Stefana Fratila & Diana Lynn VanderMeulen^RO/CA+CA

© Shelby Fenlon

Stefana Fratila is a Romanian-born artist, composer and sound designer based in Toronto, Canada. She is also a DJ and co-founder of Crip Rave, an event platform showcasing and prioritizing Crip, Disabled, Deaf, Mad, and Sick body-minds within safer and more accessible rave spaces. She created Sononaut, 8 open-source VST plug-ins that emulate the atmospheric conditions of the planets in our solar system in collaboration with NASA scientists and Jen Kutler. She has exhibited and performed her work internationally, including at MoMA and e-flux (New York, USA), Ars Electronica (Linz, Austria), MUTEK (Montréal, CA), and the International Symposium on Electronic Art (Paris, France). She has also completed residencies at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, Wave Farm Transmission Arts, SAT (Société des arts technologiques), and CMMAS (Mexican Centre for Music and Sonic Arts).

Diana Lynn VanderMeulen is a multidisciplinary artist living in Toronto, Canada. Her practice is fluid between analogue and digital mediums with a focus on extended reality and cyclical material use as she develops expansive, multisensory environments. During a 2023 artist creation residency at Société des arts technologiques (Montreal, CA) Diana adapted her ongoing project A Boundless and Radiant Aura into an immersive A/V performance entitled I want to leave this Earth behind alongside sonic collaborator Stefana Fratila. A Boundless and Radiant Aura has also been presented in multimodal exhibitions with the Art Gallery of Burlington, Debaser at SAW Gallery (Ottawa), Toutoune Gallery (Toronto), Video Pool (Winnipeg) and to virtual audiences via her independently published Magic Window application. Alongside representation with Sky Fine Foods, VanderMeulen has been involved in many public and DIY ventures. Notably, she has shown at Canadian Embassy (Tokyo, Japan), CADAF Digital Art Fair (Paris, France), Constellations Festival (Metz, France), Lincoln Centre (New York, USA), Société des arts technologiques (Montreal, CA) and Video Pool (Winnipeg, CA).

"I want to leave this Earth behind“ is a multisensory project by Stefana Fratila and Diana Lynn VanderMeulen which centers on outer space exploration, speculative-fictive realities, and Crip futurity. Engaging audiences in an immersive exercise of imagining interplanetary and sci-fantastical atmospheres– conditions that are inherently unlivable, unbreathable, converting all human body-minds into disabled-bodied-ness. This show combines three overarching works: Sononaut (VSTs) & "I Want to Leave this Earth Behind" (2LP) by Fratila, and "A Boundless and Radiant Aura" (Extended Reality) by VanderMeulen. A research-creation residency with the Society for Arts and Technology granted Fratila and VanderMeulen the time and tools to transform their work into a 40-minute immersive A/V show, specifically formatted to the Satosphère’s multichannel sound system and 360-degree projectors.

Genres: Sci-fi, Crip Futurity, XR, Art & Science, speculative futures, Extended Reality, Magic Window, Multisensory experience, Open-source, Sound art, Outer space, Experimental Animation, Immersive sound, Immersive video.