Vidéographe and Dazibao entrust the talented artist and curator Anne Golden with a carte blanche for the dv_vd series. Golden, the winner of the Prix Robert-Forget, has chosen this program to highlight the works that have inspired her throughout her prolific career.

NEVER GONNA GIVE YOU UP

” The program title refers to the 1980s song by Rick Astley.

Never gonna give you up
Never gonna let you down
Never gonna run around and desert you

The lyrics express how I feel about the works in this program and the admiration I have for the artists. I would never give them up and they have certainly never let me down. In fact, these are works I have returned to over and over again.

My 1980s included lots of exposure to video art and independent film, meetings and marches, actions, and the beginning of long associations with Image et nation gaie et lesbienne (now Image+Nation) and Groupe Intervention Vidéo. I am taken with films and videos produced by queer artists. I realize much later that I was waiting for these works. They make a fan out of me. They teach me. They make me laugh. I believe they helped make me. In the past little while, I have experienced memories of what these works represented/represent for me.

My selections reflect the fact that I have had key formative experiences in my professional life. I graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Film Studies from Concordia. I had little idea about what I could do as work, beyond watching, loving, and analyzing films. I applied to the Festival international de films et videos de femmes de Montréal (now sadly defunct.) I was hired as an assistant film programmer, a term that is no longer in vogue. I saw video art for the first time and was intrigued, then hooked. The second festival I worked for was Image et Nation. My two festival work experiences overlapped. I would work at the Festival international de films et videos de femmes for six months and volunteer at Image et Nation for the other six. I also began working at Groupe Intervention Vidéo in 1989. I was in positions that meant I was seeing media artworks constantly.

This program is a reflection of my interest in early video art, in works that foreground activism around HIV/AIDS, and in experimental works, whether these reflect experimentation in form or content. Eight years ago, I joined the programming team for MUFF (Montreal Underground Film Festival) and grasped how much I had missed the communal experience of watching works.

This is a program about nostalgia and bereavement. Esther Valiquette and Cathy Sisler were often in my thoughts as I watched works and thought about my selections. The two men in DHPG MON AMOUR, David and Joe, so alive and vibrant in Super 8, are gone. There is also a nostalgia informed by obsolete video formats and editing procedures. I have also been thinking of the many friends and colleagues who viewed and discussed these works with me. I recall (memory or wish?) that we laughed in the right places and felt anger and sadness in solidarity with the artists. Never gonna give you up.”

— Anne Golden, 2022