Ottawa-based writer, independent creator and sex worker rights advocate Seska Lee will be a guest speaker at JenniCam@30: Thirty years of live streaming cultures, a day-long symposium held April 14, 2026, at Concordia University in Montréal. She will present on camming and the construction of liveness.
About the symposium
On April 14, 1996, Jennifer Ringley, then a college student, mounted a digital camera on top of her computer in her dorm room and began streaming online. Her webcam, known as JenniCam, transmitted nearly uninterrupted for seven years and became the most enduring webcam performance of the early Internet. Though she was not recognized as a pioneer in her time, Ringley made Internet history by pioneering live self-streaming.
Exactly thirty years later, the symposium marks the anniversary with an event about and through live streaming practices. Morning and afternoon sessions will be also transmitted online.
Seska’s talk
Seska has worked on camera as an independent creator since 1998, which gives her a rare vantage point on the history the symposium set out to examine. Her presentation, “Camming and the Construction of Liveness,” will take place during the afternoon programme, a pop-up live TV studio transmission hosted at the Speculative Life Cluster in Milieux, Concordia, in collaboration with the Institute of Network Cultures.
She will be joined by an international lineup of speakers and artists:
Tommaso Campagna on live streaming as a form of publishing (TheVoid.TV)
Geert Lovink on the lives of the online self
Seska Lee on camming and the construction of liveness
Lotte de Jong on webcam and art
Uandha Fernandes Barbosa, Aalok Sud and Tara Halkiw presenting the live coding performance if (afk == false) stream();
Mark Sussman introducing pandemic object theatre
Jas Nasty, DJing live
The morning programme at 4th Space, Concordia, will feature a keynote lecture by Susanna Paasonen, “JenniCam in Context,” followed by an in-person conversation.
Event details
What: JenniCam@30: Thirty years of live streaming cultures, a symposium
When: April 14, 2026
Where: 4th Space (LB-103) and the Speculative Life Cluster (EV-10.625), Milieux, Concordia University, Montréal
Online: jennicam-at-30.com
The event is made possible by the Digital Intimacy, Gender & Sexuality Lab (DIGS), Milieux Institute for Arts, Culture and Technology, Speculative Life-Machine Agencies, the Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Society and Culture (CISSC), COMS Concordia, the Institute of Network Cultures and PLSM.
About Seska
Seska is an Ottawa-based independent cam model, content creator and writer who has worked in adult entertainment since 1998. An XBIZ Creator Award-nominated performer, she has been featured by HBO and CBC Radio, and she speaks at universities as an advocate for sex workers and sex education.