When Colin Campbell made his first videotapes in 1972, the medium was little-known, still new. The first tapes were statements in the order of sculpture, works with volume in space and in time, two dimensions expanded into four; they had the added bonus of putting Campbell “on TV.” But the field as such was hardly visible. In those days television arrived in the house via the airwaves, and was produced-as everyone knew-in a studio with a large staff and expensive, complicated equipment. Nowadays, the VCR home video camera and cassettes are common, and broadcast or cable is by no means a viewer’s-only option. Much has changed.


Having coming through the University of Manitoba (BFA) and Claremont Graduate School (MFA), Campbell was teaching sculpture at Mount Allison University in Sackville, NB in 1972. the first small-format video (introduced by Sony Corporation as a novel “consumer” item) was being made in those days in Europe; along with other forms of “performance,” “body art” and “conceptual art,” video was being investigated by such artists as Dennis Oppenheim and Vito Acconci in New York. Portpak video was being tried out by a few Canadians as well, centered in Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal and Halifax-though these individuals were mostly working alone, and didn’t yet know each other. At Mount Allison, the only video equipment then was in the Physical Education department, where it was used for reviewing football games and the like.

Campbell had his own ideas. Having made the necessary connections that year for borrowing the equipment, he was able to complete eight videotapes in 1972, with himself as performer, cameraman, everything. On those early portable decks with their black-and-white open-reel tapes, editing was not yet possible, but the low cost of camera and tape stock, along with the no-frills assumptions for the medium generally, were important advantages. It was fine to just “try things out.”

Campbell was inventing the medium for himself. His aim was not to make “video art,” in any case a new category of little meaning. He wished to speak, though not necessarily in words. There was no ready form or context for his ideas, and no obvious audience for the finished “products.” From the start, Campbell’s works were ironic, even anarchic, humorous and subversive. They were like nothing else he’d seen anywhere, and remain so.

Identity and sexual personae were addressed early in the videotapes, issues that were being considered by others in other ways. Where Dennis Oppenheim tested the physical limits of his body, or Vito Acconci probed personal relationships and manipulations, Campbell focused directly on psychological doubts and questions, and on the lure and lie of the physical façade. Investigation of his own desire and ambivalence led him to question the limits of gender itself. The adoption of “other” faces and voices is a noted feature of his work.

Though trained in the visual arts, Colin Campbell has placed special emphasis on literary and psychological issues in his work. Dialogue and repartee are his tools, humour and revelation his strategies. Seduction is always an issue, where the viewer fills in the “missing parts” and may be seduced in turn. The shock of recognition, or satisfaction may come quietly-through a surprise development, a revealed tragedy, a suddenly understood meaning. The viewer, implicated in the construction of the work and the story, has become involved with the process-and thus, necessarily, with the author and his ideas.

Content is prime for Colin Campbell, though that content over the years may be differently described. Form is a means rather than an end, and has changed with the surrounding context and developing audience.

In the early 1970s, the video medium offered a separation of self from body, through externalization of the image and simultaneity of record/replay. Documentation and a sort of third-person “investigation” (of self or of given situations) seemed both natural and appropriate for video. For some years numbers of artists and community groups, then later art schools and museums, were fascinated by the medium’s potential, which also increased the possibility of circulation for the work (and for the artist) through unorthodox channels of distribution. While artists in Canada at the time were not necessarily “against” the traditional buy/sell commercial galleries, “dealers” and “shows” seemed somehow irrelevant to the times. In both North America and Europe, the work of art had become more ephemeral, it dealt with more personal information and non-traditional forms; it might be characterized as “process art,” “body art” or “conceptual art” and might not be intended for actual sale at all… at least at first. This was also the moment for establishing “alternative galleries” and the “artist-run space” for production and exhibition—which were to become central to art activity in Canada in the ensuing years. Especially in Canada, financial rewards were and are hardly possible for artists; process, meaning and response to the work were far more important than a saleable object.

At first and in keeping with the available tools for working in video, Campbell tended to work alone, both on-screen and off. As equipment changed and developed, however, so did his working method; from improvisation in real time, he moved towards construction of sets and scripts and a more filmic editing. Others were incorporated into the action, until with White Money (1983), Campbell’s appearance on screen shifted from solo or central, to one of small supporting parts in a larger panorama. He had tried collaboration with others while developing the spontaneous dialogue of Bad Girls in 1980; in 1986 he began a more extended collaboration with writer Lynne Fernie and others on scripts for feature films. With Skin (1990), he moved to production in 16mm film himself, though the piece has continued to circulate in video form as well. And since Skin, Campbell has opted entirely for the written word, his first novel well underway by 1992.

The issue of sexual identity continues to be a text only slightly submerged in Campbell’s work. He often chooses actors to work against type, possibly against gender, as he has done in his own characterizations… as a means of texture and grain, a reversal of the easy, the presumed. Incongruities of performer and text are intriguing, perhaps surprising or puzzling. Such strategies keep viewers alert, at the least, and imply multiple messages that need not be spelled out in literal terms. Intuition and deduction are potent tools.

The author also, however, continues to resist the traditional, as well as the (assumed) relationship (or antipathy) to television modes. This is not TV, but neither is it regular drama or poetry. There is something of theatre here, an anecdotal history in keeping with Campell’s own storytelling voice and image(s) of himself. The roots of his narrative are often to be found in the everyday world, culled from personal experience, overheard conversation, or from “normal” newspaper articles. As Campbell works over the material, however, finds a character and voice for the role and the story, “straight, simple facts” tend to assume a surreal colouring.

He has often taken the part of the Other, man as woman, to see how it feels and what it looks like. Is this identity real? Is it enough? Does this person make more sense than the one I would normally be?

Or…

Who are my friends and intimates and what am I doing with them? For them? Can I find a voice and a persona to bring their needs and demands into the open, to find an audience for these facts and feelings?

And…

What are the conditions of life in society, in the family, on-the-screen, and are they acceptable? What is the nature of prejudice, including my own—for homosexuals, for middle-aged women, for young beauties, for intellectuals? What are the pretensions of these categories? What is it that must be said?

In his quest for self-definition, Campbell has also sought out the place of fiction, as a means of inventing and re-inventing oneself and one’s role. Gossip-about self and scene-is full of wonderful material, needing (only?) a combination of clever presentation, brazen nerve, determination and resilience.

Accustomed to self-analysis, Campbell has often turned to windows and mirrors for inspiration and reflection. Eyes—his eye, and the gaze of others—and the Body are central in his work, pointing out and working with the reciprocity of male and female. He has shown curiosity about this symmetry and its mystery.

Campbell places his standards high, refusing the predictable, the merely acceptable. Coming form the Canadian prairies, he chose California for graduate work, and in the mid-1970s lived in new York City for several months. At a later date he returned to Los Angeles for an extended stay… at each juncture, evidencing his willingness to re-invent his life, its aims, its “furniture.” Starting over and over again. His trajectory has been from three-dimensional sculpture to two-dimensional screen-but the video screen brought time and directional progression into his work, along with the extremities of privacy (as mirror and diary) and public information (as television). He moves from solo productions to an increasing complexity of scale (in duration, scripting, message, personnel), and then towards the “big” film screen. Having worked through those ephemeral images of light, he now extends both privacy and public access, in his shift towards pure writing. In this case, the privacy is in the quiet solitude of crating the work, and in the final rapport of reader-with-book. The public access, of course, is through traditional publishing itself, books being a multiple form with a ready place in the world. His concerns for form and content remain simultaneously central and marginal: an interplay of narrative hybrids, sex and language, performance and production values, media and artworks.

Re-inventing still.

Originally published as a booklet by Art Metropole (Toronto) along with a three-tape package of Colin Campbell’s work. First edition of 500 books and 100 videotape packages. Designed by Barr Gilmore. March 1993.