Participant Biographies

Deanna Bowen is a descendant of the Alabama and Kentucky born Black Prairie pioneers of Amber Valley and Campsie, Alberta. She is a Toronto based interdisciplinary artist whose work has been exhibited internationally in numerous film festivals and galleries. Bowen’s solo exhibition about the Ku Klux Klan and its migration into Canada, entitled Invisible Empires, is currently showing at the Art Gallery of York University (AGYU) in Toronto. Other recent works have been shown at the Images Festival, the Art Gallery of Peterborough, and her commissioned, performed oral history, sum of the parts: what can be named, has shown at the Kassel Documentary Film & Video Festival, the Oberhausen Film Festival, and the Nasher Museum of Contemporary Art at Duke University.

Pablo de Ocampo is a curator based in Toronto where he is the Artistic Director of The Images Festival. In June 2013, he will present his work as the curator of the 59th Flaherty Seminar. His program for the seminar, titled History is What’s Happening will examine both the frame and subject of history in cinema to understand how the social and political conditions of the past are inextricably linked to the present. In March 2013, he will present a series of discursive screenings at TPW R&D as a prelude to the Flaherty. Prior to his post at Images, Pablo was a co-founder and collective member of Portland’s Cinema Project.

Reena Katz works with the transmission and reception of sonic information present in the human voice. She uses live and recorded talking, whispering, yelling and listening to consider bodies as sites of knowledge, and communication as a social and political practice. Through audience participation in public spaces, Katz highlights the relationship between collective voice and the empathic act of listening. Her projects take shape as installations, recordings and live performances. They have been performed, played and exhibited widely in North America and Europe. Her current project, love takes the worry out of being close: public assemblies in bed with queers is a re-imagining of Yoko Ono and John Lennon's iconic Bed-ins. It will be presented in April at Harbourfront Centre as part of the 2013 HATCH Residency.