Uploaded February 2018 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago
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Midi Onodera is a 2018 winner of the Governor General's Awards in Visual and Media Arts. Directed by Alexis Wood.
Presentation of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Independent Media Arts Alliance.
The Canada Council for the Arts is a federal, arm's-length Crown corporation created by an Act of Parliament in 1957 (Canada Council for the Arts Act) "to foster and promote the study and enjoyment of, and the production of works in, the arts."
For more information, visit: ggavma.canadacouncil.ca
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Transcript:
Today we’ve become so media saturated and so inundated with the moving image, that it hardly leaves
time for someone to just take a moment and reflect on what you're seeing. The element of questioning
what you're seeing is absent.
I want to create those kinds of pauses in the moving image landscape to ask us to reflect and perhaps
question what we're seeing.
Being an artist whose roots are in experimental film, I’m very interested in visual techniques that
change or lend another perspective to an image.
I've worked in many different forms of moving image from cinema to writing for television to tiny videos for
mobile devices.
A theatrical experience is a group experience whereas a mobile device is much more of a tool for social
avoidance.
It’s intimate yet it’s in a very public space, so I am very interested in a kind of tactile cinema, which means
that it’s more about the relationship not only between the viewer and the screen but it also involves the
environment in which you’re consuming those items.
[Audio from Midi’s work Ten Cents a Dance (Parallax)] Midi: “Can I ask you something personal?”
And then I discovered toy cameras, to me it’s like discovering a whole new range of colours, a whole new
set of oils come to life.
When I started studying art I also was a painter and so I still have that kind of painterly lens that I’m
looking through when I approach a film or a video.
I think of the frame still as my canvas creating a world or an environment or a space that can be
manipulated in different visual techniques.
By putting my vision out there I’m hoping to connect with an audience and have them see things
through my eyes.
Please like this video and subscribe to support the arts in Canada.
Midi Onodera is a 2018 winner of the Governor General's Awards in Visual and Media Arts. Directed by Alexis Wood.
Presentation of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Independent Media Arts Alliance.
The Canada Council for the Arts is a federal, arm's-length Crown corporation created by an Act of Parliament in 1957 (Canada Council for the Arts Act) "to foster and promote the study and enjoyment of, and the production of works in, the arts."
For more information, visit: ggavma.canadacouncil.ca
****
Transcript:
Today we’ve become so media saturated and so inundated with the moving image, that it hardly leaves
time for someone to just take a moment and reflect on what you're seeing. The element of questioning
what you're seeing is absent.
I want to create those kinds of pauses in the moving image landscape to ask us to reflect and perhaps
question what we're seeing.
Being an artist whose roots are in experimental film, I’m very interested in visual techniques that
change or lend another perspective to an image.
I've worked in many different forms of moving image from cinema to writing for television to tiny videos for
mobile devices.
A theatrical experience is a group experience whereas a mobile device is much more of a tool for social
avoidance.
It’s intimate yet it’s in a very public space, so I am very interested in a kind of tactile cinema, which means
that it’s more about the relationship not only between the viewer and the screen but it also involves the
environment in which you’re consuming those items.
[Audio from Midi’s work Ten Cents a Dance (Parallax)] Midi: “Can I ask you something personal?”
And then I discovered toy cameras, to me it’s like discovering a whole new range of colours, a whole new
set of oils come to life.
When I started studying art I also was a painter and so I still have that kind of painterly lens that I’m
looking through when I approach a film or a video.
I think of the frame still as my canvas creating a world or an environment or a space that can be
manipulated in different visual techniques.
By putting my vision out there I’m hoping to connect with an audience and have them see things
through my eyes.
