Curating a fan history of vampires: ‘What We Vid in the Shadows’ at VidUKon 2016

Abstract

At the 2016 fan convention VidUKon, I curated and screened a vidshow themed around vampires. A vidshow is a curated programme of fanvids, fan-made video art pieces that adapt television and film sources into short videos, which is shown at media fan conventions. To plan this, I first selected vampire-related examples from my research collection, and then drafted a list of screen vampires to guide my search for other vids to address gaps. From there, my curation was guided by a series of questions about how these pocket-sized adaptations would contribute to the vidshow’s representation of screen vampires. How do these act as a history of media fandom’s relationship with screen vampires? Vids are works of textual analysis that offer critical and creative responses to their source texts. What would my selection argue about how we watch vampires? I propose that vidshows are a site of negotiating fan-favourite and cult canons of vampire shows and characters.