tobias c. van Veen
[tobias c. van Veen], b. 1978, is a sound/media artist, photographer, techno.turntablist, and curator. His tactical media/arts explores imaginary offworlds, radical becomings, immersive performance, and occult frequencies of the outer darkness. Tobias has been enmeshed with musikal resistance culture since 1993, performing and provoking via interventions & events, broadcasts & exhibitions. His mediums are many and include: net.art, radio-art, audio-art, video art, turntablism & tactical surrealism. His net.art projects can be found at CTheory.net, Turbulence.org, Rhizome.org, and with the Whitney Museum of Modern Art in NYC. He has experimental electronic and ambient releases in CD & cassette on his label IO SOUND, as well as No Type’s Bricologe and the and/OAR labels.
Since 1997, tobias has organised numerous events, broadcasts, performances, and exhibitions worldwide, collaborating with festivals and galleries including MUTEK Montreal, Steim, Eyebeam, the New Forms Festival, Studio XX, VIVO Media Arts, Hexagram, CiTR Radio 101.9FM, Free Radio 103.9, and Kunstradio. As Founding Director of UpgradeMTL.org at the Society for Art and Technology (SAT), tobias curated the Cabaret for Critical Art Ensemble, the [CTRL] conferences with Media@McGill, and the Critical Practice Resuscitation gathering of Nettime.org. In 2007, tobias curated the audio installation ‘espaceSONO :: audio.lab’, presenting 36 global sound-artists in a uniquely constructed listening environment at Montreal’s SAT[GALERIE].
As a media theorist his work on media/sound arts, Afrofuturism, and philosophy of sound, technology, and race has been published in multiple books, journals, and magazines worldwide. Tobias is co-editor with Reynaldo Anderson of the “Black Lives, Black Politics, Black Futures” special issue of TOPIA: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies (2018), editor of the Afrofuturism special issue of Dancecult: Journal of Electronic Dance Music Culture (2013), and co-editor with Hillegonda Rietveld of the Journal’s special issue “Echoes from the Dub Diaspora” (2015).
Tobias currently hosts the Other Planes: Speculative Cultures podcast on CreativeDisturbance.org, is creative director of sound-art label IOSOUND.ca, and broadcasts techno-turntablist mixes on soundcloud.com/djtobias. His photography can be found on Instagram @fugitivephilo. Holding doctorates in Communication Studies and Philosophy from McGill University, tobias is Research Fellow in Media and Cultural Studies at University of California Riverside.
