From Videotape Exchange Networks to On-Demand Streaming Platforms: The Circulation of Independent Canadian Film and Video in the Digital Era

Abstract

This chapter discusses the adoption of digital circulation practices by the Canadian independent media arts community. It positions digital modes of media circulation in continuity with the grassroots videotape exchange networks that were developed by community-thirsty media artists and activists in the late 1960s and 1970s. The chapter explores how the Canadian independent media arts network has historically operated, and continues to operate, in parallel to commercial media production and distribution networks. Video had a magnetic importance. Ramon Lobato defines distribution as: “the movement of media through space and time”. This is a broad definition, but it usefully emphasizes the circulation of media, without tying it to a specific technology or medium. Today, Canada boasts hundreds of media arts centres, festivals, and collectives that support the production, exhibition, and distribution of media artworks in mediums ranging from analogue film and digital video, to sound art and new media, to augmented and virtual reality.