Areas:

Dance and Dance Studies, Performance Studies, Critical Race Theory, Feminist Theory
 

Bio:

I am a dance educator, arts administrator, and community organizer. My work is driven by questions about representation, access, and inclusion in the arts, and the role of the artist in society. I have taught and performed dance in over 10 cities in North America and abroad. I completed my BA at SFU in 2010, with a major in Humanities and a certificate in Sustainable Community Development. In addition to my work in the SCA MA program, I currently co-direct Luciterra Dance Company and act as Outreach Manager for Indian Summer Festival.

luciterradance.com
indiansummerfest.ca

As a settler I dance and write on the unceded and occupied territories of the Musqueam, Sḵwxwú7mesh, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples, in this place I know and love as home.




 

Areas:

Early modern, humanism, posthumanism, renaissance, revolutions, and the human form.

Bio:

I am a fledgling writer pursuing an MA in Comparative Media Arts at Simon Fraser University. In this program, I am hoping to gain a deeper understanding of the consequential periods of time that result to transformative changes in the way we see, feel, and interact with the world around us. 

I am a transfer from the MA in Liberal Studies program at SFU. My educational background is in humanities and art history. I earned my BA in Liberal Studies from Capilano University, and have pursued further studies in Art History and Visual Art at the University of British Columbia. My undergraduate research is an interrogation of art, knowledge, and visual culture during the early modern period. My work in the field of art are reflected in the following: as a Curatorial Intern at the Gordon Smith Gallery of Canadian Art, as an Official Photographer at the Vancouver Biennale, as a Production and Site Assistant at the Vancouver fringe Festival, and as a Museum Assistant at the UBC Museum of Anthropology.

Outside of arts and academics, I have a competitive background as a student-athlete. During my undergraduate years, I played for Capilano University’s Women’s Basketball team. However, an ACL injury ended my career in the cutthroat world of college sports, leading me to pursue a career in coaching. I have since coached Point Grey Secondary’s Junior Girls Basketball team from 2010 to 2014, and Cariboo Hill Secondary’s Bantam team from 2015-2016. I am taking a short break from coaching in order to focus on my career as an emerging writer and arts scholar.

Passion is what drives me to pursue. I have a very talented and inspiring wife, and a big family who teaches me a lot about love, life and humility. 

Areas:

Film, Video, Visual Arts, Gender Studies and Women's Studies, Geography

Bio:

I have lived in Vancouver, BC for most of my life and have been studying film, video and cultural theory for the past ten years at Langara College and Simon Fraser University. I finished my BFA in Film in Spring ’13 at SFU's School for the Contemporary Arts.

Currently developing research on affects in the urban landscape, I'm attempting to explore psychogeographical aspects of Vancouver using video and my research of other art works dealing with similar phenomena. Working with the theory of the shadow archive by Derrida, and furthered by Cinema professor Akira Mizuta Lippit, I'm also examining absent narratives and the early archival practice of Vancouver archivist J.S. Matthews as well as other contributions to the present state of local mediation of our landscape.

These days I'm watching a lot of early Vancouver experimental film and video of the 1960’s - 80’s, exploring lots of diasporic/exilic cinema and enjoying immersing myself in media scholarship and advocacy for the humanities and arts.

Areas:

Gender studies, visual arts, film and literature

Bio:

I have lived in and around Vancouver for my entire life. Since graduating with a BA from Simon Fraser University in 2014 I have been traveling and working full time as a yoga instructor, a profession that has brought up many questions around gender, class and inclusivity.

Throughout my MA I plan to explore female identity and contemporary disconnection alongside ideas of utopia, perfection, sadness and boredom. From Hamlet's Ophelia to The Virgin Suicides, I am interested in the ways in which these ideas manifest in film and popular culture, and how they morph as technology and social media strengthen as cultural forces. 

Areas:

Critical Theory, Philosophy, Art History, Visual Culture, Cultural Studies

Bio:

I am a visual culture historian and scholar completing a PhD by special arrangement in the School for the Contemporary Arts. I hold a Masters in Theory, Culture, and Politics from Trent University, and am an alumna of SFU SCA with a BA in Art and Culture Studies. My research focusses on the concept of the disenchantment of the world and the possibilities for art and other visual phenomena to stimulate forms of re- enchantment. I study bodies of artwork that possess haunted qualities, completing my MA thesis on the 19th Century American spirit photographer William Mumler, and now turning my attention to Post-911 visual culture through the work of Art Spiegelman, Ryan McGinley, and Robert Gober. 

Areas:

Contemporary Art; Queer and Feminist Theory; Curatorial Studies

Bio:

Micaela Kwiatkowski is an artist and curator working on the unceded traditional territory of the Coast Salish peoples. Her work engages in a critical feminist practice that intersects with contemporary colonial, art historical and queer discourses. Kwiatkowski completed her BFA at the University of British Columbia with a Concentration in English Literature, and continues to develop public programming for the arts. 

Areas:

Bio:

Minah is a world citizen who was born and raised in South Korea. She is currently one of the unlanded on this land today and also a proud member of a secret army called ESL poetrees planted in the soil. She wants to use her privilege of standing in academia as a researcher/artist to delve deeper into the issues of being and belonging against the commodification of citizenship; human security; identities of migrants, located in the state-driven paradigms. Minah takes pleasure in excavating personal narratives and creative practices in all forms that subvert and/or challenge the up-to-date grand narratives such as War on Terror, Economic Security, and Public Safety. What do privacy and freedom of expression mean to individuals, especially artists, in the state of surveillance?

Minah wants to inspire new ways of becoming and longing by re-imagining Home and borders. She believes that securing more places to summon and share personal/social traumas and memories is essential. If new technology and devices are an extension of our body/mind and its dwelling spaces, how do we draw boundaries from governing machines that are programmed to perpetuate cycles of exploitation by controlling our physical/psychological agencies?

My questions are ripples of utterance trumbled in my second language.

I lost my tongue when I opened my eyes so I drop my saliva into your earpond so that you touch my voice. What do you hear?

Areas:

Photography, Art History, Visual Culture and Curating.

Bio:

After spending majority of my youth in Edmonton Alberta, I moved to Vancouver five years ago to pursue a BFA in Photography and Curatorial Studies at Emily Carr University. I am now entering my first semester of the MA program at SFU.

My BFA consisted of making photographs as a way to experience and understand the conditions that surrounded me. It also offered me an opportunity to look into the past on a personal and culture level. This made me realize my tendency to believe in a metering of veracity by questioning truths and falsehoods. I love to learn and I enjoy engaging within spaces and communities that allow me to do so. I hope for my MA to be an extension of my simple knowledge in visual studies, culture and art history.

I am unsure of where my studies will guide me however I have keen interest in contemporary media and popular culture. I plan to research the production and consumption of the constant disposable imagery that culture is currently accustomed with to form an effective understanding of how these media are affecting the development of youth and youth culture. With an interest in the current state of contemporary art, I wish to produce methods of curating that challenge the status of exhibition making, writing and speaking about art. I hope to form a method of curating that breaks the boarders of art’s exclusivity and shows a broad spectrum of consumers that art is a pivotal part of culture and our understanding.  

Areas:

Bio:

I am a filmmaker, journalist and media educator, and I work as a producer for SFU’s Creative Studio. My career encompasses contributions as a writer, director, producer, picture editor, story editor and musical composer on documentaries, features, short films, music videos and television series. In my personal work, I recognize an ongoing interest in mythology, memory, marginalization, subculture and dogs, and occasionally incorporate archaic production technology such as degraded film stock and toy video cameras. These personal projects have screened in international film festivals and art galleries, and have been broadcast on television networks around the world.

My education includes a BA in film production from UBC, fellowships from SFU’s Praxis Centre for Screenwriters and CTV/Banff Television Festival, and development training courses from the National Screen Institute - Canada. As a media educator, I taught screenwriting and production at the British Columbia Institute of Technology, Vancouver Film School and the Art Institute of Vancouver, and have guest lectured at Capilano University.

Having spent several seasons running a television series on the ways emerging technologies affect culture and entertainment, I have a special interest in the evolution of our interaction with storytelling and art. My research aims to explore the influence of audience engagement and participation with content, aesthetics, structure and format of audiovisual media. I would like to examine how new opportunities to directly interact with and influence storytellers and artists are redefining the nature of art itself.

Areas:

Documentary-fiction hybridity, experimental literary adaptations, the cinema of Miguel Gomes, Lucrecia Martel and the work of Hito Steyerl, Agnieszka Kurant, theories of phenomenology, Bakhtin's carnivalesque (work sample), gender and performance in cinema.

Bio:

My research focus comes out of a diverse background pulling from languages, cinema and visual culture. In 2011, I graduated from the University of Alberta with a degree in Romance Languages and went on to complete coursework in human ecology at the U of A and in film production at SFU. Currently, I am most interested in cinematic and moving image works that trouble the divide between documentary and fiction as well as those that experiment with literary adaptations. My other interests include theories of phenomenology, gender performance, Bakhtin's carnivalesque and ideas of the archive.

Areas:

The intersections of women, art, and technology.

Bio:

I graduated Emily Carr University in 2013 with a BFA focused in drawing as well as critical and cultural theory.  Most recently I have been developing a hardware electronic music project under the moniker Minimal Violence in collaboration with my partner Ashlee Gowriluk, also a student within the SCA. Our first release in 2015 was through Vancouver based all-female collective Genero, formed by Soledad Muñoz. Since then, we have played live locally, in the U.S. and Europe, as well as released both tapes and records through labels based in Vancouver, Seattle, Dublin, and Frankfurt, with more releases scheduled in months to come.

Visually, I am concerned with light, texture, depth, the work of time, and the idea of the double. Having last shown my detailed drawings of wood panels at Unit/Pitt, I aim to continue my visual practice concurrently with my MA research.

During my studies I expect to investigate the intersections of women, art, and technology. I am interested in the roles of women, or the absence of women, in certain technological and artistic avenues such as sound. Additionally, I am interested in developing the idea of electronic mediums as enabling a modular identity through which women may assemble and piece together new forms of communication, interpretation, self-representation or dissolution. Possible points of reference may be Anne Carson’s The Gender of Sound, techno-cyber feminisms of the late 80s and 90s, as well as a more recent call for a xenofeminism embracing alienation. 

Areas:

Narrative & Documentary Film Production, Directing, Editing, Sound Mixing

Bio:

I am a 29-year-old Iranian Video Producer with non-linear editing as my main expertise. I finished my bachelor’s degree in Film Editing amongst the top five graduates. I also have an associate’s degree in Computer Software.

I have been involved in various video productions, TV broadcasts, commercials, and live events. I was a member of photography & videography crew in 32nd International Fajr Film Festival Tehran-Iran, documenting the festival.

I founded “the THREE BENCHES group” 8 years ago which has contributed towards production and distribution of several media projects. Our short-drama “Mistaken Manna” was selected for the international showcase in NFFTY 2010 Seattle-US. We were also nominated for the best sport-video award in Tehran International Sport Movies Festival 2011 for “Esteghlalish Blue / Persepolis Men”. The short- documentary “I’m NOT a Freak” received two official selections in EasternBreeze International Film Festival 2013 Toronto-Canada and 4th Viewster Online Film Fest 2014.

I have conducted several researches in artistic and technical aspects of cinema, including an academic paper, “Direct Cinema & Richard Leacock, The Father of Modern Documentary”. Following these researches, I decided to explore the effect of visual art on film production and methodologies for using other art forms in filmmaking as my MA thesis. 

Areas:

Photography

Bio:

My photographic practice is a process of producing and exploring my fascination of nature and people. With this in mind, I always look for energy in light, shades and subtle nuances from a personal photographic look and substantiated vision.

In my images, I always try to look for connections between people and the interactions between

man and nature. I identify with this theme because of my wanderlust and wanting to meet new people and explore new places. This intrigues me because of the connections that occur while I take the image in a particular setting. As I travel to create this narrative, I’m looking for engagement; a mix between the personal and the social that communicates with other people.

My work is mainly poetic with a documentary and social-political touch. With my photographs, I try to look for a topic, reveal a story and raise awareness amongst the viewer. Photography can be a tool to describe a reality that people don’t know. In that sense, I try to bring that reality or story to the viewer so that they have a better understanding of the world around them.

Artists such as Alec Soth, Ansel Adams, Robert Frank, etc. have been an inspiration to my goal of becoming a photographer.

The act of taking the photo is just a document of the event before the click. The hunt for the image, the people to portray, the conversation with yourself and others, setting up the 4x5” or 35mm camera; all of this adds to the meandering, the searching and the process of telling that I pursue.