Learning from Vancouver Symposium (Day 1)

Description:

Learning From Vancouver was a three-day symposium presented in conjunction with the eponymous exhibition at Western Front that featured work by Bik Van der Pol and Urban Subjects. Facilitated by exhibition curators Alissa Firth-Eagland and Johan Lundh, the program explored key questions about the mediatization of Vancouver through panels, talks, and responses by local and visiting artists.

The first day of the symposium featured opening remarks by Western Front executive director Caitlin Jones, as well as an introduction to the series by Firth-Eagland and Lundh. Tom Sherman delivered the first keynote presentation titled Media Art in 2025. Over the course of his hour-long talk, Sherman traced the history of media art in Vancouver to speculate how artists will engage with media in the future. His presentation was followed by a response by artist Laiwan, who discussed the innocence of improvisation and the effect of media technologies on embodied experiences and consent. 
 
Following the presentations, audience members were invited to join artists Bik Van der Pol and Urban Subjects in the gallery to celebrate the opening of their exhibition Learning From Vancouver. 

Presented with support from the Canada Council for the Arts Media Arts Dissemination Project Grand and the Mondriaan Foundation.

Video documentation of this event is available upon request.