Projects | Vulnerable Media Lab

Outline of campfire and tipi on black background with the sun in the sky having "go" written inside

Futures of Digital Media Art Histories

The Future of Digital Media Histories (FDHM) is propelled by an urgent and daunting cultural heritage crisis: the rapid loss of digital art and media from the past 40 years to changing technology. This loss has a devastating effect on our capacity to know and experience our heritage. Across Canada, the first decades of digital art and media production saw a flourishing of projects by artists and activists from diverse communities: Indigenous, racialized, feminist, queer, diasporic.

Kingston Heritage Film Project

The Kingston Film Heritage Project is an initiative to preserve and digitize the history of Kingston on film. With support from the Kingston Heritage Fund and the City of Kingston, the Vulnerable Media Lab has been able to research and restore elements of Kingston’s film history.

Sara Gómez Project

Digitized, Subtitled, and Restored documentaries submitted to Criterion. They launched on their streaming service on Feb 1, 2025. A boxed DVD is forthcoming. This is the result of 4 years of work undertaken in the Vulnerable Media Lab by six graduate students, two post-doctoral fellows and three undergraduates. Afro-Cuban filmmaker, Sara Gómez made 19 documentaries and a feature film in Cuba before her very untimely death at 34 in 1974. Her feature film was restored recently by Arsenal Berlin. And we in the VML restored all of the documentaries available. Many of her films were neglected, in large part because she was a Black woman in a very macho and racist culture.