Digital Puppets and Video Games

Based in Vancouver and recognized internationally, Patrick Blenkarn and Milton Lim are interdisciplinary artists whose practice focuses on experimenting with and creating gamified conceptual experiences. Their individual and collaborative projects explore the notion of participatory, immersive, and interactive shows, with an interest in the social value of art, the place of work in a digital world, different modes of discourse, and the political and artistic potential of games. They are the co-creators of culturecapital, a trading card game and performance project on Canada’s performing arts economy, and videocan, an online video archive platform for Canadian performances. Since 2018, they have been working together on asses.masses, which premiered in Spanish at the Festival Internacional de Buenos Aires (FIBA). Its French-language premiere will take place in Montreal, featuring a translation by Gilles Poulin-Denis.

Besides his collaborations with Blenkarn, Lim is an artistic associate with Theatre Conspiracy, co-artistic director of the interdisciplinary company Hong Kong Exile, and an artistic-leader-in-residence at the National Theatre School of Canada. His work is recognized and is frequently presented across the country as well as internationally. Blenkarn has participated in numerous residencies at galleries and theatres around the world, from Norway to Argentina by way of Montreal. His work is also presented across the country, elsewhere in the Americas, and in Europe. He is the producer for The Elbow Theatre and co-leads the interdisciplinary theatre company Guilty by Association.

Paola Huitrón graduated in acting in Mexico and has worked with various professional puppet theatre companies as a collaborator and on her own projects as a solo artist. In 2013, she began looking at puppetry and materials, research that took her around the world. She moved to Montreal to complete a master’s degree in virtual puppetry at the École Supérieure de Théâtre de l’UQAM.

General and artistic director of the Théâtre du Renard Antonia Leney-Granger is a Montreal artist and teacher specializing in object theatre and transdisciplinary creation, notably in bridging the gap between art and science. Her creations are a playful, poetic exploration of knowledge transfer. Her Une brève histoire du temps (2019) and La rébellion du minuscule (Théâtre Aux Écuries, 2024) were inspired by physics. Since 2022, she has been looking at ecology and the relationship between humans and nature in the podcast Enracinés | Récits de nature.