A black-and-white illustration of my head and shoulders in the style of The Simpsons cartoon series. I'm wearing a collarless sweater and a scarf.
Dr. Matt Soar, PhD
Pronouns: He/Him
- Professor Emeritus, Communication Studies
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Sign in to editResearch areas: Critical Cultural Studies, Intermedia Arts, Residual and Emergent Media, Media Archaeology, Studies of Cultural Production, Experimental Film, Web Docs, Graphic Design
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Retired from teaching and service since July 2022
Biography
I am an intermedia artist, filmmaker and writer, with a scholarly background in design, media studies, and cultural studies. My research-creation activities have often been located at the juncture of residual and emergent media forms. Prior to my retirement from teaching, my primary area was Intermedia. At this time I teach occasional workshops on cameraless animation using 16mm film, and on signs and public lettering. In the past I taught COMS courses on cultural production and media ethnography; counter-archives and residual media production; and, cities, signs and pandemics. My graduate degrees in Communication Studies are from Simon Fraser University (MA) and the University of Massachusetts Amherst (PhD).
Research-Creation & Research
1. SIGNS AND PUBLIC LETTERING: I am the director and co-founder of the Montréal Signs Project. My recent collaboration with the MEM - Centre des mémoires montréalaises involved the gifting of 14 signs from the collection. As of October 2023 these are now on prominent display in the lobby of the MEM, at the corner of Boul St-Laurent and Rue Ste-Catherine. Recent acquisitions include Florateria, Bar-B Barn, bijouterie J Omer Roy, Steinberg supermarkets, and Boite Noire video store. Since 2010 I have led countless tours of the collection at Loyola for Concordians, members of the public, design companies, the Cummings Centre for senior citizens, and members of AQIE - the professional association of Quebec signmakers. My most recent formal presentation was at ERA Architects.
My previous FQRSC Appui à la recherche-création grant, titled Les enseignes de Montréal: Culture, technologie, patrimoine, was in three parts: Les Enseignistes de Montréal, an interactive web documentary about the histories of signmaking in Montreal (co-director Dayna McLeod), a gallery installation on human migration and land rights in collaboration with Montreal artist Cheryl Sim called YMX, and an expansion of the current permanent exhibition of the Montréal Signs Project.
2. LOST LEADERS: An ongoing research-creation project driven by a singular fascination with film leaders and countdowns, treated as the forgotten 'metadata' of analog film. Outcomes have included cameraless 'handwritten' animation, interactive films, stained glass, photomontage, and videomicroscopy. My handmade short film Billionaires Gnaw their Tongues from the Pain (2021) screened at ATA/Other Cinema (San Francisco), the Brooklyn Film Festival, Antimatter [Media Art] (Victoria BC), Engauge Experimental Film Fest (Seattle), Analogica (Bolzano, Italy), and STUFF (Corpus Christi, TX). ASANASA (2019) screened at New Experimental Works / Avant to Live (ATA/OtherCinema, San Francisco), Fantasia, Antimatter, Engauge, MUFF, Dreamers of Dreams, and SF IndieFest. Soar's definitive introduction to the historical development of US/Canadian film leader standards appeared in the journal The Moving Image in 2016.
3. DATABASE STORYTELLING: From 2012 to 2015 I was Principal Investigator on a SSHRC Research/Creation in the Fine Arts grant titled Adventures in Research-Creation. My teammate was Dr. Monika Kin Gagnon, and our collaborators were Florian Thalhofer, Phil Hoffman, and Midi Onodera. Our event Database | Narrative | Archive, an international symposium on digital nonlinear storytelling, was held at Concordia in May 2011; Dr Gagnon and I subsequently co-edited the DNA Anthology, a post-symposium collection of seven nonlinear, interactive essays built using Scalar. In 2024 our essay 'Always Already Old: Looking back with the Korsakow System' appeared in Baker, M. & Mulvogue, J. (Eds.) The Interactive Documentary in Canada (MQUP). From 2008 to 2016 I was codirector of development for the Korsakow System. In May 2015, Phil Hoffman launched his Korsakow film Racing Home, an extended, lyrical exercise in 'posthumous cinema'.
Graduate Supervision
PhD students (current/recent)
Raphaëlle Bessette-Viens (2021 - ). HUMA Program. Minor field supervisor. [research-creation]
Chrys Vilvang (2020 - 2022) Outsourcing Memories: Image, Archive, and Story in the Age of the Algorithm [research-creation]
Myriam Rafla (2013 - 2016). I Am Story. [research-creation]
Dr. Jacqueline Wallace (2009-2014). Women’s Creative Labour: DIY networks and the indie crafts movement.
Dr. Mélanie Hogan (2008-2012). Crashing the Archive: A Research-Creation Intervention into the SAW Video Mediatheque [research-creation]
MA students (current/recent)
Daniela Silva (2020 - 2021). Lunchbox: A Diasporic Still Life During a Global Pandemic [research-creation]
Catherine Poitras (2019-2020). The Stellifying Fabulist: A Journey through Toxic City / La Stellaire Fabuliste : Bienvenue à Toxic Cité. [research-creation]
Bradley Peppinck (2017-2019). Reconciliation Journalism. [research-creation]
Jaëlle Dutremble-Rivet (2017-2019). Parlons Montréal: Exploring Young Montrealers’ Linguistic Identity. [research-creation]
Michael Iantorno (2017 - 2019). Sub-Versions: Investigating Videogame Hacking Practices and Subcultures.
Andrea Marek (2016-2017). Adult animation in film and television [research-creation]
Belinda Oldford (2013 - 2016). Auteur Animation: Drawing out urban homelessness [research-creation]
David Widgington (2012-2014). Archival (de/re)Sedimentation: Creating an Active Archive of The Political Graphics of the Maple Spring [research-creation]
Jordan Coulombe (2012-2014). Designing a Historically-minded Literary Zine about Contemporary Gay Men’s Culture in Canada. (Co-supervisor) [research-creation]
Publications
Soar, M. & Gagnon M. K. (2024). Always Already Old: Looking back with the Korsakow System. Baker, M. & Mulvogue, J. (Eds.) The Interactive Documentary in Canada. MQUP.
Soar, M. (2022). I’ll like your Instagram - and raise you one Genocide! MESSAGE 5: Graphic Communication Design Research. Plymouth, England: University of Plymouth Press.
Soar, M. (2018). Standardized Film Leaders. In Wolf, Mark (Ed.) The Routledge Encyclopedia of Media Technology and Obsolescence. Taylor & Francis.
Soar, M. (2017). Memory, Materiality, and the Montreal Signs Project. In Atzmon, L. and Boradkar, P. (Eds.) Encountering Things. London: Bloomsbury.
Soar, M. (2016). The Beginnings and the Ends of Film: Leader standardization in the US and Canada (1930-1999). The Moving Image 16(2), Fall, pp 21-44.
Soar, M. (2015). 26 ways of thinking about a graphic advocacy poster. In Resnick, E. (Ed.) Graphic Advocacy: International Posters for the Digital Age (2001-2012). Boston: MassArt.
Workshops, Shows, Panels, Residencies
In June 2022 I cohosted the Orphan Film Symposium with the theme counter-archives, in close collaboration with Archive/Counter-Archive.
Billionaires Gnaw their Tongues from the Pain (2021) is the fourth film in a dubiously conceived trilogy of shorts for Lost Leaders. Billionaires screened at New Experimental Works / Avant to Live (ATA/OtherCinema, San Francisco) in December 2021, and the Brooklyn Film Festival in June 2022, among other venues.
During COVID I participated in a collaborative video project called EXC-19, an 'exquisite corpse' intervention conceived by Toronto-based artist Midi Onodera. EXC-19 involved over 100 artists, producing a total of almost 70 finished videos.
ASANASA (2019) premiered at New Experimental Works / Avant to Live (ATA/OtherCinema, San Francisco) in December 2019. This is the final film in my Lost Leaders trilogy. Or not. ASANASA is also an official selection at the Fantasia, Antimatter, and Engauge film festivals.
My web documentary Les Enseignistes de Montréal, co-directed and edited by Dayna McLeod, was finished in May 2018. Screenings included Sign Expo 2018 and the Lost River Film Fest 2018. In Fall 2017 I presented version 1.0 of Les Enseignistes and an overview of my Lost Leaders project at the annual ATypI conference.
My short film Love Leaders screened at the 11th Orphan Film Symposium, held at the Museum of the Moving Image in NYC in April 2018. It was also shown at ATA/OtherCinema in San Francisco the following month, and at Engauge Experimental Film Festival (Seattle Nov 2018). Love Leaders is the second in a planned trilogy of films for Lost Leaders.
In June 2017 I co-presented a paper titled Migration, Media Archaeology, and the Montréal-Mirabel International Airport at Poetics & Politics of Documentary 3 (University of Sussex, England) with then-grad student Danica Evering. In Winter 2017 I co-curated YMX: Migration, Land, and Loss after Mirabel, a show created in collaboration with artist Cheryl Sim, and grads Danica Evering and Treva Pullen, featuring two Solari split-flap passenger information displays. YMX ran for two weeks in the CJ Media Gallery in late January and a further two weeks in early March at Gallery POPOP in the Belgo Building.
Screenings
Billionaires Gnaw their Tongues from the Pain. Brooklyn Film Festival (NYC, June 2022).
Billionaires Gnaw their Tongues from the Pain. New Experimental Works, ATA/OtherCinema (San Francisco CA, December 2021).
Billionaires Gnaw their Tongues from the Pain. New Experimental Works, ATA/OtherCinema (San Francisco CA, December 2021).
ASANASA (35mm, 16mm to digital). Montreal Underground Film Festival (Montreal, May 2021).
Les Enseignistes de Montréal (web doc). Lost River Film Festival (San Marcos, TX, Nov 2018).
LOVE LEADERS. Engauge Experimental Film Festival (Seattle, WA, Nov 2018).
Les Enseignistes de Montréal. Sign Expo Canada 2018. Sign Association of Canada / Association Canadienne de l’enseigne annual trade show (Toronto Sept 2018)
Les Enseignistes de Montréal. Department of Communication Studies, Concordia University (Montreal Sept 2018).
Love Leaders (35mm, 16mm, to digital). ATA/OtherCinema (San Francisco, May 2018).
Love Leaders (35mm, 16mm, to digital). Orphan Film Symposium (Museum of the Moving Image, NYC, April 2018).
Untitled/Film Farm Alfabet (16mm to digital). VISIONS (Lumiere, Montreal, April 2018).
Academy/Society/Universal: 3 Handwritten Leader Standards. ATA/ OtherCinema (San Francisco, December 2017).
Les Enseignistes de Montréal (web documentary, v. 1.0; co-director Dayna McLeod). Association Typographique Internationale (UQAM, Montreal, September 2017).
Bullfought (16mm hand-tinted short film). Alchemy Film Festival (Hawick, Scotland, March 2017). Premiere.
Academy/Society/Universal: 3 Handwritten Leader Standards. Premiered at Orphans X (Packard Campus, Library of Congress, Culpeper VA, March 2016).
Lost Leaders #1 and Lost Leaders #18 ‘Handwritten Universal (PH22.55-1966)’. Poetics & Politics 2 (UCSC, Santa Cruz, May 2015).
Lost Leaders #18 ‘Handwritten Universal (PH22.55-1966)’. New Experimental Works (ATA/OtherCinema, San Francisco, May 2015).
Not As I Do (2009) and Untitled/Film Farm Alfabet (2009). A Pact with the Process: 20 Years of Film Farm (Pleasure Dome, Toronto, September 2014).
Lost Leaders #1. Montreal Underground Film Festival, May 2014.
Lost Leaders #14. FUSE #2: Mobile Interactive Microcinema. (Ann Arbor, April 2014).
Lost Leaders #14. Orphan Film Symposium (Amsterdam, March 2014).
Ceci N’est Pas Embres (2012, database diary film) selected for the Docs 2.0 section of RIDM 2013.
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