Category: Media Art

Media Art

Scroll down to see all our media art listings.

bumfuzzled monachopsis: innerspace out

Curated Visual Art Exhibition

Sat Jun 17 – Wed Jun 28 

Mon – Fri 9am – 9pm
Sat – Sun 9am – 5pm

Roundhouse Exhibition Hall – 181 Roundhouse Mews

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Zandi Dandizette, Curator

bumfuzzled monachopsis: innerspace out

Free Guided Curator Tour with Zandi Dandizette

Sat Jun 24, 2pm

Roundhouse Exhibition Hall – 181 Roundhouse Mews

This event is ASL Interpreted.

Featured Artists:
Eda Birthing
Helena St Tearer
JAIK PUPPYTEETH
Judah Kong
Kale Roberts
Kali Fish
Leby Le Morìa
Levi Nelson
Makoto Chi
Odera Igbokwe
Moozhan Ahmadzadegan
Parisa Rafat
Pastiche Lumumba
Rachel Britton
Raven John
Romi Kim, Kendell Yan & Chris Reed

bumfuzzled monachopsis: innerspace out reflects the uncertain times in which our collective world does not ascertain belonging to those occupying it. Our parallel universes of experience, never quite overlapping, seeking out an idealized community, that “me-shaped” hole in which inclusion is touted. A confused subtle space of emotion as the external world points at what we are and who we are, yet never quite where we are welcome to be. 

The present state in which queer artists take up space, share space, and embody the ownership of it. Sharing our inner worlds out visually via developed characters, worlds, or visual language that provides safety in exploring identity or the relation to the spaces around them. 

Zandi Dandizette’s curation asks viewers to “wander the maze of our hearts and open them to the multiplicity of being.” We are not a homogenized whole, but many individuals all seeking that future space in which belonging can be achieved. 

Zandi Dandizette, QAF 2023 Visual Art Exhibition guest curator

Zandi Dandizette is a nonbinary settler-immigrant interdisciplinary arts and cultural worker that likens their medium as space whether 2D, 3D, or 4D. Their work vacillates between focus shifts on identity, dis/connection, and collective problem solving. Zandi’s practice attempts to investigate and share the lessons they’ve absorbed in navigating the complexity of existence by utilizing repeating shape and colour motifs.  Zandi has a BMA in Animation (2014) from Emily Carr University and has shown varied new media and installation works over the last decade across Canada and internationally. They balance their artistic practice with supporting arts advocacy and community building. Zandi Dandizette co-founded and leads The James Black Gallery (2014) which is located on the stolen unceded ancestral lands of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. They are a current board member of CARFAC National, and chartering member of the Arts and Cultural Workers Union (ACWU local 778-B).  

Cosmic Connections: Queer Indigenous Astronomy (A View From Above and Below)

 Preston Buffalo AR works

Sat Jun 17 – Wed Jun 28

9am to 9pm daily

Roundhouse Exhibition Hall – 181 Roundhouse Mews

Augmented Reality artist Preston Buffalo secretly brings the Roundhouse to life with Indigiqueer pasts and futures – including a creation story of how the Cree People originated from the Pleiades star cluster. Buffalo’s AR images are invisible and inaudible to the naked eye and ear – but revealed when your phone scans a QR code! Presented in partnership with Little Chamber Music. 

Preston Buffalo

Preston Buffalo (he/him) is a Two-Spirited Cree man residing in the unceded Coast Salish Territories in British Columbia. His interdisciplinary practice is centred around exploring personal Indigenous iconography and symbolism through the use of photography, alternative photo processes, digital illustration and AR. Preston’s work is informed by pressing issues faced by Indigenous communities, including mental health, harm reduction, loss of culture and language resulting from displacement and the residential school system. By intersecting traditional material practice with contemporary techniques, his work seeks to challenge viewers’ perceptions of contemporary Indigenous Identity.

MOTORBIKE/SUPERDYKE

Language as a Virus: Queer isolation stories

Sat Jul 24- Fri Aug 13

Sonic Installation | around False Creek & Online 

Language as a Virus: Queer Isolation Stories is an interactive multi-platform sonic-art installation from artist Bobbi Kozinuk, featuring publicly broadcasted radio programming around the False Creek area as well as online.

Combining music, sound art, and community-submitted recordings, stories become soundscapes that are broadcast on low power transmitters located along the water’s edge. The public will encounter advertisements for the project at transmitter hubs and participating community centres in the greater Vancouver area, where they will be directed on how to participate. The public is invited to take a walk along the False Creek and listen in on their FM radio or QR-enabled phone as well as visit the Isolation website to contribute their own stories and tune into location-specific channels. An experiment in radical storytelling, Language as a Virus explores themes around the Covid pandemic and its effect on queer and diverse communities. It asks us who we are, and how can we move towards a better future?

You can appreciate this Sonic Installation either online or in person around False Creek.

Details of the “walking radio” tour can be found at https://kozinuk.ca/walking-radio You will need an FM radio to enjoy this tour. (Some older phones have FM radio integrated if you use wired earbuds).

Alternatively you can listen online. Visit Bobbi’s website at https://kozinuk.ca/locations to select a location you are interested in.

Posters are available at the various locations with QR codes that, when scanned, give you access to a selection of stories.

Bobbi Kozinuk

Bobbi Kozinuk is a Vancouver-based media artist, curator, and technician. Former Media Director at Western Front, she has also worked on a board level with the Independent Media Arts Alliance (Montreal), Co-op Radio, grunt Gallery, Video In and Pride In Art Society(Vancouver), and has travelled extensively producing workshops on low-powered FM transmission at schools, universities and artist-run centres across Canada. Bobbi is published in Radio Rethink (produced by the Banff Centre for the Arts), Echo Locations (audio art CD produced by Co-op Radio) and Islands of Resistance (New Star Books, Vancouver). Currently, as the Wearables, Interactivity, Prototyping Lab Technician at the Emily Carr University of Art and Design, she teaches electronics and programming. Bobbi has exhibited media installation works in local, national and international contexts including In-Ex ISEA (San Jose), Diffractions, Galleria di Nuova Icona (Venice), and Folly Gallery (Lancaster, UK).

Jae Lew

Jae Lew is a media artist and filmmaker currently residing in so-called Vancouver, BC, Unceded Coast Salish Territories. Their practice is situated at a place of visibility and invisibility; their work deals with spirituality, disability, gender and the absurdity of social constructs. They have recently graduated with a degree in New Media and Sound Arts at Emily Carr University of Art + Design.

Language as a Virus –The Tour

Mon Jul 26 | 5 pm  |False Creek 

 

Language as a Virus: The Tour

Mon Jul 26 | 5 pm

Audio Art Tour | Roundhouse Community Arts Centre Roundabout

Join artist Bobbi Kozinuk in an exploration of her work, Language as a Virus: Queer Isolation Stories. Language as a Virus: Queer Isolation Stories is an interactive multi-platform sonic-art installation from artist Bobbi Kozinuk, featuring publicly broadcasted radio programming around the False Creek area as well as online. **Please bring a personal device that can access FM radioand/or scan QR codes.

Bobbi Kozinuk is a Vancouver-based media artist, curator, and technician. Former Media Director at Western Front, she has also worked on a board level with the Independent Media Arts Alliance (Montreal), Co-op Radio, grunt Gallery, Video In and Pride In Art Society (Vancouver), and has travelled extensively producing workshops on low-powered FM transmission at schools, universities and artist-run centres across Canada. Bobbi is published in Radio Rethink (produced by the Banff Centre for the Arts), Echo Locations (audio art CD produced by Co-op Radio) and Islands of Resistance (New Star Books, Vancouver). Currently, as the Wearables, Interactivity, Prototyping Lab Technician at the Emily Carr University of Art and Design, she teaches electronics and programming. Bobbi has exhibited media installation works in local, national and international contexts including In-Ex ISEA (San Jose), Diffractions, Galleria di Nuova Icona (Venice), and Folly Gallery (Lancaster, UK)

Studio (ob)Sessions

Mon Jul 26 – throughout festival

Digital Discourse | Online

In the connective void that has been this pandemic pause, QAF takes you on a few house calls. We visit with several festival artists in their creation spaces, a digital dialogue to allow a connection from the artist in their corner of space to you and where you call your place

Participating artists:

Carrie Hawks – Jul 26, 7:30pm (ASL)

Falak Vasa – Jul 27, 7:30pm

Alvin Erasga Tolentino – Jul 29, 7:30pm

Lili Robinson – Jul 30, 7:30pm (ASL)

Rachel Kiyo Iwaasa & Evan Ducharme – Aug 1, 7:30pm (ASL)

Eva Wong & Naoko Fukumaru – Aug 3, 7:30pm

Tejal Shah – Aug 3, 8:30pm

Zachery Longboy – Aug 9, 7pm

Ho Tam – Aug 11, 7pm

Screen Greenery

Sat Jul 31 | 9 pm

Media Art Screening | SUM & Sun Wah 268 Keefer Rooftop

Curated by QAF Associate Artistic Director Fergie and Programs Coordinator Ben!  Rooftop screening of edutainment for the pandemic — very queer and rather green short films.

Animation and environmentalism share a more than passing connection for many of us. From celebrated ecocentric blockbusters like Hayao Miyazaki’s Princess Mononoke and Pixar’s WALL-E to popular children’s programming such as Captain Planet and The Lorax, environmental protection is a memorable recurring theme within the medium for multiple generations. As a message, environmentalism presents an approachable moral framework for education and entertainment; the earth is beautiful and sacred and those who wish it harm must be challenged because hurting the planet hurts us all. These programs told us to hold ‘eco-villains’ responsible, and fight for the planet and the little guy. They taught us that we were ‘the little guy’. Both timeless and timely, it is a vital concern to implant in the minds of future generations, and the fact this message is frequently brought to life through the medium of animation feels incidental yet brimming with significance.

Recently animation and queerness have been dancing a similar dance, repeating motions inherited from their environmentalist predecessors. Likewise brought together by radical movements—both figurative and literal—queer animation garners the attention of an accepting audience with a timely message rooted in progressivism and compassion. Viewing such lessons through the lens of queerness, our generation saw that queerness was a fight against the same cruel forces that sought to destroy the earth. That we too could thrive and flower if we removed poisonous villains from the equation. After all, queers are beautiful and sacred and those who wish us harm must be challenged because hurting queers hurts us all. 

Further still, queer animation feels different, more synergistic, more compelling, more substantial. Some have argued that animation has always been queer, exhibiting a methodology compounded by the fluidity of a medium capable of unlimited orientation, by the immeasurable joy of saturated pigments in a hypercolour cornucopia, by the unmistakable touch of the human hand embodied within every frame. It expands us and imbuing animation with joyous queer futures is radical self love, a beautiful statement of queer justice. Queer animators ‘imagine, envision, and describe new ontologies and actively depict them in a way that demands participation’; animation becomes a group exercise, trusting in our ability to question and learn, apply learning, and share said learning. When we embrace the cartoonishly queer, we share in queer liberation.

Featuring films by:

Carrie Hawks
Daniel Sterlin-Altman
Sara Koppel
Sonya Reynolds & Lauren Hortie
Deirdre Keough/IQECO
Al MacKay

Media Nights with VIVO

| July 18 + July 19 | 7 PM

Rupture Probe and Return to Sodom North look at the continuity of themes across the two decades that separate the works. They also illustrate the resilience of shorter experimental forms that emerging queer festivals preferred and rapidly evolving technologies coveted. However, while Vancouver artists in the ‘90s were informed by previous decades, their work suggests an impatience for the new millenium. Today, as artists approach this fifth decade of queer Canadian media art, Rupture Probe also samples works that reflect on the past, applying critical remediation to its radical legacies (Slumberparty 2018) and incisive dismantling of historical oppressions (Framing Agnes, Less Lethal Fetishes).

RUPTURE PROBE

Queer Inquiries & Remediations | July 18 | 7 PM

Recent queer shorts rupture normative notions of gender, pleasure, and activism. Employing remediation and experimental narrative and forms, artists probe transgender and non-binary experience, new erotic signifiers, and inventive strategies for dissent and celebration.

Framing Agnes (Chase Joynt, 2018, 19min)   
Lesbian Hand Gestures (Carol Short, 2011, 3min)   
Less Lethal Fetishes (Thirza Cuthand, 2019, 10min)
Paisa (Dorian Wood, Graham Kolbeins, 2019, 9min)
Slumberparty 2018 (Cait McKinny & Hazel Meyer, 2018, 24min)               

RETURN TO SODOM NORTH

Vancouver Queer Video 1993-2000 | July 19 | 7 PM

At Video In and elsewhere in the ‘90s, a new generation of queer artists were expanding the west coast response to ongoing racialized and gendered suppression of queer bodies, expression,and desire. Experimental narrative, appropriation, and remediation marked video storytelling. Characteristics of abbreviation, play, and provocation portent the queer potential of new platforms and emergent counterpublics that would define the new milennium. The sum of this work speaks to the desire for a more equitable future; one executed with rigour, joy, and delicious wickedness. 

*The title is derived from R.E.A.L. Women’s attempt to ban the 1990 Gay Games, warning B.C. would become Sodom North. The moniker was quickly appropriated for the queer publication, Sodomite Invasion, and Video In’s screening, Sodom North Bash Back.  

Boulevard of Broken Sync (Winston Xin, 1996, 3min)
Helpless Maiden Makes an I Statement (Thirza Cuthand, 1999, 6min)
Defiance (Maureen Bradley, 1993, 6:50min)
Surfer Dick (Wayne Yung, 1997, 3:20min)
Unmapping Desire (Sheila James, 1999, 6:42min)
Transmission (Ivan Coyote, 1998, 7min)  
Water Into Fire (Zachery Longboy, 1994, 10min)
View (Shani Mootoo, 2000, 6min)
Search Engine (Wayne Yung, 1999, 4min)

VIVO Media Arts Centre, incorporated as Satellite Video Exchange Society, is a steward of critical history and an agent for emergent experimental media arts practices. Our programs foster formal and critical approaches to media arts, and reflect the diversity of contemporary technologies and communities that coalesce around new forms of knowledge and creativity. VIVO builds an engaged audience through workshops, production support, distribution, artist residencies, workshops, performances, exhibitions and curatorial and archival research. Through these activities and the extensive resources of Western Canada’s largest repository of media art history, VIVO plays a unique role in facilitating and fostering artistic practices in the region including of queer artists, activists, collectives and organizations.

VIVO’s Crista Dahl Media Library & Archive and Video Out Distribution steward and disseminate a queer media, publications, and histories from the 1960s – present. Many are freely available online at vivomediaarts.com/archive. All materials are accessible in-house. Holdings can be searched through Every Queer Thing (vivomediaarts.com/archive/every-queer-thing).

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