Archives Access: Margaret Dragu

Jun 12, 2023
Field:

Media Artwork, Screening, Talk

Location:

Grand Luxe Hall, Western Front

Time:

7:00 p.m.

Description:

Presented as part of Western Front’s ongoing Archives Access series, Archives Access: Margaret Dragu featured a screening of excerpts from three archival works created by Dragu, followed by a screening of her new piece Tick and Talk of Common Time (2023).

Margaret Dragu played a prominent role in the history of Western Front, creating and presenting performance and video artworks from as early as the late 1970s. This evening of archival screenings presented excerpts from video works Backup (1978), created with Kate Craig; and Urban Skills #5: Secretarial (1979), created with Cornelia Wyngaarden; as well as extracts from the documentation of the 2004 performance Bread.

In between each archival screening, Dragu was joined in conversation with Western Front assistant curator, Nathaniel Marchand. These question and answer segments explored topics such as durational performance, labour rights and unions, democratic production values, X’s and O’s compositional style, and other recurring themes that have emerged throughout Dragu’s practice.

The event culminated with the screening of Dragu’s latest video work, Tick and Talk of Common Time (2023), an opus of five variations and five entr’actes. Playing with the idea of TikTok dance trends, the variations feature fifteen Vancouver-based dancers, many of whom are dancing over Zoom, as well as several TikTok dance videos. Each variation presents a new choreography set to compositions from five different Canadian composers. The videos of the dancers are often in split screen or overlapping one another in the mainframe. The entr’actes feature improvisational dance by Dragu and Justine Chambers set to the sounds of live improvised vocal transcription.

Curated by Nathaniel Marchand.
Margaret Dragu and Kate Craig’s 1979 video work Backup is projected on a screen in the Grand Luxe Hall. The still shows Craig and Dragu standing on the roof of Western Front, pointing beyond the camera’s frame. The first four rows of audience members are visible from behind.
Margaret Dragu sits on a chair in front of a projector screen in the Grand Luxe Hall. She sits with her legs crossed and speaks into a microphone held in her right hand. A black water bottle is positioned on the floor next to her chair.
Nathaniel Marchand and Margaret Dragu sit on chairs positioned in front of a projector screen in the Grand Luxe Hall. They are both holding microphones and sitting with their legs crossed. 
Marchand looks at Dragu as she speaks to the audience. A black water bottle is positioned on the floor next to her chair.
Nathaniel Marchand and Margaret Dragu sit on chairs positioned in front of a projector screen in the Grand Luxe Hall. They are both holding microphones and sitting with their legs crossed. Marchand looks at Dragu as she smiles into her microphone.
Margaret Dragu sits on a chair in front of a projector screen in the Grand Luxe Hall. She sits with her legs crossed and speaks into a microphone held in her right hand. A black water bottle is positioned on the floor next to her chair.
Margaret Dragu sits in a chair with her legs crossed in the Grand Luxe Hall. She smiles as she leans into a microphone held in her right hand. A black water bottle is positioned on the floor next to her chair.
Nathaniel Marchand and Margaret Dragu sit on chairs positioned in front of a projector screen in the Grand Luxe Hall. They are both holding microphones and sitting with their legs crossed. Marchand looks at Dragu as she speaks into her microphone.
Margaret Dragu’s 2023 video work Tick and Talk of Common Time is projected on a screen in the Grand Luxe Hall. The image on the screen layers two video clips of Justine A. Chambers and Vanessa Kwan dancing. Rows of audience members are visible from behind.
Margaret Dragu’s 2023 video work Tick and Talk of Common Time is projected on a screen in the Grand Luxe Hall. The image on the screen shows Dragu and Justine A. Chambers dancing in a large studio with cement floors. The audience in the room is visible from behind. Light refracts through a nearby window and leaves a diffused pattern on the far wall.

Related People

Captions:

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.