happiness of a drug (heroin and cocaine) inspired perfect day. The music of Lou Reed: Heroin and Perfect Day. Recorded on Sunday – edited on Monday. Be Happy.
Director
The artist records himself at home proudly indulging in the happiness of a drug (heroin and cocaine) inspired perfect day. The music of Lou Reed: Heroin and Perfect Day. Recorded on Sunday – edited on Monday. Be Happy.
Self
The artist records himself at home proudly indulging in the happiness of a drug (heroin and cocaine) inspired perfect day. The music of Lou Reed: Heroin and Perfect Day. Recorded on Sunday – edited on Monday. Be Happy.
Editor
The scattering of Steve Lacy’s ashes at Long Island, NY on March 21, 2006.
Director of Photography
The scattering of Steve Lacy’s ashes at Long Island, NY on March 21, 2006.
Director
The scattering of Steve Lacy’s ashes at Long Island, NY on March 21, 2006.
Director
With real and constructed reflected views we glide down the Grand Canal in silence. We enter a tighter waterway slipping past buildings on each side and go under foot bridges. The single view splits into multiple views, as we reach open water it returns to a single view. The journey is repeated in reverse and speeded up.
Director
HUNGRY GHOSTS is a collaboration between the artist and the curator. The video installation provides an ephemeral form where interdisciplinary elements from the disparate past are configured with unsettling current issues and produced as a new whole. Fleeting moments, manipulated images, visual clips, still photographs, text, narrative stories, home movies, sound bites, edited fiction and real time documents will be digitally seamed and beamed onto transparent surfaces. The video projections shown in a moving vaporetto (sea bus) will transport both the work and audience on a journey. The time-based work will float by the post-modernism of Venice, a rich port for thriving trade and now in the 50th edition of the Venice Biennale, the international art market converges to make the trade. This work is a site of memory where the very private becomes public. It is a virtual ‘walking the mountain’, a way to honour and remember those who have gone before.
Editor
EAT: Mainstreet Dinner for the Homeless is a roving view of the homeless occupying the public sidewalks surrounding the vacant Woodward’s Building in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. The tent city becomes both an eyesore and rallying point for the plight of the homeless and disenfranchised in Vancouver’s booming real estate market. Inter-cut with poverty is a chef preparing a gourmet meal and images of the houseboy cleaning. Originally created for the EAT issue #5 of www.horizonzero.ca. -- a virtual dinner party.
Director of Photography
EAT: Mainstreet Dinner for the Homeless is a roving view of the homeless occupying the public sidewalks surrounding the vacant Woodward’s Building in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. The tent city becomes both an eyesore and rallying point for the plight of the homeless and disenfranchised in Vancouver’s booming real estate market. Inter-cut with poverty is a chef preparing a gourmet meal and images of the houseboy cleaning. Originally created for the EAT issue #5 of www.horizonzero.ca. -- a virtual dinner party.
Director
EAT: Mainstreet Dinner for the Homeless is a roving view of the homeless occupying the public sidewalks surrounding the vacant Woodward’s Building in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. The tent city becomes both an eyesore and rallying point for the plight of the homeless and disenfranchised in Vancouver’s booming real estate market. Inter-cut with poverty is a chef preparing a gourmet meal and images of the houseboy cleaning. Originally created for the EAT issue #5 of www.horizonzero.ca. -- a virtual dinner party.
Editor
Based on slides shot in 1978 of the Austrian aktion artist Hermann Nitsch. Put away for 24 years, the color transparencies are spread out on a light table. The images are examined with a macro lens and captured with digital video. Not so much a reconstruction, or documentary of an event but a process of re-imagining. A hundred frames record a 12-hour, noon to midnight performance in an Roman amphitheatre in the center of Trieste in Northern Italy. Hermann Nitsch has been creating his unique rituals since the early 1970’s. The blood flows over naked bodies strapped on crosses, carried blindfolded, senses are tweaked with percussion sounds and blaring brass instruments. Religious iconography, operatic orchestrations of cast, crew, friends, and the public who eat, dance, drink.
Director of Photography
Based on slides shot in 1978 of the Austrian aktion artist Hermann Nitsch. Put away for 24 years, the color transparencies are spread out on a light table. The images are examined with a macro lens and captured with digital video. Not so much a reconstruction, or documentary of an event but a process of re-imagining. A hundred frames record a 12-hour, noon to midnight performance in an Roman amphitheatre in the center of Trieste in Northern Italy. Hermann Nitsch has been creating his unique rituals since the early 1970’s. The blood flows over naked bodies strapped on crosses, carried blindfolded, senses are tweaked with percussion sounds and blaring brass instruments. Religious iconography, operatic orchestrations of cast, crew, friends, and the public who eat, dance, drink.
Director
Based on slides shot in 1978 of the Austrian aktion artist Hermann Nitsch. Put away for 24 years, the color transparencies are spread out on a light table. The images are examined with a macro lens and captured with digital video. Not so much a reconstruction, or documentary of an event but a process of re-imagining. A hundred frames record a 12-hour, noon to midnight performance in an Roman amphitheatre in the center of Trieste in Northern Italy. Hermann Nitsch has been creating his unique rituals since the early 1970’s. The blood flows over naked bodies strapped on crosses, carried blindfolded, senses are tweaked with percussion sounds and blaring brass instruments. Religious iconography, operatic orchestrations of cast, crew, friends, and the public who eat, dance, drink.
Director
“In 2002, I was invited to curate two video programs of Canadian works for EuroPride in Koln, Germany. Feeling disillusioned by the mainstreaming or “gay-streaming” of queer culture, I slammed together a collection of shorts critiquing our queer culture – an anti-Pride program. The second program was Smash: Reflecting Sex, an assemblage of video clips dealing with sex and sexuality by Paul Wong." - Winston Xin
Director
Refugee Class of 2000 is a series of three TV ads produced as part of the Unite Against Racism campaign mounted by the Canadian Race Relations Foundation. These ads started airing nationally on Jan. 15, 2000. The central subjects are thirty four Grade 12 students from the graduating class of 2000 of Sir Charles Tupper Secondary School. Tupper is in a working class culturally diverse neighbourhood in Vancouver. Many of the students are first generation born Canadians. Grad students were chosen as the demographic group, they straddle two centuries, the violent racist past and representing the hopes and dreams of a better future in the new multicultural world.
Camera Operator
Jazz Slave Ships was a site-specific performance collaboration between Vancouver artist Jan Wade and London-based performer Vanessa Richards that involved the creation of an ancestral altar. It took place in two U.K. ports in October 1996: on the West Coast in Whitehaven, Cumbria (the last English slaving port), in an 18th century bonded warehouse used to store liquor and guns used in the slave trade; and on the East Coast in Hull, Yorkshire in Wilberforce House, the birthplace of the anti-slavery pioneer William Wilberforce and now a museum of anti-slavery. The production took place over a 3-week period that began Sept. 30, 1996.
Editor
Jazz Slave Ships was a site-specific performance collaboration between Vancouver artist Jan Wade and London-based performer Vanessa Richards that involved the creation of an ancestral altar. It took place in two U.K. ports in October 1996: on the West Coast in Whitehaven, Cumbria (the last English slaving port), in an 18th century bonded warehouse used to store liquor and guns used in the slave trade; and on the East Coast in Hull, Yorkshire in Wilberforce House, the birthplace of the anti-slavery pioneer William Wilberforce and now a museum of anti-slavery. The production took place over a 3-week period that began Sept. 30, 1996.
Director
Jazz Slave Ships was a site-specific performance collaboration between Vancouver artist Jan Wade and London-based performer Vanessa Richards that involved the creation of an ancestral altar. It took place in two U.K. ports in October 1996: on the West Coast in Whitehaven, Cumbria (the last English slaving port), in an 18th century bonded warehouse used to store liquor and guns used in the slave trade; and on the East Coast in Hull, Yorkshire in Wilberforce House, the birthplace of the anti-slavery pioneer William Wilberforce and now a museum of anti-slavery. The production took place over a 3-week period that began Sept. 30, 1996.
Writer
Blending Milk and Water: Sex in the New World is a cross-cultural, intergenerational, documentary about the diverse views of sex from twenty-two people. The recollections, fears and opinions of young people, professionals, healthworkers, educators, artists, community activists, and people living with AIDS are mixed.
Producer
Blending Milk and Water: Sex in the New World is a cross-cultural, intergenerational, documentary about the diverse views of sex from twenty-two people. The recollections, fears and opinions of young people, professionals, healthworkers, educators, artists, community activists, and people living with AIDS are mixed.
Executive Producer
Blending Milk and Water: Sex in the New World is a cross-cultural, intergenerational, documentary about the diverse views of sex from twenty-two people. The recollections, fears and opinions of young people, professionals, healthworkers, educators, artists, community activists, and people living with AIDS are mixed.
Director
Blending Milk and Water: Sex in the New World is a cross-cultural, intergenerational, documentary about the diverse views of sex from twenty-two people. The recollections, fears and opinions of young people, professionals, healthworkers, educators, artists, community activists, and people living with AIDS are mixed.
Director
So Are You is a 25 minute videotape about the difficulties of assuming ones self-identity. Identity is shaped and informed by the dominant culture, often producing stereotypes that are reinforced by the media. Through such structures racist behaviour is learned and condoned. So Are You uses unconventional structures and casting to criticize stereotypes. The eighteen cast members include Natives, Asians, Blacks and Whites. Paul Wong continues to explore the idea of self-identity by investigating gender boundaries through the inclusion of a set of identical male twins and two female impersonators who portray twins and two female impersonators who portray twins in the cast. The video uses recognizable television and cinematic framing devices to highlight the idea of the construction and dissemination of stereotypes through the broadcast news, cinema verite, interviews, etc. Comprised of short scenes, So Are You is faced paced and entertaining.
Director
Mixed Messages is a work that addresses the issues of race and sexuality. This mixed media installation consists of three life size photographs of Gina Gonzalez, who is subject of two 20 minute videotapes. Gina is a transsexual claiming to have undergone a sex change between the first taped interview, in 1990, and the second, in 1994. In the initial session Gina allows us to glimpse into her life as a prostitute; in the next she reacts to the first taping. We not only look at her or listen to her, but she is also present in the form of a life-size photo cutout. The artist explores the boundaries between the public and private, and between appearance and reality. Conventional behaviour patterns, attitudes, and stereotypes are challenged in a work that brings out a variety of voyeuristic reactions in the subject, the artist, and the viewer.
Editor
Temple of My Familiar is the name of a mural painted in Belfast by Canadian artist Nhan Duc Nguyen. This documentary situates Nguyen’s art within the political context of war-torn Northern Ireland, and explores the artist’s own cross-cultural search for an identity spanning East and West.
Director
Temple of My Familiar is the name of a mural painted in Belfast by Canadian artist Nhan Duc Nguyen. This documentary situates Nguyen’s art within the political context of war-torn Northern Ireland, and explores the artist’s own cross-cultural search for an identity spanning East and West.
Director
Miss Chinatown juxtaposes the views of eight subjects against the background image of a beauty pageant: the Miss Chinese-Vancouver 1996. The subjects are all full or part ethnic Chinese, together they represent a diverse face of the Chinese-Canadian community, they present different perspectives on identity, home, sex and race. The contestants are seen going through the paces in the cheong-san (traditional side slit dress) segment of the live television spectacle.
Director
This was a site-specific work for spectra-board urban screen located at BC Place stadium in Vancouver. This Day Without Art project, curated by Scott Watson, was launched on Dec. 1, 1993 as part of AIDS Awareness Day. I Love You appeared in four languages: English, French, Chinese, and Coast-Salish. The two spectra-boards on the exterior of the stadium is visible to commuters on two bridges and surrounding streets and buildings in downtown Vancouver.
Director
The images seem to suggest a traditional Chinese funeral ceremony associated with ancestor worship, though Wong has remarked they do not represent any particular ritual. The work deals with death, remembrance, and history, and was conceived as a memorial to the Chinese workers who died building the Canadian railway through the Rocky Mountains. It is also dedicated to the artist’s father, Hoy Ming Wong, and to two friends and collaborators who committed suicide, Ken Fletcher (1954-1978) and Paul Speed (1967-1991). Wong created the work while artist-in-residence at the Banff Centre for the Arts in Alberta. Chinaman’s Peak is the name of a mountain near Banff where, according to legend, a Chinese worker killed himself. The work was first performed at Tunnel Mountain, Banff in 1992, before being exhibited as an installation at the Contemporary Art Gallery in Vancouver, for the Chinese New Year, in 1993.
Director
Wong uses his second generation Chinese-Canadian perspective to frame the Chinese here in the new world, Canada, and in the motherland, China. This is an intimate, personal view. Through his own “family network” and several trips to the People’s Republic of China, the artist gained access to the everyday, non-exotic world of the Chinese. A picture emerges of displaced cultures and traditions in transitions.
Director
A skillful, sensual rendering of an intriguing performance orchestrated by the artist. Through a fog-laden atmosphere, iconic figures emerge to perform on a huge turntable. Our look at this garishly lit spectacle is mediated by the gaze of a female Red Guard. All flesh and brilliance, this tape appears to critique popular culture by robbing it of any ostensible content. Hollywood proverb says, beneath the surface of fake tinsel lies only the real tinsel – the detritus of our times.
Director
A visual/aural non-linear narrative. A layering of ideas, facts, opinions, prejudices, fears, and styles. The story is based upon the innuendoes and interrelationships of four main characters – Gary, Gina, Jeanette and Paul. Distinct video forms are used to build the narrative and to handle the complex range of information and technical styles. The video’s intent is to develop a broader understanding and tolerance by its viewers towards a new sexual attitude.
Paul
A visual/aural non-linear narrative. A layering of ideas, facts, opinions, prejudices, fears, and styles. The story is based upon the innuendoes and interrelationships of four main characters – Gary, Gina, Jeanette and Paul. Distinct video forms are used to build the narrative and to handle the complex range of information and technical styles. The video’s intent is to develop a broader understanding and tolerance by its viewers towards a new sexual attitude.
Director
The installation Confused: Sexual Views was part of a three-phase project that also included Confused [the videotape] and Confused [the performance]. It was produced just before AIDS had reached epidemic proportions. Twenty-seven individuals face the camera head-on as they speak about bisexuality, especially its more complex and engaging aspects, such as the relationship between sexuality, love, and friendship. Without mincing words, they challenge the conventions of behaviour and human relations conveyed by commercial film and television, and refute the myths surrounding the notion of romantic love. The intent here is to question the constrictive mores that sanction only one style of love, and to examine the many forms of desire and sexuality experienced in our culture, approaching them from a variety of perspectives.
Director
"For those who came of age in the 1960s and 70s, glamour received its highest expression in fashion magazines like Vogue, where the representation of lives and those who lived them achieved perfection on every page. Prime Cuts is a work premised on the notion that the lives of magazine models are real (much like another Vancouver artist, Ken Lum, who as a child believed that the bedroom suites in the furniture store flyers that landed on his doorstep were real bedrooms). In exploring the lives of models (some of whom the Mainstreeters worked with through commercial projects), Prime Cuts does not so much imagine what these models get up to both before and after the lights, camera and action of the photo shoot casts them in amber, but extends the fantasy." – Allison Collins & Michael Turner, Mainstreeters: Taking Advantage, 1972-1982, Satellite Gallery, 2015
Director
’4′ originated as a collaborative performance by Deborah Fong, Carol Hackett, Annastacia McDonald and Jeanette Reinhardt as the S.S. Girls, following events and activities of the women’s daily lives on Main Street. The performance was produced by Paul Wong and co-sponsored by the Video Inn. ’4′ explores the lives and personalities of four women as described by one another in the style of a feuding dysfunctional family. ’4′ was developed as a multimedia performance, first staged at Western Front in 1980, then followed by a tour across Canada and into the USA. The scripted multimedia presentations were later adapted to a video work.
Editor
"The VAG exhibition space was staged with a four walled cube, 8’X 8’ which was padded internally. The four walls and the open ceiling were monitored by video cameras. Wong entered the gallery, climbed a ladder and disappeared into the blue cube. Personally I was very uneasy about the work at this time. Knowing that [Kenneth] Fletcher was a close friend of Wong’s who had only months before committed suicide. I felt perhaps Wong would attempt his own cathartic self-mutilation as we all watched. As Wong’s slow pacing and wall assaulting became more intense the audience picked up the momentum of his energies. The intensity of the performance became overpowering. Not knowing how far Wong has planned his own movements, one began to wonder if he was indeed going to bash himself into unconsciousness as some observers had predicted." - Arthur Perry, Vanguard Magazine 1979
Director
"The VAG exhibition space was staged with a four walled cube, 8’X 8’ which was padded internally. The four walls and the open ceiling were monitored by video cameras. Wong entered the gallery, climbed a ladder and disappeared into the blue cube. Personally I was very uneasy about the work at this time. Knowing that [Kenneth] Fletcher was a close friend of Wong’s who had only months before committed suicide. I felt perhaps Wong would attempt his own cathartic self-mutilation as we all watched. As Wong’s slow pacing and wall assaulting became more intense the audience picked up the momentum of his energies. The intensity of the performance became overpowering. Not knowing how far Wong has planned his own movements, one began to wonder if he was indeed going to bash himself into unconsciousness as some observers had predicted." - Arthur Perry, Vanguard Magazine 1979
Self
"The VAG exhibition space was staged with a four walled cube, 8’X 8’ which was padded internally. The four walls and the open ceiling were monitored by video cameras. Wong entered the gallery, climbed a ladder and disappeared into the blue cube. Personally I was very uneasy about the work at this time. Knowing that [Kenneth] Fletcher was a close friend of Wong’s who had only months before committed suicide. I felt perhaps Wong would attempt his own cathartic self-mutilation as we all watched. As Wong’s slow pacing and wall assaulting became more intense the audience picked up the momentum of his energies. The intensity of the performance became overpowering. Not knowing how far Wong has planned his own movements, one began to wonder if he was indeed going to bash himself into unconsciousness as some observers had predicted." - Arthur Perry, Vanguard Magazine 1979
Director
Hands Across The Border was a seven city slow scan collaboration. With participation from Paul Wong, Sharon Levett & Daryl Lacey, Video Inn, Vancouver;Randall Lyon & Gus Nelson, Televista Projects, Memphis; Sharon Grace, Video Free America, Berkeley Art Museum, U.C.; Peggy Cady, Bill Bartlett, Chas Leckie. Open Space, Victoria; Felix Partz, Jorge Zontal & Willoughby Sharp, General Idea, Toronto; Liza Bear & Robin Winters, Center for New Art Activities, NY.; et al. Slow-scan television equipment used a computerised memory to sample a picture from a television camera every few seconds, “freeze” it and send it down a telephone line as an audio signal. The machines could only be used between two points at a time. At the receiving end, the signal was decoded and slowly scanned out a still frame on a television monitor.
Director
A made for the camera video collaboration with Steve Paxton, a unique pas de deux between videographer and dancer.
Editor
Early colour video recorded on ½ in. Part of The Mainstreet Tapes (1976-1980) a series of autobiographic tapes documenting Wong & friends “youth & angst”. 7 day Activity – 7 days of facial treatments for acne. Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the vainest of them all. 1970′s body/art. Digitally Re-Mastered & Re-Edited in 2008, the process of restoring the picture & sound elements included shortening the work from the original length of 13 minutes to 8.5 minutes.
Director
Early colour video recorded on ½ in. Part of The Mainstreet Tapes (1976-1980) a series of autobiographic tapes documenting Wong & friends “youth & angst”. 7 day Activity – 7 days of facial treatments for acne. Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the vainest of them all. 1970′s body/art. Digitally Re-Mastered & Re-Edited in 2008, the process of restoring the picture & sound elements included shortening the work from the original length of 13 minutes to 8.5 minutes.
Self / Narrator (voice)
Early colour video recorded on ½ in. Part of The Mainstreet Tapes (1976-1980) a series of autobiographic tapes documenting Wong & friends “youth & angst”. 7 day Activity – 7 days of facial treatments for acne. Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the vainest of them all. 1970′s body/art. Digitally Re-Mastered & Re-Edited in 2008, the process of restoring the picture & sound elements included shortening the work from the original length of 13 minutes to 8.5 minutes.
Director
The Mainstreeters initiated a number of commercial enterprises. Support Modelling was a modelling agency comprised of members of the local art and punk rock scene. To promote the project, Paul Wong made a three-channel video (later adapted to single channel) that featured certain Mainstreeters in various states of undress, accompanied by a disco soundtrack. Support Modelling also appears as a series of concept ads (weddings, funerals) in Ennui magazine.
Director
“Early in the morning on Thursday Feb 26, 1976, a young First Nations man named Eugene Lloyd Pelly was fatally stabbed in an apartment at 4272 Watson Street, east of Main near 28th. After escaping out a window Pelly collapsed in the middle of the road and, as snow fell, succumbed to his injuries. That same morning Jeanette Reinhardt noticed Pelly’s bloody body from her window. Paul Wong, whom she was living with at the time, shot a roll of 35mm film documenting the scene – first from their window, and later at roadside. The quiet violence of the scene captivated Wong, and together with collaborator Kenneth Fletcher, the two embarked on a project to research the crime in full detail." – Allison Collins & Michael Turner, Mainstreeters: Taking Advantage 1972-1982
Director
A two-channel installation from the Modern Television Loop series. Rock Garden shows two continuous shots of stone piles. On one monitor we see a close-up of hands grasping stones off the pile and tossing them off until the pile dwindles. The second monitor is a long shot of tossing stones to yet another pile.
Self
A two-channel installation from the Modern Television Loop series. Rock Garden shows two continuous shots of stone piles. On one monitor we see a close-up of hands grasping stones off the pile and tossing them off until the pile dwindles. The second monitor is a long shot of tossing stones to yet another pile.
Director
A 4 channel video installation (Hill, Wall, Cliff, Roof). A video dance work based on the accumulation 24 movements. The multi-layered effect is structuralist and sculptural, exploring the elements of real, delayed, edited and inherent video time.
Director
Wong's first colour videotape bears the influence of several artistic genres popular in the 1970s, including performance and body art. We see Kenneth Fletcher draw several millilitres of blood from his arm and inject the contents of the syringe into Paul Wong's back, just under the skin. The camera closes in on this, observing the slow response of the immune system as the skin turns red and purple. What was originally intended as a sort of ritual uniting the young men as blood brothers, with implicit reference to drug use, has become a disturbing and dangerous act, when AIDS evokes our deepest fears and anxieties.
Self
Wong's first colour videotape bears the influence of several artistic genres popular in the 1970s, including performance and body art. We see Kenneth Fletcher draw several millilitres of blood from his arm and inject the contents of the syringe into Paul Wong's back, just under the skin. The camera closes in on this, observing the slow response of the immune system as the skin turns red and purple. What was originally intended as a sort of ritual uniting the young men as blood brothers, with implicit reference to drug use, has become a disturbing and dangerous act, when AIDS evokes our deepest fears and anxieties.
Director
On the occasion of his 21st birthday, Paul Wong walks southwest from his mother’s house at St. Catherines St. to the Quebec St. home of Kenneth Fletcher. Most remarkable about this video is not its careful camera work (shot entirely from a moving vehicle), but the driving that allowed for it – a feat that brings to mind the complementary (and collaborative) relationship between the shooter and the driver. On Becoming a Man was also the title of Paul’s 1995 solo exhibition at the National Gallery of Canada.
Self
On the occasion of his 21st birthday, Paul Wong walks southwest from his mother’s house at St. Catherines St. to the Quebec St. home of Kenneth Fletcher. Most remarkable about this video is not its careful camera work (shot entirely from a moving vehicle), but the driving that allowed for it – a feat that brings to mind the complementary (and collaborative) relationship between the shooter and the driver. On Becoming a Man was also the title of Paul’s 1995 solo exhibition at the National Gallery of Canada.
Director
This three-channel installation, from the Modern Television Loop Series, utilizes the qualities of real and edited time. “Three views of Toronto’s underground action; trains pull in, pause, doors open, crowds exchange places, whirl off into oblivion. It is mesmerizing, this subsurface world. You could sit and watch for hours as the hypnotic qualities of TV sets and passing trains act together”. - Peggy Gale, 1977, Only Paper Today.
Director
Based on four ancient elements: Earth, Air, Fire, and Water, this four-tape, multi-monitor piece was presented on sixteen monitors at the Burnaby Art Gallery’s Video Bag show and was the main installation.
