London Ontario Media Arts Association Launches Online Performance Series for Spring 2023

LOMAA is excited to premiere Virtual Encounters, a series featuring new or reimagined projects by practitioners working at the nexus of performance and media art, including:

Virtual Encounters: New Entanglements in Performance and Media

Premieres March 1, 2023, and runs until June 30, 2023
Presented online and across various platforms through the London Ontario Media Arts Association

Curated by Christine Negus

With an extensive history rooted in a dialogue on “live”-ness and the ephemeral, performance art has weathered a major shift over the past few years. Though the COVID-19 global pandemic has undoubtedly impacted all arts-related programming, live and time-based practices in particular have been forced to renegotiate presentation modes and adapt to a more virtual, screen-based life. Performance art’s merge with the digital realm, with its seemingly opposite characteristics based in permanence and the archival, has raised challenges for both areas of work. Through this convergence, performance artists have been asked to reconsider these aforementioned essential disciplinary attributes in relation to their practice—both in presentation and developing new projects. These uncharted possibilities associated with the virtual have produced exciting outcomes, which continue to redefine and reimagine praxis, and the fields of both performance and media art, in novel ways.

David Yu, x-in-waiting: Chiminea, 2020

Over spring 2023 LOMAA is pleased to facilitate Virtual Encounters: New Entanglements in Performance and Media, which investigates performance art’s newly defined relationship with media. The organization has invited seven artists and one artist duo to present new mediated performances that unsettle their previous modes of creation and address the challenges faced in digital translation. The invited artists span the gamut of performance practices and represent various modalities across the discipline—expanding from, and blurring lines between, embodied movement, sonic interactivity, and intermediality. Virtual Encounters aims to be generative and open possibilities for artists to re-envision their work and to investigate new archival processes, novel (virtual) space, and a wholly different relationship with audiences.

Autumn Knight, Messh, 2017

Public Programming:

March 2023—Kite and David Yu
Artists in conversation on Sunday, March 5, 2023, at 3 p.m. EST

April 2023—Anyse Ducharme and Jacob Wren
Live performance and artists in conversation on Sunday, April 2, 2023, at 3 p.m. EST

May 2023—Raven Chacon & John Dieterich and Ellen Moffat
Live performance and artists in conversation TBA

June 2023—Jerron Herman and Autumn Knight
Artists in conversation on Sunday, June 4, 2023, at 3 p.m. EST

A companion publication will be produced in conjunction with the series, featuring critical and creative contributions from Golboo Amani, Shannon Cochrane, C.W. Crawford, Che Gossett, and Sandra Ruiz.

For more information on the individual artists and their works, please visit LOMAA’s website and Instagram.

This project is made possible by the generous support of the Canada Council for the Arts. LOMAA is additionally supported by the London Arts Council through the City of London’s Community Arts Investment Program.

Anyse Ducharme, Complex Waves, 2023

London Ontario Media Arts Association (LOMAA) is a regional, non-profit, artist-run organization focused on the exhibition of media art and experimental time-based work. With an emphasis on progressive contemporary Canadian practices, LOMAA supports the presentation of local, national, and international artists in the areas of moving images, performance, new media, and sound art while facilitating the creation of new work through workshops, commissioning, and partnership. The organization is committed to supporting dialogue about media art today through inclusive and intersectional public events and community engagement. Our dynamic programming seeks to involve audiences from London and the surrounding region, introducing them to innovative artists while encouraging new modes of creation from local makers.

LOMAA shares space on the traditional territories of the Anishinaabek, Haudenosaunee, Lūnaapéewak, and Chonnonton Nations, on lands connected with the London Township and Sombra Treaties of 1796 and the Dish with One Spoon Covenant Wampum. The organization would like to recognize the significant historical and contemporary contributions of local and regional First Nations, and all of the Original peoples of Turtle Island, not excluding First Nations, Inuit, and Métis, whom we recognize as contemporary stewards of the land and vital contributors to our society.

London Ontario Media Arts Association

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Please contact Christine Negus for media or accessibility inquiries.

Accessibility:
LOMAA is committed to increasing access within media art through online programming. All talks are offered with live ASL Interpretation and recorded, offering on-demand access for extended viewing with additional Closed Captioning. Closed Captioning is available when possible within artistic projects. Events are offered free of charge to reduce economic hindrances. LOMAA acknowledges this does not provide comprehensive accessibility, and though this is a move towards facilitating barrier-free presentations, this is not ideal. LOMAA continues to work on further breaking down access obstacles.

Image Descriptions:
1. Image of white text that reads the words Virtual Encounters morphing into one another on a black background with a white grid and blue-purple 3D shapes.
2. Photo shows documentation of a performance to video. Artist David Yu is lying face down on several firewood logs that are placed upright in front of a burning chiminea. The fire is large above the chiminea lip. The artist is wearing a grey quilted shirt, blue jeans, blue socks, and black shoes. The artist is looking at his phone.
3. Image of stairs with detritus and a person’s leg at the top of the frame with white text that states “I know that we both seem insane.” on the lower left side.
4. Two framed images of a woman holding a cell phone over a background image including a table, computer, cell phone, audio recording device, microphone on a stand, a chair and 3 plants.