Dr. Erin Manning, 3Ecologies Project

Erin Manning studies in the interstices of philosophy, aesthetics and politics, concerned, always, about alter-pedagogical and alter-economic practices. Pedagogical experiments are central to her work, some of which occur at Concordia University in Montreal where she is a research chair in Speculative Pragmatism, Art and Pedagogy in the Faculty of Fine Arts. Recent monographs include The Minor Gesture (Duke 2016), For a Pragmatics of the Useless (2020) and Out of the Clear (forthcoming, minor compositions). Her artwork is textile-based and relationally-oriented, often participatory. She is interested in the detail of material complexity, in what reveals itself to perception sideways, in the quality of a textural engagement with life. Her work often plays synesthetically with touch, of recent in acknowledgement and experimentation with the ProTactile movement for DeafBlind culture and language. Tactile propositions include large-scale hangings produced with a diversity of tools including tufting, hooking, knotting, weaving. 3e is the main direction her current research takes - an exploration of the transversality of the three ecologies, the social, the environmental and the conceptual (3ecologies.org). An iteration of 3e is a land-based project north of Montreal where living and learning is experimented. Legacies of SenseLab infuse the project, particularly the question of how collectivity is crafted in a more-than human encounter with worlds in the making. 

Areas of expertise

Philosophy, radical pedagogy, blackness, neurodiversity, choreographic practice, participatory art, activism

Research interests

Movement, Relation, Process philosophy, Research-creation, Neurodiversity, Black Studies, DeafBlind research/ProTactile, Textile/relational art, Sculpture, Procedural architecture, Radical pedagogy

Pedagogy is what I am most committed to at the university. It is the place from which my research develops, and it is how the politics key to my practice situate themselves. 

Books

Manning, E (2022) Out of the Clear. Minor Compositions.

Manning, E (2020) For a Pragmatics of the Useless. Durham: Duke UP.

Manning, E. (2019, republication from 1994 with a new preface and afterword)) The Perfect Mango. Punctum Books.

Manning, E. (2016) The Minor Gesture. Durham: Duke UP.

Manning, E. (2013) Always More Than One: Individuation’s Dance. Durham: Duke UP.

Manning, E. (2009) Relationscapes: Movement, Art, Philosophy. Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press.

Manning, E. (2007) Politics of Touch: Sense, Movement, Sovereignty.  Minneapolis:  Minnesota UP. 

Manning, E. (2003). Ephemeral Territories: Representing Nation, Home and Identity in Canada. Minneapolis.: University of Minnesota Press.

Manning, E and Massumi, B. (2014). Thought in the Act – Passages in the Ecology of Experience. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Edited Books

Manning, E.; Munster, A; Stavning Tomsen, Bodil Marie (Eds). (2019). Immediation. Open Humanities Press

Book Series

Exhibitions (solo)

June 2024 TBD. Richard Saltoon Gallery, London.

March-June 2019 Anarchives – Goat Island. Chicago Cultural Center. Curator : Nick Lowe.

January 2018-December 2019  Collective Fabulations – Propositions for Social Dreaming. Distributed work in collaboration with Andrew Goodman. 24 locations (peoples’ homes) in Montreal, Sao Paolo, Amsterdam, London ON, Budapest, Cluj, Berlin, Zurich, Melbourne, Sydney.

July 2018 Threadways Curated Co-Lab. Online project. Curator : ChyeHong LIM. Singapore.

May 2018 The Colour of Time. Anarchive. Centrul de Interes, Cluj, Romania.    

May 2018 The Smell of Red. Victoria Art Centre,  Bucharest, Romania.

October 2017. La couleur du temps / The Colour of Time  Dream City - Multidisciplinary Biennale of Contemporary Art in Public Space, Tunis, Tunisia.

June-August 2017 Threadways Museum vor Angewandte Kunst, “Manufactories of Caring Space-Time” Ghent Belgium.

June 18-August 15 2016 Threadways, in Het kleine Gebaar Museum vor Angewandte Kunst, 

            Ghent Belgium.

September 2015 Weather Patterns – Where Forces Meet With Samantha Spurr and Andrew Goodman. Rubicon Gallery, Melbourne Australia.

August 2015 Weather Patterns – The Smell of Red. With Nathaniel Stern. Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver. ISEA 2015.

June 2014 The Slow Colour Project. Encuentro Performance Festival: Choreographing Social Movements in the Americas (with the Hemispheric Institute). Concordia University. Curated: Stephen Lawson, Shauna Janssen.

May-July 2014 Weather Patterns 4: The Smell of Red (with Nathaniel Stern). Glasshouse Gallery. Brooklyn NY. Curated Jennifer Johung.

September 2013 Stitching Time: A Collective Fashioning (traces). 5^th Moscow Biennale, Russia. Curated Catherine de Zegher.

June-September 2012 Stitching Time: A Collective Fashioning. 18th Biennale of Sydney, Sydney Australia. Curated Catherine de Zegher, Gerald McMaster.

May 2012 Weather Patterns, A Sentimental Construction, with Nathaniel Stern and Bryan Cera University of Wisconsin Milwaukee (in the context of the Nonhuman Turn conference).

October 15-16 2010 Slow Clothes 4: Explorations in Neurodiversity” AutCom, Milwaukee,USA.

June 15-19 2010 Volumetrics. The Stockholm School of Economics - opening performance for the Society for Literature, Science and the Arts, Riga, Latvia.

October 3 2009 Folds to Infinity III/Volumetrics I. Dancehouse, Melbourne, Australia.

September 17 2009 Folds to Infinity III/Volumetrics I. Critical Path, Sydney, Australia.

February 20-25 2009 Folds to Infinity II – Mapping: From Topography to Topology. Grand Arts Gallery, Kansas City, USA.

November 6-8 2008 Slow Clothes 3 -  McCord Museum Montreal, Canada

June 12-15 2008 Slow Clothes 2 – “In Transit 08”, House of World Cultures. Berlin, Germany

May 23-25 2008 Slow Clothes 1– “Into the Folds” Société des arts technologiques Montreal, Canada [Interview with Patti Schmitt – CBC radio one, « cinq à six », disseminated May 24]

September 10-20 2007 Folds to Infinity – a mobile architecture of performance. Gallery Al Pendre, Fortaleza, Brazil