Book Author

Lawrence Bird works in art, architecture, urbanism, and writes on these subjects. He has a professional degree in architecture (McGill, 1991), an M. Sc. in city design and social science (London, 2000), and a PhD in History and Theory of architecture (McGill, 2009). He also completed a research studentship at Kanazawa Institute of Technology, Japan, and a post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Manitoba. He is especially interested in the mediated image of the city, from film to anime. He writes for academic and trade publications including Canadian Architect and Azure, contributes to academic journals and volumes, is a peer reviewer for MIT media art journal Leonardo, and recently co-edited Warming Huts: a decade + of art and architecture on ice (Dalhousie Architectural Press, 2021). His own artwork explores the image of space, often through harvested satellite and aerial imagery, focusing on digital errors and the collision of image and materiality. It has been exhibited internationally and is currently supported by a research/creation grant in media arts from the Canada Council for the Arts. His research has also been funded by SSHRC, FQRSC, the Winnipeg Arts Council, the Manitoba Arts Council, and the Japanese Ministry of Education. Licensed as an architect and city planner, Lawrence has practised in the UK, the US, and Canada, focusing on regional development, urban design, housing, cultural and public art projects. He has taught at McGill University, the University of Manitoba, Kanazawa International Design Institute, and Harvard Kennedy School of Government.

Janet Blatter has a PhD (McGill University, 2005) in Integrated Studies from the Faculty of Education with a focus on Cognitive Science. Her specialization is visual design-based problem solving, visuospatial and temporal reasoning, and collaborative design. More specifically, her research focuses on time-based arts, and considers animation as the most challenging and therefore intriguing domain in which to understand the nature of, and skills needed to, craft space and time. Significantly, her research is based mainly on authentic field observation in studios and with individual artists during various stages of the animation process.

Dr. Blatter has done much research in commercial animation studios, with her current research centering on the filmmakers at National Film Board of Canada (NFB/ONF), where she is the scholar-in-residence. She also blogs for Animation World Network. Her publications and presentations at numerous film and interdisciplinary conferences continue to push the boundaries between the ideal, neat theoretical models and the actual, messy world of real-world animation design.

Gwynne Fulton is an image theorist and independent curator based in Tiohtià:ke/Mooniyang/Montréal. She holds an MFA in Cinema and a PhD in Philosophy and Art History from Concordia University. Her research spans critical phenomenology, decolonial aesthetics, and contemporary film and photography. She has organized film programs and workshops about the carceral state, the visual geopolitics of oceans, and the targeted killing of land defenders in Colombia. Taking the political rights of rivers as its starting point, her exhibition River rights / rites de rivières at SBC Gallery (2022) is part of a long-term curatorial research project concerned with the social histories of waterways, the political ontologies of water, and the legacies of hydrocolonial violence that link Canada and Colombia through extractive activities and hydroelectric projects. Fulton’s research awards include the Singer Family Doctoral Fellowship at The Image Centre in Toronto, a Fulbright Award at Villanova University in Philadelphia, and a SSHRC Visiting Doctoral Researcher Award at the Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy at Kingston University in London. She is a contributor at Slought in Philadelphia, and at Esse art + opinions in Montréal. Her writing has appeared in Esse, Mosaic, InVisible Culture, VU Photo, Les Éditions de Mévius, and Dazibao Editions.

José Sarmiento Hinojosa is a film critic, curator, film and moving image researcher from Lima, Peru. He is currently co-director/editor of Desistfilm.com and programmer and curator at MUTA: International Audiovisual Appropriation Festival. Resident of Berlinale Talent Press (Berlin) 2014, Images Festival Research Forum (Toronto) and Flaherty Film Seminar (NYC) 2021. Graduate for the Master’s Degree in Art History and Curatorship at the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru. He has published/curated for CNC, CFMDC, La Huit, Senses of Cinema, Joris Ivens Foundation, Dobra Film Festival, among others.

Sky Hopinka (Ho-Chunk Nation/Pechanga Band of Luiseño Indians) was born and raised in Ferndale, Washington and spent several years in Palm Springs and Riverside, California, Portland, Oregon, and Milwaukee, Wisconsin. In Portland he studied and taught chinuk wawa, a language indigenous to the Lower Columbia River Basin. His video, photo, and text work centers around personal positions of Indigenous homeland and landscape, designs of language as containers of culture expressed through personal, documentary, and non-fiction forms of media.

His work has played at various festivals including Sundance, Toronto International Film Festival, Ann Arbor, Courtisane Festival, Punto de Vista, and the New York Film Festival. His work was a part of the 2017 Whitney Biennial, the 2018 FRONT Triennial and Prospect.5 in 2021.  He was a guest curator at the 2019 Whitney Biennial and participated in Cosmopolis #2 at the Centre Pompidou. He has had a solo exhibition at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, in 2020 and in 2022 at LUMA in Arles, France. He was a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University in 2018- 2019, a Sundance Art of Nonfiction Fellow for 2019, an Art Matters Fellow in 2019, a recipient of a 2020 Alpert Award for Film/Video, a 2020 Guggenheim Fellow, and was a 2021 Forge Project Fellow. He received the 2022 Infinity Award in Art from the International Center of Photography and is a 2022 MacArther Fellow.

Joshua Minsoo Kim is a high school science teacher based in Chicago. He is the founder and editor-in-chief of Tone Glow, and his writing about music and film can be seen at Pitchfork, The Wire, NPR, Cinema Scope, and MUBI Notebook. He is currently writing a book about sound, music, and silence in avant-garde film for Repeater Books.

Suzanne Morrissette (she/her) is an artist, curator, and scholar who is currently based out of Toronto. Her father’s parents were Michif- and Cree-speaking Metis with family histories tied to the Interlake and Red River regions and Scrip in the area now known as Manitoba. Her mother’s parents came from Canadian-born farming families descended from United Empire loyalists and Mennonites from Russia. Morrissette was born and raised in Winnipeg and is a citizen of the Manitoba Metis Federation. Morrissette holds a PhD from York University in Social and Political Thought. She currently holds the position of Assistant Professor and Graduate Program Director for two programs at OCAD University: Criticism and Curatorial Practices (MFA) and Contemporary Art, Design, and New Media Art Histories (MA).

Claudia Sicondolfo lives and works as a guest in Tkaronto. She currently holds an LTA as an Assistant Professor in Arts Management in the Department of Arts, Media, and Culture at the University of Toronto, Scarborough and is a PhD Candidate in Cinema and Media Studies department at York University. Her research projects address topics ranging from film festivals, screen publics, youth and digital media cultures, anti-colonial research methodologies, and affect in the creative industries. Her doctoral research, for which she was awarded the Vanier CGS from 2017-2021, examines curatorial modes in pedagogy, community outreach, and audience engagement within contemporary digital screen initiatives and film festivals in Canada. Her writing has been published in ESSACHES, PUBLIC, and Senses of Cinema, in addition to various book anthologies. Claudia has worked intimately with educational communities across Canada and has published educational companion curriculum for documentaries. She is currently a co-researcher in the Archive/Counter-Archive SSHRC Partnership Project, in the Fair Play SSHRC Partnership Exchange Grant, as well as the Research Associate for York University’s Digital Justice Research Cluster.

Jennifer Smith is a Métis curator, writer, and arts administrator from Treaty 1 Territory/Winnipeg. She works as an independent curator and arts writer alongside her work as an arts administrator. Jennifer has curated exhibitions for Gallery 1C03 & Plug In ICA, AKA artist-run, the Manitoba Craft Council, and was the Indigenous Curator in residence at aceartinc. in 2018 and works with the window winnipeg collective. Her writing has been published through galleries and art publications, she was part of the 2022 Momus Emerging Critics Residency: Writing Relations, Making Futurities: Global Indigenous Art Criticism. Through her work as an arts administrator Jennifer works consistently for the National Indigenous Media Arts Coalition, and works on projects that include programming, consulting, and research for many arts organizations, mostly in the media art sector.