Performance: Video Screening/ Overhead Projector Performance/Curatorial/Documentary
Winnipeg Babysitter (2005-2023)
Directed, written, and performed by Daniel Barrow
Saturday, August 1, 2026, at 7:00pm
90 minutes, multi-media presentation
Free to attend
In addition to their Paper Doll Poems workshop, artist-in-residence Daniel Barrow presents a multi-media performance entitled Winnipeg Babysitter (2005-2023) on Saturday, August 1, 2026, at 7:00pm.
When SHAW cable purchased Winnipeg’s local cable station VPW, a rumour was circulated that SHAW had destroyed the public access television archives and were systematically dismantling the public access services. Shortly thereafter, Daniel Barrow began researching, compiling and archiving a history of independently produced television in Winnipeg, Manitoba. The performance draws on their decades-long research and independent archive of Winnipeg’s public access television from the late 1970s and 80s presented as a 90-minute hybrid storytelling performance.
In the late ’70s and throughout the 80s, Winnipeg experienced a “golden age” of public access television. Anyone with a creative dream, concept or politic would be endowed with airtime and professional production services. Winnipeg Babysitter traces unique vignettes from a brief synapse in broadcasting history when Winnipeg cable companies were mandated to provide public access as a condition of their broadcasting license.
Because, the local public access archives were destroyed programs could only be found in the VHS collections of the original producers. In cases when these producers did not save their own work, Barrow had to rely on television collectors, fans and enthusiasts. In this regard, Winnipeg Babysitter is an archival project that restores a previously lost history. Daniel Barrow travels to each screening providing an overhead projected commentary/context, tracing the histories of public access television in Manitoba, and describing the various and outrageous biographies of each television producer and personality.
Presented at venues such as The Portland Institute of Contemporary Art, La Maison Rouge (Paris) and Light Industry (Brooklyn), Winnipeg Babysitter (2005-2023) features a live commentary by the artist from an overhead projector over excerpts of archival television.
Barrow’s performance is not exclusively an exercise in nostalgia—it is also a critical gesture with deep relevance to our contemporary media landscape. Winnipeg Babysitter (2005-2023) foregrounds the politics of visibility and the value of infrastructures that support creativity without commodification.
This performance offers audiences with a suggestion that the future of media art may benefit from looking back at a moment when the signal was open, and the screen truly belonged to the public.
The public are invited to attend Daniel Barrow’s performance Winnipeg Babysitter (2005-2023) on Saturday, August 1, 2026, at 7:00pm at Oxygen Art Centre. The performance is 90-minutes in length. This event is free to attend. Everyone welcome.
Daniel Barrow is one part of the artist collective Three Way Mirror with Glenn Gear and Paige Gratland. Three Way Mirror are in residence at Oxygen Art Centre from July 3, 2026, to August 7, 2026.
Oxygen Art Centre is located at #3-320 Vernon Street along the alleyway behind Baker Street in Nelson, British Columbia. More information about how to access the facility can be found here or by contacting info@oxygenartcentre.org. Admission to all events is free.
Daniel Barrow is a genderfluid, Tiohtià:ke / Montreal-based storyteller/artist/filmmaker who has employed parallel strategies in their approach to the tradition of paper dolls – inventing “narrative architectures” and “paper doll poems” that grapple with the dollhouse/paper doll.
images: (above) Daniel Barrow, “Natalie Kiss” (video still) from Winnipeg Babysitter (2005-2023), Performance; Courtesy the Artist; (middle) Daniel Barrow, “Art Spoof” (video still) from Winnipeg Babysitter (2005-2023), Performance; Courtesy the Artist; Daniel Barrow, “Leather Men” (video still) from Winnipeg Babysitter (2005-2023), Performance; Courtesy the Artist; Daniel Barrow, “Survival” (video still) from Winnipeg Babysitter (2005-2023), Performance; Courtesy the Artist; (below) Daniel Barrow, Courtesy the Artist