Showcase event
The showcase event took place on 5th August 2022 at Vivid Projects and showcased live coding works and performances from the 2022 cohort Canaan Brown, Japhet Dinganga, Meesha Fones, melissandre varin & Sym Stellium, and Tyger Blue.
Photos by Jodi Cunningham
Artists
Canaan Brown
He/Him
Canaan Brown is an artist and designer, currently studying at Birmingham City University, and working as an Emerging Artist with Legacy West Midlands. Brown strives to advocate, exemplify, and inspire Black excellence through his art and design practice. Using film, writing, and digital media, as well as sculpture, painting, and installation, Brown employs diverse media to tell stories through his work - highlighting, celebrating, and speculating on histories, modernities, and futures.
Brown was recently awarded as a finalist for the Black Heritage Undergraduate of the Year Award, 2022, and has exhibited his artwork internationally.
- Website: https://canaanjbrown.cargo.site
- Twitter: @canaan_jbpress
- Instagram: @canaan_jb
- Facebook: canaan_jb
Demarae
He/Him
Demarae is a multidisciplinary designer, World builder & Music producer born and raised in Birmingham UK.
Representing our city in new and innovative ways has always been at the forefront of all Demarae experiences. From envisioning potential futures to the replication of modern midlands as a backdrop for virtual storytelling is a common practice.
Demarae is a world builder who creates alternative realities in a stylised way, allowing you (the player) to experience new and familiar environments and take on adventures like never seen before. (Virtually and sonically)
- Website: https://demaraemusic.wix.com/demarae
- Twitter: @_Demarae
- Instagram: @Demarae.exe
Japhet Dinganga
He/Him
Birmingham based visual artist, currently working on several projects along with community organisations and other Birmingham based emerging creatives. Developing in carpentry digital art programming to constitute my current practice and interests as a cultivating contribute. I’m excited to take part in this experience in high hopes to learn lasting skills and new knowledge.
- Instagram: @jahpharoah
Meesha Fones
They/Them
Meesha Fones is a Wolverhampton born electronic sound designer, live performer and creative producer. Meesha identifies as a neurodivergent creator with no formal training.They take inspiration from analog and digital sound, 70s post punk bands, arpeggiator synth lines and Electronic dance music. They play in bands’ Dorcha and electronic-trio Pretty Grim and solo perform under the name Naycha/Nature Boi.
Their style of producing can be most noted in ‘Queef’: a Birmingham based collective where They are lead producer, showcasing queer experimental art and live music. Queef challenges standard forms of hosting live performance, and the journey of how spaces can work and look. Meesha bases Their work on journeying towards immersion and self healing.
- Instagram: @meekameeka77
- Instagram: @queef_qult
- Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/user-970049646-176857914
melissandre varin
they/them
Relation, displacement, multiplicity, identity, interdependency, and language emerge from melissandre’s work. Making from an Afro and Caribbean diasporic context, melissandre adds layers of complexity using a situated Black feminism.
Through performance arts, moving image assemblages, and site-specific installations - among other things - melissandre investigates love, intimacy, and tenderness.
- Website: https://melissandre.hotglue.me/
- Instagram: @vmelissandre
Sym Stellium
they/them
Sym is a movement artist, facilitator, performer and community worker with focus on supporting and uplifting marginalised communities- and the exploration of connection and communication on micro and macro levels situated at the core of their practise. Sym is the lead facilitator of UNMUTED and creates and leads workshops from movement and confidence building to meditation and practical wellbeing practices. Sym has performed across stages in the UK such as Manchester O2 arena, Birmingham Hippodrome, Creamfields festival and Birmingham Pride future stage.
- Website: https://symstellium.hotglue.me
- Twitter: @simsoulspeaks
- Instagram: @mendezi0
Tyger Blue
He/Him
Multidisciplinary artist specialising in sound. Explorer of the intersection at which technology, art and science meet.