Speaker Bios

Kristin Li was born in Chengdu, China, and currently works in Montreal. As a filmmaker and multimedia artist, Kristin creates experimental narratives, animations, documentaries, and installations that explore contemporary formations of power. These projects recontextualize familiar stories, practices, and institutions to reveal the ways that they constrain us in spite of our intentions, and the hidden sites of possibility that we can nonetheless exploit. Kristin’s work has been shown globally, including screenings at Oberhausen (Germany), National Contemporary Art Museum Bucharest (Romania), MIX NYC (USA), Videoformes (France), Laceno d’Oro (Italy), and Galerie Leonard & Bina Ellen (Canada).

Bronwyn Dobchuk-Land holds a PhD in Sociology from the City University of New York (CUNY) Graduate Center. She studies the politics of imprisonment, policing, and settler colonialism through their local expressions in Winnipeg and Manitoba. She is particularly interested in understanding how left-wing and liberal social welfare programming and criminal justice reforms may inadvertently strengthen carceral and colonial infrastructure. In this context, she is pursuing research about the impacts of union activism on carceral expansion; the uses of “community policing” and School Resource Officers (SROs) to expand police power and influence; and the ongoing policing of poverty and securitization of public spaces.

Robyn Maynard is the author of CBC national bestseller Policing Black Lives: State violence in Canada from slavery to the present (Fernwood 2017) which, among many other accolades, was shortlisted for an Atlantic Book Award, the Concordia University First Book Prize and the Mavis Gallant Prize for Non-fiction, and the winner of the 2017 Annual Errol Morris Book Prize. Maynard has a long history of involvement in community activism and advocacy. She is currently a PhD student and Vanier scholar at the University of Toronto and is working toward the completion of a new book manuscript.

Aliya Pabani is a Toronto-based artist and audio producer. She was host and co-producer of Canadaland’s arts and culture podcast, The Imposter, and her audio work has appeared on Falling Tree Productions’ Short Cuts for BBC 4, In the Dark, and NTS Radio. Her predominantly installation and performance-based art has been shown as part of Images Festival, Summerworks, the Toronto Biennial of Art and most recently in Resonant Bodies, an exhibition of sound-based works presented by Constellations. Her writing has appeared in Beside and C Magazine, and she’s a co-creator of POC in Audio; a searchable online database of hundreds of people of colour working in audio from around the world.

Jackie Wang is a poet, scholar, multimedia artist, and fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. She is the author of Carceral Capitalism (Semiotexte Press), a book on the racial, economic, political, legal, and technological dimensions of the US carceral state. She recently received her PhD from Harvard in African American Studies and in the fall will be Assistant Professor of Culture and Media Studies at The New School.

Artist Bios

Midi Onodera is a recipient of the 2018 Governor General’s Award for Visual and Media Arts. She is a moving image artist who has been making work for 35+ years. She has produced over 25 independent shorts ranging from film to digital video to “low end” toy camera formats. In addition to this she created a theatrical feature film, Skin Deep (1995), and 500+ online videos. She currently teaches video at UTSC in the Department of Arts, Culture & Media.

Frédérick A. Belzile lives and works in Montréal. She makes videos introducing narratives of bizarre and impossible events exploring our relation to language and myths, simulation and the relation between sound and images. Her work has been shown nationally and internationally. 

Born in Iran in 1983, Atefeh Khademolreza’s work is concerned with the experience of disorientation both culturally and socially. She expresses herself within poetic and experimental cinematic traditions. She has made 16 short films and documentaries and they have been showcased and awarded in many festivals globally, including Berlinale, Vienna, and Bogota. She recently earned her MFA in Film Production from York University in Canada and currently working on her first feature film.

Stephanie Comilang divides her practice between Toronto and Berlin. Her documentary-based works create narratives that look at how our understandings of mobility, capital and labour on a global scale are shaped through various cultural and social factors. Her work has been shown at the Ghost:2561 Bangkok video and performance art triennale, SALTS Basel, UCLA, International Film Festival Rotterdam, and the Asia Art Archive in America (New York). She received her BFA from the Ontario College of Art and Design.

Nika Khanjani is a film and video artist and writer based in Montreal. Her work is marked by contrasting extremes and a patient sense of beauty. She combines landscape photography, subtle sound design, and portraiture to invoke internal states responsive to political and historical forces.

How to Support / Sources

Prairie Province Prisoner Support Fund

Acknowledgments

We are on Treaty 1 Territory. Plug In ICA is located on the territories of the Anishinaabeg, Cree, Oji-Cree, Dakota, and Dene peoples, and the homeland of the Métis Nation.

Plug In ICA extends our heartfelt gratitude to our generous donors, valued members, and dedicated volunteers. We acknowledge the sustaining support of our Director’s Circle. You all make a difference.

We gratefully acknowledge the support of the Canada Council, the Manitoba Arts Council and Winnipeg Arts Council. We could not operate without their continued financial investment and lobbying efforts.

Plug In ICA relies on community support to remain free and accessible to all, and enable us to continue to present excellent programs. Please consider becoming a member of Plug In ICA and a donor at https://plugin.org/support or by contacting Angela Forget: angela@plugin.org.

For more information on public programming and exhibitions contact Nasrin Himada at nasrin@plugin.org.

For general information, please contact: info@plugin.org or call 1.204.942.1043