This presentation will address different projects of the Concordia University Research Chair in Critical Practices in Materials and Materiality and its affiliated laboratory, the Speculative Life Biolab of the Milieux Institute (dir. Dr. Alice Jarry). Through research-creation that combines with material and environmental science practices, the Chair draws on the potential of residual, bio-inspired and bio-composed materials to examine the socio-environmental, aesthetic and political issues related to material and cultural production.

In a context where ecological urgency requires sustainable interactions between technology, humans and ecosystems, this presentation will examine how new critical imaginaries can emerge to address the affective as well as the effective aspects of resilient materialities for the environment and communities. How do artist-researchers and scientists engage together to materialize sensory and responsive experiences of these issues? How are artistic objects mobilized to co-create new forms of public experimentation? This presentation will focus on how this art-science-citizen framework seeks to decompartmentalize knowledge and encourage new social uses of research and creation.

How can you participate? Attend in person or online by registering for the Zoom Meeting or watching live on YouTube.

Have questions? Send them to info.4@concordia.ca  

Alice Jarry

Alice Jarry (Montreal) is an artist, researcher and educator who specializes in site-specific responsive works, socio-environmental design, digital arts, and tangible media. Her research brings concerns about sustainability, aesthetics, and politics to bear critically upon materiality, material production, and contemporary matters-of-concern regarding urban communities and infrastructures. With matter inseparable from both form and practice, her installation works examine how materiality - engaged in constant processes of transformation and circulation with site, technology, data and communities - can provoke the emergence of dynamic adaptive forms and resilient socio-environmental relations.

Her current research focuses on residual matter and recycling/upcycling processes for glass. From natural resource extraction (Dust Silica, 2018) to current downcycling methods (Dust Agitator, 2018), Alice Jarry explores how the alliances between waste management infrastructure, design, art, and process philosophies can produce new modalities and experiences for residual matter.