PXR 2022
2022 IBPOC Fellows

Kai is a storyteller who creates linear and immersive experiences for kids and their caregivers. Kai spotlights STEAM, social justice, and emotional intelligence in educational experiences and blends myth, mystery, and comedy into their art practice. Kai’s contributed in development to distribution on over 100 hours of long and short-form media. In 2022, Kai won the YMA-TAAFI John Rooney Creator Fund with a solarpunk adventure; and completed two audio-driven AR projects, Udo Gardens and Storytellers’ Lime: Journey to Babylon. She then introduced the world to “Solstice Stories”, a mythical mystery.

Renae Morriseau is a writer, a theatre and television director, actor, singer and musician. She has worked across Canada and internationally with her singing group, M’Girl.   She just completed directing 5 episodes of the 4th season of Quest Out West, a documentary series for APTN on Syilx/Okanagan food sovereignty.  She currently instructs Indigenous film studies at Capilano University however, she continues creating her own work, currently researching and developing a feature length script on the history of her peoples displacement in the Treaty 1 territories now known as Manitoba.

Kingston Fellow*

Seymour Irons is a multi-disciplinary artist and spiritual coach. Through independent and academic training with Queens University, he has developed a production company called SEE MORE WAKE UP. This business produces media work as well as 1 – 1 wellness coaching. Seymour found the passion to bridge his spiritual interests and production ability through self-exploration during the pandemic. Currently Seymour is researching the intersectionality of VR and Projection Mapping technologies. In Spring 2023, these research finding will be displayed with  Queens University and the Dan School of Drama & Music through Immersive performance.

*This opportunity was funded by the City of Kingston Arts & Culture Services.

Andrea Wong is an emerging new media artist and sound designer based in Vancouver, Canada. Her musical background stems from classical piano and Canadian folk fiddle. Andrea discovered an interest in sound and technology and a love for cross-discipline collaboration co-creating interactive media performances as a programmer with Sonic UBC Laptop Sounds and Sensors (SUBCLASS). Her recent sound design work specialized in interactive mediums including virtual reality games. With a passion for experimentation and learning, Andrea is pursuing using technology to create meaningful and accessible immersive experiences.

K.P Dennis a Black, Arawak, non-binary, multi-disciplinary artist, director, producer, and activist based on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh Nations. They were the 2016 Youth Poet Laureate of Victoria, the 2017 recipient of the VACCS Community recognition Award, and in 2020 they received the Witness Legacy Award for Social Purpose and Responsibility Through Art. Their work explores future building through a queer afro-surrealist lens, using magic and fantasy to explore what we will have to do and who we have to become, to liberate our futures.

Lorena Torres Loaiza was born in Bogota, Colombia, and grew up in Canada. She works in comics, illustration, theatre design, and fiction. All her work has a quirky visual style and some fantasy elements. She’s interested in flawed characters solving problems, and hope as an active process.

Lorena has a Creative Writing certificate from the University of Toronto. Several of her short stories have been published in Syntax and Salt, AntipodeanSF, POMEgranate magazine, and the Toronto Comics: Yonge at Heart and Wayward Sisters comic anthologies. She has recently developed a comics-based art installation, with the support of the Theatre Centre exploration residency and the 2021 CAMINOS theatre festival.  She can be found @lszian on Instagram and Twitter.

Raven John, artist, involuntary comedian and two-spirit activist, is of Coast Salish and Stolo Nation decent. This Two-spirit Trickster is a BFA graduate from Emily Carr University of Art and Design, with a major in visual art and minor in social practice and community engagement, as well as a graduate of the North West Coast Jewelry Arts program at the Native Education College. Raven is a visual artist, cultural consultant, mediator, storyteller, photographer and sculptor. A jack-of-all-trades (and master of a few), their practice covers a wide array of mediums from provocation and humor, puppet making, ceramics, dressmaking, interactive electronics and indigenous technologies. Should you wish to participate in direct action regarding Truth and Reconciliation and/or the ongoing colonization/genocide of the indigenous peoples of Canada, feel free to visit their following website to directly wire them money for coffee, comic books and/or art supplies.
www.ravenjohn.com