Biographies (listed alphabetically)

VERA FRENKEL:

The work of award-winning multidisciplinary artist Vera Frenkel has
been shown in Canada and abroad to great critical acclaim. Her
videotapes, installations, performances and new media projects address
the forces at work in human migration, the learning and unlearning of
cultural memory, and the related bureaucratization of experience.
Treating these themes in relation to the art theft practices of the
Third Reich, Frenkel is currently preparing an exhibition of her Body
Missing installation and web-site (http://www.yorku.ca/BodyMissing) for
the Sigmund Freud Museum in Vienna.

Her newest project consists of a group of works in different media
under the title , "The Institute(TM): Or, What We Do For Love", in
which fictional and documentary modes interrogate each other, mapping
the travails of a large cultural organization. "Artists in Residence"
a work for voices prepared for The Arts Today is one of these works.
Another project in this group is a poly-serial web narrative now in
progress, programmed in part at the Banff Centre, to be hosted at the
Stadium Network for the Arts, N.Y.


SASCHA HASTINGS:


Born in Toronto and raised in a large family , Sascha Hastings studied at the Universities of Toronto and Freiburg, Germany. After four and a half years with The Arts Today, she has decided to strike out on her own into the freelance world. Highlights on The Arts Today have been producing the series "Ten Years After: The New Berlin", and "Art on the Web"

JAMEL OUBECHOU:

Jamel Oubechou is a French citizen of Algerian descent. Educated in Algeria, France and England, his main interests are in supporting a wide range of activities in the cultural sector and in the civil rights field.Though Jamel is too modest to reveal this himself, listeners might want to know that he is exceptionally good-looking and at times almost dangerously
charming. He considers Canada his second home and the CBC its voice.

LISA STEELE:

Lisa Steele's videotapes have been extensively exhibited nationally and
internationally including at: the Venice Biennale (1980), the Kunsthalle
(Basel), the Museum of Modern Art (NYC), the National Gallery of Canada,
the Institute of Contemporary Art (Boston), the 49th Parallel Videoseries, the
Vancouver Art Gallery and the Long Beach Museum.
Steele worked at Interval House, an emergency shelter for battered women in
Toronto, from 1974 to 1986. She is a founding director of V tape, a
national information and distribution service for independent video, and a
founding publisher and editor of FUSE magazine. She has been involved in
the anti-censorship movement since 1980, is the past president of the
Independent Film and Video Alliance / Alliance de la Video du Cinema
Independant, past chair of the New Media Program at the Ontario College of Art
where she has taught video since 1981. Steele served for three years on the
Advisory panel for Visual Arts at the Canada Council and as a member of the
Board of Trustees of the Art Gallery
of Ontario from 1993-97.
Author of numerous articles and catalogue essays, Steele has co-edited the
book VIDEO re/VIEW: the (Best) Source For Critical Writings On Canadian
Artists' Video (Art Metropole and Vtape, 1996).
Working exclusively in collaboration with Kim Tomczak since 1983 on
videotapes, performances and photo/text works, their first feature-length
work, Legal Memory (1992), has been shown at The Los Angeles Gay and
Lesbian Festival, the Festival Internazionale Cinema Giovani (Turin,
Italy), the Toronto Festival of Festivals, among others. In 1996,their
work THE BLOOD RECORDS: written and annotated, received a world premiere at
the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Steele and Tomczak are currently
guest editors of FELIX, a journal of media arts and culture published in
New York


KIM TOMCZAK:


Kim Tomczak is a multidisciplinary artist whose work in performance,
photography and video has been shown extensively both nationally and internationally,
including the Paris Biennale, the Canadian Cultural Centre in Paris, the
Video Biennale in Vienna ( first prize for a tape co-produced with Lisa
Steele) as well as the Musee de Beaux Arts in Montreal, Documenta 8 (Kassel,
Germany) and the Centre Georges Pompidou (Paris). In 1982, he became a
founding director of V tape, a national information
and distribution service for independent video. Tomczak is currently the
President of the Board of the Toronto Arts Council and he is also on the executive for the
Audio Visual Heritage Trust of Canada.
Since 1983, Tomczak has worked exclusively in collaboration with Lisa
Steele, producing videotapes, performances and photo/text works. Their
individual and collaborative work was the subject of a major survey exhibition at the Art
Gallery of Ontario in 1989-90.
In 1993, Steele and Tomczak were recognized with two prestigious awards:
the Bell Canada Award for excellence in the field of Canadian video art and
a Toronto Arts Award (the Peter Herndorf Media Arts Award). In 1996, their
work THE BLOOD RECORDS: written and annotated, received a world premiere at
the Museum of Modern Art in New York.



IRIT ROGOFF:

Chair of Art History / Visual Culture at Goldsmiths' College, University of
London, and am a well dressed critic and scholar of contemporary visual art
and critical theory.

ELEANOR WACHTEL:


Eleanor Wachtel is host of "Writers & Company" and "The Arts Today". After studies at McGill University and travels in the United States and Kenya, she worked as a freelance writer, broadcaster and editor in Vancouver.
In 1987, Eleanor moved to Toronto to work as Literary Commentator on CBC Stereo’s "State of the Arts", and then as writer-broadcaster for "The Arts Tonight", and Toronto reporter for "The Arts Report". Since 1990 she has been host of CBC Radio’s "Writers & Company" and (since 1996), of "The Arts Today".
In 1993, Knopf Canada published a selection of interviews called Writers & Company, (Harcourt Brace, 1994 US). More Writers & Company was published in fall 1996 (Vintage paperback, fall 1997).
In 1995, "Writers & Company" won the coveted CBC award for programming excellence for the best weekly show broadcast nationally. The judges noted that if they had to choose one hour of radio to take to a desert island, it would be "Writers & Company".
In 1998, "The Arts Today" won the CBC award for programming excellence for the best daily show broadcast nationally.
Eleanor Wachtel has received two honourary degrees, D. Litt. (1999) from St. Thomas University in Fredericton and D. Litt (2000) from Athabasca University.