Andrew James Paterson (born 1952 in Toronto, where he lives and works) is an interdisciplinary artist working with
performance,
video and
film,
musical composition, and both critical and fiction writing. His performances and videotapes have been presented and exhibited locally, nationally, and internationally. Paterson was formerly the lead singer and principal writer for a band called The Government, between 1977 and 1982, which made several recordings and one “music video”
How Many Fingers?. Paterson has served as a board member for Trinity Square Video, A Space, and YYZ Artists' Outlet, all Toronto-situated artist-run galleries or organizations. He has previously curated media-art programmes for Trinity Square Video, A Space, Mercer Union, Cinematheque Ontario, Pleasure Dome, Available Light (Ottawa) and YYZ Artists' Outlet, and he has written on media-art and cultural politics for
FUSE,
PUBLIC,
IMPULSE, and
FILE, as well as contributing to anthologies published by Gallery TPW, Pleasure Dome, and YYZBOOKS. He is the co-editor of
Money, Value, Art, published by YYZBOOKS in 2001. In 2003, Paterson debuted
Mono Logical, an inter-media performance remix of his film and video works in tandem with performative monologues, co-produced by Pleasure Dome and the 7a*11d Performance Art Festival-both of Toronto.
Mono Logical has been presented in Calgary, Kingston, and Winnipeg, each performance characterized by a different remix. And, in 2005, he edited
Grammar & Not-Grammar, an anthology of scripts and essays by media-artist Gary Kibbins, published by YYZBOOKS. Since the beginning of the twenty-first century, Paterson's own media-works have been of two different but parallel strands. Some works are comprised of Super-8 film stocks, shot by the artist walking behind the camera and synthesizing documentary with performance. Several different works are composed of the artists's still graphic images collaged into a Final Cut Pro editing program, and are arguably as much examples of “visual art” as they are film or video. All of his media-works also involve writing and original music. However, Paterson has recently been experimenting with wordless moving images.
