alchemical narratives is a workshop series hosted by Aaron Finbloom in collaboration with Navid Navab and the TML exploring material temporalities, rhythms of perception, and geodynamics of duration. Each workshop will be a collaborative investigation into these issues through texts and discussion alongside unique platforms of non-traditional theoretical performative activation. The workshop series can be attended sequentially or rhizomatically (you can attend one or all of them).
Scoring Philosophy — Or How to Choreograph Thought via Conversation, Action & Movement
Taught by Aaron Finbloom
Date:
Dec 14 – Dec 19, 12-2:30pm | Culminating in a Final Presentation on Sunday Dec 20th @ 6pm
Location:
The Topological Media Lab (Concordia University, EV Building 7.725)
Cost:
$40 for the entire course
Philosophy is typically regarded as a discipline full of wordy abstractions and complex theories bereft of life, action and practicality. However, this dominant paradigm forged by the academy over the past few millennia, has covered up another philosophy — a practice of philosophy whereby experimental thinking methodologies are created and enacted. This course will be an intensive exploration into this marginalized practice by focusing on philosophical and artistic techniques which structure conversation. These includes: Socratic Dialectics, Cartesian Meditations, Surrealist Games, Quaker Meetings, Dialogical Movement Practices, Tibetan Buddhist Debate Techniques and more. Each session will involve: discussing a short textual passage, a brief lecture, experiential introductions to 1-2 techniques, and then opportunities for participants to re-work the techniques via the creation of conversation scores or structured improvisations. The second to last session will be devoted to developing a final piece/presentation to be offered to a wider public on the last evening of the course.
Thinkers/Artists include: Tino Sehgal, Plato, Descartes, Freud, Donald Winnicott,
George Fox, Andre Breton, Heidegger, Pierre Hadot, Martin Puchner, Vilém Flusser, Purbujok Jampa Gyatso.
To register please email
aaron.finbloom@gmail.com
The class will reach capacity at 12 students so please register asap.
For more information visit:
topologicalmedialab.net
BIO
Aaron Finbloom is a philosopher, performance artist, musician and co-founder of The School of Making Thinking (SMT), an artist/thinker residency program and experimental college. Much of his work involves re-kindling the connection between the philosophical and the performative by creating quasi-structured conversations through games, improvisational scores, booklets, audio guides, dance maps, theatrical lectures, existential therapy and philosophic rituals. Finbloom has taught philosophy at Suffolk County Community College, curated dozens of courses playing with radical pedagogy for SMT, and led numerous interactive workshops at places which include: EMERGE Residency Program, The Performance Philosophy Conference, Elsewhere, and Milk Bar. Finbloom holds an M.A. in Philosophy and Art from SUNY Stony Brook and currently working towards his PhD at Concordia University’s Interdisciplinary Humanities program.
Artist Talk: Teoma Jackson Naccarato
Thursday November 5th / 5:00 – 6:30
Join choreographer Teoma Naccarato for a discussion of shifting attitudes and approaches towards embodiment and technology within interactive performance.
Naccarato will present her interdisciplinary research and creation practice, which involves contemporary dance with video, audio, and biosensor technologies, to investigate vulnerability, intimacy, and uncertainty in live and virtual encounters.
Naccarato will highlight her project Experience #1167, currently being developed in residence at TML, to be presented by Tangente Danse November 12-15, 2015. Further, she will reflect on her ongoing collaboration with composer John MacCallum, Choreography and Composition of Internal Time, in which she is investigating temporal relationality between physiology, such as heart rate and breath, with rhythms in movement, music, and mediated environments.
www.naccarato.org/dance
November 10th, 4:00 – 6:00
Open Meeting / Open House
TOPOLOGICAL MEDIA LAB
EV- 7.725
EV building, Concordia Univ. 1515 St. Catherine Street West (corner of Guy)
info: michael.montanaro@concordia.ca / topologicalmedialab.net
Come see what we’re up to?
InTime Call out for Researchers master
The Topological Media Lab (TML) was established in 2001 as a trans-disciplinary atelier-laboratory for collaborative research creation. In 2005, TML moved to Concordia University and the Hexagram research network in Montréal, Canada. Its projects serve as case studies in the construction of fresh modes of cultural knowledge and the critical studies of media arts and techno-science, bringing together practices of speculative inquiry, scientific investigation and artistic research-creation practices. The TML’s technical research areas include: real-time video, sound synthesis, embedded sensors, gesture tracking, physical computing, and active textiles. Its application areas lie in movement arts, speculative architecture, and experimental philosophy. Within a research setting that is both studio and lab, we look towards developing new lines of enquiry that both examine and apply artistic techniques and methods within an environment that doubles as rehearsal and experimental platform. Concepts and outcomes are imagined, conceived, explored, developed and transformed into public exhibits within a lab-studio space that is equipped with fully operational models of our interactive systems and instruments.
Call out for Researchers:
InTime – project title: (FQRSC Funded) The objectives of the research process-creation –
(1) To create time-conditioning installations or living environments embodying alternative modes of time
(2) Refine and develop techniques, instruments and compositional paradigms for modulating time-based media and its experience within interactive environments. This year’s research focus is on Material Temporality and Temporal Textures, the study and designing of systems that support responsive environments/ecologies that use the processes that drive the transformation of matter as a way of investigating temporality.
(e.g. creating a closed sensor based system where ice turns to water, water to steam, steam to water and water back to ice.)
Under the umbrella of the TML, the Intime project we will enjoy the privilege of daily contact and creative engagement with designers, theorists and artists from a broad spectrum of disciplines. We will use these exchanges as a means of identifying, expressing and articulating different exploratory paths around the subject of time as defined by its poetic and practical application within different disciplines.
Position:
Flow Systems Expert: Students with expertise in the following areas of research and practice:
• Fluid / Thermal Dynamics
• Material Sciences
• Mechanical Engineering
• Physical Computing – expertise in measurement technologies, sensors, actuators, etc.
• Closed System Design
• Chemistry / Alchemist: material transformation
• Material design and fabrication
Responsibilities: oversee innovation, design and fabrication of modular systems and techniques leading to the creation of responsive ecologies driven by material processes.
Education: minimal experience: Undergrad degree, Masters, PhD in the categories listed above. Professional experience in technical design and fabrication is an asset.
How to apply: Please submit your C.V to:
Michael Montanaro- michael.montanaro@concordia.ca and Navid Navab – navid.nav@gmail.com
Optional information: Link to past works, layman summary of relevant experience
* Compensation may vary based on experience
Position:
Interactive Visual Designer: Experience in installation and performance based work with a deep knowledge in technical design and practical experience in programming for responsive environments;
Areas of interest and responsibilities:
• Max/MSP (max 7, Jitter, gen, open GL, Jamoma, Syphon)
• Camera Tracking
• Projection techniques, mapping and image processing
Education – minimal experience: Undergrad degree, Masters, PhD in the categories listed above. Professional experience in technical design and fabrication is an asset.
How to apply: Please submit your C.V to:
Michael Montanaro- michael.montanaro@concordia.ca and Navid Navab – navid.nav@gmail.com
Optional information: Link to past works, layman summary of relevant experience
* Compensation may vary based on experience
Table of contentsCompany: For Body And light
Show Title: Coming And Going
Choreography and Lighting Design: Stéphanie Morin-Robert
Spoken Word and Music: Ian Ferrier
Dancers and company collaborators: Allison Burns, Linnea Gwiazda
*Created during a creative residency in the Bay Of Fundy. (Main & Station – nonesuch kickshaws in Parrsboro, Nova Scotia)
Stéphanie graduated from Concordia University with a degree in Contemporary Dance (2011) where she was lauded as most outstanding graduate. After creative residencies at L’arrêt de bus (Montreal, Québec) and at Main & Station (Parrsboro, Nova Scotia), Stéphanie continued to develop both her solo work ME, MYSELF & EYE and her work with her company FOR BODY AND LIGHT at MainLine Theater (Montreal, Québec), where she was artist in residence for 2013-14. In Montréal, her work has been presented at Studio 303/EDGY WOMEN, Tangente, St-Ambroise Montréal FRINGE festival, Bouge d’ici dance festival, Nuit Blanche, Mile End Poets’ Festival, Carmagnole festival, Canadian Festival of Spoken Word, the Phénomena festival and the WildSide festival. She is currently planning her company’s second cross-Canada tour with their hit show COMING AND GOING and a new work titled BEAR DREAMS.
Stephanie is a proud member of the DIRTY FEET podcast team and is also a collaborating member of the multidisciplinary improvisation collective BODY SLAM directed by Greg Selinger.
www.stephaniemorinrobert.com
www.forbodyandlight.org
www.bodyslamjam.com
www.nomoreradio.com/show/dirtyfeet/
Table of contentsAaron Finbloom is a philosopher, performance artist, musician and co-founder of The School of Making Thinking (SMT) – an artist/thinker residency program and experimental college. Much of his work is interested in exploring the inner workings of dialogue/dialectics by creating quasi-structured conversations through games, booklets, audio guides, dance maps, performative lectures, existential therapy and philosophic rituals. Finbloom has taught philosophy at Suffolk County Community College, and has curated dozens interdisciplinary immersive courses for SMT. His work has been featured at the performance collective “Milk Bar” in Bristol (UK), Elsewhere in Greensboro (NC), BETA Spaces in Brooklyn (NY), Figment (NYC), International Association for the Study of Place, Space and Environment, Towson (MD), and Workspace for Choreographers, Sperryville (VA). Finbloom holds an M.A. in Philosophy and Art from SUNY Stony Brook and currently he is housed within Concordia University’s Interdisciplinary Humanities PhD program.
Game Description
The Philosophy Conversation Game is a game that facilitates a philosophical conversation while making explicit and interactive conversational structure and methodology. The game is played as two players converse while a third person, the conversation guide, visually maps the conversation and provides written and structural cues to guide the conversation. This guide acts as a “conversation therapist” who helps the conversation stay balanced, move in interesting directions, clarify word meanings and advance deeper into a subject. Before the game begins the players chose from six different philosophers each of which has special conversational “powers” which can be used throughout the game to alter the game play in your favor. (for example: one of the Foucault cards reads: “Radically alter the power dynamics of this game for 2 minutes”). The goal of the game is to generate an interesting and lively dialogue in a way that affords an analysis of the method of conversation while it is occurring.
We would like to invite you to a reading group/interdisciplinary seminar to dive into Evan Thompson’s new book: Waking, Dreaming, Being: Self and Consciousness in Neuroscience, Meditation and Philosophy.
At the topological Media Lab, EV-7.725, Concordia
Table of contentsSwintak is a Canadian artist working in variety of media including site-responsive sculpture, installation, performance and video. Approaching the world as her studio, her large-scale commission-based practice has included moving almost an entire house by hand without the aid of machinery, creating the most banal rollercoaster ever made in the head office of an energy drink corporation, building a full-size ship through collective improvisation, running an election party campaign for the Irish underworld, transforming a city-issued dumpster into a fully-operational luxury boutique hotel, attempting to give a shed consciousness and producing a series of impossible project proposals.
She has exhibited at galleries, festivals and museums across Canada and internationally, including Art Gallery of Ontario (Toronto), The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery (Toronto), Kuandu Museum of Modern Art (Taipei), Hessel Museum (New York), European Cultural Congress (Poland), Nuit Blanche (Toronto), HMK Mariakapel (Holland), Model Niland (Ireland), Confederation Centre for the Arts (Charlottetown), YYZ Gallery (Toronto), and Rockefeller Centre (New York). Swintak has also presented numerous independent interventions in places like Amsterdam, Vancouver, Teslin, Death Valley and Los Angeles. She has been awarded the Canada Council International Residency at La Cité Internationale des Arts (Paris, France), a Nominated Fellowship and the Alumni New Works Award at the Headlands Centre for the Arts (San Francisco, California), and a Chalmers Fellowship from the Ontario Arts Council. In 2014 she was researcher in residence at Tapei National University of Art (Taipei, Tawian) and Château de la Napoule (Mandelieu, France). She is Co-Founder and Artistic Director of Don Blanche, an experimental off-the-grid artist residency in rural Ontario. Currently, Swintak is an MFA candidate in the Intermedia program at Concordia University.
Recent Project Links:
Château de la Napoule (Fellow/Residence): http://lnafblog.org/?p=924
Don Blanche Artist Residency (Co-Founder/Artistic Director): https://donblanchedonblanche.wordpress.com/
Public Metal TRIBE Residency of Europe Eastern Balkans (with Peter Flemming): http://transitoryart.org/christine-swintak/
http://transitoryart.org/rods-and-coils/
Headlands Centre for the Arts (Fellow and Alumni New Works Awardee):http://www.headlands.org/artist/christine-swintak/
