DIRECTOR

Miki Aurora is an artist, writer, and community organizer based in Vancouver, BC. Her work explores the politics of liberation. She is a survivor of street homelessness and this experience was part of her inspiration to found the Social Sculpture Foundation. She is also the founder of DECEL / DIVERGE (short for deceleration), an art collective and youth movement oriented around encouraging young people to protect themselves from digital extraction in the AI era.


BOARD MEMBERS

Growing up in Vancouver’s punk rock music scene Jim Sigmund’s life has always been focused on advocating for change. As a person with lived/living experience with substance use and recovery, a big part of that has been advocating for substance user’s human rights. He has worked with MHSU Services with Vancouver Coastal Health 19 years ago, starting with his time at WDMSservices in Vancouver Detox and Daytox. After 5 years of this he worked on Vancouver’sDowntown Eastside with a Primary Care Team supporting folks that live in DTES single room units. He was then involved in the DTES redesign and when the team he was on was dissolved he took a Coordinator position with VCH Peer Program supporting the SMART Recovery Program and Harm Reduction Services working alongside the VCH Harm Reduction Peer team. They collaborate with the Regional Addiction team on anti-stigma work and policies that support humanrights for substance users, and more inclusive services for the community. For the past 2 years he has worked for the Vancouver Junction as one of the core unionized staff. The Junction is a brand new Provincially funded Harm Reduction Recovery Community. As this is the first program of its kind, being part of the core team hired to run it he helped to create a “How To Manuel” for 6 additional Recovery Community Centers which have been funded to open throughout the Province.

Torien C. Cafferata (they/he) is an AuDHD interdisciplinary artist originally from Treaty 4 and Treaty 6 territory where they trained as a performer, playwright, director, dramaturge, and educator before coming to Simon Fraser University for their MFA. Their creative practice spans a host of forms: devised theatre, social practice, site-specific, mixed-reality, anti-game design, critical ludology, and Pochinko clown. He enjoys trifling with paratextual methodology, digital platforms, and lo-fi aesthetics, often using them to explore labour, play, madness/disability, anti-professionality, interpassivity, non-places, and hauntology. As co-Artistic Director of It’s Not A Box Theatre they have toured performances and installations to the Prague Quadrennial, SummerWorks, and across Fringe Festivals.

Caspar Danuser is a Swiss curator and researcher. Currently, he directs Stiftung akku Emmen and contributes to curatorial education at Goldsmiths, University of London, and the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts (HSLU). He holds an MA in Curating Contemporary Art from the Royal College of Art. 

His curatorial and research practice examines how exhibitions and cultural institutions produce meaning, attention and value under conditions of economic precarity, ecological degradation, digital abundance and artificial intelligence.

Richard Raghunath Khe Trimble is a music producer / DJ, radio host, event organizer, and harm reductionist. They also have served as a substance use recovery facilitator for many years, and previously were a monk. During that period, cooking and distributing meals to people with zero, or limited, funds for food was an important part of their larger spiritual practice. Presently, as a peer harm-reductionist working the front lines of the Vancouver opioid crisis, they advocate for continued safety, and for the advancement of customized recovery opportunities and moments of respite for one of Vancouver’s most at-risk communities.