MUTEK x VIFF Live delivers cutting-edge electronic music and workshops, October 2 to 4
Presented as part of the Vancouver International Film Festival’s live-performance series, the event is a collaboration between MUTEK Montreal and Vancouver’s Chapel Sound Art Foundation
Left to right: Dopplereffekt; Nancy Lee (photo by Alger Ji-Liang)
Chapel Sound Art Foundation presents MUTEK x VIFF Live at SFU Goldcorp Centre for the Arts’ Fei and Milton Wong Experimental Theatre on October 2 at 9 pm. VIFF Labs take place at SFU’s Djavad Mowafaghian World Art Centre October 3 and 4
MUTEK IS KIND OF a big deal. Since its first edition back in 2000, the Montreal festival has grown to become one of the world’s premier electronic music events. As superstar DJ and producer Richie Hawtin noted a few years ago, “I think it’s been instrumental in developing a deeper appreciation of electronic music in North America.”
MUTEK has since expanded to other cities around the world, with events taking place in Barcelona, Buenos Aires, Dubai, Mexico City, Santiago and Tokyo.
There has never been a MUTEK Vancouver, but thanks to the dedicated work of Chapel Sound Art Foundation artistic director Nancy Lee, we’ll be one major step closer in October. Lee has collaborated with MUTEK Montreal since 2021 as an artist and forum facilitator. In 2024, with the support of CreativeBC’s AmplifyBC fund, Chapel Sound launched a BC Delegation program to send local professionals to MUTEK Montreal with mentorship and subsidized access. This led to an increase in artist exchanges, with more British Columbia artists appearing in MUTEK Montreal’s programming.
“I wanted Vancouver to tap into MUTEK's international ecosystem,” Lee said in a Chapel Sound press announcement. “It’s often harder to get inter-provincial projects off the ground than international ones, but I think there’s finally an appetite for it now given the geopolitical state we’re in.”
As a result of Lee’s efforts, Chapel Sound and MUTEK Montreal have teamed up with the Vancouver International Film Festival to present MUTEK x VIFF Live on October 2. The concert, which takes place at SFU Goldcorp Centre for the Arts’ Fei and Milton Wong Experimental Theatre, features Detroit’s science-fixated duo Dopplereffekt (featuring To Nhan Le Thi and Drexciya co-founder Gerald Donald); Montreal bass producer and DJ Honeydrip; and Shanghai-via-Vancouver’s MIIIA in collaboration with visual artist MELT.
Also presented in partnership with MUTEK and Chapel Sound, this year’s VIFF Labs is a two-day series at SFU Goldcorp Centre for the Arts’ Djavad Mowafaghian World Art Centre examining “reworlding”—VIFF Live’s theme exploring how sound, the body, and technological systems shape our relationships with one another.
On October 3, Sound as Body focuses on sound as a physical and embodied experience through sessions including Honeydrip’s sound-system practice and Kiran Bhumber’s spatial audio workshop. The next day, Interface as Skin shifts to ideas of connection and systems, with a live hardware masterclass by MIIIA and a TouchDesigner workshop led by Jonny Ostrem and TDYVR. 
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