Environmental Materials and/as Methods Keynotes and Roundtable

Program:

Chantier Ecotechnologies and Speculative Life Cluster are pleased to welcome interdisciplinary researcher Heather Davis (United States) and independent curator Juliette Bibasse (Belgium).

12:30 – 2 PM | Heather Davis Keynote: Producing Plastic Air

Heather Davis talk will explore how one plastic cup factory produces plastic air, and the consequences for how we think about waste, plastic, air quality, and bodily knowledge. Highlighting workers’ experiences in plastic production and decentring narratives of individual consumer choice, her work draw attention to petrocapitalism’s structural violence, where harmful environmental conditions have been normalized and integrated into what it means to build a life in the image of the American Dream. She will explore this through the concept of “private air,” showing how air quality is monitored differently in workplaces than in the general environment.

3 – 4 PM | Juliette Bibasse Keynote: Creating at Large – Prototyping off the grid & slowing down

Juliette Bibasse & Joanie Lemercier crossed the Atlantic in March 2026 aboard a sail cargo vessel, slowly travelling for two weeks from France to New York without flying — a deliberate choice made in response to the environmental cost of air travel. A series of works has been made on board, in direct response to the physical experience of wind, waves, storms and swell, ever-changing light, shadows and reflections, transcribing moments of the ocean into thousands of ink drops and pixels.

At sea, you cannot trust data, even on a high-tech vessel full of sensors. You must observe reality. This journey was a wonderful context to question our growing tendency to use technology to sense the world rather than experience it directly: all the computing power in the world will never be sufficient to model a single drop of water.

In this presentation, Juliette Bibasse will share some of their recent works, the motivations behind this journey and the embodied experience they got from it. Through their studio works and the Concordia University Solar Lab, their goal is to share a critical understanding of technology and to propose desirable alternatives. They believe the future should not rely on robots and datasets, as these fragile systems feel more like disposable gadgets than a serious roadmap for the future.

4:30 – 6 PM | Roundtable Unsettling Sediments: Site-responsive, collaborative inquiry, and public engagement

This round table explores the material and methodological dimensions of a collective bio-based book-making process at the Speculative Life Biolab. Since fall 2025, the group has engaged in an art–science collaboration in Victoriaville, where sediment accumulation in the Réservoir Beaudet is increasingly threatening access to drinking water. The limited-edition artist’s book is being produced using locally collected sediments, algae, and plant matter, and functions both as a research outcome and a site-responsive medium. The discussion will examine how its fabrication and writing operate as a sensory, collaborative method of inquiry, as well as an ecotechnological form of engagement and public knowledge production.