When: Tuesday October 18th, 2022 3:30 pm – 4:15 pm EST
Where: 7 Doigts (7 Fingers) 2111 St-Laurent Boulevard.
Through an approach of centering collaborative relational kinship assemblages with environments and multispecies within research-creation, we will examine what it means to become-with through art and creative encounters with ecosystems. These concepts of making-with and becoming-with, invite us to consider ourselves in symbiosis with the world around us, not as a species disconnected from the conditions of its world.
Miranda Smitheram (she/her) is a design researcher, artist, and educator. Smitheram’s creative practice is tactile and embodied, and incorporates ancestral and contemporary methods to work with socio-cultural matters and nonhuman collaborators. This was explored in depth during her recent Maori Postdoctoral Research Fellowship at Auckland University of Technology (Phenomenal Dress, 2017-19). Through research-creation and philosophical inquiry, Smitheram develops new hybrid materials to contribute to sustainable, relational, and Indigenous futures. As Assistant Professor of Material Futures at Concordia University, Smitheram’s current research focuses on decolonizing matter. Through unraveling ontologies and kinship of invasive plant species, she frames possibilities of rematerializing these unwanted invaders through soft surface and textile forms to propose slow, local responses through materiality. Smitheram comes from an award-winning industry background in fashion and textile design. She holds a Master of Design degree, a Master of Philosophy, with first class honours, and a Doctorate in Creative Technologies/Fine Arts. Smitheram has exhibited artworks and presented research internationally.
Masterclass runs 45 minutes
textiles + materiality research cluster 