About Channels

Channels Festival is an artist-led collective based in Naarm/Melbourne, Australia which is dedicated to showcasing emerging trends in contemporary video art practice from around the world.

We seek to expand awareness and appreciation of video art as an important, powerful and vital practice, through an ambitious program of contemporary Australian and international work.

We create a space where artists and audiences can come together to consider video art’s broader social and critical discourses and histories.

History

Channels Festival is governed by an Advisory Committee made up of artists and other creative practitioners, who take a lead role in shaping the vision and values of the organisation. Channels Festival was founded in 2012 by Melbourne-based artists Jessie Scott, Rachel Feery and Eugenia Lim. The inaugural festival was co-directed by the founders in 2013, with the aim of representing the breadth and depth of local and global practices operating within the field.

In subsequent years, the committee has invited a new Artistic Director to bring fresh perspectives to the curation and delivery of each program. In 2015, Artistic Director Nikki Lam presented a program that sought to challenge the historical context of video art by exploring its development in an increasingly tech-saturated and hybridised world. In 2017, Artistic Director Alicia Renew explored speculative narratives as a construct for mapping uncharted cultural territories, histories and futures.