More Voice-Over: Colin Campbell Writings. Edited by Jon Davies (2021)

More Voice-Over: Colin Campbell Writings
Edited by Jon Davies
Paperback, 280 pages, colour images
9 x 7 x 1 inches
ISBN-10: ‎ 1988111277
ISBN-13: ‎ 978-1988111278
Published by: Concordia University Press (March 29 2021)
 
Colin Campbell (1942-2001) is widely recognized in the field of video art for his provocative, thoughtful, and wry depictions of sexuality, gender, and social norms and expectations. The creator of more than fifty video works including Hollywood and Vine (1977), Bad Girls (1980), and Dangling by Their Mouths (1981), Campbell was also active in the artist-run centre movement, helping to establish Vtape, Canada’s largest distributor of video art. More Voice-Over: Colin Campbell Writings gathers for the first time a broad selection of Campbell’s writings for video and beyond. Edited and with an introduction by Jon Davies, it includes scripts as well as magazine articles, artists’ books, lectures, short fiction, and excerpts from his two unpublished novels. In these witty and perceptive texts, Campbell considers sexuality and gender, desire and longing, power, history, his own artistic practice and community, artist-run culture, video and its audiences, censorship, the AIDS crisis, and more. Covering three decades, More Voice-Over illuminates Campbell’s development as a central figure in the history of video art as well as the importance of writing to his work.
 
 
Born in Reston, Manitoba, Colin Campbell received his MFA from Claremont Graduate School in California. He began teaching at Mount Allison University in New Brunswick, where he made his first video works. He moved to Toronto in the early 1970s where he taught at OCAD University and the University of Toronto. His works have been exhibited internationally, including at documenta 6 and the 39th Venice Biennale, and are in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Art Gallery of Ontario, and the National Gallery of Canada, among other institutions. His videos are distributed by Vtape in Toronto.
 
Jon Davies is a PhD candidate in art history at Stanford University. He received his BFA at Concordia University. He has held curatorial roles at The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery, Oakville Galleries, and the Art Gallery of Ontario.
 
 
In conjunction with the exhibition at VOX I Almost Ran Over Liza Minnelli Today: Colin Campbell and Lisa Steele in L.A., 1976–77 and the launch of the book More Voice-Over: Colin Campbell Writings by Concordia University Press.
 
Guest curator Jon Davies in a wide-ranging conversation with two key figures in Canadian video art: artist Lisa Steele, and video/film artist and Campbell collaborator John Greyson. 
 
The discussion takes up questions around video, narrative and performance arising from Campbell and Steele’s time in L.A., where they used voice and gesture to experiment with different forms of performance in a practice Campbell called “internal fiction.” Participants also discuss the close relationship between video and writing. To view the Zoom panel discussion please click here.