INTRAVENE

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 partnership of immersive and documentary experts and drug user activists:  DARKFIELD, Crackdown and Brenda Longfellow.

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. 

INTRAVENE EPISODE 1: BENZODOPE launches at TriBeCa Festival, New York, 8-19 June 2022 and on Darkfield Radio on 16 June 2022

It will broadcast via the DARKFIELD Radio phone app, available on the App Store and Google Play Store. Download the free app and buy a ticket for your chosen date and time.
At the designated time you put on your headphones and your home becomes the setting for another world, blurring the lines between real and imagined.

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, 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 benzos.

The episode is 20 minutes and is for a single person.

INTRAVENE EPISODE 2: RIVERVIEW on Darkfield Radio on 16 June 2022

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 Mullins’ 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 scenes from Darkfield

INTRAVENE is a collaboration between DARKFIELD, Crackdown and Brenda Longfellow

CO-ARTISTIC DIRECTOR: Brenda Longfellow

FOR CRACKDOWN:

CO-ARTISTIC DIRECTOR OF INTRAVENE & EXECUTIVE 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 DIRECTOR: David Rosenberg

CO-ARTISTIC DIRECTOR: Glen Neath

CREATIVE PRODUCER: Victoria Eyton

EXECUTIVE PRODUCER: Andrea Salazar

SOUND DESIGNER: David Rosenberg

PRODUCTION COORDINATOR: Mario Ruiz

SOUND ASSOCIATE: Anna Sulley

GRAPHIC DESIGNER: Alex Purcell

ARTWORK ON WALL OF BENZODPE OPS IMAGE: Trey Helton

PERFORMERS:

EPISODE ONE - BENZODOPE:  Alyssa J. Donahue

EPISODE TWO - RIVERVIEW: Kasper Michaels, Alyssa J. Donahue, Adam Khedheri, Alexander Osborne, Sonya Cullingford; piano: Nicholas Brown

With thanks to:

Vancouver’s Overdose Prevention Site

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

CRACKDOWN PODCAST

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.

Performances:

TriBeCa Festival, New York, USA, 8-19 June 2022 (live activation)

DF Radio, 16 June - 3 July 2022

BFI London Film Festival, London, UK, 5-16 October 2022 (live activation)

Darkfield Radio, 16 October to December 2022

ReFrame Film Festival, Artspace, Peterborough, Canada, 27-29 January 2023

Darkfield Radio from 21 July 2023