About No Future No Cry

Syrus Marcus Ware is a Vanier Scholar, visual artist, activist, curator, and educator. Syrus is an Assistant Professor at the School of the Arts, McMaster University. Using drawing, installation, and performance, Syrus works with and explores social justice frameworks and Black activist culture. His work has been shown widely, including solo shows at Tangled Art + Disability in 2022 (Random Access Memory), Grunt Gallery in 2018 (2068: Touch Change) and Wil Aballe Art Projects in 2021 (Irresistible Revolutions). His work has been featured as part of the inaugural Toronto Biennial of Art in both 2019 and 2022 in conjunction with the Ryerson Image Centre (Antarctica and Ancestors, Do You Read Us? (Dispatches from the Future and MBL:Freedom), as well as for the Bentway’s Safety in Public Spaces Initiative in 2020 (Radical Love).

He is part of the PDA (Performance Disability Art) Collective and co-programmed Crip Your World: An Intergalactic Queer/POC Sick and Disabled Extravaganza as part of Mayworks 2014. Syrus’ recent curatorial projects include That’s So Gay (Gladstone Hotel, 2016-2019), Re:Purpose (Robert McLaughlin Gallery, 2014) and The Church Street Mural Project (Church-Wellesley Village, 2013). Syrus is also co-curator of The Cycle, a two-year disability arts performance initiative of the National Arts Centre.

Syrus has lead residencies at The Banff Centre, for the Toronto Biennial, and for Artscape Gibraltar Point. He has been a participant in several residencies including the Fogo Island Arts residency, The Future is Floating (Sydney, Australia), and with the Trans Archives in Victoria, BC. 

Syrus is a co-founder of Black Lives Matter- Canada and the Wildseed Centre for Art & Activism. Syrus is a past co-curator of Blackness Yes!/Blockorama and the Wildseed Black Arts Fellowship. Syrus has won several awards, including the TD Diversity Award in 2017. Syrus was voted “Best Queer Activist” by NOW Magazine (2005) and was awarded the Steinert and Ferreiro Award (2012). Syrus holds a doctorate from York University in the Faculty of Environmental Studies. He is the co-editor of  the best-selling Until We Are Free: Reflections on Black Lives Matter in Canada (URP, 2020), and Marvellous Grounds: Queen of Colour Formations (BTL, 2018) and Queering Urban Justice (UTP, 2018).

Dominic Bonelli (they/he) is a sound artist, educator, and engineer living in the Chicago area. Their creative practice as a sound artist intertwines sampling with no-input mixing improvisations. Having a background in electrical engineering, they teach audio theory, programming, and electronics courses at Columbia College Chicago and ambisonics/VR at Northwestern University. Their first experimental short film (in collaboration with Eislow Johnson) titled Listening In, Resounding Out recently premiered at Prismatic Ground. dominicbonelli.com

Krish is a producer and composer based in Toronto. He’s spent the past 7 years producing podcasts, music, and sound design installations for a variety of digital art projects, short films and oral history projects.

Dr. æryka jourdaine hollis o’neil is an transdisciplinary scholar, writer, and artist whose research spans the fields of Black queer and trans studies, Black feminist theory, political ontology, visual culture, performance studies, and film theory and practice. In July of 2024, she will begin an appointment as Assistant Professor of Trans Cinema and Media at the University of Toronto. hollis o’neil completed her PhD in Black Studies and MFA in Documentary Media concurrently at Northwestern University with graduate certificates in Gender and Sexuality Studies and Critical Theory. hollis o’neil also holds a Master of Arts in American Studies and a graduate certificate in Documentary Filmmaking from George Washington University in Washington, DC. Her writing can be found in the journals Feminist Theory and most recently in TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly. Apart from her written scholarship, æryka maintains a creative research and artistic practice, having screened her work at Harvard University, Prismatic Ground, Onion City Experimental Film Festival, San Francisco Documentary Festival, and Milwaukee Underground Film Festival, with her film in the interval receiving a Special Jury Recognition of “Best Media Archaeology Meditation” at the latter.

Afua Mfodwo is a multimedia journalist and podcast producer based in Toronto.

Committed to work rooted in research, her writing and production work illustrate her strong problem-solving, critical thinking, and organisational skills. Her ability to successfully execute projects across different mediums is a reflection of her love of innovative storytelling and collaboration. Connected by her ability to capture the essence, her work covers arts and culture, explainer journalism, and personal finance.

Growing up in Johannesburg and Accra, she credits a lot of her interests and inspiration to living in these two vibrant cities. Afua’s work exists as photography, creative direction & production, poetry, and more recently copywriting.

Sean is a producer, writer and director, and the founder of Visitor Media. He leads the company’s creative and business strategies. Since the company’s launch in 2020, Visitor has produced LIDO TV (2022), a CBC Gem digital variety show created and hosted by the Grammy-nominated artist and musician Lido Pimienta, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival; and the feature documentary Crystal Pite: Angels’ Atlas (2022), which premiered at the Vancouver International Film Festival and won the festival’s Showcase Audience Award; and Swan Song (CBC/Dogwoof), a verité-driven feature documentary and four-part limited series, which Sean produced, co-created and co-wrote with director Chelsea McMullan. Swan Song premiered at TIFF 2023, and screened at Lincoln Centre, the BFI London Film Festival and CPH:DOX. It won the 2024 Rogers Prize for Best Canadian Documentary. From 2017 to 2020, Sean co-created, executive produced and hosted the award-winning CBC Arts documentary series In the Making, which brought viewers inside the lives and work of leading artists at pivotal moments of creation. Prior to that, he spent nine years working at the Art Gallery of Ontario, most recently as Director, Public Programs & Partnerships, where he met his friend Syrus Marcus Ware.

Tao Fei is a transdisciplinary cultural worker with over 15 years experience as a producer, arts manager, researcher and writer. Tao is currently Producer, Strategic Initiatives at 221A where she advances the R&D goals of the organization, with a focus on decentralized technologies and plural governance and ownership models in art, community and public sector contexts. Prior to joining 221A she was Executive Producer of the POP Montreal International Music Festival (2012-18). Tao is a 2023-24 Research Fellow with the Center for Arts, Design and Social Research (CAD+SR). Other recent cohorts and fellowships include The New Centre for Research & Practice, Saas-Fee Institute of Art, KERNEL, and the Banff Centre for the Arts. Born in Hong Kong, Tao is sixth-generation Chinese-Canadian with maternal family ties to Vancouver’s Chinatown, on the unceded lands of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations.

Eric Kostiuk Williams is an illustrator and cartoonist based in Toronto, Canada.

His new book, 2am Eternal: A Decade of Queer Nightlife Posters + Comics, is out now from Secret Acres.

He has contributed comics to Now Magazine, Dazed & Confused, and The Believer. He has also created murals, nightlife flyers, harm reduction campaigns, editorial illustrations, and music videos. Eric is an Eisner, Lambda Literary, and Doug Wright  finalist.

Alex is a community organizer, web designer, developer, sound artist, and bodyworker dreaming of a more consentful, autonomous, accessible, and playful internet. 

Over the past seven years, they’ve been working on projects related to mutual aid, peer-to-peer wealth redistribution, transformative justice, and resource sharing based in Montréal / Tioh’tià:ke / Mooniyang.

They also release music as Dråsa, participated as a resident artist at Platform, and have collaborated with performance artists and filmmakers. They will be completing their training as a Shiatsu massage therapist in January 2025, with the intention of integrating somatic approaches of care into their design and organizing practices.

They are a co-director at the community tech studio Cyber Love Garden, UX strategist at House9 Design, and a member of the Design Justice Network.