WESTERN FRONT – Archives Access

Join us for an online screening and talk with media artist, curator, and technician Bobbi Kozinuk, exploring the history of radio art at Western Front.

The discussion will include reflections on the pioneering influence of artist Tetsuo Kogawa who visited Western Front on numerous occasions in the 1990s, and Kozinuk’s own work producing low-powered FM transmission at schools, universities, and artist-run centres across Canada.

Kozinuk will be joined in conversation by Becket MWN and Susan Gibb, co-curators of the current exhibition Broadcasts from Here.

In the lead up to the conversation, we invite you to enjoy a work from Western Front’s archives. Wiener as Marconi (1995) is a collaborative video work made by Bobbi Kozinuk and Elizabeth Vander Zaag, recreating the world’s first transatlantic wireless signal by inventor and electrical engineer Guglielmo Marconi at Signal Hill, St. John’s, Newfoundland, in 1901.

About the Artist

Bobbi Kozinuk is a Vancouver-based media artist, curator, and technician. She was the former Director, Media Arts at Western Front from 1993-96. She has served as a board member for Independent Media Arts Alliance, Co-op Radio, grunt Gallery, VIVO Media Arts Centre, and Pride In Art Society, and has traveled extensively producing workshops on low-powered FM transmission at schools, universities and artist-run centers across Canada. Bobbi is published in Radio Rethink: Art, Sound, and Transmission, Banff Centre for the Arts; Echo Location (Vol. 1), Co-op Radio; and Islands of Resistance: Pirate Radio in Canada, New Star Books. Currently, as the Wearables, Interactivity, Prototyping Lab Technician at the Emily Carr University of Art + Design, she teaches electronics and programming.

Acknowledgements

This project has been made possible in part by Library and Archives Canada.

Still from Bobbi Kozinuk and Elizabeth Vander Zaag, Wiener as Marconi (1995), video, 4:26 min. Courtesy of the artists and Western Front.

Still from Bobbi Kozinuk and Elizabeth Vander Zaag, Wiener as Marconi (1995), video, 4:26 min. Courtesy of the artists and Western Front.
Still from Bobbi Kozinuk and Elizabeth Vander Zaag, Wiener as Marconi (1995), video, 4:26 min. Courtesy of the artists and Western Front.

Still from Bobbi Kozinuk and Elizabeth Vander Zaag, Wiener as Marconi (1995), video, 4:26 min. Courtesy of the artists and Western Front.
Bobbi Kozinuk and Elizabeth Vander Zaag, Wiener as Marconi (1995), video, 4:26 min. Courtesy of the artists and Western Front.

Bobbi Kozinuk and Elizabeth Vander Zaag, Wiener as Marconi (1995), video, 4:26 min. Courtesy of the artists and Western Front.

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.