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Cairns-based Screen Artist/Curator Jenny Fraser
Digital Dreamtime is presented by cyberTribe and will remain online for public viewing long after the screening in Toronto. cyberTribe is an unfunded online gallery focused on nurturing digital and experimental art, which has been at the forefront of exhibiting cutting edge and politically important artworks from Indigenous Artists internationally, both online gallery and other gallery spaces across the world. Over the years cyberTribe, has brought together Indigenous artists from places across Australia, the Pacific, the Americas and elsewhere to participate in exhibitions of international standing. The Digital Dreamtime exhibition is the richer for the inclusion of key groundbreaking work, which was pre-digital, yet
laid down a pattern for storytelling and screen culture occurring now. “What we present here digitally re-tells and documents stories of grief and loss, along with those of protest, reclamation, revitalisation, cultural maintenance, healing and rebirth. Digital Natives are resistance fighters in the Culture War and can explore the possibilities in promoting culture, while also defending and spearheading strategic public and private responses to apartheid and Neo-Colonial regimes. We acknowledge the creators in the decades before us, who laid a track in the collective contemporary re-Dreaming, which works to reinforce existing ideas by connecting ancient storytelling traditions and sophisticated visual literacy with gadget ingenuity” said
Jenny Fraser. The imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival is the world’s largest Indigenous festival, that celebrates the latest works by Indigenous peoples on the forefront of innovation in film, video, radio, and new media. Held in Toronto each year, the festival presents a selection of the most compelling and distinctive Indigenous works from around the world. The festival’s screenings, panel discussions, and cultural events attract and connect film makers, media artists, programmers, buyers, and industry professionals. The works accepted reflect the diversity of the world’s Indigenous nations and illustrate the vitality and excellence of Native art and culture in contemporary media. This year’s International Spotlight, presented with support from the Canada Media Fund, shines on the diverse, inspiring and remarkable work of Indigenous artists from Australia. Over the past 15 years, many artists from Australia’s vibrant and accomplished Indigenous media arts industry have been presented at imagineNATIVE. As part of this Spotlight, imagineNATIVE is absolutely delighted to work with three highly esteemed guest programmers: Rachel Perkins, Pauline Clague, and Jenny Fraser who will each present a selection of short works representative of different sectors of Native life in Australia. Plans are also underway for cyberTribe to bring the Digital Dreamtime exhibition to Australia in 2015, for an exhibition in Cairns, and also further showings at galleries and festivals internationally.
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