Digitization of Kate Craig and Western Front Films
This year, Western Front is thankful to have received funding from the BC History Digitization Program administered by the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre at the University of British Columbia to digitize our entire collection of 41 moving image films. We are now able to preserve these works in Western Front’s archives and share them with audiences online here.
These films were predominantly created by Western Front co-founder and feminist video pioneer, Kate Craig, who was foundational in the creation of our archives. The films span artworks, early experimentation in computer generated graphics from the 1980s, and documentation of performances by artists such as Vincent Trasov, Alan Storey, Eric Metcalfe, Ken Mimura, Spencer Cathey, and many others. These films were digitized by John Romein at Lifetime Heritage Films.
We are pleased to share three of these digitized films here to highlight Kate Craig’s central influence on interdisciplinary practices at Western Front. Preserving and sharing these films not only keeps alive a vital chapter of artist-run history in Canada, but also affirms the enduring relevance of Craig’s feminist, collaborative, and experimental approach to artmaking.
About the Films
Kate Craig
Flying Leopard on Hornby Island (1974)
video, 16 sec.
One of Craig’s experimental Flying Leopard films was documented on Hornby Island in 1974. Wearing her leopard skin costume complete with ears, tail, and “Hand of the Spirit” wings, Craig created this work by using processed un-slit 8 mm film, with the camera flipped to create two channels appearing in 16 mm format. This method, originally proposed by Patrick Ready, was filmed by Hank Bull, who later gifted the Kate Craig collection to the Western Front archives in 2016.
Kate Craig
Pink Poem (1975–80)
video, 4 min. 18 sec.
Drawing on her background in theatre and costume design, Craig engaged clothing as a central component of practice, using dress to collapse distinctions between art and life. Pink Poem was a durational performance by Kate Craig comprising a collection of found and hand-sewn pink garments activated across live events and video works. Conceived as a deliberate departure from her Lady Brute persona, the project allowed Craig to reassess her artistic direction while interrogating the social construction of femininity, sexuality, and autonomy through an engagement with the colour pink. Garments from Pink Poem included Craig’s Pink Dress (1975), worn at Amy Vanderbilt’s Valentine’s Ball; the Pink Vest (1977), worn while drumming for the punk band The Young Adults; and Straight Jacket (1980) in which Craig designed and constructed a pink satin straightjacket adorned with decorative bows, transforming an instrument of institutional restraint into a critique of gendered power and control.
Kate Craig
Surfacing on the Subliminal (1974)
video, 3 min. 20 sec.
As one of the early instances of colour video at Western Front, Craig’s documentation of Surfacing on the Subliminal (1974) provides a vivid record of the musical spectacle held in the Grand Luxe Hall. The event celebrated the Hollywood Decca Dance, a theatrical parody of the Academy Awards organized in Los Angeles by Western Front founders earlier in 1974, which brought together over 800 international artists connected through the “Eternal Network.” Craig’s video captures performances by Annie Siegal, Eric Metcalfe as Dr. Brute, Hank Bull, Vincent Trasov as Mr. Peanut, and Andy Graffiti, while uniquely emphasizing the elaborate set, which included a display of the Shark Fin bathing caps Craig constructed in collaboration with Glenn Lewis.
Western Front is a non-profit artist-run centre in Vancouver.
We acknowledge the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and səl̓ílwətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations as traditional owners of the land upon which Western Front stands.