Vector Online, 2020
July 16-August 13, 2020
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, Christine Kim, and Katie Micak, who were later joined by additional curators.
Vector 2020: For the first time in its eight-year history, Vector Festival 2020 was presented fully online. The digital programming explored themes of solitude, distanced interaction, digital art-making and curation, and the many new forms of community, solidarity, and care spawned by the challenges and promises of the current moment. Online Edition was primarily curated by Katie Micak and Martin Zeilinger, and expanded programming included invited guest curators Miriam Arbus, Hearth Collective, InterAccess staff Megan Maclaurin and Cléo Sallis-Parchet. Logo design by Rebecca Wilkinson. Website by Jordan Shaw.
// 60 artists
// 2 exhibitions
//1 video screenings
// 6 live performances
// 4 panel discussions
//5 workshops.
ONLINE IS THE NEW IRL
curated by Katie Micak and Martin Zeilinger
Presented on a new custom-built online platform, this year’s festival exhibition integrates a diverse mix of interactive net art, art games, machinima and video works, live streams from artist studios, web tool hacks, and other artworks that can be experienced – in a time of lingering COVID-19 lockdown measures – digitally. Not every artwork featured in the exhibition may have been created in direct response to the pandemic, but what unites them all is their resonance with themes such as digital connectedness, overcoming isolation, building and maintaining virtual relationships, and coming to terms with the many new realities of digitally mediated, ‘socially distanced’ life online.
PERFORMANCES:
Tough Guy Mountain, Intern Purgatory: A COVID-19 VRCHAT Story
Olivia Shortt: ISHKWE-AYI’II
Keiko Hart: Is this Real Life Drawing + Unstill Life Drawing
Justin Massey: False Positive
Meghan Cheng and Cherly O.: Luna
WORKSHOPS:
A to Z: Experimental Chatroom led by Xin Xin
Resistance Strategies in the Age of Surveillance lead by Joselyn McDonald and María Angélica Madero
Fermenting a Revolution led by Ashley Jane Lewis
Making Meme Art on your Phone led by Fallon Simard
A Queer Guide to GIF- Making led by Alex Jensen
PANELS:
ANTI-RACIST ARTIST NETWORKS: EMERGING FORMS OF COMMUNITY, SOLIDARITY, AND CARE
Ashley Jane Lewis, Fallon Simard, Geneviève Wallen, and Syrus Marcus Ware. Moderated by Belinda Kwan.
Performance in Quarantine. Cat Bluemke, Keiko Hart, and Olivia Shortt. Moderated by Katie Micak
The Virtual and the Viral: Digital Arts Practices. Maya Ben David, Milumbe Haimbe, Sameen Mahboubi, Jordan Shaw. Moderated by Katie Micak.
You Need Protocols: Working with Indigenous Culture in the Digital Realm. Meagan Byrne, Elijah Forbes, Taylor McArthur.
Curating Online. Sarah Cook and Lorna Mills. Moderated by Martin Z.
Guest Curators/ Partnership Programming:
#WATCHINGTOGETHER IN SPITE OF A DYING PLANET | SCREENING curated by Miriam Arbus. Amanda Amour-Lynx, Patricia Domínguez, Trudy Erin Elmore, Brianna Lowe, Annette Mangaard.
View Recent Changes by Hearth Collective | Exhibition | Oscar Alfonso, Simon Fuh, Matt Nish-Lapidus, Sophia Oppel, Benjamin de Boer, Rowan Lynch, Sameen Mahboubi.
COVIDFASHION | Event | Natalie Logan, Ayodele Hudlin, Daniel Rotsztain, Julie Reich, Diséiye Thompson, Lana Kuidir and Renika Hall.
Artists: Hiba Ali, Jennifer Chan, Ronnie Clarke, Hilarey Cowan, Theo Cuthand, Maya Ben David, Steph Davidson, Hannah Epstein, Jord Farrell, Dimitris Gkikas, Milumbe Haimbe, Fay Heady, Amay Kataria, Samuel Kiehoon Lee, Gina Luke, Ben McCarthy & Cale Weir, Amelia Merhar, Roberto Santaguida, Juli Saragosa, Jordan Sparks, Lee Tusman, Syrus Marcus Ware, Qirou Yang
Thank you to all of the artists, community partners, and devoted audience who made this year’s online edition of Vector Festival possible. We would also like to acknowledge the generous support of our funders: the Government of Canada (Building Communities Through Arts and Heritage), the Canada Council For The Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, and the Toronto Arts Council.
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