Nadia Mancer is a French artist and co-founder of Infr’Action, the international festival of Art Performance in Sète, France. She has presented her work nationally and internationally, including in Sweden, Italy, and Singapore. Mancer often uses everyday items and food as subjects and material in her performances and installations which are created spontaneously and intuitively. Nadia’s practice frequently explores socio-political questions around neo-colonialism and the systemic repression of minority cultures and genders.

Participation

2009

Donato Mancini is a Canadian poet and artist whose practice focuses mainly on bookworks, text-based visual art, poetry, and cultural criticism. His books include Ligatures (2005) and Æthel (2007), Buffet World (2011), Fact ‘n’ Value (2011), Loitersack (2014), and Same Diff (2017) which was a finalist for the 2018 Griffin Prize. Mancini’s collaborative visual works have been exhibited in Canada, the United States, Scandinavia, and Cuba.

Gabriel Saloman Mindel works as an artist, writer, curator, and composer. Mindel holds an MFA from Simon Fraser University School for the Contemporary Arts and is completing a PhD in the History of Consciousness Department at the University of California Santa Cruz. His work focuses on the production of visual artworks from time-based phenomena such as sound composition, dance, social practices, and protest. Saloman has been performing experimental, conceptual, and freely improvised music for over 20 years. He is best known for his work as half of Yellow Swans, a Portland based noise group that released over 50 recordings and toured internationally between 2001-2008, and have recently began playing shows again as of 2023. His solo performances, under the name Gabriel Saloman, are investigations into temporal abstractions, conceptual sound and gestural noise. Often his compositions stem from collaborations with choreographers such as The Contingency Plan, Daisy Karen Thompson, Lisa Gelly Martin, Rob Kitsos, and Vanessa Goodman.

Website

Participation

2013

Brady Ciel Marks is a computational artist from Cape Town (Khoisan), South Africa, working primarily in audiovisual practices, new media, and kinect art. Marks’ work often thematically engages with the fallibility and promise of technology, perspectives of virtual/actual and ecological place, and narratives of self orientation in the sciences. Concerned with how we live our lives in the face of technological encroachment, Brady experiments with media configurations that explore the inbetween of technological fetishism and dystopian fantasies. Calling herself a Cultural Prototyper, Brady provides tools for technological play through her work as an artist, educator, and DJ. She obtained an undergraduate degree in Computer Science from the University of Cape Town, South Africa, and a Masters in Interactive Arts from Simon Fraser University in Vancouver. As a graduate of Simon Fraser University taught by faculty including original members of the World Soundscape Project (WSP), and as a member of the Soundscape Collective at Vancouver Co-operative Radio, Marks is an inheritor of the WSP legacy of Acoustic Ecology. In addition to DJ-ing Queer Dance Music and frequently hosting the Soundscape Show on Co-op Radio, she is a member of the Vancouver Electronic Ensemble, and a curator of the Coda series of live coding events. Brady is based in Vancouver, on unceded, traditional and ancestral xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səl̓ilw̓ətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) territories.

Website

Participation

2009 2005

Tanya Mars is a performance and video artist who has been involved in the Canadian art scene since 1973. Her work is often characterized as visually rich layers of spectacular, satirical feminist imagery. Mars has also been an active member of arts organizations since the early 70’s. She was a founding member and director of Powerhouse Gallery (La Centrale) in Montréal, the editor of Parallelogramme magazine for 13 years, and very active in ANNPAC (the Association of National Non-Profit Artist-run Centres) for 15 years. She has performed widely across Canada, and internationally, including in Svalbard, Chile, Mexico City, Sweden, Denmark, France, China, Finland, and the US. Mars is co-editor, with Johanna Householder, of Caught in the Act: an anthology of performance art by Canadian women (2004), and More Caught in the Act (2016), both published by YYZ books. She was a member of the 7a*11d in Toronto from 1998-2022. In 2004, Mars was named Artist of the Year for the Untitled Arts Awards in Toronto. She is the recipient of a 2008 Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts and was an International Artist in Residence at La Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris the same year. Mars has recently retired from teaching at the University of Toronto Scarborough after 25 years and currently lives off-grid in Middle Ohio, NS. She has one daughter and 3 grandsons.

Participation

2007 1999

Lauren Marsden is a Canadian filmmaker and media artist living in Vancouver, BC. Her practice spans a wide range of interests including character performances, experiments in time travel, interventions into press photography, and a fascination with cinematic conventions. Her performances place unreliable narrators in landscapes or on the stage, resulting in the production of text, video, photography, and ephemera as documentation. Using humour and absurdity, Marsden is known for staging performative scenarios that subvert the normalcy of public rituals. She received her MFA from the California College of the Arts (2010) and has exhibited her work in Canada, Italy and the United States. TABANCA (2022), Marsden’s award winning narrative short film, has screened at 30 festivals around the world, including BFI Flare London, Inside Out Toronto, and Short Shorts in Japan.

Website

Participation

2013

Guadalupe Martinez is an artist and educator making works that reflect on what she’s defined as "sensorial aesthetics" and "expansive pedagogies." Born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, she immigrated to Vancouver in 2008, where she lives and works—conscious of her presence on the unceded territories of the xwməθkwəy̓ əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and səl̓ílwətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) peoples. Guadalupe’s work explores the capacity for creative processes to generate forms of wisdom and world-making. Her ongoing project CUERPO collective-body is a fluid group of emerging artists and mentors who share knowledge, movement and touch to create a practice where embodied learning transforms conventional approaches to art production and education. Martinez’ work often takes the form of installation, performance and collaborative research with a deep consideration for her personal and inherited histories. She has presented work in Canada, the US, Italy, Mexico and Argentina.

Website

Participation

2021 2011

James Maxwell is a composer focusing on concert music, as well as music for contemporary dance, theatre, film, and media. He has worked collaboratively with choreographers Claire French, Rachel Meyer, Joe Laughlin, Simone Orlando, and Helen Walkley, theatre artists Mallory Catlett, Alex Ferguson, and Caleb Johnson, filmmakers Alex Williams and Alison Beda, and visual artists Kathleen Ritter and Hadley+Maxwell. Maxwell is also a technologist in the field of musical creativity.

Website

Participation

2009

Samra Mayanja is an artist and writer based in London, England. Her practice, which spans various mediums, is unified by an obsession with how life speaks poetry. Her work is always seeking form, to move beyond strictures and to be lost and free. In her work, the voice functions as the search party for the body that she once forgot somewhere over there. Her desire to improvise, to create unfiltered, lucid and meandering utterances, underpins her writing, pedagogy, performance, installation and film works.

Website

Participation

2023

See DRIL

Participation

2011

Kevin McKenzie is a Cree/Métis artist from Regina, SK. He is a descendent of the O’Soup family from the Cowessess First Nation of Saskatchewan. Throughout his career, McKenzie has participated numerous residencies, including at the Banff Centre for the Arts, the Indian Art Centre in Ottawa, Sâkêwêwak First Nations Artist Collective, and the Department of Visual Arts at the University of Regina. His artwork is included in the collections of the National Gallery of Canada, the MacKenzie Art Gallery, the Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada Art Gallery, Manitoba Hydro Corporation, First Nations University of Canada, Comox Valley Art Gallery, and the Saskatchewan Arts Board. McKenzie works as an assistant professor and faculty member in the IWGI Department of Visual Art at Brandon University, Brandon, MB.

Participation

2009

Graham Meisner is an interdisciplinary artist based on the unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səl̓ilw̓ətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) people in Vancouver, BC.

Participation

2009

Daniel F. Menche is an experimental musician, sound artist, and photographer from Portland, USA. Menche’s work straddles the boundaries of noise, ritual, and dark ambient, often slipping into other related styles.

Website

Participation

2007

Christian Messier lives and works in Montréal, QC, where he divides his time between his artistic practice and teaching visual arts at Cégep Édouard-Montpetit. Since the early 2000s, he has presented performances at several festivals in Canada and in more than a dozen countries. At the same time his painting practice, which has grown in recent years, has been presented in several venues, including L’Œil de Poisson (Quebec City), Regart (Lévis), Verticale (Laval), L’Écart (Rouyn-Noranda), Clark (Montreal), the UQAC gallery l’Œuvre de l’autre (Saguenay), the Maison de la culture (Longueuil), the Dieppe Arts and Culture Center (New Brunswick), and Woodbury University (California).

Website

Participation

2011

Michèle Ceballos Michot is an accomplished dancer, choreographer, artistic director, educator, visual and performance artist of American and Colombian ancestry. Michot has a performance history which includes numerous international ballet companies, dance and performance art productions, including National Academy of Ballet & Theatre Arts, American Ballet Theatre School, Joffrey Ballet School, Royal Ballet School, Institute Paliashvili in Tbilisi, Chicago Ballet, Deutsche Oper Am Rhein, Ballet Hispanico of New York, and Ballet Nacional de Colombia. Since 1994, Michèle‘s work with La Pocha Nostra has dealt with identity, place, gender politics and the aging body.

Participation

2015

Elizabeth Milton is a mixed European settler artist of Croatian and British ancestry who lives on the unceded territories of the xwməθkwəy̓ əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and səl̓ílwətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) peoples in Vancouver, BC. Her media and performance-based practice utilizes absurdist character-play and hyperbolic expressivity to explore identity, affect and the radical potential of comedic performativity. Involving a range of participants, from family members to opera singers, her interdisciplinary and collaborative works aim to critically investigate the visual language and power structures of amateur spectacle. Her work has been exhibited and performed across Canada, the United States and Europe. She is a faculty member in the Department of Fine Arts at Langara College where she instructs studio courses in Media and Performance.

Website

Participation

2023 2011

See Instant Coffee

Participation

2009

Peter Morin is a grandson of Tahltan Ancestor Artists. Morin’s artistic offerings can be organized around four themes: articulating Land/Knowing, articulating Indigenous Grief/Loss, articulating Community Knowing, and understanding the Creative Agency/Power of the Indigenous body. The work takes place in galleries, in community, in collaboration and on the land, and is informed by dreams, Ancestors, Family members, and performance art as a research methodology. Morin has a BFA from Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design (2001) and a MFA from the University of British Columbia-Okanagan (2010). Morin was longlisted for the Brink (2013) and Sobey Awards (2014), and in 2016, Morin received the Hnatyshyn Foundation Award for Outstanding Achievement by a Canadian Mid-Career Artist. Morin currently holds a tenured appointment in the Faculty of Arts at the Ontario College of Art and Design University (Toronto), and is the Graduate Program Director of the Interdisciplinary Master’s in Art, Media and Design program at OCAD.

Participation

2021 2009

Michael Morris was a multimedia artist and curator based in Victoria, BC. With an early focus on abstract painting and printmaking, Morris’s practice broadened to include collaborative work which spanned film, photography, video, installation, and performance. Also known as Miss General Idea, Marcel Dot, and Marcel Idea, Morris was a co-founder and co-director of Western Front, and the co-founder of Image Bank (now the Morris/Trasov Archive), an artists’ network for correspondence art, exchange, and collaborative events. In Morris’ words: "My professional career covers over 40 years. I have worked individually and collaboratively in numerous ways but always with the aim of contributing work that is relevant to the ongoing discourse of the role of art practice in relation to culture and society. I like to think of the artist’s role as that of cultural ecologist."

Vincent Trasov is a painter, video, and performance artist based in Berlin, Germany, and Vancouver, BC. Also known as Mr. Peanut, Marquis d’Arachide, and Vincent Blue Pants, Trasov’s work is often collaborative and media based. Alongside Michael Morris, he was a co-founder of Image Bank (now the Morris/Trasov Archive), and one of the co-founders and co-directors of Western Front. In Trasov’s words: "I am informed and intimate with, and contribute to, the cultural environment at a time when history is in upheaval. I am continually asking how society functions and why? My work communicates on the personal and communal level, and provokes discourse in the global dialogue."

Participation

2007

Mineki Murata is an artist based in Maebashi, Gunma, Japan. Murata’ s works mainly consist of drawing performances, hallmarked by his energetic physical actions, as well as installations of the objects which result from those performances. Murata’ s practice is guided by his spontaneous movements and the etymological interpretation of the Japanese word kaku, which brings together of four different meanings: writing (kaku: 書) his consciousness, drawing (kaku: 描) results, scratching (kaku: 掻) actions, and lacking (kaku: 欠く) hidden potentials. Murata creates his works with his eyes closed, fully concentrating his physical sensation to (with)draw a picture on his eyelids and create a vision inside him.

Website

Participation

2019

Heidi Nagtegaal is an artist, writer, and facilitator based in Vancouver, BC. Nagtegaal focuses on care, embodiment, consent, and both trauma- and queer-informed approaches in their work which bridges social practice, performance, sculpture and installation. Their Headbanding and Braceleting practice (2004 – ) has become popular nationally. Nagtegaal is also the founder of Hammock Residency, an organization that focuses on inclusive models of art making.

Participation

2009

Monica Narula formed Raqs Media Collective in 1992, along with Jeebesh Bagchi and Shuddhabrata Sengupta. The word “raqs” in several languages denotes an intensification of awareness and presence attained by whirling, turning, being in a state of revolution. Raqs Media Collective take this sense to mean ‘kinetic contemplation’ and a restless and energetic entanglement with the world, and with time. Based in Delhi, India, Raqs practices across several media including installation, sculpture, video, performance, text, lexica and curation. In 2001, they co-founded the Sarai program at CSDS New Delhi and ran it for a decade, where they also edited the Sarai Reader series. They have shown and curated extensively globally, including the Shanghai Biennale (2016), and Yokohama Triennale (2020).

Website

Participation

2021

The National Bitter Melon Council (NBMC) is an organization run by an artist collective that is devoted to the cultivation of a vibrant, diverse community through the promotion and distribution of Bitter Melon. Supporting the use of Bitter Melon for its myriad health benefits and culinary possibilities, the NBMC celebrates this underappreciated fruit through creative and stimulating food-focused projects instigating situations that, through bitterness, create an alternative basis for community. As an artist collective and social experiment, NBMC uses the form and concept of performance art as a research method and model for community development. The members are Hiroko Kikuchi, Jeremy Liu, and Andi Sutton, with the collaboration of Misa Saburi from 2008 to 2011.

Participation

2007

Guadalupe Neves is a multimedia artist and performer with a background in philosophy and art. She has presented her work in festivals in Mexico, Chile, Finland, Japan, Italy, France, Uruguay, and Argentina. She has organized international performance festivals including In Transit (En tránsito) in the Japanese-Argentine Performance Exchange, and Mutaciones, Tribute to Portillos. Speaking about her work Neves explains: “I am interested in using my own body as a possibility to explore aspects of existence which words are too clumsy to thread. I am trying to capture the essence of a situation, a state of mind."

Participation

2013

"I am a dyslexic artist originally from Dublin and based in Belfast since 1995. My work has been presented in Asia, Canada, Europe, Eastern Europe, Middle East, North and South America. My performance practice is nomadic and patterns of travel have broadened my cultural perceptions and influenced my artistic sensibilities regarding time and space. I am also highly active in the Belfast performance art scene working with local organisations to foster performance art activity and support emerging artists in my community. The critical and artistic core of my solo work explores identity through immediate and mediated encounters with territory and the territorial. I have also developed an international curatorial practice that enables exchange between local and international artists. I am interested in creating collaborative experiences in which artists can develop a current evaluation of performance art history parallel to the cultivation of a cultural common ground within the context of visual and live art praxis." – Sinéad O’Donnell (2011)

Website

Participation

2011

See DRIL

Participation

2011

Dr. Paul O’Neill is an Irish curator, artist, writer, educator, and the Artistic Director of PUBLICS (2017 – ); a curatorial agency and event space with a dedicated library, and reading room in Helsinki. Between 2013-17, he was Director of the Graduate Program at the Center for Curatorial Studies (CCS), Bard College, New York. Paul is widely regarded as one of the foremost research-oriented curators, and leading scholar of curatorial practice, public art and exhibition histories. Paul has held numerous curatorial and research positions over the last twenty years and has taught on many curatorial and visual arts programs in Europe, the USA, Asia and the UK. Paul has co-curated more than sixty curatorial projects across the world including amongst others the exhibition: We are the (Epi)center, P! Gallery (New York, 2016), and the multifaceted We are the Center for Curatorial Studies for the Hessel Museum, Bard College (2016-17).

Participation

2021

Francis O’Shaughnessy is an artist who lives and works in Montréal, QC. His practice centres a process he developed called "performative haiku," an artistic approach combining love and performance art. Through his work, O’Shaughnessy attempts to present poetic images that express the essence of an inner experience: an act of faith in love and an ongoing endeavour to transmit positive energy and convey joy. For him, performance art is an occasion for self-discovery. Francis holds a PhD in art studies and practices from the Université du Québec à Montréal, and has exhibited work across Canada and internationally.

Website

Participation

2015

Joshua Ongcol is an artist based on the unceded territories of the xwməθkwəy̓ əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and səl̓ílwətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) peoples in Vancouver, BC. In his work, Ongcol is interested in the ways tenderness manifests in the body and its receptivity to deep connection, wisdom and transformation. He is interested in methods of communication that go beyond the mediums of art and language. Ongcol aims to unravel his narrative as part of the Filipnx diaspora; specifically addressing intergenerational exchange, lineages of resilience, the concepts of “home” and “KAPWA,” queerness and reclaiming spirituality.

Participation

2023

Leslie Mark Overland is a musician based in Calgary, AB. Overland began streaming music in the early 1990s and has played in a number of projects and bands including Lucid 44, 2000 wears, and GutterAwl. Mainly recording on 4-track cassette, Overland’s practice is geared more towards meeting other artists and traveling than touring and performing. Under Lucid 44, Overland has released four albums, including Body Harms Sounds (2009) and Sunday at Rosie’s (2019).

Participation

2009

Carmen Papalia is a social practice artist who uses organizing strategies and improvisation to address his access to public space, the art institution, and visual culture. His work, which takes forms ranging from collaborative performance to public intervention, is an effort to unlearn visual primacy and resist support options that promote ableist concepts of normalcy. Papalia’s walks, workshops, and interventions are an opportunity to model new standards and practices in the area of accessibility. He approaches the museum as a colonial enterprise that has benefited from a tradition of cultural violence; a platform that contains valuable cultural resources, which is marginalizing by design. Papalia is based in Vancouver, BC.

Participation

2019