Artist Bio
Alex MacKenzie is a Vancouver-based media artist working with light projection, expanded cinema, performance, hand-processed film, and moving image instruments. He received a Bachelor of Arts Degree with Honours from Carleton University and has worked with a variety of independent film organizations over the past fifteen years, including Mainfilm, Pacific Cinémathèque, Cineworks, and Doxa. He was the founder and curator of The Edison Electric Gallery of Moving Images, The Blinding Light!! Cinema, and the Vancouver Underground Film Festival, and he currently works as an independent curator, graphic designer, and writer. His live media works have been presented at festivals and underground screening spaces throughout Europe and North America, most recently on a month-long tour of the UK, as well as in Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa, and Winnipeg.
Alex has presented his work and given artist talks at Concordia University and York University’s graduate cinema programs and at Mount Allison University, Humboldt State University in California, and University of Regina. He has given workshops at no.w.here in London (UK), the Cork Film Festival, and LIFT in Toronto, among many others. He has been a mentor for at-risk youth in Vancouver. Alex completed artist residencies in Grenoble, France and at Struts Gallery/Faucet Media in New Brunswick. He is co-editor of the volume DAMP: Contemporary Vancouver Media Art (Anvil Press, 2008), and he interviewed David Rimmer for Loop, Print, Fade + Flicker: David Rimmer’s Moving Images (Anvil Press, 2009).
Alex continues to explore new directions in artisanal film production, handmade film emulsion, and recomposed projection devices for gallery installation and live performance.