Cultured Waters: Mangling maker methods through art/science research-creation workshop led by Treva Pullen

Monday, April 9th, 9am-12pm

This half-day workshop will explore the complex systems of microbial life in Montreal’s Lachine Canal through an experiment in water culturing. Together we will create Winogradsky columns, a simple device for culturing a large diversity of microorganisms invented in the 1880s by Sergei Winogradsky, 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 will encourage participants to speculate on multiple scales of life, their impact on, and the way they are impacted by, water infrastructures in Montreal. We will capture 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.