A QUESTION OF RESPONSIRILITY

On January 19, 1982, Paul Wong, a well known Vancouver
based media artist who works in photography and video was.
guest lecturer at ECCAD. He presented a variety of his work,
accompanied by commentary. About two-thirds of the way throygh
the lecture to Foundation students, during Wong's Murder
Research, Alison Diesvelt became ill, reacting to the video's
content, and subsequently fainted. She fell and cut her chin,
a gash which later required stiches. This incident resulted in
a series of explanatory correspondence, which together bring
out issuesfor future consideration, and which give us all
food for thought. Excerpts are reprinted below.

650 Diesvelt to Tom Hudson, Dean

...The nature and content of (wong's) video prentation was suf-
ficiently upsetting to have caused me physical injury.

The portion/contained: The figure of a corpse lying naked in
blood stained snow, proceeded by very explicit shots of the wounds
and bruises sustained by the deceased, and then full colour shots
of the man's body sliced in half...

..-Dizziness and nausea overcame me and | felt it best to
leave... | fainted... my- chin had been split open... and | was
so shaken and upset by the whole afffair that |! could not return
to school...

In light of this it is completely beyond my comprehension as
to why there was no warning regarding the content of this artist's
work. There are such warnings for both television and cinema
programs. If, as a student, | am required to attend these seminars,
| must express my most fervent diapproval of the fact that no
warning was given as to the content of this presentation, consequent-
ly denying me the opportunity of avoiding this whole unfortunate
incident. |! would also like to stress that not only were my
sensibilities blatently infringed upon but also my rights...

...discussing the mateer Of filing litigation... my lawyer
advised me that | had a good case... had the injuries | sustained
as a result of this so called 'work of art'' been of a more serious
nature... you can be assure that | would certainly have pursued the
‘case to the utmost... 99