Cyclical Matter - In Conversation (EN)

Title

Keywords

Biomaterials, Art/science collaboration, Sustainability, Materiality, Socio-environmental engagement

Authors

Vanessa Mardirossian

As a textile designer for fashion for over twenty years, Vanessa Mardirossian is concerned about the polluting impact of her industry. She studies sustainable ways of designing textile materiality. As part of her doctorate, she develops natural and non-toxic dyes from bacteria that feed on food waste. Her research, combining art and science, focusses on developing a design ecoliteracy, namely a better understanding of the impact of our productions on ecosystems. She has been teaching for 4 years at the École Supérieure de Mode de l’Uqam (ESM) where she emphasizes the eco-responsible approach to design. Her research is funded by Hexagram and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC).

Alexandra Bachmayer

Alexandra Bachmayer is a Montréal/Tiohtià:ke-based interdisciplinary artist and researcher exploring hybrid ecologies through her digital, textile, and bio-material practice. Whether developing haptic performance garments or textile dyes with pigment-producing bacteria, her work is largely centered on themes of empathy, play, connectivity, ephemerality, and the materiality of softness. She was a research assistant at XS Labs and matralab, contributing to the fields of electronic textiles and music performance through the body:suit:score project. Alexandra was the production and costume designer for both Niemandslandhymnen and Éphemerides hosted by SMCQ, has had her work exhibited at the Visual Voice Gallery, and was an artist in residence at the Great Island Arts Co-op in July 2017. She is currently the technician for the Speculative Life BioLab at Milieux Institute for Arts, Culture, and Technology at Concordia University.

Miri Chekhanovich

Threading together video, performance and sculpture Miri Chekhanovich is creating installation works that bridge between the notions of decay and rebirth in our society. Chekahnovich was born in Armenia when it was still part of the Soviet Union, from the age of three she has lived in Jerusalem and today works and lives in Tiohtià:ke/ Montreal, Canada. The diversity of her cultural background and the numerous languages she speaks serves the artists in creating imaginative spaces, places where anything can occur and transform. In those places the artist invites the spectators to become active participants, in what she hopes to be a transformative experience. Her most recent video work, Being With was recently exhibited in Venice, Italy. Her work is generously supported by the FRQSC research fund and the Canada Council of Arts.

Yves Gélinas

Biography is upcoming.

Tuesday October 20th, 10:00-11:30 am
Cyclical Matter - In Conversation (EN)

A public discussion with Vanessa Mardirossian, Miri Checkanovich, Alex Bachmayer, Alice Jarry, and Yves Gélinas.

Free - This event will be streamed on Youtube and in the LIVE PROGRAMING section of our homepage:
https://rencontres.hexagram.ca/

Scientist Janine Benyus, in her 1997 work Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature, invites us to reimagine material research and production methods by taking nature as a model. The natural world manufactures, calculates, performs chemistry experiments, builds structures, and designs high-performance systems and tools. Benyus encourages interdisciplinary collaborations between design and science so that we might mimic these incredible feats. Similarly, Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things, published five years later by designer and chemist duo William McDonough and Michael Braungart, highlights the importance of planning for the end of a product's life from the moment it is designed in order to eliminate the need for waste.

Inspired by the ecological thinking of these authors and adopting both a scientific and artistic perspective, this public discussion will address the research-creation process of the Cyclical Matter collective, their work with biocomposites, and the challenges - be they conceptual, methodological, technical, or health-related, of working with such materialities.

Cyclical Matter - In Conversation (EN)

Cyclical Matters - Biocomposite en coquilles d’œufs

Virtual Menagerie

Collective Productions, Trees, Woodpeckers, Systems

Cyclical Matter - In Conversation (EN)

RELATED STORIES

Cyclical Matters - Biocomposite en coquilles d’œufs

Virtual Menagerie

Collective Productions, Trees, Woodpeckers, Systems

Connecter | Login

Infolettre | News letter

Subscribe to Hexagram News Letter