Keynote Artist Talk

Thursday, June 13 | 6:30 – 8:30PM ET
In person at InterAccess and online 
FREE, registration here 

Social

Thursday, June 13 | 8:30PM ET
In person at Blood Brothers (165 Geary Ave, Toronto, ON M6H 2B8)

Kicking off Vector Festival 2024 Game Jam: deu(s ex) machina is a keynote talk by new media artist and poet Shawné Michaelain Holloway. Join us at InterAccess's studio or online to attend. 

Curated by Bracy Appeikumoh, Vector Festival 2024 Game Jam: deu(s ex) machina explores how technology, the machine, and machina have both enriched and hindered our pursuits for sexual intimacy and understanding in relation to ourselves, one another, and the collective whole. In close proximity, Holloway is well known for her noisy experimental electronics and performance practice that shapes the rhetorics of computer programming and sadomasochism into tools for exposing structures of power. 

Holloway will join us to question:

• How has technology created spaces for finding kinship but also allowed for gross misunderstandings?
• What human idiosyncrasies and intricacies cannot be turned off or mediated by technology?
• How does the internet help queer folks discover themselves sooner, and what happens when the imagery supporting this discovery is primarily pornographic?
• What happens when marginalized bodies are made hyper visible through online pornography in contrast to weaponizing visibility in attempts to police and punish those bodies?

Attendees are invited to a social event following the artist talk at Blood Brothers (165 Geary Ave, Toronto, ON M6H 2B8), located within walking distance from InterAccess.

Proudly co-presented as part of Toronto Games Week. 

ABOUT THE KEYNOTE ARTIST 
Shawné Michaelain Holloway is a Chicago-based new media artist and poet. Known for her noisy experimental electronics and performance practice, Holloway shapes the rhetorics of computer programming and sadomasochism into tools for exposing structures of power. She has spoken and exhibited work internationally since 2012 in spaces like Performance Space New York, The New Museum, The Kitchen, The Time-Based Art Festival at the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, Institute of Contemporary Arts (London), The Knockdown Center, and the NRW-Forum Düsseldorf. SHAWNÉ is currently Assistant Professor of Video/New Media in the Kinetic Imaging department at Virginia Commonwealth University︎︎︎ and has served as the Digital Developer and Technology Manager with Black Lunch Table’s archives team from 2022-23. In addition to her work in the arts, she is an open source software advocate, 1/2 of electronics duo BONE LATTICE, and a bodybuilder.

ABOUT THE GAME JAM CURATOR 
Bracy Appeikumoh is a writer and mixed media artist whose work centers reimagining desire and pleasure wholly divested from the diktats of empire and all of its baggage. Her erotic fiction takes place in queer futures embodying queer pre-colonial pasts; her non-fiction ponders how we get here. She is burdened by the urgent need to restore, preserve, and disseminate indigenous ways of being and knowing. Octavia E. Butler, bell hooks, Audre Lorde, Toni Morrison, June Jordan, Lorraine Hansberry, Maya Angelou, Claudia Jones.

ABOUT VECTOR FESTIVAL 
Vector Festival is an experimental media arts festival dedicated to showcasing digital games and creative media practices. Presenting works across a dynamic range of exhibitions, screenings, performances, lectures, and workshops, Vector acts as a critical bridge between emergent digital platforms and new media art practice. The festival is proud to be a participatory and community-oriented initiative organized by InterAccess in Toronto, Ontario.