Incubator as Collaborative Methodology
This talk explores the recent projects of Dr. Heather Igloliorte, Dr. Julie Nagam, and Dr. Carla Taunton as a collective of curator-artist-scholars who present innovative projects in public spaces by working through Indigenous, feminist, and anti-oppressive methodologies that are grounded in practices of research creation through incubators. Over the past few years, they have brought forward several exhibitions that hold space for critical discussions about long standing Indigenous relationships to technologies as creative materialities and as sites for exchange and continuities. They will discuss our incubator and night festival series which includes Memory Keepers I, II, and III as well as gathering across moana (2019-2020) and ebb and flow (2020) in order to consider their engagement with and activation of Indigenous methodologies of visiting, mentorship, and intergenerational exchange.
Dr. Heather Igloliorte, (Inuk, Nunatsiavut), is the University Research Chair in Circumpolar Indigenous Arts at Concordia University in Tiohtiá:ke/ Montreal, where she leads the Inuit Futures in Arts Leadership SSHRC Partnership Grant and Co-Directs the Indigenous Futures Research Centre. Igloliorte has been a curator for sixteen years; she is currently is the lead guest curator for INUA, the inaugural exhibition of the new Inuit art centre, Qaumajuq, which opened in Winnipeg in March 2021.
Dr. Julie Nagam (Métis/German/Syrian) is a Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Arts, Collaboration and Digital Media and is an Associate Professor in the department of Art History at the University of Winnipeg. She is the inaugural Artistic Director for 2020/21 for Nuit Blanche Toronto, the largest public exhibition in North America. Nagam’s scholarship, curatorial and artistic practice has been featured nationally and internationally. Dr. Nagam is the Director of Aabijijiwan New Media Lab and Co-Director of Kishaadigeh Collaborative Research Centre in Winnipeg, Canada.
Dr. Carla Taunton, a white-settler scholar, is an Associate Professor in the Division of Art History and Contemporary Culture at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design University (NSCAD) and is the Special Advisor to the VP Academic and Research, Social Justice and Decolonization. Her research contributes to arts-based critiques of settler colonialism and engages with theories of decolonization and settler responsibility.
Our lecture series is made possible by generous support from the MacArthur Foundation, Ford Foundation, and MIT Transmedia Storytelling Initiative.