Ctrl+Shift | A Strategy Session Series

Artists & Cyber Security

Thursday, February 13

7-8:30PM

Register for your FREE ticket here: https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/ctrlshift-artists-cyber-security-tickets-91025476651

Ctrl+Shift is a strategy session series that invites influential members of Toronto’s creative community to propose solutions to urgent challenges that affect the artists living in this city. Structured as a panel discussion, Ctrl+Shift seeks to facilitate productive conversations and actionable strategies that can elicit change in our shared creative landscape. This event is free and welcome to everyone.

In this Ctrl+Shift session, panelists Hiba Ali, Sarah Friend, Aljumaine Gayle, Jason Li, and moderator Matthew Braga will explore current concerns in digital privacy and security and how artists are questioning, circumventing, and intervening in tools of online surveillance.

PANELISTS

Hiba Ali is a new media artist, writer, DJ, experimental music producer and curator based across Chicago, IL, Austin, TX, and Toronto, ON. Her performances and videos concern music, labour and power. She conducts reading groups addressing digital media and workshops with open-source technology. She is a PhD candidate in Cultural Studies at Queens University, Kingston, Canada. She has presented her work in Chicago, Stockholm, Toronto, New York, Istanbul, São Paulo, Detroit, Dubai, Austin, Vancouver, and Portland. She has written for THE SEEN Magazine, Newcity Chicago, Art Dubai, The State, VAM Magazine, ZORA: Medium, RTV Magazine, and Topical Cream Magazine.

Sarah Friend is an artist and software engineer with special interest in blockchain and the p2p web. Recently, she has exhibited work at Radical Networks in New York, Microwave Festival in Hong Kong, the Athens Biennale, and the ZKM Center for Art and Media In Germany. Friend is a proud Recurse Centre alum, and is one of the organizers of Our Networks, a conference on all aspects of the distributed web in Toronto.

Aljumaine Gayle is a queer Jamaican-Canadian Interdisciplinary creative technologist working at the intersections of technology, art, design and data justice. He’s currently enrolled in OCADU’s Digital Futures program and actively co-organizes programming on behalf of IntersectTO. He’s currently an active member of the University of Toronto’s Technoscience Research Unit primarily focusing on research about surveillance technologies and how they affect communities of color. Aljumaine’s artwork work explores othering of blackness in contemporary life and aims to subvert this othering through Afrofuturism and artistic use of technology. His interactive digital art challenges tokenism and trauma narratives that characterize the majority of mainstream black art, film and music. His art practice is rooted in design thinking and centers the forgotten groups that are under-represented in the process of digital product design and art.

Jason Li is an independent designer, cartoonist and researcher working at the intersection of storytelling, technology and social change. His practice focuses on amplifying underrepresented voices, creating alternative media ecosystems, and making digital safety more accessible. Previous works have appeared at the Victoria and Albert Museum, Asian Art Museum, on the BBC, and on the radio in Spain. He also serves as an editor at Paradise Systems, a publisher of exemplary comics from the US and China, and is a member of Zine Coop, an independent publishing collective in Hong Kong.

MODERATOR

Matthew Braga is a writer and freelance journalist. He also manages Security Planner, an educational resource for digital security advice, run out of the University of Toronto's Citizen Lab. He was previously a senior technology reporter for CBC News and an editor at VICE Media's Motherboard. He has written for Bloomberg Businessweek, The Globe and Mail, Hazlitt, BuzzFeed, The Outline, Canadian Business, The Walrus, The Atlantic, and Fast Company, among others, and has guest hosted CBC's daily news podcast Front Burner.

ACCESSIBILITY

We regret that at this time InterAccess does not have barrier-free access; we are currently working to improve the accessibility of all facilities. There are five steps up to our main entrance. Once inside all facilities are on the same level, and there is a single-user washroom inside the unit.

To increase this event's accessibility, the panel will be live streamed using Facebook Live.