I am a middle-ageing queer video and performance artist. I am a Settler Canadian who has lived in Tiohtiá:ke/Montréal/Montreal for the past 20+ years.
My work uses humour, and capitalizes on exploiting the body's social and material conditions using cabaret, duration, remix, video, and installation practices. My interests of artistic and theoretical research are in media representations of sexuality, queer identity, and how bodies marked female are perceived as public property. I am also interested in how these modes of representation intersect with middle-ageing, since this is where I'm at in my life course.
I have 25 single channel videos in distribution, which have screened worldwide hundreds of times accumulatively, and I have staged over 3-dozen independent performance art works and cabarets, locally, nationally, and internationally. My work has been presented at the Summerworks Theatre Festival in Toronto, the Tang Teaching Museum in Saratoga Springs, the Abrons Art Center in NYC, Les Rendez-vous du cinéma québécois in Montréal, the Impakt Festival in Utrecht Netherlands, the Mardi Gras Festival in Darlinghurst Australia, MIX Brasil Festival Of Sexual Diversity in São Paulo Brazil, the Modern Art Museum in Warsaw Poland, the City of Women International Festival of Contemporary Arts in Ljubljana Slovenija, and Le Centre d’art contemporain in Paris. I have received research and development, production, and travel funding from the Canada Council and the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec. I have won numerous awards, including Le Prix Powerhouse from La Centrale Galerie Powerhouse in 2014 that celebrates mid-career women artists who have significantly contributed to the cultural life of Montréal, as well as various Audience Choice Awards at film and video festivals like the Prix du Public in the Experimental category at Cineffable, Festival International du film Lesbian et Feminist de Paris in 2019. In 2015, I was commissioned to curate a touring video program for Groupe Intervention Vidéo (GIV), an artist-run, video distribution centre in Montréal to celebrate their 40th anniversary.
I earned a PhD from the Centre for the Interdisciplinary Studies in Society and Culture at Concordia University. My interdisciplinary Humanities dissertation combines studies in performance art, feminism, queer theory, age, and research-creation, and centres my art practice.
Montréal based George Stamos has been active in the professional contemporary dance world as a choreographer, dancer, and teacher since the mid-1990s. Originally from Nova Scotia Canada, George received his BFA (Dance) from The Amsterdam University of the Arts in 1993 and spent his formative years in the queer performance art and contemporary dance milieus of Toronto, London, Amsterdam and New York. More recently, in 2018 he completed the graduate diploma program at the Department of Communication Studies of Concordia University.
In both 2009 and 2017, George was invited to be a resident artist at the Baryshnikov Arts Centre in New York, and from 2012 to 2015 at Agora de la Danse in Montréal. George also received the much sought-after Northrop McKnight Fellowship for International Choreographers Award in 2014.
George's choreography has received critical acclaim, including his most recent piece One Kind Favor that premiered in February 2020 at Montréal Arts Interculturel. As a dancer, he has worked with many pioneering Choreographers, most notably Benoit Lachambre, Sara Shelton Mann, and Zab Maboungou, and regularly performs in his own work.
A native of New Brunswick, Jamie completed her Bachelor's degree in Dance at York University in 1997. Arriving in Montréal in 1999, Jamie quickly became active in the dance community, both socially and artistically. She danced primarily with José Navas/Compagnie Flak (2002-08) and performed in works by Ginette Laurin, Estelle Clareton, Dana Gingras and Caroline Gravel, amongst others. Since 2007, Jamie has maintained close artistic ties with Frédérick Gravel as a dancer, rehearsal director and outside eye. She continues to deepen her artistic practice as a performer through different projects such as Recurrent Measures as well teaching and rehearsal directing through various collaborations.
Robert Meilleur began his contemporary dance career in Montréal, with choreographers Hélène Blackburn and Martine Époque. He spent fifteen years working with Ginette Laurin and O Vertigo dance, which allowed him to tour all over the world. As a freelance dancer, he collaborated with choreographers William Douglas, Anne-Marie Giroux, José Navas, Sacha Waltz, Catherine Tardif et Jean-Pierre Perreault. He worked particularly closely with Isabelle Van Grimde, Paul-André Fortier and Benoît Lachambre. Recurrent Measures DELUXE is Robert's first emergence into George Stamos's universe.
Think Fast! Is a flexible artist collective featuring a variety of multimedia artists and musicians. Under the tutelage of Dr. Helen Pridmore, Think Fast! came to fruition within the University of Regina New Music Ensemble in 2018. Performing with a focus on experimental and improvised music, the collective also makes use of projected multi-media visuals, live painting and art creation, electronics, and original poetry. Growing out of the individual artistic visions of its members, Think Fast! explores themes of self perception and identity, eroticism and sexuality, mental illness, and nature. The collective draws inspiration from Fluxus artists such as John Cage and Nam June Paik, as well as eclectic artists Tanya Tagaq, Lydia Lunch, Björk, and Billy-Ray Belcourt.
Hagere Selam “shimby” Zegeye-Gebrehiwot Their practice engages with themes of place and it’s abstraction from a diasporic, queer and feminist perspective. Their experimental film work has been reviewed in Blackflash magazine and the Winnipeg Free Press while screening the world over. Their art writing has appeared in the Capilano Review as well as in the form of commissioned essays at artist run centres in Winnipeg.
Currently, they are the Executive Director at the Saskatchewan Filmpool, Co-Director of WNDX Festival of Moving Image and guest editor of the forthcoming Art&Wonder publication.
Elian Mikkola is a Finnish Moving Image Artist (of Karelian descent), and a white settler currently based between Treaty 4, Regina, and Montréal (Tiohtià:ke), Canada. Originally from Turku, Finland, Mikkola holds a BA in Journalism from Tampere University. They completed their MFA in Media Production in 2019 at the University of Regina.
Mikkola works closely with both analog and digital images and extensions and/or hybrids of these mediums. Their work explores themes such as memory, spatial dependences and queer belonging. Mikkola’s work has been showcased in several film festivals in Canada and internationally. Their debut film SAARI (2016) was selected to TIFF’s Canada’s Top Ten Film Festival student program in 2017 and their latest two films premiered at International Film Festival Rotterdam 2020 and Hong Kong International Film Festival in 2021.
Mikkola is a part of La Lumière Collective based in Montréal and a current board member of Queer City Cinema.
Charity Marsh is a researcher, artist, and educator who has published on Hip Hop, women in popular music, gender and technology, interactive media and performance, and community arts-based programming. She is co-editor of We Still Here: Hip Hop North of the 49th Parallel and Director of the award-winning documentary I’m Gonna Play Loud: Girls Rock Regina and the Ripple Effect.
Marsh has produced and facilitated multiple workshops on creative audio and digital technologies; she has curated the Flatland Scratch Seminar and Workshop Series; developed supports for remote communities with hip hop programming; engaged in numerous collaborative hip hop and interactive media projects with many community partners.
Marsh is Director of the Humanities Research Institute, Director of the IMP Labs, and Professor in Creative Technologies and Interdisciplinary Programs in the Faculty of Media, Art, & Performance at the University of Regina.
Girls Rock Regina (GRR) is a volunteer-based organization dedicated to the empowerment of female, trans, two-spirit, and non-binary youth and adults through collaborative music creation and performance.
At GRR, you'll learn an instrument, form a band, write and record an original song, and perform at a live music venue. In addition to technical training, you'll take part in a number of music and non-music workshops centered on creativity and confidence-building, such as songwriting, image & identity, self defense, zine-making and more. No musical experience required!
We value diversity and strive to be as inclusive as possible. Camps usually have a very low tuition, sliding scale and/or provide financial aid, and value female mentorship and leadership.