I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication at the Université de Montréal, specializing in media studies, the media arts, and research-creation. I focus on the material and technical practices and histories of media technologies. My research gravitates around two central axes. The first is concerned with the politics and aesthetics of media technologies as materials and infrastructures, and the second with the meeting points between cultural practices and technological innovation. Recurring through my research are questions related to matters of identity and identification, something which is currently taking shape through the following problem: how do we recognize the authenticity and veracity of a person or thing?
I’m working on these questions through two projects. The first is a media history of high-tech paper and security printing, where I am looking to understand the technical ways we mark and inscribe authenticity, value, legitimacy and trust in paper or paper-like substrates. In the other I think about the politics and aesthetics of technologies of recognition (of bodies, identities, physical states), specifically as these are practiced, developed, and negotiated in the media arts.
I’m also a co-investigator in Archive/Counter-Archive: Activating Canada’s Moving Image Heritage, a nation-wide partnership working to research and remediate audiovisual archives created by women, Indigenous Peoples, the LGBTQ2+ community, and immigrant communities. And, I’m the lead on Nano-Verses, an ongoing collaborative research project with artists and scientists that is at once a speculation on the possibilities of new nano-optical medium and a reflection on the nature of interdisciplinary work. (See projects for details.)
Other info:
- I am a co-director of the Artefact Lab.
- I am a member of Hexagram, an editorial board member of the journal Intermédialités, and a member-at-large of the Canadian Communication Association.
- My first book is Polish Media Art in an Expanded Field (Intellect/University of Chicago Press, 2016).
- I previously worked as the Managing Editor of PUBLIC: Art/Culture/Ideas in Toronto and with Continuum Publishing (now Bloomsbury) in New York.
