Media mélange from the mish-mash masterMonday, June 29, 2009 
Marc Adornato, Smash Video artist Marc Adornato tends to avoid doing things in the usual way.
His bizarre and often comically twisted works usually elicit extreme responses: love or rejection and very little in between.
So it's hardly surprising that Adornato is spearheading July 7, a genre-busting new collaborative screening that will at once celebrate the local video and film making scenes and very likely piss off a few purists.
“July 7 came about from a frustration of never seeing the kind of screenings I wanted to see,” said Adornato. “Conventional screenings, which are artist content book ended by black space, simply don't reflect how the majority of the emerging population absorbs media content.”
“My friends, colleagues, and I often view most media content on our desktops with multiple web browsers set to different things,” Adornato explains. “You will see my desktop, a wandering cursor, YouTube and Facebook interfaces, link clicking, etc., but set to some kick-ass beats.”
Slated for, yes, July 7 at Club SAW, July 7 is an hour-long continuously streaming mélange of 11 local videos and films, augmented with a mish-mash of stuff dug up by Adornato: vintage film shot in Ottawa pre-1950s as well as short videos by Chris Cunningham, Salvador Dali, Matthew Barney, Alejandro Jodorowsky, and other stuff pulled from YouTube.
The eleven featured locals are Lee Demarbre, Bridget Farr, Roger Wilson, Pixie Cram, Ariel Smith, Ryan Stec and Véronique Coulliard, Phil Caron, Megan Turnbull, Miles Finlayson, and Adornato himself. Noted musician Dr. Lee will provide sounds during the interlude segments.
Adornato says he included individual works based on their “awesome-ness and digestibility,” but he also made a effort to bring together local video and film communities.
“All too often, local screenings are focused on either IFCO filmmakers, or SAW Video artists,” Adornato explained. “The work in this screening is creative, engaging, smart, and artistic regardless of whether it was done in film or video.”
“Each video is no more than five minutes,” Adornato points out. “So if you don't like one video, wait five minutes—the next will be completely different.”
July 7 takes place on Tuesday, July 7. Doors open at 7 p.m., pay what you can. For details visit www.july7.ca.
Bridget Farr, The Space Between Us 
Pixie Cram, Coil 
Ariel Smith, To All the Boys I've Loved Before
Ryan Stec and Véronique Coulliard, Transformer Remix 
Megan Turnbull, The Adventures of the Problem Solving Super Hero & Mme O
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