AN IMMERSIVE AUDIO EXPERIENCE ABOUT THE OVERDOSE CRISIS IN VANCOUVER

A PARTNERSHIP BETWEEN

 
 
 

ABOUT

INTRAVENE is an immersive audio experience using binaural 360 degree sound to plunge listeners into the heart of the overdose crisis in Vancouver. It is a groundbreaking partnership of immersive and documentary experts and drug user activists: DARKFIELD, Crackdown and Brenda Longfellow.

Episode One: BENZODOPE is a fully immersive episode. It places the audience in the centre of Vancouver’s Overdose Prevention Site (OPS) and features voices from the drug user community via interviews by Crackdown.

Episode Two: RIVERVIEW is a Crackdown podcast episode with binaural elements from DARKFIELD. It confronts listeners with the ongoing spectre of institutionalising drug users via the story of Rosa Mullins, who was an involuntary mental health patient at Riverview for 26 years.

The project began in early 2021, with international partners working remotely due to the pandemic. INTRAVENE was awarded funds by the UK-Canada Immersive Exchange programme.

  • In April 2016, the British Columbia Provincial Health Officer declared the overdose crisis a public health emergency. Since that time, deaths due to illicit drug toxicity have skyrocketed. During the first year of the pandemic, there was a 95% increase in drug toxicity deaths in North America. Every year, 100, 000 Americans and over 7000 Canadians die of a toxic drug overdose. 

    “The primary cause of increased deaths is the growing toxicity and unpredictability of the street supply of drugs. The current drug policy framework of prohibition is the primary driver of this illegal, unregulated and toxic street supply.”  - British Columbia Coroners Death Review Panel, 2021.

    Statistics can only tell one part of the story. Overdose victims are friends, partners, mothers, sons, colleagues, daughters, lovers, nephews and grandmothers. Their preventable deaths create unfathomable wells of grief and anger. 

  • WWW.CRACKDOWNPOD.COM

    THE DRUG WAR, COVERED BY DRUG USERS AS WAR CORRESPONDENTS.

    CRACKDOWN is a monthly podcast about drugs, drug policy and the drug war led by drug user activists and supported by research. Each episode tells the story of a community fighting for their lives. It’s also about solutions, justice for those we have lost, and saving lives.

    The host and executive producer of CRACKDOWN is Garth Mullins, an award-winning documentarian and longtime community organizer. Garth has been an opioid user for years, injecting heroin daily all the way through the last overdose crisis, and is now on methadone. The podcast is led by an editorial board made up of some of Vancouver’s most experienced drug user activists. CRACKDOWN is produced by Cited Media Productions on the territories of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and sel̓íl̓witulh (Tsleil-waututh) Nations.

  • Brenda Longfellow produces and directs documentary and interactive work with a strong social justice and feminist focus. Her award-winning documentaries have been screened and broadcast internationally, winning Best Cultural Documentary at the Havana International Film Festival; a Canadian Genie and the Grand Prix at Oberhausen . Offshore, an interactive documentary co-directed with Helios Design Lab, was released in 2013 and screened at Hot Docs, the Sheffield Documentary Festival, SXSW among other festivals. She recently completed The Circle, an interactive art project co-created with formerly incarcerated women and is producing a public art project on women and incarceration with collaborating artists in Vancouver.

 
 

EPISODE ONE

Opioid overdoses were bad enough. But now Vancouver’s drug supply - already contaminated with fentanyl-is laced with benzodiazepines. Peer workers like Trey Helten, a former drug user and manager of an Overdose Prevention Site (OPS), loves his chosen community and has saved hundreds of lives with naloxone. But now benzos are throwing up new kinds of challenges.

Over 20 minutes, BENZODOPE immerses listeners in the intense audio environment of the OPS where a user has inadvertently injected a hit contaminated with benzodope. INTRAVENE Episode One: BENZODOPE launched at Tribeca Film Festival in June 2022.

  • INTRAVENE is a collaboration between DARKFIELD, Crackdown and Brenda Longfellow.

    CO-ARTISTIC DIRECTOR: Brenda Longfellow

    FOR CRACKDOWN:

    Crackdown is produced on the territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh Nations.

    CO-ARTISTIC DIRECTOR OF INTRAVENE & EXEC PRODUCER OF CRACKDOWN: Garth Mullins
    PRODUCER & PROJECT MANAGER: Sam Fenn
    PRODUCER: Alex de Boer
    INTERVIEWEES - EPISODE ONE BENZOS: Trey Helten, Martin Steward

    FOR DARKFIELD:

    CO-ARTISTIC DIRECTORS: David Rosenberg & Glen Neath
    CREATIVE PRODUCER: Victoria Eyton
    EXECUTIVE PRODUCER: Andrea Salazar
    ASSISTANT PRODUCER: Linseigh Green
    SOUND DESIGNER: David Rosenberg
    PRODUCTION COORDINATOR: Mario Ruiz
    SOUND ASSOCIATE: Anna Sulley
    GRAPHIC DESIGNER: Alex Purcell
    ARTWORK ON WALL OF BENZOS OPS IMAGE: Trey Helton
    PERFORMERS - EPISODE ONE BENZOS: Alyssa J. Donahue

    With thanks to:

    Vancouver’s Overdose Prevention Site

    Laura Mingail, Caitlin Boyle, Manna Mostaghim

  • It is thanks to Trey Helton and Sarah Blyth that we were able to record BENZOs in Vancouver’s Overdose Prevention Site (OPS):

    The mandate of the Overdose Prevention Society is to be leaders in the harm reduction movement with a continual push for change and justice, offer employment and advancement opportunities for members of the Downtown Eastside community, and continually work to break the stigma of addiction through empowering drug users and fighting against preconceptions of substance use. We continue to challenge the normalization of the opioid crisis every day. We are a community driven, grassroots initiative that bring people in from the alley and provide a safe and welcoming place to use drugs.

    You can take action by supporting the OPS via the website.

  • Crackdown, the lead community partner on Intravene is an award winning podcast produced in Vancouver.  Crackdown’s Episode 31 “Love, Death and Benzodope” probes further into the impacts of benzos on the illicit drug supply through the moving love story of Martin Steward and Laura Shaver, two longtime drug user activists.

EPISODE TWO

Over 45 minutes, RIVERVIEW confronts listeners with the ongoing spectre of institutionalising drug users. The audience journey into the dark past of Riverview, formerly BC's provincial insane asylum, where Crackdown’s producer Garth Mullin’s great grandmother, Rosa Mullins, was an involuntary mental health patient for 26 years. The social tendency to banish and incarcerate did not die with the closing of the asylum, but is a reality that continues to impact drug users and those living with mental trauma.

RIVERVIEW is presented as a Crackdown episode, with binaural elements from DARKFIELD. 

  • INTRAVENE is a collaboration between DARKFIELD, Crackdown and Brenda Longfellow.

    CO-ARTISTIC DIRECTOR: Brenda Longfellow

    FOR CRACKDOWN:

    Crackdown is usually produced on the territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh Nations but this episode was created in kʷikʷəƛ̓əm (kwee-kwick-lum) territory.

    CO-ARTISTIC DIRECTOR OF INTRAVENE & EXEC PRODUCER OF CRACKDOWN: Garth Mullins
    PRODUCER & PROJECT MANAGER: Sam Fenn
    PRODUCER: Alex de Boer
    PRODUCER: Lisa Hale
    SOUND DESIGN: Alexander Kim
    SCORE: James Ash
    INTERVIEWEES - EPISODE TWO RIVERVIEW: Gary Mullins
    ACADEMIC DIRECTOR: Ryan McNeil
    ACADEMIC ADVISOR FOR RIVERVIEW: Professor Jade Boyd

    CRACKDOWN EDITORIAL BOARD: Samona Marsh, Shelda Kastor, Jeff Louden, Dean Wilson, Laura Shaver, Reija Jean. Rest In Peace Dave Murray, Greg Fresz and Chereece Keewatin.

    FOR DARKFIELD:

    Binaural, historical excerpts.

    CO-ARTISTIC DIRECTORS: David Rosenberg & Glen Neath
    CREATIVE PRODUCER: Victoria Eyton
    EXECUTIVE PRODUCER: Andrea Salazar
    ASSISTANT PRODUCER: Linseigh Green
    SOUND DESIGNER: David Rosenberg
    PRODUCTION COORDINATOR: Mario Ruiz
    SOUND ASSOCIATE: Anna Sulley
    GRAPHIC DESIGNER: Alex Purcell
    PERFORMERS: Kasper Michaels, Alyssa J. Donahue, Adam Khedheri, Alexander Osborne, Sonya Cullingford
    PIANIST: Nicholas Brown

    With thanks to:

    Laura Mingail, Jill Stauber, Isin Can, Kat Waharma, Megan Davies, Geertje Boschma, Chris Dooley, Patty Gozolla, Arthur Giovinazzo, Nicole Luongo, Megan Linton, Gabrielle Peters

  • Crackdown, the lead community partner on Intravene is an award winning podcast produced in Vancouver. You can also access the episode via the Crackdown podcast feed where it is named Episode 33: You will not destroy me:

TAKE ACTION

LEARN MORE

After a century of prohibition and thousands of preventable deaths, a growing international movement including the United Nations, the World Health Organization, the British Columbia government, Ontario’s Big City Mayors, the International Red Cross, the American Public Health Association and a wide spectrum of human rights, medical and progressive public health organizations is calling for change.

Key Demands:

  • Safe Supply

  • Decriminalization

Find out more: