https://trevalegassie.ca/blog daily 0.75 2018-04-25 https://trevalegassie.ca/blog/2018/4/25/arthur-m-sackler-research-fellowship-in-washington-dc monthly 0.5 2018-04-25 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5a2759f20abd04abef14dfe7/1524685952842-K3GSO4OIEJOH08OGPP3R/unnamed.jpg Blog - Arthur M. Sackler Research Fellowship in Washington, DC. https://trevalegassie.ca/blog/2018/2/8/keynote-presenter-at-intersectionscross-sections-conference monthly 0.5 2018-02-21 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5a2759f20abd04abef14dfe7/1519255870820-9CH40XUMEI796P5MVU8U/27798164_1919863561676354_2414466110452344669_o.jpg Blog - Keynote Presenter at Intersections|Cross-sections Conference https://trevalegassie.ca/blog/2018/1/18/whimsical-bodies-and-performative-machines-aesthetics-and-affects-of-robotic-art monthly 0.5 2018-01-18 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5a2759f20abd04abef14dfe7/1516306954249-XU4LCU617TAI5U8197ZJ/Jpallas_NoseWazoo.jpg Blog - Whimsical Bodies and Performative Machines: Aesthetics and Affects of Robotic Art Jim Pallas, The Nose Wazoo, 1990. Image courtesy of jpallas.com https://trevalegassie.ca/blog/2017/12/10/exhibition-review-teresa-margolles-mundos-in-public-journal monthly 0.5 2017-12-10 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5a2759f20abd04abef14dfe7/1512949691224-D5O9VGV3SZTGZI0AZR2I/tm1.jpg Blog - Exhibition Review: Teresa Margolles 'Mundos' in PUBLIC Journal Mundos, Teresa Margolles at the MAC, Montreal. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5a2759f20abd04abef14dfe7/1512949602272-HDPACSYZ2N6XTZW3PBDK/Screen+Shot+2017-12-10+at+6.45.31+PM.png Blog - Exhibition Review: Teresa Margolles 'Mundos' in PUBLIC Journal PUBLIC Journal: Attendant A to Z https://trevalegassie.ca/blog/2017/12/9/biocare-feminist-labs-and-the-ethics-of-care monthly 0.5 2017-12-09 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5a2759f20abd04abef14dfe7/1512847003748-GG6XCWIDIRPS49JJ503I/Poster_RE-TRACE_Final.jpg Blog - BioCare: feminist labs and the ethics of care https://trevalegassie.ca/work daily 1.0 2026-03-08 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5a2759f20abd04abef14dfe7/1512845533228-DPBZJICYDG8O054054MZ/IMG_6184.JPG Work https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5a2759f20abd04abef14dfe7/1512848432598-R6N0AAQ01C4BWVYELQ7R/IMG_0014.jpg Work https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5a2759f20abd04abef14dfe7/1512942843263-5INFN8OLBSSS8JKXB977/FullSizeRender-3.jpg Work https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5a2759f20abd04abef14dfe7/1533763432272-LBFR9I2DEN1PNKA1XF9W/Screen+Shot+2018-08-08+at+5.23.17+PM.png Work https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5a2759f20abd04abef14dfe7/1533763675664-VP1Z3XIYDSRG25LF9JBX/IMG_0507.JPG Work https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5a2759f20abd04abef14dfe7/1533777768772-YUPZUFSINJ0OLLZLWOYG/Screen+Shot+2017-12-16+at+5.01.33+PM.png Work https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5a2759f20abd04abef14dfe7/1524680913532-YQDLMYMPT53B6LW6KYEI/IMG-9528.jpg Work - Cultured Waters (Workshop) This workshop explored the complex systems of microbial life in Montreal’s Lachine Canal through an experiment in water culturing. Together we created Winogradsky columns, a simple device for culturing a large diversity of microorganisms, in order to think through the ways in which a scientific experiment for visualizing microbes can also be an artistic medium and a creative form of researching the otherwise inaccessible nonhuman life in the Lachine canal. This workshop encouraged participants to speculate on multiple scales of life, their impact on, and the way they are impacted by, water infrastructures in Montreal. We captured a unique visualization of microbial life and environmental impacts on the Lachine canal by culturing water, and thinking through how feminist art-science lab practices, and a mangle of transdisciplinary research methods, can create new forms of knowledge around water’s social, political and environmental impact in an urban space like Montreal. Workshop developed and facilitated by Treva Michelle Legassie for the students of COMS6715: Bricoler les médias taught by Dr. Aleksandra Kaminska and held in collaboration with the Speculative Life Biolab at Milieux Concordia. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5a2759f20abd04abef14dfe7/1540251381565-RNED2K2TSPEWVF73SEVY/Screen+Shot+2018-10-22+at+7.36.01+PM.png Work - Sights of Feeling curated by Treva Michelle Legassie featuring the research-creation work of: Lucas LaRochelle—Zinnia Naqvi—Matthew-Robin Nye—Kalervo Sinervo—Enitan Adebowale—Garnet Willis—CRCC—AbTeC/IIF—Hilary Bergen—Suzanne Kite—Sadie Couture—Rebecca Goodine & Enric Llagostera—Jessica Bebenek—Ryth Kesselring—Skawennati—Treva Legassie—Ida Toft—Théo Chauvirey & WhiteFeather Hunter—Alexandre Saunier—Darian Goldin Stahl—Eileen Mary Holowka—Waterways—Charline Lemieux—Margaret MacDonald—Kinga Michalska—Yvonne Pelling & WhiteFeather Hunter—Abbie Rappaport—Sanaz Sohrabi—Kelann Currie-William—Tricia Toso Sights of Feeling explores the embodied, qualitative and 'feeling' encounters provoked in the act of research-creation work. The ethnographic, game-based, performative, photographic, sculptural, and written works in this exhibition create a space for witnessing care, empathy, and marginalized voices. Sights of Feeling seeks to reveal some of the many ways in which research-creation work at Milieux 'sees others' and 'makes seen' through encounters outside of the more traditional bounds and segmented disciplinary knowledges of academia. Processual techniques of practicing and disseminating research in the academic milieu are made visible here, within, around and outside the Institute; gesturing towards a fleeting grasp of what it means to make, and to witness, research-creation. We acknowledge this exhibition is being held on unceded Indigenous lands. The Kanien’kehá:ka Nation is recognized as the custodians of the lands and waters on which we gather today. Tiohtiá:ke/Montreal is historically known as a gathering place for many First Nations. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5a2759f20abd04abef14dfe7/1512528650157-NR3UWGAUDE33J0SEDD3U/IMG_6274_2592.jpg Work - YMX: Migration, Land, and Loss After Mirabel - Cheryl Sim (2017) Though open for less than half a century, the Montréal-Mirabel International Airport, designated by the IATA code YMX, sits at the nexus of many narrative lines. From its opening on October 4, 1975 until its eventual demolition after years of economic hardship in May 2014, it connects parallel stories of displacement and forced migration. Montréal artist Cheryl Sim’s installation YMX: Migration, Land, and Loss after Mirabel, curated by Danica Evering and Matt Soar and co-ordinated by Treva Legassie, breathes life into these archival narratives and brings them into willful consonance and dissonance. In Sim’s exhibition, a darkened room holds a labyrinth of classic airport belt stanchions, normally used as queuing guidance and crowd control, but here re-purposed as a winding path for reflection. This path leads to the voices of Pierre Nepveu, a celebrated Québécois poet whose book Lignes aériennes relates his farming family’s displacement during the expropriation; Prem Sooriyakumar, who along with his mother and sister sought asylum at Mirabel from the civil war in Sri Lanka; and author Kim Thuy, whose Governor General’s Award-winning novel Ru echoes a vivid account of her own arrival at Mirabel from war-torn Vietnam. These memories—both exproprié and refugee—are complicated by archival footage of the airport and the land surrounding it. On the wall, news documentation in French and English highlights the Canadian government’s refusal to engage with Kanehsatà:ke’s stewardship of the land. In the middle, Nepveu’s Lignes aériennes lies flat on the soft glow of the airport’s luggage carousel signs. And there, at the heart of the labyrinth: two bright yellow Solari split-flap displays, formerly serving a more functional purpose as Gates 46 and 48 at Mirabel, now mutter to one another about land, policy, resistance, home, flight, and politics. Instead of an archive that complies with narrative definition, we propose that the embodied experience of an art installation allows for a more willful archive with multiple accounts converging and conflicting through many voices: visitor, artist, curator, media, Kanien'kéha:ka, refugee, archive, exproprié, airport, machine, and the land itself. Co-curated exhibition by Danica Evering and Matt Soar, co-ordinated by Treva Michelle Legassie. Image courtesy of Danica Evering. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5a2759f20abd04abef14dfe7/1512679344280-ZTIA1B4Q5Y1XXCMZJCYA/903625368c2b8540-influenced-machines-5.jpg Work - Influenc(Ed.) Machines The machine is a working system that functions to facilitate human life. As we influence machines through production they reciprocate by informing and influencing our daily lives. In the 1970s OCA (now OCAD University) was a catalyst in the development of new media and electronic art through the Photo Electric Arts Department. The students and faculty have employed an aesthetic that transcends time and unifies the work of students, professors and alumni from the 1970s until today. Influenc(Ed.) Machines celebrates a do-it-yourself mechanical aesthetic and a sense of liveliness inherent in the machine or mechanical object. The themes of this exhibition are inspired by Caroline Langill's seminal research into the early days of new media art in Toronto emerging in the 1970s. Influenc(Ed.) Machines has been curated by the students of Professor Jennifer Rudder’s class Criticism and Curatorial Practice: International Collaboration Studio; Robin Goldberg, Matt Kyba, Kate Murfin, Tak Pham, Treva Michelle Legassie, and Renée Stephens. The exhibition Influenc(Ed.) Machines encompasses work spanning the period between the 1970s to today that have been produced at or by OCAD (OCA) faculty and students from the present and past. The works of Doug Back, Judith Doyle, Kate Hartman, Layne Hinton, Michael Page and Norman White represent a spirit of humanness as they move, project and engage with the viewer. Accompanying the work is ephemera that offers a visual narrative of the lives of such objects and the process of their creation and function. Influenc(Ed.) Machines borrows and subverts the title of the landmark exhibition curated by Jeanne Randolph for YYZ Artists' Outlet in 1984, Influencing Machines, in order to unpack a new relationship of machines to human subjects. The machine has agency and is influenced by the artist as much as the artist is influenced by it. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5a2759f20abd04abef14dfe7/1512845689038-1I5J7EXCQSRWAYMHEBMR/IMG_1144.JPG Work - Tel Quel/As Is: Recent Acquisitions from the Montreal Signs Project The Montréal Signs Project started at Concordia University in 2010 when Matt Soar, a professor of Communication Studies, and Nancy Marrelli, archivist emerita, began saving old signs from around the city. Not just any old signs, but ones with local, cultural significance: Warshaw, Bens Restaurant, Monsieur Hot Dog, Monkland Taverne. The collection has since grown to around twenty signs, covering airports, butchers, bookstores, boots, bicycles, cinemas, news media, poutine, restaurants, and vacuum cleaners. Every sign in the collection is imbued with a deep connection to Montreal's everyday past: the memories of those who grew up or have lived in their shadow or their glow. Each layer of wear, tear, and patina offers clues as to how and when the signs were made, why, and for whom. This exhibition is a rare opportunity to view several well-known signs recovered or donated in 2016, in more or less the condition they were in when we picked them up. Visitors to this temporary exhibition are warmly invited to explore the permanent collection, also in this building. We suggest taking the elevator to the 5th floor and walking back down. Many of the signs are visible in the main corridors. Curated by Dr. Matt Soar with curatorial assistance from Treva Michelle Legassie and Danica Evering. signs.concordia.ca https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5a2759f20abd04abef14dfe7/1512846139328-NTWBSIWIFZRQ0W5UX1SJ/Untitled-37_33.jpg Work - Whimsical Bodies: Agency and Playfulness in Robotic Art A thesis paper presented to OCAD University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Contemporary Art, Design and New Media Art Histories, 2016. Abstract: This thesis examines issues related to agency, playfulness, and behavioral design in robotic art. Using the term ‘whimsical bodies’ (inspired by artist Steve Daniels’, Whimsy, 2008) as an evocative metaphor for the playful ecology and creations of robotic art, I take up historical and contemporary case studies as entry points to a multi-faceted discussion of human-machine engagements through the lenses of philosophical, art historical and curatorial methodological research. Robotic art’s whimsical bodies are also explored through references to new media scholarship, object-oriented-philosophy, metaphysics and speculative theory. In assessing characteristic features of the art form, such as its playfulness, use of humor, and critique/reconfiguration of wonder as a mode of critical engagement, this thesis aims to move robotic art from the periphery to the center of new media art as a lively and unique field of research. Ultimately, “Whimsical Bodies” reimagines and reanimates cybernetic objects as they break from their role as passive recipients of traditional modes of museum/gallery spectatorship by providing insights into their hidden lives and potential. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5a2759f20abd04abef14dfe7/1512939737413-MM19OY7UZ209AXIW0JVX/IMG_3011.JPG Work - #trending: mobilizing art and culture The influence of trends is undeniable in contemporary culture, but rarely are its implications fully fleshed out. How can a trend mobilize or call others to action? As scholarship in contemporary art, design and new media becomes increasingly focused on networked lives, the digital platforms through which we communicate, interact, and share information demand academic and social inquiry. This interdisciplinary conference looks to the topic of #trending in its myriad meanings as it produces and affects subjects and citizenship, social and political change, visual and material culture. We must consider the longevity, impact, and relevancy of cultural work and research as the implications of cultural trends, their makers, and media are nuanced and complex. Are trends disposable or lasting? How should scholarship respond to trends -- by defining them or following them? What can trends tell us in their sequencing, forecasting, and analysis? A conference managed and organizing by Treva Michelle Legassie, with support from the 2016 cohort of the Masters in Contemporary Art, Design and New Media Art Histories at OCAD University. http://cadnconferenceocadu.blogspot.ca https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5a2759f20abd04abef14dfe7/1540254485880-SGMK0F5OXUOP8EBMYL2S/450-2016-patrick-beaulieu-03-swann-bertholin-ret-m-2017-rgb.jpg Work - Six Tales of Peace (and War) Six Tales of Peace (and War) / Six histoires de paix (et guerre) transports the second floor (Baroque and Enlightenment Era) of the Pavilion for Peace into a place of historical memory and imagination, exploring the human desire for peace even in the midst of wars both Napoleonic and contemporary. The audio guide includes commentary from humanitarian and peace activist, Lieutenant-General Roméo Dallaire; recent Syrian immigrant George Arbaii; specialist in the Spanish enlightenment, Jesus Pérez-Magallon; and museum guide Louis Pelland. Developed and written by artists/graduate students Gianni Berretta, Arianna Garcia-Fialdini, Karlene Goffe, Emily Keenlyside, Bonnie Klohn, Carly McAskill, Trish Osler, Treva Michelle Legassie and Christine Suarez, this audio guide is available in both English and French. Download the English version here Download the French version here These audio guides were created under the supervision of Kathleen Vaughan, Concordia University Research Chair in Socially Engaged Art and Public Pedagogies, in collaboration with audio artist/sound engineer Phil Lichti, as part of Concordia University’s partnership with the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. Production of the audio guides received financial support from both institutions. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5a2759f20abd04abef14dfe7/1555621016324-KIORH4ZZ7D480PPOCCM8/01_E1975.jpg Work https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5a2759f20abd04abef14dfe7/1639688334245-87B2NL24DH2G1XSNN1TK/IMG_0005.JPG Work Curated by the Curatorial Research-Creation Collective (Treva Legassie, Matthew-Robin Nye, karen wong) The four day field-intensive was inspired by the Bauhaus’ paradigm-shifting approach to art, design, and education. The intensive focused on La Station, the decommissioned Nun’s Island gas station (1969) designed by Mies van Der Rohe (last principal of the Bauhaus), which has been recently converted into an intergenerational community centre (2011), as a material entry point and guide, to collectively imagine and propose material and ecological transitions toward post-Anthropo-/Capitalo-cene futures. At the intersections of critical theory, environmental studies, artistic research, speculation, architecture, and design, we used La Station as a starting point to investigate how we might rethink the monumental infrastructures of our carbon-based cities, economies, and modes of living. La Station afforded a means to imagine a way of transitioning such sites into more just and livable post-Anthropo/Capitalocenic futures. Initially a part of the broader masterplan for Nun’s Island, the gas station - with its historic link to Bauhaus - offered the opportunity to engage with issues of processual methodologies, experimental pedagogy, landscape, performativity, and expanded considerations of simultaneous and multiple living phenomena. Equally representative of a then idealized ‘carbon future’, the station accommodated inquiries of environmental interferences and mutations at both micro and macro (molecular to planetary) scales. We proposed a through-line between the pedagogical and design innovations of the Bauhaus and potential modes of transitioning into an uncertain future. We considered how the radical pedagogy of the Bauhaus might allow us to rethink our research methods through, for example, research-creation, qualitative exploration and ethnographic enquiry; offering tools to attune to the micro and macro scales of the local landscape and its social and technological entanglements. By engaging with both past and current states and uses of the station through architecture, ecology, art and critical theory over four days of programming, we attempted to develop and propose speculative futures for a world in transition. Participants engaged in lectures, discussions, and guided workshops to work with: the site’s written and unwritten histories through (an)archival work, art-based research, ethnography, literature, and other creative and research-based practices; the multiple entanglements of species, their resiliencies, complexities, and adaptabilities; the physical reality of the island itself as host to such varied ecosystems; and Modernist applications and consequences of then-contemporary energy infrastructures, with projections towards (other) possible futures. Presenters included: Dr. Orit Halpern (Concordia University), Gabriel Pena (Concordia University), Stefana Breitwieser (CCA_Archives), Tricia Toso (Concordia University), Kregg Hetherington (Concordia University), Erin Manning (Concordia University), Joel Mason (Maritime Social Innovation Lab), Buildings + Grounds Concordia, k.g. Guttman, Monika Gagnon (Concordia University), Shauna Janssen (Concordia University), and the CRCC (Treva Michelle Legassie, Matthew-Robin Nye, and Karen Wong) Transitions was developed jointly with Dr. Orit Halpern. Photo Credits : Treva-Michelle Legassie, Matthew-Robin Nye, Karen Wong, and Sarah-Claudia Ligondé. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5a2759f20abd04abef14dfe7/1714406811228-ZJTNGJQH1L5BVYVLOM6G/26.LowerDonRiver1948_MeanderEdit_FINAL.jpg Work improvement becomes a wall, and the river meanders still (2023), online exhibition walk. Curated by Treva Legassie. Taking up a critical (re)reading of colonial notions of ‘improvement,’ Danica Evering, Elijah Harper, and Shelby Lisk revisit the connection between Wonscotonach (the Don River) and the city of Tkarón:to. In the late 1880s, through the Don Improvement Project, the lower river was straightened and canalized to control nature’s rhythmic course and harness the waterway’s utility. The winding and wild meander was straightened and widened, expressing a colonial desire to tame, discipline, control and use the Land; the meander became The Narrows. The online sound and video-based exhibition improvement becomes a wall, and the river meanders still speaks to relations with water as they emerge and shift through urban development. Experience the online exhibition HERE. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5a2759f20abd04abef14dfe7/1661282500817-VYO8XLV7QVOAPCA40T14/IMG_5809.jpg Work - A Latento for Curation as Research-Creation Book chapter: CRCC (Treva Legassie, Matthew-Robin Nye, karen wong), “A Latento for Curation as Research-Creation,” Media, Practice and Theory: tracking emergent thresholds of experience, Vernon Press, 2022. Abstract: A latento calls forth the tendencies of the minor, whereas a manifesto articulates the already-present molar. This chapter explores how curation as research-creation, fuelled by “artfulness,” can undo the disciplinary zones of art and exhibitionary practice, in favour of an expanded zone of (incipient) action. Art, as allied to intuition, is understood as the “way”, or “manner”, which crafts an operational problem. The operational problem proposed by both art and research-creation is a transversal movement that is political, propositional of a “value” shorn away from the logic of the “excluded middle” (Massumi). Art, or artfulness, detached from contemporary institutional structures, might align more with what Harney and Moten have termed “sociality,” a form of non-exclusive desiring-relation. The curatorial, as a form of sociality, must then tend transversal relations - and their conditions, catalysts, and other agents - attuning to those nearly-imperceptible latencies which are allied to the artful, truly deserving of the exhibitionary. Image: Fire in Oka Provincial Park during a CRCC writing retreat. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5a2759f20abd04abef14dfe7/1512529688193-NQUH4SLC1DX6FLCHCQZE/5745317_orig.jpg Work A small selection of work from a series of paintings that have been in development since 2012. Through explorations of colour and form this body of work suggests a rethinking of 'landscapes' outside of the Western art historical traditional. Can the body be a landscape, how and for whom? Where do boundaries lie, how can we break them productively and equitably? For what and whom are landscapes marked and consumed? https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5a2759f20abd04abef14dfe7/1728582583412-FOIHDIS595RQAQ5V1EL6/IMG_5223.jpg Work improvement becomes a wall, and the river meanders still, 2024. Immersive sound and video installation at Cork Town Common for Nuit Blanche 2024. Curated by Treva Legassie. Listening to water sounds and stories offers a chance to reflect on the history, present and possible futures of Toronto's rivers and lake. Three immersive audiovisual works honour the memory of the Wonscotonach River's formerly meandering flows and Lake Ontario's once visible shoreline. Marsh bridge through Danica Evering's Songs for the Narrows, 2024. 5-channel immersive soundwalk at Corktown Common Marsh. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5a2759f20abd04abef14dfe7/1512941505029-LTK5CQEH4SSLLZM83VMD/11_KateHartman_GoGoGloves.png Work - Lively Objects “Lively Objects (curated by Caroline Seck Langill, and Lizzie Muller) brings together artworks that vibrate with mechanical, digital, and magical forces. Installations hidden throughout the Museum of Vancouver's history galleries awaken our fascination with objects that come to life. The artworks in Lively Objects take a variety of forms—gloves, tables, figurines, machines and projected images. Visitors can hunt for them or drift through the galleries and take their chances. Some works hide in plain sight, speaking only to those who stop to listen. Others deliberately pull focus and make a ruckus. In Lively Objects, artefacts do not quietly await our appreciation. These enchanted artworks disrupt traditional museum categories and presentation techniques. They start surprising conversations with neighbouring objects and invite visitors to reconsider the museum experience.” - Curators Caroline Seck Langill, and Lizzie Muller Lively Objects features works created by faculty and alumni of OCAD University and Emily Carr University of Art and Design: Wendy Coburn, Steve Daniels, Judith Doyle, Kate Hartman, Garnet Hertz, Simone Jones and Lance Winn, Germaine Koh, and Norman White. It is part of The Living Effect, a SSHRC-funded project that investigates notions of “aliveness” in media arts objects. Caroline Seck Langill is a Peterborough-based writer and artist. She has curated new media art exhibitions for various venues including SAW Gallery, the Ottawa Art Gallery, and InterAccess. Caroline Seck Langill is Dean of the Faculty of Liberal Arts and Sciences, and the School of Interdisciplinary Studies at OCAD University. Lizzie Muller is a curator and researcher specializing in interdisciplinary collaboration, interaction, and audience experience. She is Director of the Masters in Curating and Cultural Leadership at UNSW Faculty of Art and Design, Australia. Lively Objects is an associated exhibition of the 21st International Symposium on Electronic Art (ISEA). Treva Michelle Legassie was the research assistant to Dr. Caroline Langill and Dr. Lizzie Muller for this exhibition and the Lively Objects symposium at the Banff Centre. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5a2759f20abd04abef14dfe7/1512846490098-SHIS0RCIB5T4XC5I48TO/IMG_7422.JPG Work - #NATURE #NATURE, a temporary installation by artist Sean Martindale, held at OCAD University's Graduate Gallery in tandem with the #trending conference. #NATURE was conceived as an enclosed public space. Through Martindale's intervention the gallery space was transformed into a self-referential site for thinking though the modes in which both nature, and public spaces are manicured, manufactured, and mediated today. Martindale is most well know for his public art installation practice. For #NATURE the artist created an installation for a interior site, a more traditional white cube gallery. In collaboration with Martindale, and the community, we were able to collectively create an installation that calls to the potential artificiality of urban nature-scapes, and to imagine out how we can embrace, work within, and on, such spaces in positive and productive ways. Sean Martindale is a Canadian artist and designer currently based in Toronto. He holds a Master of Fine Art from OCAD University, Toronto, and a Bachelor of Design from Emily Carr University, Vancouver. Sean’s playful works question and offer alternatives for existing public spaces, infrastructure and materials found in the urban realm. His work activates public space to encourage engagement and prompt conversation and interaction. Martindale’s body of work includes public interventions, works for exhibitions and festivals and more recently community-based projects. His work has appeared in galleries and museums, festivals and on the streets worldwide in cities such as Berlin, Hong Kong, London, New York, Montreal, Paris, Shanghai, Toronto, and Venice. He works with Katzman Contemporary in Toronto. This exhibition was curated by Treva Legassie and funded by the office of graduate studies at OCAD University. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5a2759f20abd04abef14dfe7/1772991464946-8XLMBR2S1D6LVYNU3OUS/IMG_1217.jpg Work As the mouth speaks (2026), geolocated soundwalk at Biidaasige Park hosted by Echoes.xyz. LISTEN HERE As the mouth speaks tends to relations-in-process during the revitalization of former marshland today known as Biidaasige Park on Ookwemin Minising. Complicating colonial conceptualizations of Land as ‘resource’ and ‘sink’ that move through the past, present and future, this soundwalk weaves together histories, notes from the field and field recordings to compose a sonic collage. Presented through a singular voice recorded on site the soundwalk embraces the glitchy and disruptive interruptions from the field—such as wind and construction noise—to expose the performativity of listening and recording which are not universal, neutral or objective acts. Geolocated ‘echoes’ overlap, tangling temporalities to disrupt a singular linear narrative of how the artificial island Ookwemin Minising came to be. The soundwalk conjures multiple temporalities of the park as marsh, infilled industrial site, dump, revitalized public space and its possible futures. Listeners are invited to oscillate between knowing to unknowing—what they are hearing, understanding and experiencing—to think critically about the spatial politics of urban change. Without a defined beginning or end As the mouth speaks invites multiple and differing approaches to listening in/to place. https://trevalegassie.ca/about daily 0.75 2025-06-16 https://trevalegassie.ca/like-water daily 0.75 2026-03-18 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5a2759f20abd04abef14dfe7/d27b5202-817a-4004-a793-90aa74d17137/IMG_3797.jpg Remembering like water Reflecting Pond at the Academic Quadrangle, SFU Burnaby. https://trevalegassie.ca/artwork daily 0.75 2025-07-31 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5a2759f20abd04abef14dfe7/607274cc-b560-4cfe-99cd-cc6b024b568a/26.LowerDonRiver1948_MeanderEdit_FINAL.jpg Artwork https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5a2759f20abd04abef14dfe7/3ab8f410-d81e-4b39-8bb7-8dad80a6474f/IMG_0496.JPG Artwork https://trevalegassie.ca/mouth-speaks daily 0.75 2026-03-26 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5a2759f20abd04abef14dfe7/4dafaa1e-0f58-4e41-9b3e-6a2a1d22606b/IMG_0296.jpg As the mouth speaks - Make it stand out Collage of photos from field recording walks at Biidaasige Park, Toronto. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5a2759f20abd04abef14dfe7/80d8a25a-03bd-47e6-83e5-a310405c3e6c/IMG_1217.jpg As the mouth speaks - Make it stand out Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference. https://trevalegassie.ca/meeting-point daily 0.75 2026-03-08 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5a2759f20abd04abef14dfe7/ec775d35-26a4-410b-a86e-2c4dfc7b9de4/Screenshot+2026-03-08+at+2.09.28+PM.png Three scores for a meeting point - Make it stand out Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5a2759f20abd04abef14dfe7/3c8a62b4-a6db-405f-90f1-dbaa5feaa9e7/Screenshot+2026-03-08+at+2.09.40+PM.png Three scores for a meeting point - Make it stand out A foldable portable score for soundwalking. https://trevalegassie.ca/theres-always-the-other-side daily 0.75 2026-03-08 https://trevalegassie.ca/confluence daily 0.75 2026-03-30 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5a2759f20abd04abef14dfe7/047c67d3-8ac9-403b-8bcd-1a54c557abd6/IMG_1273.jpg Confluence (annotated bibliography) Annotated image of Biidaasige Park in Toronto seen from the CP24 chopper on July 18, 2025. Image courtesy of CP24 News online and Treva Legassie. If maps are meant to visualize, demarcate, lay claim, analyze, and wayfind, then this ‘annotated map’ of notes from the field moves otherwise. It obscures, connects, troubles, and conjures the experience of getting lost. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5a2759f20abd04abef14dfe7/2da469fa-6f8f-4241-b133-4274e4a4755c/IMG_4ED73F04B0AF-1.jpeg Confluence (annotated bibliography) - Make it stand out Annotated soundwalk instructions and photo from soundwalk in Grange Park, Toronto. Soundwalk instructions, photo and annotations by Treva Legassie. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5a2759f20abd04abef14dfe7/e43377c1-2673-48ed-aa93-cd782b76ffb2/IMG_41FF9F97083D-1.jpeg Confluence (annotated bibliography) - Make it stand out Annotated photos taken while walking and field recording on December 3, 2025 (left) and January 16, 2026 (right). On December 3rd it was too windy to record and on January 16th the atmosphere was still and quiet apart from my boots crunching in the snow.