About
Karen is 3rd-generation settler living and working on the stolen and unceded Coast Salish Territories of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. She is currently Manager and Special Projects Lead at the VIVO Media Arts Centre’s Crista Dahl Media Library & Archive (CDMLA). She has 23-years of accumulated experience at VIVO as Librarian, Archivist, Distributor, Development Coordinator, and Programmer since 1984.
Karen’s current focus is on activating the CDMLA Special Collections through a series of Archivist Internships, digitization projects, and exhibition series. Recent CDMLA digitization and exhibition projects include Celebration’ 90, a Digital Museum Canada exhibit documenting Vancouver’s Gay Games III (Mary Anne McEwen fonds) and Women & West Coast Labour, audio and video recordings documenting 80 years of action for equity in domestic and workplace labour (Sara Diamond and Women In Focus fonds).
Karen is Lead for VIVO’s case study, Gendered Violence: Responses and Remediations, part of York University’s SSHRC project, Archive/Counter-Archive.
She is also VIVO lead and co-researcher for Crossing Fonds, Dr. Sara Diamond’s two-year SSHRC project in collaboration with Dana Claxton, Andrea Fatona, The Black Arts Centre, the City of Vancouver Archives, SFU Archives, and SFU Special Collections & Rare Books.
2013-2022
Select Curatorial Projects
1. Rupture Probe:Queer Inquiries & Remediations. 2. Return to Sodom North: 90s Queer Video Out & Uncensored, Queer Arts Festival Media Nights, 2020.
Sticky Impulse Series, Crista Dahl Media Library & Archive, 2020-2021.
Radical Rewind , 2015; Punk, Poetry & Politics (co-curator Elisa Ferrari) 2015; changeXchange , (co-curator Elisa Ferrari) 2017. Vancouver Independent Archives Week (annual series)
EATa I-IV; Evening At the Archives (series) 2013-2016
Recent Panels/Symposia
EN GRÈVE!: 1970s French Labour Activisms on Screen, “Intersections: Video Inn & the French Militant Video Movement,” Unit Pitt Society, 2021
HIV on TV: A Panel on Early HIV/AIDS Activist Television in Canada, “Gayblevision and AIDS Activism,” Archive/Counter Archive 2021
Intergenerational Dialogue with Artist Mothers, Art/Mamas PLOT artist residency at ACCESS Gallery, 2021
“Not Confused: Artists, Queers, Activists and Educators Against Censorship, Censorship, Sexuality and Resilience: Revisiting Paul Wong’s Confused Sexual Views,” Griffin Art Projects, 2020
Theorizing Vulnerabilities in Audio-Visual Archives, Congress 2019 FSAC Annual Conference, 2019
Underground in the Aether Seminar, “…of cabbages & catalogues” co-presentation with Elisa Ferrari. Doryphore Independent Curators Society, 2017
1984-2005
Commissioned surveys of Canadian artist-run centre archives
Ed Video Media Arts Centre, Guelph.
Em Media, Calgary.
Satellite Video Exchange Society (Video Inn, Video In Studios, VIVO Media Arts Centre), Vancouver.
Western Front Society, Vancouver.
Select Publications
Celebration ‘90: Gay Games III, Digital Museum Canada,(online) 2020.
“Abundant Harvest: The Recordings of Calgary Video Artists and Independents”, Expanded Standard Time, Em Media, 2005.
“Sculpting the Deficient Flesh: Mainstreet, Body Culture, & the Video Scalpel”, Making Video “In”, ed. Jennifer Abbott, Satellite Video Exchange Society, Vancouver, 2000.
“Imaging the Feminine: The Video Art of Sara Diamond”, Memories Revisited, Histories Untold, ed. Jean Gagnon, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, 1992.
Distinguishing Features: 15 Years of Artists’ Video at Ed Video Media Arts Centre 1976-1991, Ed Video, Guelph, 1992
(Inter)reference, Part II: (In)authentic (Re)search, Jin-me Yoon solo exhibition catalogue, Women In Focus Lateral Gallery, 1990.
“Preserving our Polymeric Progeny”, Whispered Art History, ed. Keith Wallace, 1990.
Select Curatorial Projects
Home Body: Residing in the Buried Self: The First Lorna Boschman Retrospective, Video In Studios, 1994.
Sculpting the Deficient Flesh / Mainstreet Mythopeia, Video In 20th Anniversary Series, Video In Studios, 1993.
Ruling Passions, Video In Studios, 1991.
Lifting the Televisual Fog – Media Resistance to the New World Order, Mayworks Festival Vancouver, 1991.
Demarcations of Desire, Images Festival 1990
‘Sodom North’ BASH BACK (co-curator) Video In Studios, 1990.
Crossed Borders/Identifying Impressions, San Francisco State U, Pacific Film Arcives, New American Makers, 1989.
FLV: Feature Length Video, Series co-curated with Paul Wong, VIVO Media Arts Centre, 1988.
Visual Evidence: A Series on Sexuality and Representation, Series co-curated with Sara Diamond, Vancouver Artists League, 1987.