David William Buchan was born 11 February 1950 in Grimsby, Ontario, Canada. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts Honours degree from York University, Toronto, Ontario, in 1972 and lived for a short period of time in Montreal, Quebec, before settling permanently in Toronto in 1975. Between 1975-85, he was primarily employed at Art Metropole in the capacity of Bookstore Manager. His association with Art Metropole and especially with its founding members, General Idea, would continue to be a vital source of personal and professional support throughout his life. During the mid 1970's to mid 1980's David's artistic production was largely performance based and consisted of multi-media productions. A performance piece entitled Fruit Cocktails was performed at the artists' video conference Fifth Network, 8 September 1978 and debuted Lamonte del Monte, an invented persona which David would assume in a variety of performances, artworks, and installations until 1988. In addition to performance art, David produced photo-text works and magazine pages which featured parodies of 1950's and 1960's advertising, and in keeping with his performance pieces, functioned as popular culture commentaries. His work has been included in numerous group exhibitions, in addition to solo exhibitions, in Canada, the United States and Europe; and is in the collections of The National Gallery of Canada, Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography, University of Lethbridge Art Gallery, Canada Council Art Bank, Winnipeg Art Gallery, as well as private collections. On 5 January 1994 David Buchan died in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

Dana Inkster is an Alberta-based media artist and cultural producer. Her first film, Welcome to Africville, was released in 1999 and won critical acclaim and awards in Canada and internationally. Since that time, Dana has produced and directed other short films and videos spanning the genres of experimental video art to television public service announcements. Her films and videos have been exhibited and acquired throughout Canada and around the world. She has been profiled and numerous critics, journalists, and cultural theorists around the world have lauded her work. Her documentary The Art of Autobiography, was awarded Best Documentary of 2003 from the Association of Quebec Cinema Critics. From this work came the Art of Autobiography: Redux, works that have found audiences around the world. Her documentary, 24 Days in Brooks (2007) was co-produced by the National Film Board of Canada and CBC Newsworld. It received an Alberta Motion Picture Industry award in 2008 and has been nominated for a Gemini by the Academy of Cinema and Television. She continues to make experimental video work that explores the margins of personal history and the imagination. In addition to her creative practice, Dana is an educator and has served as faculty in colleges and universities in addition to developing education programs in Canadian galleries and museums. She has lead marketing and distribution projects for the NFB, CBC, Alliance Atlantis, Miramax Films, and the Weinstein Company. She has also worked as an independent producer and in the nonprofit cultural sector. All of this work culminates in a career as cultural producer in which art is facilitator of cultural exchange.

Bruce LaBruce is a Toronto based filmmaker, writer, director, photographer, and artist. He began his career in the mid-eighties making a series of short experimental super 8 films and co-editing a punk fanzine called J.D.s, which begat the queercore movement. He has directed and starred in three feature length movies, No Skin Off My Ass (1991), Super 8 1/2 (1994), and Hustler White (1996). More recently he has directed two art/porn features, Skin Flick (2000)(hardcore version: Skin Gang) and The Raspberry Reich (2004)(hardcore version: The Revolution Is My Boyfriend), and the independent feature Otto; or, Up with Dead People (2008). After premiering at Sundance and Berlin, The Raspberry Reich took off on the international film festival circuit, playing at over 150 festivals, including the Istanbul, Guadalajara, and Rio de Janeiro International Film Festivals. He was also honoured with retrospectives at the end of ’05 at the Madrid and Hong Kong Gay and Lesbian Film Festivals. Otto; or, Up with Dead People also debuted at Sundance and Berlin and played at over 150 film festivals, culminating in a screening at MoMA in New York City in November of 2008. His new film, L.A. Zombie, starring French star Francois Sagat, premiered in competition at the Locarno International Film Festival in August, 2010. It will have its French premier at the L’Etrange Film Festival in Paris and its North American premier at the Toronto International Film Festival in September. 2010. The hardcore version, L.A. Zombie Hardcore, will be released at Halloween, 2010.

Born November 25th, 1950, on the Six Nations territory on the Grand River near Ohsweken in southern Ontario, Aiyyana grew up in Rochester and Buffalo, New York. Spending time in Vancouver, Toronto, Chippewa territory, and Montreal, in 2010 she returned to the Six Nations reservation. On April 24, 2016, Aiyyana Maracle died surrounded by her loving family and friends. Aiyyana Maracle was a multi-disciplinary artist, scholar, educator, story-crafter and storyteller. For half a century, Aiyyana was actively involved in the merging of Ogwehoweh art and culture into the Euro-centric world and consciousness. For 20+ years she sought that same inclusion for herself and other gender-variant folks by offering an alternate framework to the prevalent Euro-centric view of gender. Aiyyana Maracle was both a maker and keeper of culture. Describing herself in her article “A Journey in Gender” as a “transformed woman who loves women,” Aiyyana’s work steered people towards a decolonized understanding of gender and sexuality. Through her work she argued that in most traditional Indigenous cultures gender identifications fall outside the strict confines of the gender binary and are recognized as both socially and spiritually integral to the culture. Her one-woman show, Chronicle of a Transformed Woman, detailed her use of traditional medicine rituals for transitioning genders while struggling under colonial rule. Aiyyana’s work, which reflected her various transformations in relation to her ongoing process of decolonization, received numerous honours and recognitions.

Cathy Sisler (1956-2021) was born in Neenah, Wisconsin, United States. She moved with family to Ontario in 1965. She started writing and playing music in London, Ontario, then moved to Toronto, where she played in bands for ten years and studied painting at the Ontario College of Art & Design. She moved to Montreal in 1992, where she received an MFA from Concordia University and began a career as a video artist, performance artist, writer, and teacher. Her video The Better Me (1995) was acquired for the permanent collection of the National Gallery of Canada in 1998. Cathy worked as a sessional instructor at the University of Western Ontario in London and resided in rural Ontario until the end of her life.

Ho Tam is a Canadian artist whose practice spans video, photography, painting, drawing, graphics and print media. His work often concerns with mass media representations of race and identity politics. He has exhibited in galleries and film festivals across Canada and internationally. Tam was born in Hong Kong. He holds a Bachelor of Arts from McMaster University and a Master of Fine Arts from Bard College. He also attended the Whitney Museum Independent Studies Program. Tam’s video work has received various prizes and awards, including the Best Documentary at Tel Aviv International LGBT Film Festival and the Outstanding Artistic Achievement Award at OutFest, Los Angeles (both for Books of James 2006). In the past ten years, Tam has been focusing on his independent publishing practice under the imprint Hotam Press. His publications can be found in the website hotampress.com

Hagere Selam “shimby” Zegeye-Gebrehiwot is an artist and administrator who currently works and resides between Treaty 1 and Treaty 4 territories. They have received funding from municipal, provincial and national arts councils as well as awards from local and transnational arts organizations. Their practice engages with themes of place and its abstraction from a diasporic, queer and feminist perspective. Their experimental film work has been reviewed in Blackflash magazine and the Winnipeg Free Press while screening the world over. Their art writing has appeared in the Capilano Review as well as in the form of commissioned essays at artist run centres in Winnipeg. Currently, they are the Executive Director at the Saskatchewan Filmpool, Co-Director of WNDX Festival of Moving Image and guest editor of the forthcoming Art&Wonder publication.