Antimatter [media art] festival

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Antimatter17

Antimatter festival celebrates its 20th anniversary with unprecedented lineup of screenings, installations and performances at various locations in Victoria, BC.

Over its 20 year history Antimatter has grown from a week-long niche underground festival to a 16 day celebration of the moving image in all of its rapidly evolving forms. Celebrating this anniversary in 2017, Antimatter [media art] features an unprecedented number of screenings, installations and performances throughout the city of Victoria from October 13 through 28. Since 1998 Antimatter has grown to become a leading exhibitor of international experimental film and media, having presented the work of more than 2,000 artists from around the globe, known for championing the work of emerging practitioners, programming their work, often world premieres, alongside that of art world luminaries.

Special guest this year is Craig Baldwin, seminal to the first iteration of the festival. A filmmaker and curator whose interests lie in archival retrieval and recombinatory forms of cinema, performance and installation, Baldwin returns to present his expanded cinema performance Nth Dimension and illustrated lecture/screening Orphan Morphin’. Antimatter 2017 includes six other live cinema, media and new music performances including The Powers by Katherine Kline, Emily Pelstring and Jessica Mensch, which integrates video projection, dance, costumes, puppetry and experimental electronic music and Monteith McCollum’s Hidden Frequencies, which plays with ideas and tools from the history of sound technologies and communication.

Seven public media art installations—a genre of work still underrepresented internationally in institutions and festivals—will be on view in galleries and partner spaces. Deluge Contemporary Art will present Glass Mountain, a solo exhibition by Puerto Rican San Francisco-based artist Mirka Morales, while Circular Inscription by Austrian Lucas Marxst runs daily at the Audain Gallery at the University of Victoria. The fifty fifty will present Kemi Craig’s exhibition matters of duration exploring themes of afrofuturism and hauntology, rear-projected in its windows.

Nineteen curated programs representing 160 films will be screened at Deluge Contemporary Art, including the special program Fireworks Indoors curated by Winnipeg’s Scott Fitzpatrick and viewed through special 3D fireworks glasses. All installations are free and screenings and performances are pay-what-you-can (suggested donation $5–$8). Participating artist from around the world attend the festival and the public is invited to attend salons, talks and Q&As to engage with them and festival producers.

Program guides available now throughout Greater Victoria and at antimatter.ca