Metabolizing Moving Images

Considering experimental moving images as a part of broader cultural, ecological, political, and spiritual systems, the theme Metabolizing Moving Images asks what the gut has to do with it. What does a moving image require of a body? Where might it linger within us? When we invite moving images into our sightlines, do we also invite them into our nervous system, our memory, our grief, our lineages, our dreams? Might they leak or seep beyond the body? And how do they circulate between media, bodies, and worlds? Do they generate energy? When do they nourish? Act as poison? What is their shelf life, half-life? Do they have an afterlife? And once they have entered a body, do they ever truly exit? 

Images Festival operates on land stolen from the Anishinaabe, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee, the Huron-Wendat, and the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation. Tkáron:to is currently home to diverse Indigenous and Métis peoples as well as people who settle on this land. As part of Treaty 13 and the Dish With One Spoon Wampum Covenant, we acknowledge that we all eat from the same bowl and spoon, and must take only what we need, ensuring resources are available for all. 

As art workers, artists, and curators, we see the process of untangling ourselves from settler complicity as internal, structural, and ongoing. It is not something to be taken lightly. The inclusion of Indigenous artists and curators into our program is just the first step of necessary and deeper change. Extending from our organizational accountability work, we strive to not only undo forms of complicity, but also actively create an environment and infrastructure that can support Indigenous peoples who work with us. 

Images expresses our solidarity with Indigenous people on Turtle Island and globally. We are committed to continuing to learn, critique, and challenge the settler colonial structures we are complicit in.