VECTOR FESTIVAL 2025: Game Art Residency

Call for Applications

"While the material in this book comprises extensive research, interview content, photographs, and journals, much of it is based on memory, which is discrete, impressionable, and shaped by the body inside of which it lives."

– T Kira Madden, A Note From The Author, Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls

In its fourth year, the 2025 Vector Festival Game Art Residency, curated by Bracy Appeikumoh, seeks to have its participants explore video game play as autoethnographic ~ autotheoretical ~ autofictive practice. With this, we are seeking to excavate individual and collective memories, experience embodied epistemologies. How does the video game change the way that memory is placed within the self? How do the visual, audio, as well as motor/mechanic/manual components impact our thoughts and experiences as we traverse the (in)finite pixels of video game space? How do we bring those principles into the ways that we interact with memory in the waking world? Finally, how can renewed understanding encourage us to interrogate which memories are canonized as collective?

Video game as time capsule. Video game as time machine.
Memory as time machine.
Flashback as time machine
Oversaturation of photography, meaninglessness of contemporary memory-making/memory-keeping

The residency includes a keynote address and a networking social supported by Toronto Games Week, alternative controller workshop supported by Hand Eye Society, a showcase opportunity supported by the Centre for Culture and Technology at University of Toronto, and critique and thematic support throughout the game development process from the curator.

Timeline

Application deadline: April 7, 2025
Artist notification: Mid-May 2025
Residency dates: June 11 – July 9, 2025
Showcase dates: Within July 10 – 20, 2025

Type of Submission

Artist applications for participation in an experimental Game Art Residency.

Location

In-person events will take place in downtown Toronto and at InterAccess (32 Lisgar Street, Toronto, ON M6J 0C7).
Priority is given to artists local to the festival, but out-of-town artists can be accommodated with online participation through Zoom and Discord.

Collaborators

This program is curated by Bracy Appeikumoh and proudly co-presented with Toronto Games Week, Hand Eye Society, and the Centre for Culture and Technology at University of Toronto.

Fees

Vector Festival does not charge submission fees or provide production expenses. All artists selected for participation will receive fees in accordance with CARFAC and IMAA fee schedules, as well as support to apply for external funding.

Equity

InterAccess is committed to equity and strongly encourages applications from equity-deserving communities, including artists who are Black, Indigenous, People of Colour, LGBTQ-identified, Gender Diverse, Two-Spirit, and Persons with Disabilities. 

Contact

Please reach out to art@interaccess.org with any questions.