Wednesday, August 4 | 7—8:30 PM EST
Online via YouTube Live
FREE (no registration required) 

What does it mean to bring forth intimate online spaces in the context of pandemic realities? Join Vector Festival flagship exhibition curator Rea McNamara for a virtual tour of dis-ease, an e-newsletter and mail art programme responding to screen-based escapism and exhaustion. Following the tour, McNamara will be joined by the participating artists Driftnote, Stefana Fratila and Racquel Rowe for a conversation regarding the exhibition’s themes. The discussion will explore ideas and concepts directly tied to the artists’ post-digital practices, respectively, like avatars as self-portraiture, oral histories, and Crip rituals.

This event was presented as part of Vector Festival 2021. A recording of the event can be viewed here.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Stefana Fratila is a Romanian-born composer, artist and writer based in Toronto, Canada. She is also a DJ and co-founder of CRIP RAVE™ collective, an event platform showcasing and prioritizing Crip, Disabled, Deaf, Mad, and Sick body-minds within safer and more accessible rave spaces. Stefana has exhibited, performed and screened her work internationally, including at e-flux (New York, USA), Ars Electronica (Linz, Austria), Kamias Triennial (Quezon City, Philippines) and AGYU (Toronto, Canada). She has also completed residencies at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, Wave Farm Transmission Arts, and CMMAS (Mexican Centre for Music and Sonic Arts).

Omar Rivero, also known as Driftnote, is a musician and multimedia artist whose work is centred around improvisation, interactivity, audio visual installations and 3D imaging. He is interested in themes of cultural erasure, systemic oppression, race and identity in the african/indigenous diaspora.

Racquel Rowe (she/her) is a Black, queer, femme interdisciplinary artist from the island of Barbados living in Canada. The notion of compulsory visibility and subverting dominant ideologies, is essential to Rowe's practice. As a Black artist engaging in critical conversations around race, culture and gender, has furthered her own ability to understand and break away from colonial representations. This process of decolonisation does not come easy, even when work is created to challenge colonial and racist narratives, the critical language necessary to talk about the complexities presented does not always exist. Rowe explores the way history has shaped modern day depictions of Black women, culture and thus how these things affect her lived experience. She considers performative action as a form of exploratory, open ended research that is constantly evolving."

ABOUT THE CURATOR

Rea McNamara is a writer, curator, and public programmer based in Toronto. She has written extensively on art, culture and the internet for frieze, Art in America, The Globe and Mail, VICE, Art F City, and more. From 2020-2021, she was the Emily H. Tremaine Journalism Fellow for Curators at Hyperallergic.

ABOUT VECTOR FESTIVAL

Vector Festival is a participatory and community-oriented initiative 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 was founded in 2013 as the “Vector Game Art & New Media Festival” by an independent group of artists and curators: Skot Deeming, Clint Enns, kris kim, and Katie Micak, who were later joined by Diana Poulsen and Martin Zeilinger.