XINEMA

XINEMA [zin-em-a] is an artist-run experimental film series founded and based on on the traditional, ancestral and unceded territory of the Musqueam, Squamish, and the Tsleil-Waututh Nations (Vancouver, BC). They began operation in VIFF Centre's 41 seat Studio Theatre, with a focus on BC-based and connected media artists, stringing emerging and established artists together into monthly thematic programs.

They now operate between spaces and regions, facilitating screenings, workshops and related events, with a focus on local wherever that may be. Their main priorities are to remain low-barrier, accepting free ongoing and unlimited submissions of any year or premiere status; prioritize underrepresented artists and media forms; and connect filmmakers and film-lovers of various backgrounds, disciplines and career levels.

Click here to participate in the EMAP Survey.

Thank you for participating in the Experimental Media Arts Project’s Accessibility Survey.

This survey is part of the Experimental Media Access Project (EMAP), conducted by XINEMA, grunt gallery, and Crip Cinema Archive.

This survey is intended for people who engage with experimental media arts presentations and programming—or would like to—as an audience member, curator, filmmaker, cultural worker or event organizer and experience barriers to participation. This can include but is not limited to people who identify as d/Deaf, d/Disabled+, sick, crip or chronically ill. We welcome responses from people with all types of disabilities, whether permanent, temporary, visible, or invisible. If you do not identify with any of these labels but experience barriers to accessing media arts presentations, we want to hear from you.

Experimental media art focuses on exploring new, unusual or unconventional ideas and methods. It often uses technology and creative techniques to challenge traditional media and create novel forms of expression, like digital art, interactive installations, and video or film works. This interdisciplinary field emphasizes the process of creation and the artist's exploration of ideas, rather than commercial viability, to encourage new perspectives and engage with contemporary issues.

Instructions

All questions in the survey are optional. You are welcome to skip anything at any time. Any form or amount of survey input is helpful; please fill out as much as your capacity allows – do not feel pressure to complete every question.

Each question in the online survey includes an audio recording of the question. Click here.

Some questions include conditional logic which, depending on your response, will lead you to other questions (e.g. if you identify yourself as a curator, questions will follow related to this area of work).

The survey is also available in a Word document format and PDF format.

We also welcome survey responses via video, audio or text file sent to emap@xinema.ca.

If you have any questions, please email us at emap@xinema.ca.

Your individual responses are for internal reference only, but aggregated and anonymized data collected through this survey will inform publicly shared resources created through this project.

This survey is hosted on Jotform, their privacy policy is here. If you would prefer not to use the Jotform platform, please submit responses in video, audio or text format to emap@xinema.ca.

We are accepting responses until February 2 2026.

About EMAP

The Experimental Media Access Project is led by a diverse committee of cultural workers, curators, and artists to conduct research focused on dismantling barriers and prohibitive practices in media arts presentation, particularly those excluding d/Deaf, d/Disabled+, sick or chronically ill individuals. This project aims to generate resources such as best practices, guidelines and tools based directly on feedback from affected communities to help arts organizations transform media arts programming and event planning through the lens of radical accessibility, inclusion, and disability justice.

The project centers d/Deaf, d/Disabled+, sick and chronically ill voices through a lateral working group—a committee assembled to study and report on accessibility gaps and make recommendations, composed of cultural workers who identify as d/Disabled, sick and chronically ill, with Crip Time as a central organizing and relational tenet. The term Crip Time is used by some disability theorists and advocates to describe disabled individuals' unique relationship to time.

This survey is the project's first stage of public research and community consultation. This builds on each of the project partners’ ongoing engagement with d/Disabled+ artists and communities, which has helped us identify accessibility gaps and opportunities in the experimental media sector. The feedback will deepen our understanding of intersectional challenges and exclusionary structures and inform program components, our working structure going forward and development of best practices.

We do not position ourselves as experts, and acknowledge the fluctuating nature of our own capacities as a working group and those of the communities with whom we are engaging. We welcome feedback on this survey and knowledge sharing towards the shared goal of increasing accessibility in contemporary media arts presentation practices.