Symposium
February 3, 2027
Symposium – What Matter Knows: Towards Multisensory Museum Archives
Free Activity | Space is limited, reservations required
As part of the exhibition Carrie Allison: askōhtēskanohwē at the McCord Stewart Museum, this half-day symposium, conceived and organized in collaboration with Concordia University and led by Dr. Michelle S.A. McGeough and Dr Miranda Smitheram (Kāi Tahu, Pākehā), explores the possibilities of creating a multisensory archive in dialogue with Indigenous knowledge, materiality and contemporary museum practices.
Drawing on the Wolf Babe Collective essay On Being Nosy and Carrie Allison’s exhibition, the symposium takes curiosity as a methodology for research, encounter and knowledge-making. The various panels focus on the senses, artefacts and matter, examining how we perceive, understand and come to know the world through touch, haptic experience, tactility, visuality and our relationships with objects and materials.
Through a keynote lecture and three panels exploring the body as archive, extrasensory perception and practices of material disobedience, participants will be invited to consider forms of knowledge that emerge beyond the document, evidence and the visible. In dialogue with several Indigenous knowledge traditions, the symposium considers the body as a living, multisensory archive, intimately connected to land, ancestors and community. Knowledge circulates through the relational experiences between people, materials and places, opening the way to a more sensitive, embodied and relational understanding of the archive and its potential.
These reflections also raise important questions for museums today. As museums are called upon to rethink their relationships with archives, cultural belongings and contemporary Indigenous artistic practices, there is a growing need to move beyond approaches centred on the preservation, classification and interpretation of objects. Indigenous perspectives instead invite us to consider collections as networks of living relationships, carrying responsibilities to the communities, lands and knowledge they embody. By viewing the archive as a place of encounter rather than simply a repository of information, institutions can open up new possibilities for research, knowledge-sharing and collaboration, while recognizing the many forms of knowledge that emerge through experience, materiality and relationships with the living world.
Information
- Free activity, reservation required, presented in English, on February 3, 2027.
- Full Schedule coming soon
- Location: J. Armand Bombardier Theatre
Learn more about the panelists
Michelle S. A. McGeough
Originally from Amiskwaciwâskahikan, Michelle McGeough is a Métis scholar and artist. Dr. McGeough received her PhD in Indigenous art histories from the University of New Mexico. Currently, she is Associate Professor at Concordia University, prior to that she taught at the University of British Columbia. Dr. McGeough is a member of the advisory for Concordia’s Indigenous Futures Research Centre and a board member of daphne, Montreal only Indigenous artists run centre. Her research interests encompass Indigenous artistic production, gender, sexuality, and Indigenous feminism(s). McGeough’s work critically examines the intersections of these areas, producing insights on Indigenous sovereignty and LGBTQ2S+ issues. She is the co-editor of the book Museum Queeries: Two Spirit, Indigiqueer and LGBTTQ* Interventions into Museums, Archives and Curating and the curator of Love Medicine.
Miranda Smitheram
Dr Miranda Smitheram (Kāi Tahu, Pākehā) is an artist, design researcher and educator, who develops hybrid materials to contribute to sustainable, relational and postcolonial futures centring an approach to crafting with the environment. This is explored through digital, physical and hybrid materialities. Miranda’s current research investigates ontologies of kinship through invasive species, and she applies this to decolonial design approaches, rematerializing invasive plant species into soft surface, bio-composite and textile applications. Dr Smitheram is co-director of the Textiles and Materiality Research Cluster, and director of MaSH lab, at Milieux Institute of Arts, Culture and Technology at Concordia University, Montreal, Canada.
Exhibition
From September 30, 2026 to February 28, 2027
Carrie Allison: askōhtēskanohwē
As part of the Artist-in-Residence program and the 8th edition of the Biennale d’art contemporain autochtone, multidisciplinary artist Carrie Allison is developing a new body of work inspired by floral beadwork traditions from her maternal nêhiyaw and Métis homelands.
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