Robert Ladislas Derr is an American visual artist and educator whose practice includes performance art, videos, photographs, and multimedia installations. He has performed and exhibited worldwide, including in Germany, Canada, Ireland, Australia, and Latvia. Derr received his MFA in Photography from the Rhode Island School of Design and BFA in Photography from the Art Academy of Cincinnati. He is a Professor of Art (Photography, Video and Performance) at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s (UNL) School of Art, Art History & Design. Prior to UNL, he taught in the Department of Art at The Ohio State University for twelve years, where he also served as undergraduate chair and photography area coordinator.

Website

Participation

2007

Guillaume Désanges is a curator, art critic, and the founder of Work Method, a Paris based agency for curatorial projects. In 2013, he and Frederic Cherbœuf created the theater play Marcel Duchamp which toured internationally. Between 2001 and 2007, Désanges coordinated the artistic projects of Laboratoires d’Aubervilliers. He has developed several conference performance projects, including The Dark Side of the Form, A History of Performance in 20 minutes, Signs and Wonders, and Vox Artisti his master’s voices. In January 2022, Désanges was named president of the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, and he continues to organize exhibitions, projects and readings in France and internationally.

Website

Participation

2013

See iKatun

Participation

2007

Adriana Disman is a performance artist and writer whose practice centres around modes of resistance in the search for liberation. Their work is minimal, poetic and intense. Since 2010, Disman has been making, thinking, and writing about performance art. Their works have been presented across so-called Canada, the USA, Europe, and India.

Website

Participation

2019

Jackson 2Bears and Tanya Doody have worked together on numerous projects under the auspices of Fort9 and devised the artist collective LiminaL projects, with co-creators Susanna Hood, Tom Kuo and Dan Lavoie, to explore transdisciplinary ideas of collaboration combining movement, live performance, fashion, sculpture, turntablism and digital sound.

Tanya Doody is a multidisciplinary artist working at the intersection of ceramics and performance. Her work revolves around craftivist strategies, performative acts, and poetic gestures as she works within cultural contexts to explore traditional craft media beyond its historical roots.

Website

Jackson 2Bears is a Kanien’kehaka (Mohawk) multimedia installation/performance artist and cultural theorist from Six Nations who is currently based on Treaty 7 Blackfoot Territory in Lethbridge, AB. Since 1999, 2Bears has exhibited his work extensively across Canada in public galleries, museums and artist-run centres, as well as internationally in festivals and exhibitions.

Website

Participation

2017

Margaret Dragu works in video, installation, web/analogue publication, and performance. Spanning relational, durational, interventionist, and community-based practices, she has shown in Canada, USA, and Europe for over 50 years. Her favourite art-making material is still the body despite or because of her bionic status as a grateful owner of two hip replacements. She is a BCRPA Advanced Group Fitness & Yoga Instructor as well as Personal Trainer. She has 40+ years experience working with beginners, athletes, dancers, seniors, and is a Clinical Exercise & Post-Rehabilitation specialist. Margaret was the recipient of the Governor General’s Award for Visual and Media Arts (2012), Éminence Grise (2012) for 7a*11d, and, in 2000, first artist in FADO’s publication series Canadian Performance Art Legends. Dragu has been part of many iterations of LIVE, sometimes performing, and other times participating through her TV channel project, Verb Faru TV.

Website

Participation

2021 2019 2017 2015 2011 2009 2005 1999

DRIL is an artist collective comprised of Dylan McHugh, Rachel White, Ian Prentice and Leisha O’Donohue. All members received their BFA from NSCAD University in 2006-07, and began working as a collective in 2009. With diverse backgrounds in painting, sculpture, ceramics, and printmaking, their collaborative practice has expanded to include installation-based artworks and social events that combine a broad range of media, such as photography, video, sculpture and performance. DRIL is based in Vancouver, BC, on the unceded traditional territory of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and səl̓ilwətaɁɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations.

Website

Participation

2011

Founded in 2007, DTP (Dance Troupe Practice) is a Vancouver-based movement-dance collective that specializes in demolishing all rules of dance, operating within a range of dance experience, from novice to unschooled. DTP works collectively to create site and temporally specific dances influenced by all art practices. DTP incorporates dance, art, music, performance, and a range of knowledge from intuitive to academic. The collective has performed in a variety of dance and performance centered festivals including Square Waves Festival, Dancing On the Edge Festival, 12 Min Max, W2, and Low Lives 4 International Festival of Live Networked Performances.

Participation

2009

Jean Dupuy was an interdisciplinary artist who worked in conceptual and performance art, painting, installation, sculpture, and video art. He is noted as a pioneer for combining art and technology early on in his work. In the 1970s he curated many performance art events involving different artists from New York’s avant-garde, Fluxus, and neo-dada scenes. Dupuy started his career as a painter, but in 1967 – 1968 destroyed most of his works by throwing them into the Seine. On moving to New York he worked in collaboration with artists such as George Maciunas, Nam June Paik, Claes Oldenburg, Charlemagne Palestine, Carolee Schneemann, Joan Jonas, Richard Serra, Gordon Matta-Clark, Robert Filliou, Charles Dreyfus, Laurie Anderson, Philip Glass, and Charlotte Moorman.

Participation

2011

Born in Tehran, Iran, Saghi Ehteshamzadeh is a queer interdisciplinary Vancouver-based artist/curator whose practice encompasses video art, live visual performances, new media, and art installations. Holding a Bachelor of Cinema Studies from the Art University of Tehran and graduating from Capilano University’s Arts and Entertainment Management Program in North Vancouver, Saghi’s diverse artistic background informs their creative endeavours. Ehteshamzadeh’s art practice draws inspiration from their personal experiences navigating disabilities and advocating for social justice, particularly within Iran and the ongoing struggle for wxmen’s equality. Their video practice is characterized by a unique blend of compressed, low-resolution imagery and pixel manipulation, and their live visuals feature a fusion of exotic retro videos alongside digital scans of nature and urban environments. Beyond their artistic pursuits, Saghi has held positions such as the Exhibitions Manager at North Van Arts and Associate Curator at the Centre of International Contemporary Art (CICA) in Vancouver and currently serves as the Co-chair at VIVO Media Arts Centre’s board of directors.

Website

Participation

2025

Tara Ernst is a filmmaker and media artist from Winnipeg, AB. She received a BFA in Film Production from Concordia University and an MFA in Documentary Media from Ryerson University, where she was awarded The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Scholarship Grant. Ernst has exhibited her work across Canada including The World Film Festival and Festival Présence Autochtone (First Peoples Festival) in Montréal, and internationally at The Margaret Mead Film Festival and The International Documentary Festival Amsterdam. She has participated in artist residencies at La Escuela Internacional de Cine in Cuba and with Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design while filming in Bangladesh and India.

Esther Ferrer’s work spans four decades of international avant-garde activity. Primarily known for her work in performance, Ferrer’s work can be thought of as a particular type of minimalism that integrates rigour, humor, diversion, and absurdity. She has exhibited extensively globally and was one of two artists to represent Spain at the Venice Biennale in 1999. She is the recipient of the Premio Nacional de Artes Plásticas (2008), the Gure Artea Prize from the Basque Government (2012), the MAV (Mujeres en las Artes Visuales) Prize (2012), and the Price Marie Claire et Velazquez Prize (2014). LIVE 2009 was Ferrer’s first performance in Vancouver.

Website

Participation

2009

See Turner Prize*

Participation

2011 2009

Born in the Black Forest in Germany, Jürgen Fritz studied theatre and the science of music before working as a theater director, curator and actor. His largely site-specific approach to artistic work is characterized by concentration and precision, using simple materials to create “performative images”. Fritz is co-founder and co-organizer of the Festival Platform for Young Performance Artists in the Kunstfabrik am Flutgraben, Berlin, and the International Summer Camp at Castle Bröllin/Brandenburg. His pedagogical approach in these workshops is to negotiate presence and question borders, both social and gendered, thereby creating challenging situations and possibilities in the art of workshop participants. Fritz is also co-founder of Black Market International, a group who performed in the early iterations of LIVE, and has worked with the International Cooperation of Performance Artists since 1985. He has presented his performances across Europe, as well as in the US, Canada, Mexico, Asia and Australia. Fritz has lived in Hildesheim, Germany, since 2005, where he is co-founder of the International Performance Association.

Website

Participation

2013

Guillaume Désanges is a curator, art critic, and the founder of Work Method, a Paris based agency for curatorial projects. In 2013, he and Frederic Cherbœuf created the theater play Marcel Duchamp which toured internationally. Between 2001 and 2007, Désanges coordinated the artistic projects of Laboratoires d’Aubervilliers. He has developed several conference performance projects, including The Dark Side of the Form, A History of Performance in 20 minutes, Signs and Wonders, and Vox Artisti his master’s voices. In January 2022, Désanges was named president of the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, and he continues to organize exhibitions, projects and readings in France and internationally.

Website

Participation

2021

Saul Garcia-Lopez is a performance artist, radical director and scholar. Saul explores the pedagogical intersections of acting, performance theory and practice, indigenous strategies of performance, ethnicity, gender, post-coloniality, indigeneity, and chicano and border art. Based in both the both body and text, Garcia-Lopez’s artistic work is multidisciplinary with an overarching aim to dislocate/challenge assumptions of cultural representations by embodying simultaneous and contradictory identities and actions. Saul is a Core Member of La Pocha Nostra.

Participation

2015

Soressa Gardner is vocalist, laptop composer/improviser, and sometimes songwriter based in Victoria, BC. Gardner brings vibrancy and humour to her work through electronic manipulations, sound-worlds, and carefully crafted audio processing techniques. Soressa holds a music degree from Vancouver Community College. She performs with VEE (Vancouver Electronic Ensemble) and is a member of Frame Drag Trio (with Ross Birdwise and Joe Rzemieniak), and DB Boyco’s Voice Over Mind improvising choir. Gardner has played a number of local sound and dance festivals and her compositions have obtained national and international recognition.

Website

Participation

2009

Since the late 1990s, Geneviève et Matthieu have been creating a strident universe in which musical happenings and performance installations casually collide through pictorial, sculptural and manipulable works. Based in Rouyn Noranda, QC, the duo is inspired by art and life to push the boundaries of the mediums they employ. They are active in their community through their involvement with L’Écart, an artist-run contemporary arts center, and as the directors of the Rouyn-Noranda Performing Arts Biennial.

Participation

2017

See Second Front

Participation

2007

Snežana Golubović is an artist and writer. Born in former Yugoslavia, she moved to Germany in 1992 and has worked independently as an actress / performer. From 2003 to 2007 she was a member of the Independent Performance Group (I.P.G.), which was founded and led by Marina Abramović. Since 2013 she has been a co-founder and member of the performance art trio TRaG (Trojan, Reiser and Golubović). Her works have been shown internationally at, among others: Van Gogh Museum (Amsterdam), Festival d’Avignon, Venice Biennale, as well as at numerous exhibitions and performance art festivals in Europe, Asia, North and South America. She is Professor for Performative Cultural Education at the Frankfurt University of Applied Sciences.

Website

Participation

2021 2013

Guillermo Gómez-Peña is a performance artist, writer, activist, radical pedagogue and director of the performance troupe La Pocha Nostra. Born in Mexico City, he moved to the US in 1978. His performance work, and nearly two dozen books, have contributed to debates on cultural diversity, border culture and US-Mexico relations. His art work has been presented at over eight hundred venues across the US, Canada, Latin America, Europe, Russia, South Africa and Australia. A MacArthur Fellow, Bessie and American Book Award winner, Gómez-Peña is a regular contributor for newspapers and magazines in the US, Mexico, and Europe and a contributing editor to The Drama Review (NYU-MIT). He is currently a Patron for the London-based Live Art Development Agency, and a Senior Fellow in the Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics.

Website

Participation

2015

Arti Grabowski is a highly appreciated and established performance artist from Krakow, Poland. He graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow, where he obtained a Diploma (MA) with distinction of the Multimedia Department of Professor Antoni Porczak. Grabowski also holds a degree of the Universidad Castilla la Mancha in Cuenca, Spain. He has been a teaching assistant at the Department of Intermedia Studio of Performance Art, run by Professor Artur Tajber. Over the years, Arti has realized hundreds of performance actions – always strong, full of energy and humour, as well as thoughtful criticism. His work has been included in many festivals across Europe, Asia, North and South America.

Participation

2011

Curtis Grahauer is a multimedia artist whose works largely centre photography and film. Grahauer holds an MFA in Interdisciplinary Studies from Simon Fraser University (2015). His recent solo exhibitions include As far upriver as you can go before having to switch to a pole at ODD Gallery in Dawson City (2018), A Dark Shape on the Horizon at the Arts Council of New Westminster (2016), and Floodplain at Dynamo Arts Association in Vancouver (2015). In 2016, he was shortlisted for the The Lind Prize in photography and presented his short film Tidal Pool for Platforms: Coastal City, a public art project for the City of Vancouver. He has participated in residencies in Dawson City, Reykjavik and Sointula. He lives in Nanaimo, BC.

Website

Participation

2011

Francisco-Fernando Granados is an artist whose multidisciplinary critical practice spans performance, installation, cultural theory, digital media, public art, and community-based projects. He has presented work in galleries, museums, theatres, artist-run centres and non-traditional sites since 2005, including the Art Gallery of Ontario, Mercer Union, Art Gallery of York University, Vancouver Art Gallery, LIVE Biennale, Hessel Museum of Art (NY), Defibrillator Gallery (Chicago), Voices Breaking Boundaries (Houston), Ex Teresa Arte Actual (Mexico City), Kulturhuset (Stockholm), and Theatre Academy at the University of the Arts (Helsinki). He has curated exhibitions, performance art programs, and screenings across the country and, as a member of the 7a*11d International Performance Festival Collective, he has been involved in the organization of the largest performance art festival in Canada since 2012. His writing has been published in exhibition catalogues, magazines, art journals, online platforms and books including FUSE, KAPSULA, Canadian Theatre Review, and PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art. He completed a Masters of Visual Studies at the University of Toronto (2012), and is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Art at OCAD University.

Website

Participation

2011 2009 2007

Based on the West Coast of BC, Christine Grimes is an artist concerned with unmediated social interactions and exploring how individual agency can impact the significance of public space.

Participation

2007

Fausto Grossi was born in Italy in 1954. He grew up around magazines, newspapers, comics in the family newsstand, in Arce, a village in the countryside of Ciociaria between Rome and Naples, Italy. Since 1992, Fausto has lived in Bilbao, Spain, with his whole family. There he works as “pizzaiolo” and “pastaio” in his family shop, Pasta y Pizza Grossi, which shares a place with Spazio Grossi.This shop is a place of gathering devoted to art and culture, including collaborations with ex!poesía (triennial of experimental poetry of Basque Country) and M.E.M. Festival. Fausto’s art practice includes cooking, sharing and making evident things of daily life that normally go unnoticed.

Website

Participation

2021 2015

See Le Brothers

Participation

2015

Kevin Hamilton is an artist and researcher based in Champaign, USA. His work largely focuses in domains of academic research. Hamilton’s long-term collaborative projects include historical and theoretical work on the history of interface representations in mediated violence, with a special emphasis on government-produced films related to nuclear weapons development. He is a professor in the School of Art and Design at the University of Illinois.

Participation

2007

See Turner Prize*

Participation

2011 2009

See Second Front

Participation

2007