Nancy Lee 李南屏 & Kiran Bhumber ਕਿਰਨਦੀਪ ਕੌਰ ਭੰਬਰ^{TW/CA+ IN/CA}

Nancy Lee’s work stimulates and enlivens space, making a provocative statement about how inescapably interconnected we are with our surroundings. This notion of staging is a constant in Lee’s work and underpins their projects, from their early work as a filmmaker, through their conception of live events, and into the realms of XR, new media performance and installation, where their art practice continues to coalesce and evolve. Lee co-founded CURRENT, a feminist intersectional and multidisciplinary initiative, featuring artistic and educational programming. Their interdisciplinary works have been presented at Cannes Film Festival, SXSW, MUTEK.JP, Berlin International Film Festival, Vancouver International Jazz Festival, and more. They are an XR instructor at IM4 Media Lab at Emily Carr University and artistic mentor at Festival of Recorded Movement. They also run a DIY studio in Vancouver Chinatown hosting cross-genre shows, workshops and residencies. As a Sundance Institute New Frontier Alumni, Lee has been collaborating with Kiran Bhumber on a speculative sci-fi exhibition UNION, exploring 3D scanning/printing, XR, and multi-channel sound and video installation. They recently completed a sci-fi writing program at the School for Poetic Computations in NYC.

Kiran Bhumber is an Indo-Canadian interdisciplinary media artist, audio designer, performer and educator. Her practice considers the mediation of emerging technologies through the body by constructing interactive installations and performances examining social choreography, touch and performativity. As an audio designer, Bhumber’s practice centers around multichannel and spatial arrangements and how the choreography of sound can influence the listeners notion of space, time and narrative. Considering physical and virtual presence, Bhumber co-created Telepresence, a live 8.2-channel VR performance presented by Western Front, and was a composer and sound designer for Tidal Traces, a 360° VR dance film with the National Film Board of Canada. Her interdisciplinary and compositional work has been presented at MUTEK (Japan), The International Symposium of Electronic Art (South Africa, Korea), SXSW, Cannes Film Festival, Vancouver International Jazz Festival, New Interfaces for Musical Expression (Australia, Denmark), Toronto International Electroacoustic Festival and more. Bhumber is co-director of INTER/MEDIATE, a media art educational festival focused on cultivating growth within Vancouver’s media art communities and empowering marginalized communities with access to workshops, artist talks and collaborative opportunities.

Welcome to the world of UNION: play the memory game. Following environmental and societal collapse in the year 3000, humans retreat indoors, and touch is forbidden, replaced by virtual intimacy in the cyberworld GAEA. Now, memory becomes the ultimate commodity.

What happens when your memories are no longer your own?

Collaborators: Jonny Ostrem, Ian Nakamoto, Yun-Jou Chang

*This work is presented in collaboration with the Society for Arts and Technology [SAT] and is part of its Satellite virtual gallery.