2009 Goldsmiths University of London, PhD Cultural Studies & Research Architecture
1996 Whitney Museum Independent Study Program, New York
1995 University of California San Diego, MFA in Media Arts

Research

ENTANGLED MATTERS: Analogue Futures & Political Pasts (dissertation)
Theorised as an “ontology of the output” this research project conceptually repurposed media machines in order to activate new or alternate entanglements between historical media artefacts and events. Although the particular circumstances that produced these materials may have changed, the project asked why these analogue media artefacts might still be a matter of concern. What is their relevance for problematizing debates within media philosophy today and by extension the politics that underscore the operations of the digital? Does the analogue as I intuit have the capacity to release history and propose alternate pathways through mediatic time?

FORENSIC IMAGINATION: Evidence, Testimony, and the Material Witness
The attention paid to things from the CSI television franchise to the rubble of destroyed infrastructure in Gaza suggests that objects are now in a position to “tell their stories” in ways that were previously unimaginable. Technological advances in forensic analysis such as DNA testing and the micro-material assessment of the built environment have changed the modes by which evidence has been able to narrate and testify to the histories registered within its substrates and by extension the claims made in its name. Amalgamating the concept of forensics with that of imagination serves to highlight the productive tension inherent to this pairing—between fact and fiction—and offers it up as a source of critical potential. How might non-empirical things such as creative works also provide useful knowledges about the world? Can a redistribution that manifests itself in the form of transactions between fact and fiction be operative in the world and visible as attributes of its material reality? This is one of the abiding questions that underwrites my current research. Forensic Imagination takes seriously the contention that materials themselves have agency; things harbour social and political dimensions; and that objects are capable of ‘speaking’ the histories inscribed within them.

Exhibitions

Selected Exhibitions:

2010                       
Krimiseries: Evidence, Narrative and the Forensic Imagination, Museum London, ON
2008                       
Letter to Leopold, Brussels Biennale, Belgium
For Reasons of State, Whitney ISP, The Kitchen, New York
Poetics of Erasure, Simon Fraser University Gallery, Vancouver
2007                       
The Violence of Participation, Collaboration with Markus Miessen, Lyon Biennale, France
2006                       
Conflicted/Inflicted: Dictionary of War, Stadelschule Museum, Frankfurt (book)

2003                       
Pick Up! Art Gallery of Hamilton, Hamilton (catalogue)
Probing into the Distance, Contemporary Art Forum, Kitchener  (catalogue)
Domicile: Work from the Permanent Collection, Kamloops Art Gallery, Kamloops
2002                       
Signal and Noise, Video In, Vancouver
2001                       
Phony, Southern Alberta Art Gallery, Lethbridge (audio essay)
Take Two, Ottawa Art Gallery, Ottawa (catalogue)
London Calling, Performance & guided bus tour, Open Air, London
Snapshot, Contemporary Museum, Baltimore
2000                       
Frequent Flyers, Artspace, Sydney, Australia
Feedback, University Art Gallery, State University of New York at Stonybrook, NY

Selected Publications

2010                       
“The Most Dangerous Film in the World”. Book Chapter. Tickle Your Catastrophe, A joint initiative of the NGE (Dutch Aesthetics Society), Ghent University, the KASK (Ghent Royal Academy of Fine Arts) and Vooruit. Belgium

"Forensic Architecture." Co-authored with Weizman, Eyal, Paulo Tavares, Susan Schuppli, Situ Studio. Architectural Design 80 5 (2010): 58-63. Pp. 58-60.

"Airport Insecurity: How Architecture Helped to Frame (and kill) Robert Dziekanski". In “Spaces of Terror and Risk”, special issue of Space & Culture (Sage Publications, UK).

“Improvised Explosive Designs.” In Borderlands, Special issue on Ambivalent Architectures: Violence, Visualization, Memorialization, Australia, UK

2009                       
“Reading Radiological Film.” Site Magazine, Stockholm. Edition on documentary narratives & non-fictional narrativity in film and art. Guest editor Karl Lydén. Issue 28.

2008                       
“Picturing New Worlds: Propositional Aesthetics & Political Imaginaries.” In Art & Democracy, ed. John Riordan for Projects Projects, New York

“Of Moths and Machines.” In What is Life? Cosmos & History: The Journal of Natural and Social Philosophy, Australia           

“Curse of the Mummy.” Memory Studies, Volume 2, Issue 2. Sage, UK Pp 167-186.

2006                        
“The Case of the Missing 18-1/2 Minutes.” Site Magazine, Sweden

2004                       
Guest Editor of BlackFlash, Special Issue on Expo 67, Winter 2004/05 Volume 2-22

“Picturing Place: Photography and the Geographical Imagination.” Book review. The Canadian Geographer Issue 48:4

2003
“Future Tense." Scope Nottingham, UK, Edited by Rayna Denison (Fall 2003).

EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBER (current):
The Photo-Lexic Research Team, Tel Aviv, Israel
Site Magazine: Journal for Contemporary Art, Architecture, Cinema, and Philosophy, Stockholm, Sweden
Second Nature: The International Journal of Creative Media, R.M.I.T. Melbourne, Australia

Awards, Honours, Grants

2008
Canada Council Travel Grant in Visual Arts (also 2000, 1997)
SSHRC Travel Grant, UWO (also 2007, 2005, 2003)

2006
Ontario Arts Council Project Grant (also 2004, 2001)
2003
SSHRC Interdisciplinary Team Grant (Principal Dr. A. Purdy)
Canada Council B Grant in Visual Arts (also 2000, 1998, 1995)

2002
Smallman Fund (Dean’s Fund, UWO) 2001 SSHRC (UWO Internal Project Grant)

1997
Project Grant, Pro Helvetia, Zurich, Switzerland National Endowment for the Arts Award, USA Project Grant, Cultural Services of British Columbia (also 1996, 1995, 1992, 1991) Van Lier Foundation Grant, New York, NY  

Teaching

VAH 9579G Forensic Imagination (Graduate Special Topics Course)

VAS 521B Sonic Fictions (Graduate Special Topics Course)

VAH 392F Curating Public Space

VAS 285 Gallery Practices

VAS 274/5 Artnow

VAS 4430 Practicum

VAS 9540 MFA Graduate Seminar

VAS 350 Advanced Media

VAS 250 Introduction to Contemporary Media