COHDS

WIBCA’s Legacy: Carrying the Torch from Elders to Youth in Montreal’s Black Community
2025-04-10 17:00 - 19:00 (America/New_York) | LB-1019 (Sunroom), COHDS, 1400 de Maisonneuve Blvd W., Montreal, Québec, Canada
with Jamilah Dei-Sharpe, Joan Lee (President), and Ray Resvick
MC by CBC’s Dionne Codrington.
In 1982, the West Island Black Community Association (WIBCA) was founded as one of Montreal’s first Black Anglophone associations. The film is guided by the oral histories of WIBCA’s founding elders, who recount their grassroots efforts to support Black communities in Montreal for over forty years. Despite challenges like school bus drivers refusing to transport Black youth and increased policing, WIBCA engaged with politicians, educators, and law enforcement to develop essential programs. Through intergenerational dialogue, the film showcases how WIBCA youth continue to champion justice and unity amid the pandemic and the Black Lives Matter Movement, highlighting WIBCA’s vital role in Black Canadian history and its commitment to celebrating and supporting diverse communities in Montreal. The film was produced by the Decolonial Perspectives and Practices Hub (DPPH) and was funded by the SHIFT Centre for Social Transformation. Directed by Jamilah Dei-Sharpe, with Ray Resvick as Director of Photography, Rania Salawdeh as Videographer and Rebeccah Redden as the Video Editor.
Watch the Promotional Video.
The Decolonial Perspectives and Practices Hub (DPPH), is a nonprofit organization based in Montreal. It creates spaces for collaboration between faculty, students, and community organizations to address the systemic challenges marginalized groups face in academia. The DPPH makes higher education more equitable and inclusive by incorporating decolonial approaches into curricula and the learning environment, including integrating oral histories, community knowledge, antiracism education, and promoting student leadership. The DPPH engages in various initiatives to transform teaching and learning, such as syllabus deconstruction events, enhancing collaboration between students and faculty, an online library of antiracism educational videos, and offering a credit-based experiential student internship program. This program connects Concordia University students with community organizations involved in social justice projects. Notably, the WIBCA short film was produced as part of this internship program, linking Concordia film studies students with the West Island Black Community Association.and oral history into her research-creation process.
Jamilah Dei-Sharpe is, a Ph.D. candidate in Sociology at Concordia University, specializing in Black Canadian studies, gender studies, and decolonizing higher education. As an undergraduate instructor and community organizer, she is dedicated to nurturing the next generation of students and scholars. Some of Jamilah’s work for community advancement includes serving as co-chair of the Race and Ethnicity Research Cluster at the Canadian Sociological Association, founding the Decolonial Perspectives and Practices Hub, and co-founding the National Black Graduate Association.
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Dionne Codrington is an award-winning journalist. In addition to her role as the producer of the CBC Black Changemakers series for CBC Quebec, she’s the host of the spin-off podcast, Changemakers. Dionne is a regular guest TV and radio host. When she’s not in front of the camera or on the mic, she also works as a TV and radio producer.
Ray Resvick, is a filmmaker, comedian & community organizer based in Tiohtià:je / “Montréal.” Their work is focused on marginalized perspectives and subverting mainstream understanding of identity. They graduated from Concordia University in 2023 with a major in Communications and a minor in Creative Writing. They are currently participating in the Quebec Writers’ Federation’s screenwriting mentorship. Ray’s short film Extremely Small Claims Court was screen at the 2025 Canadian Film Fest.
REGISTRATION
Register now.
Please note that all our events are free and open to all, but registration is mandatory. For any questions please contact cohds.chorn@concordia.ca
LOCATION
In-person in LB-1019 (Sunroom), COHDS
COHDS/ALLAB is located on unceded Kanien’kehá:ka territory, in Tiohtiá:ke/Montreal.

Cancelled - A Reflection Moment: Writing a Land Recognition for COHDS
2025-04-11 13:00 - 16:00
“Our immigrant plant teachers offer a lot of different models for how not to make themselves welcome on a new continent […] But Plantain is not like that. Its strategy was to be useful, to fit into small places, to coexist with others around the dooryard, to heal wounds […] White Man’s Footstep [Plantain], generous and healing, grows with is leaves so close to the ground that each step is a greeting to Mother Earth.” – Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass
English
With Fran Beauvais, Catherine Richardson and Mélissa-Anne Ménard
We invite you to a moment of connection and deep reflection as we work together to write a land recognition that vibrates with COHDS’ essence and intention of reciprocity, respect and care. A time to explore the relationship we have to the land that kisses our feet every day and to honor it, this Reflection Moment will approach the collective writing moment as an ongoing process to be reflected on in the years to come. It is meant as an opportunity to connect to love and commit to the land that houses us, shapes us and offer deep gratitude to its guardians; it is a commitment to self.
As members of the COHDS community, you will be invited to meditate on your own relationship to the land and the relationship that COHDS, as the sum of its parts, also has to it. In small groups, you will be asked to come up with a land recognition which we will then “braid” together as a whole to act as a heartfelt ode to the land for COHDS to use moving forward.
Why are doing this?
Members of our team and community have felt the need to write a deeply personalized land recognition and acknowledgement, gratitude for the Kanien’kehá:ka nation, people and lands upon which we live and work.
Our aim is that this process would also allow us to reflect on COHDS’ positionality and involvement in decolonization.
Please note that participating members will ask to read and listen to excerpts beforehand so as to arrive with a common mindset. We will communicate with participants 1 week prior to the event to do so.
We look forward to sharing this moment with you.

REGISTRATION
Please note that this event has been cancelled.
Please note that registration for this event will close on April 4. If you wish to attend after this date, please write to cohdscoordinator@concordia.ca.
Please note that all our events are free and open to all, but registration is mandatory. For any questions please contact cohds.chorn@concordia.ca
LOCATION
In-person in LB-1019 (Sunroom, Computer Research Lab, Moonroom), COHDS
COHDS/ALLAB is located on unceded Kanien’kehá:ka territory, in Tiohtiá:ke/Montreal.

Memory, Art, and Violence: Listening to Difficult Stories
2025-04-22 10:00 - 12:00 | Online
with Manuela Ochoa, Luana Sampaio, and Patricia Branco Cornish.

Conflict and dictatorship are challenging topics to discuss and engage new audiences. However, scholars have tasked themselves with finding creative ways to revisit narratives of these difficult pasts to foster public awareness and prevent socio-political violence from happening in the future. Art has been a long-standing medium through which our society registers our lives, from pre-historic cave paintings to contemporary cartoons, films and exhibitions.
Oral history is ubiquitous in recounting stories of survivors’ experiences of traumatic pasts involving state violence, civil conflicts and abuse of power around the world. Still, merging oral history with different forms of art practices remains an underutilized approach to retelling the recent violent pasts in Latin America. A new wave of scholars are working to promote more engaging and immersive ways of showing the broader public complex narratives of people who experienced or survived dictatorships and armed conflicts.
This panel brings together three doctoral researchers who examine the interconnections between listening, memory, and art in Brazil and Colombia. Through three case studies, researchers discuss how oral history methodology and art practices offer alternative ways to engage audiences with complex narratives about past socio-political violence.
Manuela Ochoa has developed Can You Hear the Trees Talking?, an arts-based methodology for conducting dialogical interviews and actively listening to survivors, collaborating with Comunidad, a displaced human rights defender and musician.
Through the question “How can memory be filmed?”, Luana Sampaio explores a series of Brazilian documentaries that depict the Civil-Military Dictatorship in Brazil, which lasted from 1964 to 1985. The films focus on listening and filming the testimonies of survivors and their peers. By examining this creative work, she uncovers how cinema can offer a new understanding of memory by engaging an artistic expression with the past, present, and future.
Patricia Branco Cornish researches the experiences of women artists during Brazil’s military dictatorship (1964–1985), merging oral history and visual art within a decolonial framework. She uses the artworks as memory prompts so women artists can retell their past from daily struggles to groundbreaking creative practices despite censorship and normative gender roles. Patricia seeks to understand the pervasive and subtle ways dictatorship erases women’s stories, and manipulates how we understand past state violence in the present.
Manuela Ochoa’s is an artist and PhD candidate in Humanities at Concordia University. In Colombia, she was part of the team at the Museum of Memory, where she explored the relationship between art and memory in violent contexts. Her research centers on how to listen—effectively and with care—to survivors of violence while collaborating on creative works based on their life stories.
Luana Sampaio is a documentary filmmaker and a PhD student in Communication Studies at the Federal University of Ceará in Brazil. Her research and creative practice focus on exploring the relationship between memory and history in documentaries that use cinematic narrative tools to tell stories about the past. Luana has co-directed over five documentaries, including short films, feature films, and series, and is dedicated to discovering new ways to listen to and capture memories through cinema. She holds a Master’s degree in Communication Studies from the Federal University of Ceará (UFC) and a Graduate Certificate in Creative Arts from Deakin University.
Patricia Branco Cornish is a PhD candidate in the Communications Department at Concordia University. Her research focuses on women artists living under the Brazilian dictatorship (1964-85) and their contributions to the country’s avant-garde art scene of the 1960s–70s. In Brazil, Patricia worked as an art curator and gallery owner. She earned her MA in Art History from the University of São Paulo, where she investigated how women artists carved out space for themselves in the local avant-garde movement despite censorship and conservative gender norms.
ATTEND THIS EVENT
Join us on Zoom.
Please note that all our events are free and open to all. For any questions please contact cohds.chorn@concordia.ca

Ethics in Research: How to Apply for Ethics Certification
2025-04-24 15:00 - 17:00 | LB-1019 (Sunroom), COHDS, 1400 de Maisonneuve Blvd W., Montreal, Québec, Canada
With Liam Devitt, Gabryelle Iaconetti, Barbara Lorenzkowski, and Sonya Di Sclafani
To obtain the informed consent of our research participants is both an ethical and institutional obligation for oral historians working at Canadian universities. This workshop seeks to demystify the process of applying for ethics certification. Three emerging scholars will reflect on their experiences in navigating this process and discuss how they have translated the ethos of “sharing authority” into the formal language of their ethics applications. Meanwhile, Lead Co-Director Barbara Lorenzkowski will provide hands-on guidance on how to prepare an ethics application for your own thesis research at Concordia. Registered participants will be provided with examples of successful ethics applications, including consent forms.
Liam Devitt is a labour historian, writer, and research worker based in Tiohti:áke/Montréal. Their MA thesis “Gay Steel Mill” (Concordia University, 2024) examined how deindustrialization affected queer communities in Cape Breton. Currently, they are the Associate Director of “Deindustrialization and the Politics of Our Time” (deindustrialization.org), a SSHRC Partnership grant project examining histories and contemporary lived experiences of deindustrialization. They are also Vice-President, Sir George Williams Campus for their union, CARE (PSAC 12501). They are in charge of grievances at this campus, and work with union members to fight for justice in the workplace.
Gabryelle Iaconetti (she/they) is a second-year PhD student at Concordia University in Montréal, Québec under the supervision of Dr. Rachel Berger. She holds a BA and MA in History from Concordia University and a MISt (Master of Information Studies) from McGill University. Her research interests lie at the intersection of bisexual history, oral history, queer space, queer theory and archives.
Barbara Lorenzkowski is an oral historian of childhood and youth whose work explores the ways in which global processes of migration, displacement, and violence have shaped small people’s lives in outsized ways. She recently published the co-edited anthology Small Stories of War: Children, Youth, and Conflict in Canada and Beyond (with Kristine Alexander and Andrew Burt, McGill-Queen’s University Press 2023) and is currently completing a FQRSC-funded book project The Children’s War, a large-scale oral history project on children’s sensuous and emotional life-worlds in Atlantic Canada during the Second World War. Dr. Lorenzkowski is the Lead Co-Director of COHDS, while also serving as the Associate Chair at the Department of History (Concordia University).
Sonya Di Sclafani is a first-year MA student in History at Concordia University. Her research centres on women’s experiences in the Hungarian-Canadian diaspora in Montreal, with a focus on foodways and intergenerational storytelling. She holds a BA History (Honours), with a minor in English Literature, from Concordia University; a BFA in Photography and Art History (Concordia); and a diploma in Interior Design at Dawson College, Montreal.
REGISTRATION
Register now.
Please note that all of our events are free and open to all, but you need to register! To register, contact us at: cohds.chorn@concordia.ca
LOCATION
In-person in LB-1019 (Sunroom), COHDS
COHDS/ALLAB is located on unceded Kanien’kehá:ka territory, in Tiohtiá:ke/Montreal.

Casual COHDS
2025-04-29 14:00 - 16:00 | LB-1019 (Sunroom), COHDS, 1400 de Maisonneuve Blvd W., Montreal, Québec, Canada
Join us for another session of “Casual COHDS,” a monthly drop-in event for members of the COHDS community and anyone curious about oral history to gather, converse, and connect over coffee, tea, and snacks in a relaxed setting. If you would like to meet other members of the COHDS community, or simply take a moment to pause, recharge, and connect with other oral history practitioners and enthusiasts, “Casual COHDS” is an opportunity to foster these exchanges. Held in the afternoon, each monthly meeting will be loosely designed around a theme, to get the conversation started. For our gathering in March, participants are invited to bring a favourite story around an interview encounter or a photograph that they would like to share — or to simply bring themselves. We look forward to welcoming you on Tuesday, April 29th, anytime between 14:00 and 16:30 p.m. in the Sunroom (LB- 1019).
Kelann Currie-Williams (they/she) is a writer, visual artist, and oral historian based in Tiohtià:ke/Montreal. Kelann is a PhD student at Concordia University’s Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Society and Culture, working at the intersections of Visual Culture, History, Black Studies, and Cultural Studies. Their research focuses on the image-making and photographic preservation histories of the Afro-Caribbean diaspora in Canada from the late 19th to late 20th centuries, and the scenes of migration, homemaking, community-building, and political mobilization that those photographs depict. Kelann is a long-time student affiliate of the Centre for Oral History and Digital Storytelling, an affiliate of the Access in the Making lab, and a member of the Milieux Institute for Arts, Culture and Technology’s Post Image cluster. Her critical work has appeared in academic journals such as Urban History Review, the Canadian Journal of History, TOPIA: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies, and Philosophy of Photography.
REGISTRATION
Register now.
Please note that all our events are free and open to all, but registration is mandatory. For any questions please contact cohds.chorn@concordia.ca
LOCATION
In-person in LB-1019 (Sunroom), COHDS
COHDS/ALLAB is located on unceded Kanien’kehá:ka territory, in Tiohtiá:ke/Montreal.

Vernissage and Durational performance, "I Insist" - Bodies Carrying Exhibit Programming
2025-04-30 17:00 - 19:00
I insist is a long-duration performance piece that unfolds over the course of several hours. In it, the artist slowly wraps their body in red sewing thread. With minor, ritualistic, almost inconsequential movements, the piece itself is mostly understood in fragments. The scale of this piece does not encourage you to sit with it in its entirety, though one may choose to, but rather to understand it as it unfolds in the space. The slow disappearance of the body from its surroundings enhances a distinction between the person and the outside; the other. I insist is an exploration of what it means for a body to be woven (or not) into networks of community, lineage, and environments.
Sol Worsnip is an emergent interdisciplinary artist whose work primarily lies at the intersection of sound, video, and performance art. They are currently completing a B.A. in Communication Studies at Concordia with a focus on sound and audio art. Through their work, they seek to ask the simplest questions. How can one inhabit a body and move it through the world—and get everything else done as well? And what does it mean to witness?
REGISTRATION
Register now.
Please note that all our events are free and open to all, but registration is mandatory. For any questions please contact cohds.chorn@concordia.ca
LOCATION
In-person in LB-1019 (Sunroom), COHDS
COHDS/ALLAB is located on unceded Kanien’kehá:ka territory, in Tiohtiá:ke/Montreal.

Exhibit - Bodies Carrying: Traces & Stories
2025-04-30 17:00 - 2025-05-16 17:00
Bodies carry and transmit traces of memories, sites, and stories—both as acts of care and as burdens to bear.
Bodies Carrying: Traces & Stories is a twofold conversation taking the form of a group exhibition and a program consisting of workshops, performances, and talks. This is an experiment in transforming the Centre for Oral History and Digital Storytelling into a dialogue space that brings together artists and researchers who engage with or reflect on oral history in their work, from the curatorial process to the mise en œuvre.
The exhibition and program explore the traces we carry—the traces of what was willingly or unwillingly passed on, those that were inflicted, and the lingering ghosts of what was left behind.
These imprints can be things we hold onto or want to make more visible, carried through acts of care, (re)connection, and resistance. Yet, these traces also represent the weight of what bodies have borne and still bear. Bodies Carrying: Traces & Stories asks: How do we hold space for both the tenderness and heaviness of what it means to carry?
Exhibition Location
COHDS, 10th Floor – LB-1042; 1400 de Maisonneuve Blvd W.
COHDS/ALLAB is located on unceded Kanien’kehá:ka territory, in Tiohtiá:ke/Montreal.
Exhibition Hours
May 1 – May 16
Open daily | 1:00 PM – 4:00 PM
Dates
May 5 – May 8
Please register for individual events.
Vernissage
April 30, 5 à 7, Sunroom (LB-1019)
With durational performance “I Insist” by Sol Worsnip
Program
May 5, 10h-13h
Corps, émotions et recherches: une exploration par cartographie corporelle – Atelier
May 6, 12h-14h
Attuning to Spectralities: Senses, Whispers, and Other Connective Membranes – Workshop
May 6, 15h-16h30
كان حتى ما كان (Once Upon a Place): What Remains of the Halqa? Performing Memory and Absence – Lecture Performance
May 7, 10h-13h
The Metabolism of Silence – Workshop
May 7, 16h-17h30
Intimate Listening- Immersive Theatre
May 8, 14h-15h
Walking Interludes – Reading and dialogue
May 8, 16h-18h
Identity, Care, Labour, and Matrilineal Stories – Performance and Artist Talks
REGISTRATION
Registration forms are linked on each event page.
Curated/facilitated by: Annie Thao Vy Nguyen
Annie Thao Vy Nguyen (they/she) is a Master’s student in Geography and Urban Studies at Concordia University, exploring queer futurity and political imagination through dialogic processes. Their thesis uses oral history to trace the evolution of queer Asian activism in Montreal across generations, using Chinatown as a case study. Annie holds a Bachelor of Architecture from Université de Montréal, with a thesis at the Technical University of Munich on inquiry-based exhibition pedagogy, where they co-developed and co-taught a course on pedagogy in architecture exhibitions. Trained and soon-to-be certified in Philocreation dialogue facilitation, Annie used these tools to facilitate this exhibition and program through a curatorial dialogue with all contributors.

Corps, émotions et recherches: une exploration par cartographie corporelle - Bodies Carrying Exhibition Programming
2025-05-05 10:00 - 13:00
Description écrite par Naomie Léonard et Stéphane Guimont Marceau.
La cartographie corporelle offre une manière unique et créative d’explorer son identité, ses expériences de vie ou une thématique particulière en centrant le corps et les émotions dans le processus de réflexion. Utilisant l’idée de la carte topographique, la cartographie corporelle propose d’imaginer le corps comme un territoire qu’il est possible de représenter de manière symbolique. Abordant les thématiques du corps, des émotions et de la recherche, cet atelier invitera les participant-es à se pencher sur les manières dont le corps et les émotions affectent la recherche et inversement, comment la recherche affecte le corps et les émotions ?
Durant l’atelier, les participant-es créent une représentation en taille réelle de leur corps. Après avoir personnalisé leur carte pour l’imprégner de leur personnalité et caractéristiques, les participant-es explorent les thématiques proposées à l’aide d’images, de couleurs, de textures, de mots et de symboles produits via différents médiums d’art plastique (peinture, dessin, collage, etc.). Cela leur permet d’exprimer et documenter leur perspective de certaines expériences à partir de sensations vécues dans leur corps-territoire.
L’atelier se termine par un cercle de partage afin que chaque participant-e puisse raconter sa carte. Ces récits laissent ensuite place à une discussion collective sur les thématiques abordées pour mettre en relief les convergences et les contrastes entre les cartes. Nous invitons chaque participant-e à s’investir dans la création d’un espace bienveillant et sans jugement. Nous cherchons à établir un climat ludique, marqué par le partage, l’écoute et le respect mutuel.
Instructions:

Plusieurs médiums artistiques, dont de la peinture, seront disponibles. N’hésitez pas à vous apporter un tablier.
N’hésitez pas à amener des collations
Veuillez arriver quelques minutes à l’avance si possible

Naomie Léonard (elle/she) est doctorante en études urbaines à l’Institut national de la recherche scientifique (INRS). Adoptant une posture écoféministe décoloniale, ses intérêts de recherche touchent les relations entre corps, émotions et espaces en contexte de résistance au colonialisme et dans les luttes socio-écologiques. Sa thèse porte sur les relations à la ville et les espaces de care créés et maintenus par des femmes Ilnuatsh et Atikamekws de Mashteuiatsh. Elle a mobilisé la cartographie corporelle comme méthode de recherche afin d’inviter les femmes à explorer de manière créative leurs relations aux espaces et à leurs trajectoires de vie.
Stéphane Guimont Marceau est professeure au centre Urbanisation Culture Société de l’Institut national de la recherche scientifique (INRS). Elle codirige le programme conjoint INRS-UQAT de maîtrise et de doctorat en études autochtones. Elle est aussi codirectrice du Collaboratoire Villes Voix Visions (c3v.inrs.ca). À partir d’approches critiques, féministes, antiracistes et décoloniales, elle travaille au sein de projets collaboratifs et partenariaux qui priorisent des épistémologies autochtones et des méthodes participatives basées sur les récits.
INSCRIPTION
Inscrivez-vous ici.
Veuillez noter que tous nos événements sont gratuits et ouverts à toutes et à tous. Cependant, vous devez réserver votre place. Pour participer à l’événement en présentiel évrivez à: cohds.chorn@concordia.ca
LIEU
Le CHORN/ALLAB sont situés sur le territoire non-cédé de Kanien’kehá:ka à Tiohtiá:ke/Montréal.

Attuning to Spectralities: Senses, Whispers, and Other Connective Membranes - Bodies Carrying Exhibit Programming
2025-05-06 12:00 - 14:00
Photo: Milena Rodriguez
Description by Esteban Donoso and Shalon T. Webber-Heffernan
This workshop offers an immersive, collaborative space for scholars, performers, visual artists, and curators to engage with embodied practices that attune to spectral presences. By experimenting with spectrality as a connective tissue that links us to ancestral pasts, we will explore expanded modes of perception that allow us to sense beyond conventional boundaries of time and space.
Participants will experiment with “tuning-in” to spectral traces—those unseen presences and memories that linger in bodies, objects, and environments. Through guided exercises, ritual, open discussions, and collaborative writing, we will examine how these traces are always already part of our embodied experience, inhabiting material objects, spatial environments, and our physical and emotional tissues.
The session includes grounding and attuning exercises, brief presentations by Esteban and Shalon on their methodologies, and a generative group writing activity to create a shared “score” reflecting our collective experience of the spectral.
Esteban Donoso is a researcher-artist from Quito, Ecuador currently living in Montreal. He recently completed his PhD in Theatre and Performance Studies at York University in Toronto. His work focuses on dance and performance archiving and transmissions, oral histories, and practice-based methodologies. His artistic work has been shown in Ecuador, Colombia, Chile, Belgium, Switzerland, France, the U.S., and Canada.
Shalon T. Webber-Heffernan is a Toronto based writer and curator. She holds a PhD in Theatre and Performance Studies and is a core member of the Toronto Performance Art Collective (7a11d International Festival of Performance Art). Some of her recent writing has been published in Theatre Research in Canada, Performance Research, Comparative Media Arts Journal, C Magazine, Peripheral Review, Performance Matters, and several other publications.
*Please wear comfortable clothing
Note: this event will take place in English, with the possibility of French translation
REGISTRATION
Register now.
Please note that all our events are free and open to all, but registration is mandatory. For any questions please contact cohds.chorn@concordia.ca
LOCATION
In-person in LB-1019 (Sunroom), COHDS
COHDS/ALLAB is located on unceded Kanien’kehá:ka territory, in Tiohtiá:ke/Montreal.

كان حتى ما كان (Once Upon a Place): What Remains of the Halqa? Performing Memory and Absence - Bodies Carrying Exhibit Programming
2025-05-06 15:00 - 16:30
Photo Credits: Film still from Crossing the Seventh Gate (2017) by Ali Essafi
Description by Bouchra Assou and Salma Chouqair
Drawing from a post-colonial concern with the preservation of different forms of oral traditions in Morocco, this lecture performance seeks to restage a halqa as both a space and a conduit for ancestral storytelling, performance and communion.
The halqa, both evoking a space and a practice, serves as the epitome of narratology and the subversive oral histories of Moroccan heritage. Exploring the intersections between space, body and practice and treating the memories they hold as a form of resistance to authoritarian/colonial power, this lecture performance will centre the role of the halqa and its role in preserving and transmitting traditions in their visual and auditory manifestations such as theatre, storytelling, carnivalesque practices, music (tagnawit), etc. Furthermore, we will explore the cinematic and literary languages that seek to disrupt, challenge, and dismantle hegemonic historical narratives using alternative modes of knowledge production, such as the ancient North African practices that encompass a form of storytelling beyond text-image relationships
Bouchra Assou is an independent researcher, film curator, programmer, writer, and archivist of Moroccan origin based in Montreal, Canada. She is the founder and curator of Dhakira Collective (2020): an independent research, archival and curatorial platform that foregrounds art, cinema, and music outside the western canon with a focus on cinema from the SWANA region (South West Asia & North Africa) and the co-founder and director of programming of the North African Queer Film Festival (2021) : a community-driven platform dedicated to celebrating and supporting films by, about, and for North African queers, powered by Dhakira Collective. She was invited to deliver lectures on North African cinema and archives by Concordia University, McGill University and The International Federation of Film Archives (FIAF). Press features about her work have appeared in publications such as Mille World, Journal de Métro, Also Cool Mag, The Link Newspaper etc.
Salma Chouqair is a freelance writer and an independent researcher of Moroccan Amazigh origin. She is currently pursuing a BFA Art History and Theology at Concordia University. In 2023, Salma launched Bayt Zuhal, an independent cultural platform dedicated to recollecting and preserving the traditions, arts and archives of Tamazgha & the post-colonial Maghreb with a focus on ancestral futurism. Since its inception, the project has amassed a global online community. Press features about Salma’s work and research were published in Dune Magazine, The Road to Nowhere and more recently The Link Newspaper and Dazed MENA.
Event language(s) English, French, Arabic & Darija
REGISTRATION
Register now.
Please note that all our events are free and open to all, but registration is mandatory. For any questions please contact cohds.chorn@concordia.ca
LOCATION
In-person in LB-1019 (Sunroom), COHDS
COHDS/ALLAB is located on unceded Kanien’kehá:ka territory, in Tiohtiá:ke/Montreal.

The Metabolism of Silence- Bodies Carrying Exhibit Programming
2025-05-07 10:00 - 13:00 | LB-1019 (Sunroom), COHDS, 1400 de Maisonneuve Blvd W., Montreal, Québec, Canada
Description by Eve Garnier and Jacynthe Desjardins
In a movement-based workshop, we propose an exploration of relational possibilities and their bodily expression, anchored in silence(s). Here, silence is not a rupture but a dynamic space of exchange between individuals sharing the same space-time.
The connection between narrator and audience is a key part of any narrative formed during an interview or performance. Beyond words, what do we, as receivers, perceive? Building trust and sharing authority requires thoughtful attention to how we receive stories. The body is not just a passive receiver but an active participant with its own agency.
The workshop will develop two distinct approaches: one in pairs and the other in groups.
In the first part, participants will engage in storytelling through movement in pairs, examining how narration emerges when bodies remain in constant motion. Can movement generate alternative cognitive pathways? We will seek to identify forms of silence that extend beyond the mere absence of words. We will explore the role of the receivers when also in motion; how they interact with the narrator’s entanglement with spatial relationship, the unfolding story, and gesture. What, then, is the nature of silence in this context?
The second part will focus on a group conversation without words, engaging with the often-unconscious dimensions of interaction. Participants will observe, sense otherness, and be perceived by others. What do we see, project, or have projected onto us? How do we perceive “the other” within a group, within space, and within time? What is the nature of this silence?
Eve Garnier is a Franco-Polish dance artist and researcher, born and trained in France, it was, however, in Scandinavia and Canada that Eve built a career in dance as a performer, assistant to creation and teacher. Centered around the relational and experimental potential of the living body in movement, her artistic and pedagogical reflections are nourished by artists from varied generations and aesthetics. Eve is a Part-time professor at UQAM, where she teaches technique and interpretation classes. She is currently pursuing a Master of Arts in the INDI program at Concordia University.
Jacynthe Desjardins est une artiste en danse établie à Tiohtià :ke/ Mooniyang/ Montréal, Jacynthe Desjardins complète un baccalauréat en danse contemporaine à l’Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM, 2021) où elle aura eu l’occasion de travailler avec de nombreux chorégraphes et artistes de la scène, dont Frédérick Gravel, Caroline Laurin-Beaucage, Danièle Desnoyers et poursuit depuis un parcours en tant qu’interprète et chercheuse. Aussi titulaire d’un diplôme en lutherie de l’école-atelier Bruand, Jacynthe s’intéresse au lien entre la musique et la matière. Ses interrogations se tournent vers ce dialogue liminal entre corps sonore et corps matière. À travers sa pratique du mouvement, elle navigue cet échange constant entre physicalité, sons et vibrations. S’ajoute aussi un intérêt grandissant pour les arts martiaux ainsi qu’envers l’importance de notre héritage culturel en danse.

REGISTRATION
Register now.
Please note that all our events are free and open to all, but registration is mandatory. For any questions please contact cohds.chorn@concordia.ca
LOCATION
In-person in LB-1019 (Sunroom), COHDS
COHDS/ALLAB is located on unceded Kanien’kehá:ka territory, in Tiohtiá:ke/Montreal.

Intimate Listening - Bodies Carrying Exhibit Programming
2025-05-07 16:00 - 17:30 | Concordia University, LB-1042 (COHDS), 1400 de Maisonneuve Blvd O, Montreal
Description by Cristina Alejandra Jimenez Gomez.
In an intimate space within the exhibition space, a copera will interact with volunteer participants who visit this spot individually. Before the interaction begins, each participant will be given a token amount, which will be used to exchange stories and typical beverages of the Colombian cafés. The tokens have different values, and will determine the type of story, drink and interaction the visitor may have with the copera. After those tokens are consumed, the next participant is invited to visit the spot. This immersive theatre game delves into the notions of intimate labor, embodied listening, and care.
Event Requirements:
This piece requires one person at a time in the exhibition space. Each person will have around 10 minutes of interaction. For the quality of the piece, it is requested that participants interact individually as personal stories arise during the conversation, and those who wish to participate are invited to wait outside the room.
Cristina Alejandra Jimenez Gomez (she/they) is a Colombian interdisciplinary artist and educator developing her PhD studies in the INDI program. She is interested in creative, transformative and communal experiences that address critical intersectional concerns. Based in Tiohtià:ke – Mooniyang – Montreal since 2019. CA is affiliated with Hexagram, Milieux-LeParc, COHDS, ALLab, and SenseLab-3e at Concordia University. Editor and workshop facilitator at Kodama Cartonera, an independent publishing house born in Tijuana, Mexico, in 2010. CA’s research-creation approach is performative, feminist, and (an)archival. Her perspectives stem from embodied practices as a source of knowledge, intertwining processes of doing-feeling-thinking. Due to their experience in different theatre troupes, CA learned about diverse techniques focused on developing research and creative methods for, in, and within public spaces and non-conventional stages. Currently, they are a board member of Teesri Duniya Theatre, where she has developed two community engagement projects.

Event language(s): English
REGISTRATION
Register now.
Please note that all our events are free and open to all, but registration is mandatory. For any questions please contact cohds.chorn@concordia.ca
LOCATION
In-person at COHDS Exhibition (LB-1042)
COHDS/ALLAB is located on unceded Kanien’kehá:ka territory, in Tiohtiá:ke/Montreal.

Walking Interludes- Bodies Carrying Exhibit Programming
2025-05-08 14:00 - 15:00 | LB-1019 (Sunroom), COHDS, 1400 de Maisonneuve Blvd W., Montreal, Québec, Canada
Description by speaker Sunjay Mathuria.
“Walking Interludes is a reflective reading about walking, place, race, identity, and memory. In this reading, I share short excerpts from my field journal that I kept during my research visits to Belfast and Lahore. In an autoethnographic style, these vignettes focus on movement (walking) through the cities and consider the affective and embodied surges and textures of place. I reflect on the ways I am visibly marked as a racialized body in Belfast, a city still grappling with division. In Lahore, I draw on themes of intergenerational memory and belonging in a city from which my great-grandparents were displaced during Partition.
As an urban researcher, it is important to foreground walking as a self-reflexive, embodied practice and acknowledge the ways in which walking narratives are articulated through footsteps, sketching out our own entanglements with space, as we become enmeshed in the textured spatial networks of the places in which we walk.
Thus, this reading invites researchers to consider the ways they are situated within their research, and in particular, the relationship between body, movement, and place.
I will begin with some context: what are walking methods and why are they important? I will then read excerpts from my field journal for around 10 minutes, with an accompanying slideshow of photos I took projected behind me. At the end, I invite audience members to reflect on and share their own walking experiences. This reflection period should be around 30 minutes.
Please note:
This event may be of interest for those who use walking methods in place-based research. You can bring a notebook or your field journal to jot down some thoughts.
Sunjay Mathuria (he/him) is a PhD Candidate in Geography at Concordia University and a former urban planner. In his doctoral research, he uses walking methods and narrative analysis to examine the dynamics of memory-making in cities that have experienced spatial trauma. He is also generally interested in the representations of place, race, and class in literature, television and film.
Event language(s): English
REGISTRATION
Register now.
Please note that all our events are free and open to all, but registration is mandatory. For any questions please contact cohds.chorn@concordia.ca
LOCATION
In-person in LB-1019 (Sunroom), COHDS
COHDS/ALLAB is located on unceded Kanien’kehá:ka territory, in Tiohtiá:ke/Montreal.

Identity, Care Labor, and Matrilineal Stories– Bodies Carrying Exhibit Programming
2025-05-08 16:00 - 18:00 | LB-1019 (Sunroom), COHDS, 1400 de Maisonneuve Blvd W., Montreal, Québec, Canada
Description by Cristina Alejandra Jimenez Gomez, Javi Fuentes Bernal and David Diaz Méndez.
This is an event composed of two artist presentations followed by a joint Q&A. It will begin with a performance and talk by Cristina Alejandra Jimenez Gomez (Resonant roots: an intergenerational storytelling), followed by a presentation from Javi Fuentes Bernal and David Diaz Méndez on their collaborative project (Démarches décoloniales de fabulation critique et de reconnection: Hypergraphie, performance et futurismes andins dans la création de la Revue d’études Travesti, Q’iwa & Suprabinaires).
(1) Resonant roots: an intergenerational storytelling (Cristina Alejandra Jimenez Gomez):
Cristina Alejandra Jimenez Gomez’s event includes a solo performance (resonant roots) and a performative talk: (mise en corps/puesta-en-cuerpo) which zooms in on the role of coperas (women who worked at cafés, combining traditional waitressing with some escorting services without necessarily being sex workers) in Colombia.
Resonant Roots encompasses Alba’s story (the artist’s great-grandmother) narrated through the voices of her daughter and granddaughter. While a video is projected, the performer enacts physical movements and interacts with objects around the space. Within this maternal lineage, some stories want to be told, others are hidden or denied. Are those stories somehow imprinted in the performer’s body, although unknown? What are the resonances of her body with the audio archives of her distant lineage?
mise en corps/puesta-en-cuerpo expands the inquiry; It is a performative talk which outlines the research process on the concept of public women, focusing on the role of coperas. Also, it draws on the dramaturgical guidelines, the exploration of storytelling, and the creative questions raised to develop these pieces.
Cristina Alejandra Jimenez Gomez (she/they) is a Colombian interdisciplinary artist and educator developing her PhD studies in the INDI program. She is interested in creative, transformative and communal experiences that address critical intersectional concerns. Based in Tiohtià:ke – Mooniyang – Montreal since 2019. CA is affiliated with Hexagram, Milieux-LeParc, COHDS, ALLab, and SenseLab-3e at Concordia University. Editor and workshop facilitator at Kodama Cartonera, an independent publishing house born in Tijuana, Mexico, in 2010. CA’s research-creation approach is performative, feminist, and (an)archival. Her perspectives stem from embodied practices as a source of knowledge, intertwining processes of doing-feeling-thinking. Due to their experience in different theatre troupes, CA learned about diverse techniques focused on developing research and creative methods for, in, and within public spaces and non-conventional stages. Currently, they are a board member of Teesri Duniya Theatre, where she has developed two community engagement projects.
Event language(s)

The performance includes audio in Spanish with video subtitles in English.
The performative talk is held in English.

(2) Démarches décoloniales de fabulation critique et de reconnection: Hypergraphie, performance et futurismes andins dans la création de la Revue d’études Travesti, Q’iwa & Suprabinaires (Javi Fuentes Bernal & David Diaz Méndez)
Decolonial approaches of critical fabulation and reconnection: Hypergraphy, performance, and Andean futurisms in the creation of the Journal of Travesti, Q’iwa & Suprabinaires Studies.
​​Interweaving critical fabulation, hypergraphy, and Pastos symbolism, this presentation delves into the creative process behind the Journal of Travesti, Q’iwa & Suprabinary Studies. This journal challenges the linear narratives of colonialism by reactivating indigenous imaginaries through their hybridization with experimental graphic practices. Grounded in Travesti and diasporic studies, the journal’s critical fabulation—developed in collaboration with David Mendez for graphic design and enriched by the performances of Javi Fuentes Bernal and their mother, Yadila Bernal—becomes a tool for inventing alternative narratives that unsettle the boundaries of the so-called fixed truths of colonial historiography. Through a hypergraphy that intertwines writing, drawing, ancestral symbols, and contemporary visual languages, the project explores forms of storytelling that are vibrant, multifaceted, and polysemic. This hybridity serves as a lever for reconfiguring Latinx Cholas aesthetics and imagining new visual forms in resonance with Andean futurism. By mobilizing performance as a space for the reactivation of long memories and other sensory repertoires, the project fosters living connections between intergenerational transmission, critical fabulation, and humor. In this presentation, we explore our research and creative process from sensitive perspectives aimed at rethinking and inhabiting our identities beyond the frameworks imposed by colonialism and whiteness.
Javi Fuentes Bernal est un·e artiste transdisciplinaire, chercheur·e et intervenant·e colombien·ne basé·e à Tiohtià:ke/Montréal. Son travail s’inspire des fabulations critiques et des pratiques archivistiques, à l’intersection des pensées trans*travesti, migrantes et autochtones. À travers la performance, la vidéo, l’installation et l’écriture, Javi explore les affects liés à la mobilité, ainsi que les relations entre mémoire, territoire et culture populaire. Javi a récemment contribué à des expositions telles que Unique en son genre (Musée de la Civilisation, 2023), Awera en Bakatá (Museo Nacional de Colombia, 2024), et Le Québec, autrement dit (Musée de la Civilisation, 2024) et Minga Suprabinaire (PHI, 2025). Ses recherches ont bénéficié du soutien d’institutions telles que le Centre de recherche en santé publique CReSP, le Fonds de recherche du Québec, et une bourse Vanier pour ses études doctorales en travail social à l’Université de Montréal.
David Díaz Méndez est étudiant en design graphique à l’École de design de l’UQAM. Il s’intéresse au langage polysémique caractéristique des contextes d’hybridité culturelle et à la manière dont celui-ci peut enrichir les différentes sphères du design graphique. Il a rejoint l’équipe d’Hypercodex en 2023, où il participe à la conception de l’identité visuelle de l’exposition ALCUIN (2023-2024), à l’événement FORUM (2024), ainsi qu’à la recherche et à la conception graphique des projets d’Amandine Alessandra Ephemeral Typography: Writing the impermanent et FLUX/Mémoires Photophobes. II sest illustré aux ADCC Student Awards 2024 en remportant le bronze dans la catégorie design graphique.
Event language(s): French

REGISTRATION
Register now.
Please note that all our events are free and open to all, but registration is mandatory. For any questions please contact cohds.chorn@concordia.ca
LOCATION
In-person in LB-1019 (Sunroom), COHDS
COHDS/ALLAB is located on unceded Kanien’kehá:ka territory, in Tiohtiá:ke/Montreal.

Summer Institute: Oral History & Creative Practice (for credit)
2025-05-12 08:00 - 2025-05-26 17:00 | LB-1019 (Sunroom), COHDS, 1400 de Maisonneuve Blvd W., Montreal, Québec, Canada
May 12-26, 2025
Open to university students (for credit course) and community members
Call for applications COHDS Summer Institute 2025
Storytelling, as both an art and a practice, occupies a central role in many cultures. The evocative power of oral history has made a major impact in the worlds of public history, museum/curatorial practice, and the arts. Our inaugural Summer Institute in “Oral History & Creative Practice” – hosted by Concordia’s “Centre for Oral History and Digital Storytelling” (COHDS) – offers you an opportunity to develop an oral history project that aspires to the kind of public-facing research that has become synonymous with COHDS, including digital storytelling, podcasts, creative writing, visual arts media, and the performing arts.
This Summer Institute brings together graduate and senior undergraduate students, activists, artists, oral historians, and community members in a shared exploration of the intersection of oral history and creative practice. It will provide you with a strong grounding in the theory, methodology, and ethics of oral history while offering a space to “translate” your oral history research into works of research-creation. Participants will work with leading experts in the field; collaborate in workshops on oral history, storytelling, and research creation; and forge connections within an interdisciplinary group of peers.
As a field of inquiry, oral history has grown up on the margins. Oral history interviewing has been undertaken for many reasons: artistic; community-building; truth and reconciliation; political action; storytelling, preservation, and research. Common to these projects is a commitment to lending an ear to marginalized voices. This year’s institute is a blend of a traditional seminar that revolves around deep engagement with assigned readings and a workshop that affords us a space to reflect on interview dynamics, learn about best recording practices, and explore innovative and creative ways of interpreting life stories.
For more information, and for instructions to apply, please see the call for applications.
REGISTRATION
Please note that registration is open to university students and community members alike. University students may take this Summer Institute for credit.
We welcome all levels of experience. To submit an application for the Summer Institute, please consult the call for applications above.
Please note that the application deadline is Sunday, March 23, 23:59 EST. For any academic inquiries please reach out to the Director of the Summer Institute, Dr. Barbara.Lorenzkowski@concordia.ca

Olga, Erika, & Me
2025-09-09 19:00 - 21:00 | Montreal Holocaust Museum, 5151 Chem. de la Côte-Sainte-Catherine, Montréal, Quebec, H3W 3E8, Canada
COHDS is partnering with the Montreal Holocaust Museum and the Cummings
Centre to present the following event, The Generations After: “Olga, Erika, and Me” Podcast at the Montreal Holocaust Museum on Tuesday, September 9, 7 pm.
The creator of the podcast, Ilanit-Michele, and her mother, Erika Eriksson, will be in attendance to discuss their experiences as second and third generation descendants of their mother and grandmother, Olga. Through the podcast, “Olga, Erika, and Me,” they retrace Olga’s steps based on her writings left to them describing her experience of being part of a loving Jewish family who was torn apart during the Shoah and her life afterwards when she tried to rebuild without them followed by displacement due to the Communist repression of the 1956 Hungarian Uprising. Ilanit-Michele and her mother Erika discuss why this project is of importance:
Ilanit-Michele: “I think originally, I wanted to do it so that it wasn’t just for you and me. I felt that I had a responsibility to expose Grand-mamma’s story. And I think it’s important.”
Erika: “Holocaust survivor is speaking through you now.”
Ilanit-Michele: “Through her daughter and grand-daughter. And actually walking in her footsteps…” (“Olga, Erika, and Me” podcast, Part 3: Dominoes, 0:39:50.)
As Ilanit-Michel and Erika travel to Hungary, Poland, and Israel to better understand Olga’s experience and gather further oral testimony from family and people they meet, we not only better understand Olga through her words but through the eyes of her descendants. This event will allow us to hear directly from Ilanit-Michele and Erika and will be moderated by CBC Daybreak’s Sarah Dehaies.
REGISTRATION
Register now.
Please note that all our events are free and open to all, but registration is mandatory. For any questions please contact cohds.chorn@concordia.ca
LOCATION
In-person at the Montreal Holocaust Museum, 5151 Chem. de la Côte-Sainte-Catherine, Montréal, QC H3W 3E8

Artist Talk: “Little Burgundy – Evolving Montreal”
2025-09-17 17:30 - 19:00 | McCord Museum, 690 Sherbrooke St. W., Montréal, Quebec, Canada
with Andrew Jackson

You are warmly invited to join us for an artist talk with Andrew Jackson at the McCord Museum, 690 Sherbrooke St. W. Jackson’s exhibition Little Burgundy – Evolving Montreal is a foray into this south-western district of the city. Over a two-year period, the photographer documented important landmarks for the Black community and met people who grew up there, live there or still have ties to the area. The result is an exhibition featuring 61 photographs of the individuals and sites that bear witness to the urban and social transformations that have impacted Little Burgundy. Three hard-hitting yet touching short films capture local residents’ lived experiences.

Andrew Jackson’s talk will take place from 6:00-6:30 pm, leaving time both beforehand and afterwards to immerse yourself into this beautiful exhibit that moved some of us to tears earlier this summer. Please note that the McCord Museum offers free admission to selected exhibitions, including “Little Burgundy,” on Wednesday evenings after 5 pm.
The exhibition also features some twenty objects and images selected by Andrew Jackson from the Museum’s collection. These artefacts, juxtaposed with contemporary objects loaned by residents, create a dialogue between the past and the present.
Through this project, Andrew Jackson exposes the duality involved in designating a place or neighbourhood as a “Black space.” For Black people, it invokes a sense of security, freedom and belonging, while for non-Black persons it conveys a negative image. As Jackson reflects: “When city spaces, such as Little Burgundy, are designated as Black spaces, there are profound implications for Black occupants. This is especially true in North America, where historically, in non-Black minds at least, Black spaces have not existed as places of acceptance or celebration of difference. Rather, they have been linked to notions of failure – notions that become catalysts for urban renewal, gentrification and the ensuing erasure of Black communities.”

Andrew Jackson is a British-Canadian photographer based in Montreal since 2019. His practice is developed at the intersection of photography and text and, most recently, focuses on notions of family, transnational migration, displacement, trauma and collective memory. He recently published the monograph From a Small Island, the first chapter of his ongoing series Across the Sea Is a Shore, a collection of works that explore the intergenerational legacies of migration from the Caribbean to the UK.
Andrew Jackson has a history of developing platforms that provide opportunities for traditionally excluded groups to engage with photography. In 2021 he created a public engagement project in collaboration with the DESTA Black Youth Network, located in Little Burgundy, which resulted in a group exhibition shown at the PHI Foundation. His works are held in public collections that include the United Kingdom’s Government Art Collection, the Permanent Collection of the New Art Gallery Walsall and the Autograph ABP and Light Work collections. His photographs have also appeared in such publications as the Los Angeles Times, The Guardian, the Financial Times and The New Statesman.

REGISTRATION
Register now
Please note that all our events are free and open to all, but registration is mandatory. For any questions please contact cohds.chorn@concordia.ca
LOCATION
In-person, McCord Museum, 690 Sherbrooke St. West. Please note that the artist talk will take place in the gallery space of “Little Burgundy – Evolving Montreal” in the McCord Museum.
COHDS/ALLAB is located on unceded Kanien’kehá:ka territory, in Tiohtiá:ke/Montreal.

Does Listening Heal?
2025-09-26 11:00 - 12:00 | Concordia University, LB-1042 (COHDS), 1400 de Maisonneuve Blvd O, Montreal
With Constanza Ramírez Molano and Luis C. Sotelo
Held in Spanish with consecutive interpretation by Franklin R. Bonivento.

This event will take the form of a conversation in which Colombian artist and researcher Constanza Ramírez Molano presents three of her recent works. The dialogue will be moderated by Luis C. Sotelo, director of the Acts of Listening Lab at Concordia University.
The conversation will feature:
• VIVIFICAR (2015) — a performance that asks What is enforced disappearance? Presented as an orchestra in a shopping mall in Bogotá, the piece makes visible the crime of enforced disappearance in Colombia through the contrast between everyday public space and collective artistic expression.
• Volver a pasar por el corazón (2018) — a project that invites participants to identify with those who have been disappeared by engaging with their musical tastes, transforming memory into an intimate and shared listening experience.
• Subversiones (2020) — an exhibition hosted in the Virtual Memory Gallery presenting fourteen stories of enforced disappearance in Colombia. “Fourteen stories of courage, Colombians who inhabit the world deprived of a body but not of a soul.” These narratives, told by family members of the disappeared who were forced into exile for seeking their loved ones, explore what it means to continue the search from afar.

Constanza Ramírez Molano is a Colombian artist, researcher, and producer whose work explores the intersections of art, psychoanalysis, and memory. She develops artistic and audiovisual projects that give symbolic form to experiences of violence, with a particular focus on enforced disappearance in Colombia. She holds a degree in Community Social Pedagogy from the Pontifical Javeriana University in Bogotá. She is a founding member of the “Otras Voces” association. Through her collaborations with organizations of families of victims of enforced disappearance, she has supported communication and outreach strategies that use art to make this crime visible and to reflect on its impact on society as a whole. Her artistic practice includes works such as the video installation “Doble Oficio por la Entrega Digna,” (Bogotá, 2012) the performance “Vivificar,” (Bogotá, 2015) and the acts of memory “Volver a pasar por el corazón: la banda sonora de los desaparecidos en Colombia.” (Bogotá, 2018). She has also co-created the campaign “Aquí falta alguien” with the International Committee of the Red Cross, developed the digital memory space “Historia de Memorias,” directed the exhibition “Voces desde la otra orilla” (2021) at the Virtual Art Gallery, and produced the documentary “a-bordando la memoria” (Bogotá, 2023). She is currently responsible for the communications area of the “Otras Voces”

REGISTRATION
Register now or online.
Please note that all our events are free and open to all, but registration is mandatory. For any questions please contact cohds.chorn@concordia.ca
LOCATION
In-person in LB-1042 (ALLab), COHDS
COHDS/ALLAB is located on unceded Kanien’kehá:ka territory, in Tiohtiá:ke/Montreal.

Come Walk With Us: Walkathon Fundraiser for “Award of Distinction in Oral History”
2025-09-26 12:30 - 15:00 | EV Atrium, 1515 Sainte-Catherine St. W., Montréal, Quebec, H3G 1S6, Canada
This year, “Team COHDS” will be joining the Concordia Shuffle – an annual fundraiser for student scholarships and bursaries – to help raise funds for our annual “Award of Distinction in Oral History.”
We are warmly inviting all members of our community to come and walk with us from Concordia’s downtown campus to Loyola on Friday, September 26. The shuffle will start at 12:30 pm at the EV Atrium on Sir George Williams Campus. A member of our team will be holding up a sign “Team COHDS”.
Join our team: If you liked to “shuffle” with us, we invite you to join our team (click on “Join Team”). COHDS-affiliated faculty will be donating $ 10 for each COHDS affiliate who will join us at the shuffle.
Support from afar: For those members of our community who are not based in Montreal or have prior obligations on September 26, if you were interested in making a small donation to our campaign, you could do so at “Donate Now”. Rest assured that 100 per cent of your donation will go towards our annual student thesis prize.
We look forward to walking with you!

Annual General Assembly - Assemblée générale annuelle
2025-10-03 14:00 - 17:00 | LB-1019 (Sunroom), COHDS, 1400 de Maisonneuve Blvd W., Montreal, Québec, Canada
This event will happen in-person and online

Keynote speaker: Dr. Steven High
“Reflecting Back on Twenty Years of Oral History at COHDS”
Our Annual General Assembly is fast approaching. This year, we are delighted to welcome as our keynote speaker oral historian Steven High, who co-founded COHDS almost twenty years ago.
Dr. Steven High is an award-winning interdisciplinary oral and public historian with a strong interest in transnational approaches to working-class studies, forced migration, and community-engaged research. He has headed a number of major research projects, most notably the prize-winning “Life Stories of Montrealers Displaced by War, Genocide and Other Human Rights Violations. “ Currently, he is leading the transnational SSHRC-funded partnership project “Deindustrialization & the Politics of Our Time.” He has been awarded a Governor General’s History Award in the Popular Media category and, more recently so, the J.B. Tyrrell Medal for his outstanding contributions to Canadian history. As many of you know, Steven is a constant presence at COHDS, regularly offering workshops on oral history and the art of deep listening, taking groups of students and community members on oral history walking tours in Montreal’s South-West, and generously mentoring generations of oral historians.

SCHEDULE:
2 – 3 p.m.
Keynote Speaker – Conférencier invité
3:00 – 3:45 p.m.
Afternoon Tea – Rafraîchissements et encas
3:45 – 5:00 p.m.
Annual General Assembly – Assemblée générale annuelle

-Reporting – Rapport
-Electing – Élections
-Q&A

See last year’s AGA meeting minutes (2024)
REGISTRATION

Please note that all our events are free and open to all, but you need to register!
This is a hybrid event.
To attend in person, please register here.
To attend online, please register here.
For any questions regarding this event please contact cohds.chorn@concordia.ca
LB 1019 (Sunroom), COHDS

COHDS/ALLAB is located on unceded Kanien’kehá:ka territory, in Tiohtiá:ke/Montreal.

Book Launch: REMNANTS and What Remains: Moments from a Life Among Holocaust Survivors
2025-10-05 13:00 - 14:30 | Virtual
The event will take place in person at the University of Michigan-Deaborn’s James C. Renick University Center, Kochoff Hall C, and online via zoom.

You are warmly invited to a special book launch celebrating REMNANTS and What Remains: Moments from a Life Among Holocaust Survivors, the latest publication by Henry “Hank” Greenspan. The event will take place in person and online on Sunday, October 5, 2025, from 1:00 to 2:30 p.m. and it will be hosted by Dr. Jamie L. Wraight, Director of the Voice/Vision Archive.
This powerful volume traces the personal and creative journey of Henry “Hank” Greenspan, shaped by five decades of deepening relationships with Holocaust survivors. At its heart is the first-ever print publication of REMNANTS, Greenspan’s haunting and widely performed play that brings to life poignant, often heart-wrenching moments of survival and memory. Performed on more than 300 stages around the world, REMNANTS captures the raw essence of what survivors endured—and how they continue to live with those experiences.
In the companion piece, What Remains, Greenspan reflects on the origins of the play, the profound connections he forged with survivors, and the shared grief over the loss of a world—and of those who once told its stories. Written in a lyrical, spoken-word style, this memoir offers a compelling new lens into Greenspan’s pioneering contributions to Holocaust studies, oral history, and the transformative power of theater. The book is dedicated to Sid Bolkosky, founder of The Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive at UM-Dearborn

The program will feature reflections from three of Greenspan’s distinguished colleagues and collaborators—renowned Holocaust scholars and educators:
· Professor John K. Roth, Emeritus Professor, Claremont McKenna College
· Professor Malin Thor Tureby, Professor of History, Malmö University, Sweden
· Dr. Christine Schmidt, Deputy Director, The Wiener Library, London, and former student of Professor Bolkosky

Henry Greenspan will present a short performance and recitation from the book. In keeping with the spirit of his and Professor Bolkosky’s relationships with survivors, there will be ample time for conversation and audience engagement.

Henry (Hank) Greenspan is a psychologist, oral historian, and playwright based at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Since the 1970s, he has conducted in-depth, ongoing interviews with Holocaust survivors—an approach that reveals the evolving nature of memory and testimony over time. His work departs from one-time testimonies, instead drawing on sustained relationships and layered conversations spanning months, years, and even decades.
An accomplished performer, Greenspan was a finalist for the 2022 Alvin Epstein Memorial Prize for Solo Performance. He has performed REMNANTS across North America, as well as in Europe and Israel. He currently leads online seminars and workshops focused on survivor narratives and the complexities of interpreting oral history.

Registration:
For in-person attendance please RSVP to jwraight@umich.edu
For online attendance registration is required through this link

Radio Elsewheres at COHDS
2025-10-06 10:00 - 12:00 | Online
Join the Radio Elsewheres collective for a two-hour event introducing our ongoing radio art project and offering a preview of its upcoming third edition. The next iteration, [re.03], will take place from October 16 to November 5, 2025, at Art Windsor-Essex, presented within Elsewhere, on Record — a solo exhibition by Velibor Božović curated by Emily McKibbon.
Since its inception in 2023, Radio Elsewheres has activated temporary transmission hubs in Bihać, Sarajevo, and now Windsor, gathering field recordings, radio essays, sonic compositions, and conversations that engage with memory, belonging, displacement, and resistance. Drawing from an open call and commissioned works from 18 countries, [re.03] will feature transmissions from borderlands visible and invisible — from river corridors to airport halls, from refugee routes to garden edges.
This event will include audio excerpts, curatorial reflections, and an open conversation with the collective, offering a glimpse into how radio can become a space of shared listening, imagination, and solidarity beyond the map.
Come listen, come ask, come tune in.

Steve Bates is an artist, musician and curator. In addition to his own work, he operates The Dim Coast, a small-scale curatorial, sound art and music label. His work has been exhibited and performed in Canada, the United States of America, Europe, Chile and Senegal. He works in the field, on the air, in museological/gallery and performance contexts. These shifting territories reflect the content of his practice.
Dr. Claudia Zini is an art historian, curator, and educator. She is also the founder and CEO of Kuma International, a center dedicated to researching and promoting understanding of visual arts from post-conflict societies. Originally from Italy, she moved to Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, in 2015, exploring the intersections of art, memory, and healing in post-war contexts. She holds a PhD from the Courtauld Institute of Art in London and has extensive experience in curating, teaching, and writing on contemporary art. Through Kuma she has led exhibitions, publications, and eight editions of its international summer school.
Velibor Božović, originally from Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina, earned a Master of Fine Arts degree in Studio Arts at Concordia University where he now teaches. His work explores how images and sound shape memory and how they operate in the space where the historical, the fictional and the personal interrelate. His projects have been supported by the Canada Council for the Arts and by Conseil des arts et des lettres du Quebec (CALQ). In 2015 he was awarded the Claudine and Stephen Bronfman Fellowship in Contemporary Art. His work has been exhibited in Canada and internationally.

REGISTRATION
Please note that all our events are free and open to all, but you need to register!
This is an online event.
To attend, please register here.
For any questions, please contact cohds.chorn@concordia.ca

COHDS/ALLAB is located on unceded Kanien’kehá:ka territory, in Tiohtiá:ke/Montreal.

Book Launch: Strangely Friends: A History of Cuban-Canadian Encounters
2025-10-09 16:00 - 18:00 | LB-1019 (Sunroom), COHDS, 1400 de Maisonneuve Blvd W., Montreal, Québec, Canada
with Karen Dubinsky
You are cordially invited to join author Karen Dubinsky on Thursday October 9, 4-6 pm for a discussion of her new book: Strangely, Friends: A History of Cuban-Canadian Encounters.
Strangely, Friends delves into the rich, often overlooked history of personal and cultural connections between Cubans and Canadians. From the early days of the Cuban Revolution to the present, this book uncovers the stories of Canadians who were drawn to Cuba—teachers, artists, development aid workers, filmmakers, and activists—who left a mark on the island, and Cubans, especially the musicians, who found a home in Canada. Through intimate portraits and serendipitous encounters, Karen Dubinsky explores how these relationships transcended political ideologies and state policies, revealing a shared humanity that defies borders.
We’ll also hear comments on the book from David Austin (John Abbott College) and Zaira Zarza (University of Montreal). The launch will take place on Thursday, October 9, 4-6 pm in the Sunroom at COHDS (LB-1019).
Karen Dubinsky is an Emeritus Professor at Queen’s University. For many years she co-ordinated and co-taught in a Queen’s exchange program with University of Havana.
She has published and edited books on a wide variety of topics, including the history of gender and sexuality in Canada, the global 1960s, adoption and child migration in Canada, Cuba and Guatemala, and the politics of music in Cuba. She is a recipient of two teaching awards: the Queen’s University Award for Excellence in Graduate Supervision and the Queen’s Award for International Educational Innovation.

REGISTRATION
Register now with this link
Please note that all our events are free and open to all, but registration is mandatory. For any questions please contact cohds.chorn@concordia.ca
LOCATION
In-person in LB-1019 (Sunroom), COHDS
COHDS/ALLAB is located on unceded Kanien’kehá:ka territory, in Tiohtiá:ke/Montreal.

Listening as Political Act
2025-10-24 11:00 - 12:30 | Online
In this interactive performance-workshop, Brett Davidson explores listening not just as a personal practice, but as a vital political act. Combining elements of storytelling, theory, dialogue, audio, and visual imagery, the session invites participants to reflect on the ways listening shapes democracy, public life, and our collective ability to imagine change.
Drawing from his extensive experience in narrative strategy, media, and social justice, Davidson frames listening as a tool for transformation—one that can challenge dominant narratives, create space for marginalized voices, and foster deeper connections across difference. Participants will be invited to engage actively, considering how listening can become an ethical and creative practice in their own work, studies, and communities.
As a work in progress, the session opens a space for experimentation and exchange, encouraging those present to co-create meaning around the political and artistic potential of listening.

Brett Davidson is founder and principal at Wingseed LLC, where he supports social justice changemakers around the world to amplify their impact. Brett also serves as Lead of Narrative Field-Building with IRIS, the International Resource for Impact and Storytelling. Previously he was director of Media and Narratives at the Open Society Public Health Program, where he led an international team focused on changing long-held social narratives impacting health equity. Prior to joining Open Society in 2010, Davidson was a media consultant to civil society organizations in Southern and Eastern Africa. He previously served as program manager at the South African democracy institute Idasa, where he helped community radio stations develop participatory news and current affairs programming. Before that, he worked as a presenter and producer in radio current affairs at the South African Broadcasting Corporation, and in collaboration with the BBC. Brett has an MA in Journalism and Media Studies from Rhodes University and an MA in Individualized Study from NYU’s Gallatin School.

REGISTRATION
Please note that all our events are free and open to all, but you need to register!
This is an online event.
To attend, please register here.
For any questions, please contact cohds.chorn@concordia.ca

COHDS/ALLAB is located on unceded Kanien’kehá:ka territory, in Tiohtiá:ke/Montreal.

Historical Walking Tour – Photographing Change: Reform and Photography in Little Burgundy
2025-10-24 15:00 - 17:00 | Meeting at the Union United Church,, 3007 Rue Delisle, Montréal, H4C 1M8
Walking tour participants will meet at the Union United Church at 3007 Rue Delisle, Montréal, QC H4C 1M8 at 2:55 pm
“Photographing Change: Reform and Photography in 1960s Little Burgundy” is a walking tour which invites guests to learn about and engage in discussion on the expropriation photos of Little Burgundy. Taken throughout the 1960s, these photos show the expropriated homes which were destroyed in the building of the Ville-Marie Expressway and the development of the neighbourhood. Haunting and in some ways violent, the photos depict the homes of Little Burgundy residents of the 1960s, depicting the intrusion of city workers in their private domestic lives. Engaging with the story of the historically black neighbourhood and theories of photography, participants will be invited to discuss the photos and critically examine the role of photography in the expropriation process. Oral history interviews from the COHDS archives are used to expand the image of the neighbourhood depicted in these photographs. We’ll hear the words of community members as we walk through the Little Burgundy today.
Serafina Swandel is an undergraduate student in Art History at Concordia University. As a student affiliate with COHDS, her research interests center around the intersections of oral history and craft and the way in which oral history can illuminate craft practices and relationships forged by craft. She is interested in a study of visual and material cultures that is socially and historically informed.

Photo description: Man sitting at kitchen table caught in photo. Expropriation photo on St. Martin Street, May 5, 1967. Archives Montreal Dossier D1015: VM94-C1015-101.

Introduction to Oral History
2025-10-28 15:00 - 17:00 | LB-1019 (Sunroom), COHDS, 1400 de Maisonneuve Blvd W., Montreal, Québec, Canada
With Lea Kabiljo
English
This workshop will provide you with some of the fundamentals in the interdisciplinary field of oral history. Participants will learn about an oral history approach to interviewing, ethics in research, and the many ways that oral histories are shared with the public. This workshop is strongly recommended to all new affiliates, as it is intended to present the methodology and ethics followed by our Centre.
Lea Kabiljo, assistant professor of art education at Université Laval, is a multidisciplinary researcher with expertise in the arts, education, and oral history. She holds a PhD in Art Education from Concordia University and has a particular interest in integrating photography and oral history into the research-creation process. Her research explores the educational potential of this multidisciplinary approach in art education. With experience teaching in school, community, and university settings, Lea is actively engaged in teacher training, with a special focus on the development of socio-emotional skills. She is also recognized for her expertise in oral history and has led numerous research projects in Canada and internationally.

REGISTRATION
Please note that all our events are free and open to all, but you need to register!
Register here.
For any questions, please contact cohds.chorn@concordia.ca

LOCATION
In-person in the COHDS Sunroom (LB-1019).
You will find us on the tenth floor of Concordia’s Library Building, 1450 De Maisonneuve Blvd. W., Montreal, Quebec.
COHDS/ALLAB is located on unceded Kanien’kehá:ka territory, in Tiohtiá:ke/Montreal.

The Artist’s Interview
2025-10-31 11:00 - 12:30 | Online
This workshop with artist and researcher Lucia Farinatti invites participants to explore the interview as both a method of research and a form of artistic and critical practice. Through collective listening, transcription, and discussion, the session examines how oral history, sound archives, and curatorial approaches can open new ways of engaging with voices, memory, and experience.
Participants will experiment with different modes of transcription—from verbatim to more interpretative and experimental approaches—highlighting how writing can respond not only to words, but also to rhythm, affect, and embodied presence. The focus is on listening as an active, creative act, and on transcription as a form of art writing that captures the emotional and sensory dimensions of language.
The event offers a space to reflect on how interviews can become sites of encounter, translation, and creation, expanding the possibilities of research and artistic practice.

Lucia Farinati is an Associate Lecturer in Art History at Kingston University, activist, and independent curator. Her research focuses on dialogic practices and methodologies investigating the role of listening at the intersection of art and activism, the history of the artist interview, and performativity in the context of sound and feminist archives. She holds a PhD from Kingston University (2020) on Audio Arts magazine. Recent activities include organising The Listening Academy (London, 2021-22), the conference Regenerative Listening (2023), and co-founding the feminist collective Autocoscienza Writing Group (2022). She is co-author of ‘The Force of Listening’ (2017), ‘Training for Exploitation?’ (2017), and ‘Theorising the Artist Interview’ (2025).

REGISTRATION
Please note that all our events are free and open to all, but you need to register!
This is an online event.
To attend, please register here.
For any questions, please contact cohds.chorn@concordia.ca

COHDS/ALLAB is located on unceded Kanien’kehá:ka territory, in Tiohtiá:ke/Montreal.

My Dear Theo
2025-11-05 16:00 - 18:15 | LB-1019 (Sunroom), COHDS, 1400 de Maisonneuve Blvd W., Montreal, Québec, Canada
With Alisa Kovalenko and Stéphane Siohan

The Chair in European Intellectual History of the Munk School, Marci Shore, is pleased to collaborate with the Centre for Oral History and Digital Storytelling of Concordia to invite you to the first screening of My Dear Theo (2025) with Alisa Kovalenko and Stéphane Siohan who will share their unique personal experiences from the frontlines of the war in Ukraine.

Alisa Kovalenko is a Ukrainian award-winning documentary filmmaker whose films are internationally acclaimed. In the early days of the full-scale invasion in 2022, she joined the ranks and fought in the Ukrainian Volunteer Army alongside the Ukrainian army. Eight years earlier, at the beginning of the Russian war in Donbass, Alisa had been taken captive by a Russian separatist unit. Her personal story, one of courage and resilience, provides an opportunity to reflect on contemporary Ukrainian history in a more intimate way.

Stéphane Siohan, Alisa Kovalenko’s partner, is a senior French reporter specializing in Central and Eastern Europe, based in Kyiv since 2013. He is the correspondent in Ukraine for the French newspaper Libération, one of the most experienced international reporters on Ukraine and the author of the first biographical essay in French on President Volodymyr Zelensky. In 2014, Alisa Kovalenko, who was documenting the early days of the war in the Donbas, was taken captive by Russian-backed separatists and Stéphane Siohan headed to the occupied territories to rescue her. Since then, Stéphane and Alisa have been living together and working together on documentary film projects that chronicle a decade of history in Donbass and Ukraine at war. What Alisa survived during those days in captivity made her promise herself that if the war were to come to all of Ukraine, she would pick up a gun herself and fight. Eight years later, the war did come to all of Ukraine. And Alisa parted from Stephane and their four-year son, Theo, and joined a Ukrainian battalion. There on the front lines she filmed a video diary for her son. She wanted to show him the landscape “of beauty and death”—and to leave something for him if she were not to return : My Dear Theo.

Stéphane and Alisa worked for ten years, together or alternately, in Donbas and on the front lines of Ukraine at war. This screening, followed by a panel, will provide a rare opportunity to engage directly with individuals whose lives have been shaped by the full-scale invasion in deeply personal ways. Their willingness to speak candidly will provide invaluable insight into the lived realities of Ukraine behind the headlines.

REGISTRATION
Please note that all our events are free and open to all, but you need to register!
Register here.
For any questions, please contact cohds.chorn@concordia.ca

LOCATION
In-person in the COHDS Sunroom (LB-1019).
You will find us on the tenth floor of Concordia’s Library Building, 1400 De Maisonneuve Blvd. W., Montreal, Quebec.
COHDS/ALLAB is located on unceded Kanien’kehá:ka territory, in Tiohtiá:ke/Montreal.

Queer Oral History
2025-11-07 13:00 - 15:00 | LB-1019 (Sunroom), COHDS, 1400 de Maisonneuve Blvd W., Montreal, Québec, Canada
With Gabryelle Iaconetti and Liam Devitt
The workshop and discussion will offer reflections on methodological and ethical approaches to undertaking queer oral history in research. How does one conduct oral history interviews with queer narrators? What is particular about queer oral history? How has oral testimony been significant in the figuration of queer histories?
This panels brings together historians Gabryelle Iaconetti and Liam Devitt, who use oral histories in their various research milieus related to queer labour and activism.

Gabryelle Iaconetti is a third-year PhD student at Concordia University in Montreal, Quebec, working under the supervision of Dr. Rachel Berger. She holds a BA and MA in History from Concordia University and MISt (Master of Information Studies) from McGill University. Her research interests lie at the intersections of bisexual history, oral history, queer space, queer theory and archives.
Liam Devitt is a labour historian, writer, and research worker based in Tiohti:áke/Montréal. Their MA thesis “Gay Steel Mill” (Concordia University, 2024) examined how deindustrialization affected queer communities in Cape Breton. Currently, they are the Associate Director of “Deindustrialization and the Politics of Our Time” (deindustrialization.org), a SSHRC Partnership grant project examining histories and contemporary lived experiences of deindustrialization. They are also General Coordinator of their union, CARE (PSAC 12501), organizing for job security, fair wages, and workplace justice.

REGISTRATION
Please note that all our events are free and open to all, but you need to register!
This is a hybrid event.
To attend in person, please register here.
To attend online, please register here.
For any questions, please contact cohds.chorn@concordia.ca

LOCATION
In-person in the COHDS Sunroom (LB-1019). You will find us on the tenth floor of
Concordia’s Library Building, 1450 De Maisonneuve Blvd. W., Montreal, Quebec.
COHDS/ALLAB is located on unceded Kanien’kehá:ka territory, in Tiohtiá:ke/Montreal.

Oral Histories of Migration and Motion: Rábanos Olas Jacarandas Aleonarse
2025-11-12 15:00 - 17:00 | Concordia University, LB-1042 (COHDS), 1400 de Maisonneuve Blvd O, Montreal
with Nico Contreras, Sonia Bustos, and Priscilla Opazo Castillo

Rábanos Olas Jacarandas Aleonarse (2025, 10min) is an audiovisual collage born out of oral histories of migration, community, and the transformative power of art. Through blending interviews and choreographic exploration with Tiohtiá:ke/Montréal-based artists Sonia Bustos and Priscilla Opazo, the film shares interlinking reflections on political consciousness, navigating shifting identities across countries of origin and settlement, and engagement in processes of change. Glimpses of Chile, Mexico and Canada coexist in a shared space and time, in a moment of exchange between creative voices.
The film screening will be followed by a discussion with the creators.

Priscilla Opazo Castillo, an artist and educator from Chile, has lived in Tiohtià:ke/Montreal since 2017. A self-taught dancer currently training at the Nyata Nyata Centre, she weaves her path between popular education and artistic research. Her creative experience, collective and multidisciplinary, is rooted in an identity fragmented by colonization, exile, and violence, yet rises in resonance with other marginalized voices. A committed feminist, she envisions art as a living territory of resistance, healing, and memory, where movement frees bodies, rekindles their connection to the earth, and nurtures a shared collective consciousness.

Choreographer and performer born in Mexico and now based in Tiohtiá:ke (Montréal), Sonia Bustos is interested in socio-political engagement and the recognition of performers’ creative work. Her artistic research focuses on feminist perspectives, the Tercera Raíz in Latin America, memory, theatricality, and the relationship with the audience. Pillars of her artistic process include varied bodily states, the use of voice/text, the presence of memory-bearing objects, and non-danced body approaches. Sonia is the interpreter-creator of stage works Intérieur brut, Je ne vais pas inonder la mer, Luz : Dentelle, Luz : Terre and Luz : Écho (in progress). She holds a Master’s degree in dance (UQÀM) and a Bachelor’s degree in theatre (UNAM).

Nico Contreras is an Ecuadorian Canadian interdisciplinary artist, social worker, and current doctoral student in Social and Cultural Analysis at Concordia University. A facilitator of reflection and dialogue through creative practice, he believes in the power of art to transform our conceptions of self and society. His most recent film SAN HEN, a love letter to Montréal’s Latinx community, premieres at the Toronto Latin American Film Festival 2025.

REGISTRATION
Register now
Please note that all our events are free and open to all, but registration is mandatory. For any questions please contact cohds.chorn@concordia.ca
LOCATION
In-person in LB-1042 (ALLLAB), COHDS
COHDS/ALLAB is located on unceded Kanien’kehá:ka territory, in Tiohtiá:ke/Montreal.
