People

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STAFF, VOLUNTEERS AND BOARD

Management Collective

Emma Hendrix / General Manager / Editor

Emma is a sound designer and media artist. His work is focused on creating environments through sound, and investigating the inherent sonic qualities of purposeful and incidental sound. He has performed internationally as 1/2 of the duo Coin Gutter, was nominated for a Jessie award for Outstanding Sound Design, a Japan New Media Festival Award, and a finalist for the 2008 Canary Island Media Arts Festival. His design can be heard in Film, Theatre, Video, Dance, New Media and his own installation work. He was VIVO's Technical Coordinator from 2005-2008 and has also worked with the New Forms Festival, Media Arts Committee, and Scotiabank Dance Centre.

Sharon Bradley/ Distribution Coordinator / Venue Manager

Sharon Bradley is an arts and cultural worker and occasional creator. She holds a degree in Art History from the University of British Columbia. In addition to her involvement with VIVO Media Arts Centre since 2007, she has worked for the Word on the Street Festival, the BC Book Prizes, and has sat on the board of several artist run organizations.

Elisa Ferrari / Events+Exhibitions Coordinator

Elisa is a media artist concerned with the intersections of archival practice and liminal space. In her work she combines audio- visual- and text- fragments to examine the aporias that exist between past experience and present depiction, memory and narrative. She has worked for the Venice Biennale, Interactive Futures and Emily Carr University Teaching and Learning Centre. Over the years she has contributed to several non-profit organizations and community projects including RAM Radio Arte Mobile and more recently the Vancouver Soundwalk Collective. Elisa holds a MA in Media Arts from Emily Carr University and a BA in Visual and Performing Arts from the University of Architecture of Venice.

John Brennan / Production+Technical Coordinator / Editor

John is a Canadian multi-instrumentalist performer, sound/ installation artist and composer. His music is categorized as meditative noise drone and free improvisation. Over the past few years John has dedicated himself to studying the timbre and textural possibilities of the drum set, and to designing a custom improvisational set up. John has toured extensively through Canada, Europe and Japan and has collaborated with many locally and internationally known performers.

Megan Amaral / Education Coordinator

Megan is an artist, social innovation strategist and non-profit management consultant. She has been professionally involved with arts and culture as an artist, administrator, researcher, teacher, and advocate for over 18 years. Megan is an active volunteer and is heavily involved in regional Burning Man activities. She also holds a BA in Arts Administration and Photography from Goddard College and a Master of Science in Community Development from the University of California, Davis.

Karen Knights / Development Coordinator

Karen previously worked at VIVO as Librarian, Distributor, and Programming Coordinator (1984-1999) and as an independent curator and critic. She has a special passion for artist-run centre archives and has been commissioned to create historical surveys and touring exhibitions for EM Media (Calgary) and ED Video (Guelph), and writings based on the Western Front and VIVO collections. Her essay “Abundant Harvest: The Recordings of Calgary Video Artists and Independents” was recently included in EM Media’s 30^th anniversary publication “Expanded Standard Time”. Karen is a member of the Crista Dahl Media Library & Archive Committee.

Part-time and Casual Staff

Alan Kollins / Distribution Assistant / Operations Coordinator

Alan Kollins has been active in West coast artist-run culture for the past 10 years. Alan helped found the fifty fifty arts collective (Victoria, BC). He additionally worked as an administrator and occasional programmer at Open Space Arts Society in Victoria, BC from 2006 - 2010. Alan has a curatorial practice that has seen him coordinate the Shock Corridor Cinema series, Victoria’s Rock Lottery and various music and visual art shows. Alan studied at The University of Victoria and San Francisco State University in Film Studies, Fine Arts and English.

Sebnem Ozpeta / Distribution Assistant / Editor / Camera Operator

Sebnem is an artist, visual designer, video editor, and camera operator. She has also been involved in VIVO’s digital archiving projects. She worked as a graphic artist in Turkey from 1996-2001 and earned her Digital Film Program Certificate at The Art Institute of Vancouver in 2002. Her media art has been exhibited internationally including screenings and installations featured in festivals and galleries in Canada, England, Portugal, France, Germany, Hungary and Turkey.

Alex Muir / Event Tech / Dubbing Technician

Alex has been involved with VIVO for several years, in many capacities, including video restoration, installation, distribution, and various programming endeavours. He also programs experimental radio for Soundscapes on CFRO. He has a degree in film studies and comparative literature from the University of Alberta.

Susan Weih / Bookkeeping

Sokhom Kouch / Facilities Maintenance

Board of Directors

The Board of Directors contributes, as a group and individually, to many aspects of VIVO. They involve themselves as stewards, on the many committees, on projects, with their expertise and connections in the community-at-large and throughout the institution. They are a dedicated group with VIVO’s continued operations: long-term planning, fundraising, support of programming, distribution, archives, and educational programs as the direction and focus of their involvement. VIVO thanks them all for their efforts, support and time.

Holly Schmidt / Chair

Holly Schmidt is a Vancouver artist with a research-based practice that engages processes of collaborative research and informal pedagogy. Moving across disciplinary boundaries, she explores the relationships between practices of making, knowledge creation and the formation of temporary communities. Schmidt is a recent graduate of the Master’s program at Emily Carr University of Art + Design and a Governor General’s Gold Medal recipient. Her recent exhibitions and projects include The Moveable Feast with the Burnaby Art Gallery, Grow with Other Sights for Artists? Projects, Moveable City with Cineworks, Bio Circuit, TEI: Tangible, Embedded Computing Conference at M.I.T and Inside/Outside at the Visningrommet, Bergen, Norway. She teaches sessionally at Emily Carr University and maintains a studio in Vancouver.

Crista Dahl / Co-Chair / Archivist

Crista Dahl is a homemaker, beatnik, hippy, war protester, artist who came to Canada in the late 1960s with her four children. In the early 1970s she became part of the last years of Intermedia, an early Vancouver arts co-operative, gratefully finding that women artists were given support in ways uncommon in other countries at the time. She became an early partner in 1973 of the Satellite Video Exchange Society [S.V.E.S.], now VIVO. After several decades working as a performance artist as well as the Program Developer for the Vancouver Art Gallery’s ‘Art in Schools’, and in extensive childcare resources for street kids, she decided to involve herself with VIVO’s archives. She is currently working on a three part performance installation piece. During the last 12 years at VIVO, Crista has been a Board member, advocate and senior advisor concentrating now on the large depository archive collection of video and print.

Todd Davis / Director

Todd is a writer, artist and curator, and spearheads Wild Ideas & Art Projects Inc. He has 25 years of experience in management of non-profits and art galleries. Former administrative positions include Executive Director, Curator and Collection Management at several British Columbia cultural institutions. He formerly worked as Executive Director at Open Space Arts Society, Victoria; Interim Director and Curator at Simon Fraser University Art Gallery, Vancouver; and Director and Curator at the Burnaby Art Gallery, Burnaby. He studied at Ohio State University, Columbus College of Art & Design while working at the PACE Gallery, Columbus Ohio before travelling to Nova Scotia to finish his studies at the Nova Scotia College of Art & Design.

Tiina Liimu / Director

Tiina Liimu is a multidisciplinary artist and educator working with images and installations. She is currently producing work in a professional capacity with commercial, independent media production, artist run centres and non-profits. She is a Media Arts graduate of Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design (ECUAD), Live Event Production and Visual Arts from Niagara and VFS Digital Media and Animation alumni.

Marie-Hélène Tessier / Director

Marie-Hélène Tessier is a writer and visual artist based in Vancouver. She graduated from Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design in 2001 after she studied French literature and philosophy in Montreal, New York and the U.K. Her work migrates freely between fiction, poetry, philosophy and art criticism, typically within the body of a same narrative.

Malcolm Levy/ Director

As an artist, curator, writer and filmmaker. Levy’s curatorial, film and video installation works have been presented in India, Australia, China, Germany and Canada. In 2011 he was shown in Berlin (at Grimmuseum), Toronto (installation pre- miere at Nuit Blanche), New York (“Occupy Wall Street” exhibition) and Istanbul (at the Inter-Society for Electronic Arts). The Vancouver public would know his curatorial work from the program he curated for the 2010 Olympics, Code Live: 40 interactive media artworks and 8 performances across the city. Levy also heads the music label Hybridity Music, and collaborates with artist Kate Armstrong as Revised Projects.

Jeremy Todd / Director

Jeremy Todd is an interdisciplinary artist, teacher, writer, curator and musician concerned with the role of artists and intellectuals in society, the formation of cultural memory and technologies of the self. He is a faculty member of the Vancouver Film School Foundation Department, developing curriculum integrating art history, cultural studies and creative process. He was Director/Curator for the Helen Pitt Gallery ARC from 2003-05, and in 2007-08 acted as the interim Director/Curator of the Richmond Art Gallery. Jeremy also organizes grassroots collaborative events in Vancouver as part of his ongoing Not Sent Letters artist project (http://notsentlettersproject.com) while maintaining a studio practice and performing in the new music group Payday Millionaire.

Leanne Rooney / Treasurer

BIO COMING SOON!

Marina Roy / Director

Cross-disciplinary in scope, Marina Roy’s art practice investigates the intersection between materials, language, history, and ideology. Her work addresses the desire for a post-humanist perspective, counter to the dictates of anthropocentric hubris and biopolitical control. Materials and objects themselves have multiple potential agency, and art can act as a bridge between culture and nature, ethics and drive. Roy has exhibited locally, nationally and internationally. In 2001 she published sign after the x (Artspeak/Arsenal Pulp), a book which revolves around the letter X and its multiple meanings. She is currently working on the next book titled Queuejumping. In 2010 she was recipient of the VIVA art award, British Columbia’s largest visual art award for mid-career artists. She is associate professor of visual art in the Department of Art History, Visual Art, and Theory, at the University of British Columbia.

Workshop Instructors

Click here to view VIVO's Instructors

Interns and Regular Volunteers

Administrative Intern: Joseline Kwok

Technical Intern: Ayumi Takeda

Technical Intern: Toby Pikelin

Education Intern: Tyler Hagan

Front Desk / Administrative Volunteers: Nadia Secreto, Jade Su, Kevin Doherty