See Instant Coffee

Participation

2009

Theo Pelmus is a performance artist. Pelmus describes his practice as "creating elaborate worlds through shadow play of performative objects and video-projections. Similar to a live VJ-ing using objects, video and sound to create one single video image through performance."

Kris Snowbird is a performance artist and filmmaker of Cree/Ojibwe descent. Snowbird articulates "my process of work can be described as a continuous questioning and understanding of the way in which my tradition as a First Nation woman influences the way I conceptualize art. One pivotal aspect of the work I am creating is the traditional labor of beading and how it can be applied to different mediums of art. I am researching these approaches though film, photography, and performance. I am interested in art as a process of making a difference in the understanding of the culture I come from, with its stories, traditions, and the historical and personal trauma."

Participation

2017

Suvi Parrilla is an immersive artist, most known for her video and music installations. In her artistic practice, Suvi often explores cultural identities, social status, fetishism, and connection to nature. Focusing mainly on performance and video, Suvi’s practice often combines many different elements often through media rich, psychedelic visuals. Her work has seen internationally in Finland, Spain, Sweden, Germany, Great Britain, Mexico, Turkey, Russia, and Canada.

Website

Participation

2011

Kyra Philbert is a queer performance artist focused on failing femininities. Based in Vancouver, BC, on the unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and səl̓ilwətaɁɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations, Kyra creates ephemeral experimental works designed to be interactive and experienced exactly once. Her performances regularly incorporate critical history about Canadian Blackness and/or dessert (lately cake). During her Master of Science in Nursing degree, Kyra developed Nurse Angélique and was awarded a University of British Columbia Public Humanities Grant to showcase the performance. Her performances have been endured at Emily Carr University of Art and Design, SUM Gallery, and York University.

Website

Participation

2025

Sierra Philbert is a musical theatre performer, deviser, and clown. Her work spans across all genres and forms but always centers around her favourite muse – herself! Born and raised in Toronto, ON, Sierra moved to the United Kingdom to continue her education at The Royal Conservatoire of Scotland and is now based in London, England. She has collaborated on/performed in shows at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Toronto Fringe, Switch Festival, and Lambeth Fringe.

Participation

2025

Praba Pilar is a diasporic Colombian artist and scholar who creates interventionist projects through performance art, street theatre, electronic installations, digital works, video, writing and activism. Her projects including BOT I, Church of Nano Bio Info Cogno, Cyborg Soap Opera, Nano Sutra of Mathturbation, and Enigma Symbiotica have traveled widely in all kinds of spaces around the world, from the streets to galleries and museums.

Website

Participation

2017

Robin Poitras is a prolific dance and performance artist based in Saskatchewan. Actively engaged in contemporary dance practice since the early 80’s, Robin co-founded New Dance Horizons in 1986 where she continues to act as Artistic Director. With an interest in research into diverse fields of artistic and somatic practice, Poitras has developed a unique interdisciplinary approach. Her works have been presented across Canada, as well an internationally in Spain, France, Germany, Mongolia, and Mexico. Robin is a recipient of the 2022 Queen Elizabeth II Platinum Jubilee Medal, 2021 recipient of the Order of Canada, 2016 Lieutenant Governor’s Lifetime Achievement Award, the 2006 Mayor’s Awards for Business & The Arts’ Lifetime Achievement Award, and the 2004 Women of Distinction Award for the Arts.

Participation

2007

Jacques van Poppel is a Dutch artist working mainly in performance. Van Poppel started his career as a performer in music, playing electric violin in various, largely experimental, music-groups such as Electric Paranoid Era, Lazarus and Blue Sound. Since 1981, he has created radical narratives based on working with ordinary objects related to his "streetwise" personal life and individuality. Known for his tendency to invent situations which break preconceived assumptions of art, Jacques welcomes an intimacy with his audiences. Van Poppel often collaborates with other artists and has been a member of Black Market International since 1986. With German artist Boris Nieslony he forms Traum-Duo in der Auszeit. Dutch trombone-player, Wolter Wierbos, is also a regular partner in his performances. Van Poppel also occasionally works as a guest teacher at various art schools and universities, doing workshops with young art students.

Participation

2009

Brian Postalian (Բրայն Փոսթալյան) is an arts administrator, educator, and creator born and raised in Toronto, ON, by way of Armenia, Ireland, Wales, and the Czech Republic, currently living in Vancouver, BC. Brian makes work that reconsiders how we share space together in communal places. His work is highly collaborative and crosses disciplines from creation, direction, performance, and medium. Brian’s work has been featured on “Best of the Year” lists, received Outstanding Direction (NOW Magazine), Best Production (SummerWorks, 2017), nomination for Outstanding Direction (My Entertainment World), and continues to make collaborative work that redefines what we think of as theatre. He completed a Master of Fine Arts at Simon Fraser University’s School for the Contemporary Arts in Theatre Game Design and Interdisciplinary Performance Studies.

Website

Participation

2021

See DRIL

Participation

2011

Lisa Prentice is an artist, writer and bodyworker living on xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and səl̓ilwətaɁɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) territories, colonially known as Vancouver, BC. A graduate of Emily Carr College of Art and Design, Lisa was for many years exclusively a visual artist, sitting on the board of the OR Gallery Society and actively participating in the Vancouver art community. She works as a Craniosacral therapist and somatic practitioner and in that role has designed and led community wellness projects for the Purple Thistle project and Gallery Gachet. Lisa also writes on art and somatic topics, most recently for BlackFlash Magazine in 2021, as well as a catalogue essay for the Richmond Art Gallery in 2023.

Participation

2025

"I live in Victoria on Vancouver Island where I teach post-secondary courses in time-based art (performance, video and film), as well as sculpture, at Camosun College. My body of work includes performance pieces, performative videos, video installations, site-specific installations and short films. I merge my parallel backgrounds in visual arts and modern dance to explore non-verbal physical and gestural language as tools of communication and intervention. I am interested in creating liminal spaces through performance; interstices within which an event can move and shift in unexpected patterns of communication. My performances display my ongoing exploration of site-specific street actions, interventions, and interactive, collaborative and durational works. Interactivity for me has its source in my desire for viewers to actively contribute to the outcome of a performance, to actively experience the way in which their presence alters the relationships of objects or people to one another and to the site. I am also involved with Open Action, a group of Victoria artists who do monthly performances in public sites." – Judith Price (2011)

Participation

2011 2003

Born in Guatemala City, Guatemala, Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa is an interdisciplinary artist, working in drawing, video, sculpture, and performance. His work and research delves into poetry, folklorism, sexuality, and magical practises, as well as the experiences of refugees and the welfare of children in war through the lens of his own displacement during and following Guatemala’s civil war of 1960–96. Ramírez-Figueroa obtained a BFA from Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design (2006) and an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2008), and was a postgraduate researcher at Jan Van Eyck Academie, Maastricht, the Netherlands (2013). He has performed and exhibited extensively across North and Latin America, Europe and Asia, as well as recent solo exhibitions in Casa America, Madrid (2011); Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart, Germany (2011); Gasworks, London (2015); and CAPC musée d’art contemporain, Bordeaux (2017). Nafus performed at LIVE Biennale events for over a decade.

Participation

2011 2009 2007 2003 2001

Sal Randolph is a multimedia artist living in New York, USA. Randolph is known for producing independent art projects involving gift economies and social architectures. She is the creator of Opsound, a site for the open exchange of music and sound, and Free Press, which lead to an open access publishing house at Röda Sten Contemporary Art Space (Göteborg, Sweden). These days, Sal’s work often takes the form of multimedia performance, experimental language, publishing, and the creation of social spaces.

Website

Participation

2007

See iKatun

Participation

2007

Joseph Ravens is a performance artist, educator, and curator who has presented work throughout Asia, Europe, South America, and the United States. He studied at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam, Netherlands, and is a graduate of The School of the Art Institute of Chicago with a Masters of Fine Art in Performance. Among his accomplishments, Ravens was included in the 20th Bienal Internacional de Curitiba (Brazil, 2013), Venice International Performance Art Week (2012), and Intrude: Art and Life 366 at Zendai MoMA (China, 2008). Ravens is the co-founder and Director of the annual Rapid Pulse International Performance Art Festival, and the founder and Director of Defibrillator Gallery, a non-profit arts organization with a focus on performance art.

Website

Participation

2015

Skeena Reece is a Tsimshian/Gitksan/Cree artist based on the West Coast of BC. Her multi-disciplinary practice includes performance art, spoken word, humour, “sacred clowning”, writing, singing, songwriting, video, and visual art. Reece has been a long standing supporter of for-youth-by-youth organizations, formerly a Board Member of the Native Youth Media Society (Redwire Magazine), an employee of the Knowledgeable Aboriginal Youth Association, and the Founder and Artistic Director of the Native Youth Artists Collective. From 2005-2007, Reece was the Director of the Indigenous Media Arts Group, organizing the 8th Annual IMAGeNation Aboriginal Film and Video Festival (2007). Reece’s installation and performance work has garnered national and international attention, most notably for Raven: On the Colonial Fleet (2010) presented at the 2010 Sydney Biennale as part of the group exhibition Beat Nation. Skeena studied media arts at Emily Carr University of Art and Design, and was the recipient of the British Columbia Award for Excellence in the Arts (2012), the VIVA Award (2014), and the Hnatyshyn Award (2017). Reece’s work has been part of numerous group exhibitions across North America. Her solo exhibitions include Surrounded at the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, Vancouver (2019); Touch Me at the Comox Valley Art Gallery, Courtenay, BC (2018); Moss at Oboro Gallery, Montréal (2017) and The Sacred Clown & Other Strangers at Urban Shaman Contemporary Aboriginal Art, Winnipeg (2015).

Participation

2009

Marlène Renaud-B is a visual artist living and working in Montréal, QC. Strongly influenced by the phenomenons of perception lived in the everyday, she explores the porousness of the individual, paying particular attention to spaces of intermediacy. Marlène endeavours to create porous structures by the intersection of installation, sound art, performance, sculpture and video. She has presented her work in Brazil, France, Japan, Mexico, South Korea, the United States and Canada.

Participation

2015

Alain-Martin Richard is a performer, editor, critic, publisher, and curator. Over the years he has developed a multidisciplinary practice that considers questions of art in society and of art as poetic action. His performances focus on space, movement, pacing, identity, and individual responsibility in a world marked by postmodernism. He has participated in many festivals and events, performing in North America, Europe and Japan. He is a member of the Quebec based collective Folie/Culture.

Participation

2013

Gwendoline Robin is a multi-media artist working in performance, installation, video, and sculpture. She graduated from L’ENSAV de la Cambre in Brussels (1992) and she received a grant from Erasmus to study installation and sculpture at the Technical University of Valencia in Spain (1991). Since 2006, Robin has performed extensively around the world with her ‘explosive’ works, both solo and in collaboration, in which she utilizes controlled explosions and her body to create fugitive and highly physical moments. She teaches performance strategies to architecture and visual arts students at the Academy of Fine Art in Tournai. Robin lives and works in Brussels, Belgium.

Website

Participation

2009

Neal Rockwell is a photographer and investigative journalist based between Toronto, ON, and Montréal, QC. Rockwell is primarily interested in telling stories and he utilizes multiple mediums to explore the interrelationships of journalism, cinema, and literature in an attempt to create works which are both mentally stimulating and socially relevant. He holds a BFA in photography from the Emily Carr University of Art and Design in Vancouver and an MFA in Documentary Media from Toronto Metropolitan University.

Participation

2009

Irit Rogoff is a writer, teacher, curator, and organizer working at the intersection of contemporary art, critical theory and emergent political manifestations. She is a professor of Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths, University of London (London) where she heads the PhD in the Advanced Practice program. Her practice deals with geography, globalization and contemporary participatory practices in the expanded field of art. Her current work focuses on new practices of knowledge production and their impacts on modes of research, under the title Becoming Research. As part of the collective freethought, Irit was one of the artistic directors of the Bergen Assembly (Bergen, 2016). Her writing has been published in numerous anthologies, catalogs, and international periodicals. Rogoff lives and works in London, England.

Participation

2021

Born in Mexico City, Mexico, Emilio Rojas is a multidisciplinary artist working primarily in performance, video, photography, installation, public interventions, and sculpture. In Rojas’ practice, the intrinsic relation with the body is both his subject matter and medium and he utilizes this connection as an tool for creating political, critical, and decolonial work. His research-based practice is heavily influenced by queer and feminist archives, border politics, botanical colonialism, and defaced monuments. Rojas’ work has been exhibited nationally, including at The Vancouver Art Gallery and The Surrey Art Gallery, and internationally, including extensively across the USA, as well as in Japan, England, Greece, France, Spain, and Australia. He holds an MFA in Performance from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a BFA in Film from Emily Carr University in Vancouver.

Website

Participation

2009

Macarena Perich Rosas is a performance artist and photographer from the southernmost part of the world: Patagonia. Coming from this far-off and disconnected place, Perich Rosas deconstructs both the body and her hostile environment in order to find a possible hybridization of the two. Her interest in the relationship between presence and place is researched through teaching, residencies, and her personal practice, as well as through hosting CONFL!CTA Contemporary Art and Science Research, an international art residency in Punta Arenas, Chile, where she lives and works.

Participation

2013

See ATSA

Participation

2007

Brian Rush is an artist who creates interventions and relational objects to rearrange the syntax of everyday encounters. Part joke, part riddle, part confrontation, Rush’s sculptural and installation based work encourages humour and discomfort to mingle freely in the questioning of personal and relational boundaries and conventions. Brian is based in Bellingham, WA, USA.

Participation

2009

Raeda Saadeh was born in Um El Fahem, Palestine. Saadeh received her BFA and MFA from Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem, where she now lives and works. Her work in photography, performance and video has been exhibited widely internationally in Europe and North America, and in 2015, Al-Monitor considered her among 50 people shaping the culture of the Middle East.

Website

Participation

2017

"Since 2006 I have been engaged in performance art with fellow performance artists in Victoria at various events at Open Space. In 2008, I participated in 3 Street Actions, funded by the City of Victoria and curated by Judith Price. Currently, since September 2010, I has been participating in, Open Action, with John Boehme, Judith Price, and Brenda Petays, a once a month performance action event at various public sites in the greater Victoria area. As a performance artist I am interested in exploring durational unscripted random situations in public or private sites/spaces. My encounters with specific sites trigger memory that intuitively leads to an interaction between site, pedestrian/spectator, and myself. My intention is to create for pedestrian/spectator and myself a time for contemplative and/or conflicted random interaction. We travel through space with scripted bodies, scripted voices, scripted assumptions — I see my actions as disruptive elements in scripted spaces that engage the pedestrian/spectator to "re consider" their position to my action/presence." – Grace Salez (2011)

Participation

2011

Igor Santizo is an interdisciplinary artist and educator based in Vancouver, BC. Through his drawing collections, found object work, conceptual projects, sound experiments, and teaching, Santizo aims to explore holism and consciousness. His practice explores modes of experimental communication and discovery. Igor’s work has been exhibited locally and abroad.

Participation

2007 2003

Jon Sasaki is a Toronto-based interdisciplinary artist often working in video and performance.

Website

Participation

2019