Paul Wong
Directing
Biography
Paul Wong is a media-maestro making art for site-specific spaces and screens of all sizes. He is an award winning artist and curator who is known for pioneering early visual and media art in Canada, founding several artist-run groups, leading public arts policy, and organizing events, festivals, conferences and public interventions since the 1970s. Writing, publishing and teaching have been an important part of his praxis. With a career spanning four decades he has been instrumental proponent to contemporary art.
Born: November 20, 1954
Place of Birth: Prince Rupert, British Columbia, Canada
Known For
Say Cheese for a Trans-Canadian Look
Luc Bourdon, Marc Paradis and Simon B. Robert are curators for a selection of Canadian video to be presented within the context of the 13th Montréal International Festival of New Cinema and Video. This tape relates their experiences and research which occurs during their journey across Canada. This document is less a documentation of the trip than a logical suite to the questions raised in a previous work, Scheme vidéo. Focusing on the displacement of the three curators, the tape reflects their perceptions through the random capture of images. With Paul Wong, Grant Poier, Nida Home Doherty, Jerry Kissel, John Greyson and Collin Campbell.
Mainstreeters: Taking Advantage 1972-1982
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.
60 Unit; Bruise
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.
![Backdrop for Confused [The Videotape]](https://image.tmdb.org/t/p/w780/9dH8kmIh9sdFieX0f8pZtnCk574.jpg "Backdrop for Confused [The Videotape]")
Confused [The Videotape]
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.
Rock Garden
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.
7 Day Activity
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.
in ten sity
"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
On Becoming a Man
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.
The Hotel
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.
Diamondback
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.
Filmography
as Paul / The Hotel Director
as Wiry Man
as Host
as Self
as Self
as Self
as Self
as Paul
as Self
as Self / Narrator (voice)
as Self
as Self
as Self