Memories of the Future Panel Discussion
Please join us for a timely and engaging panel discussion with Alissa Centivany, artist Laura Moore, and Kirsty Robertson, moderated by McIntosh Curator Helen Gregory, as they address subjects such as memory, technology and waste, planned obsolescence, sustainability, and the right to repair.
The discussion will take place in McIntosh Gallery on Wednesday, February 26, at 5:30 pm.
Dr. Alissa Centivany is an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Information and Media Studies at the University of Western Ontario working on technology policy, law, and ethics. She holds a PhD in Information and a JD specializing in intellectual property and technology law. Prior to joining Western, Dr. Centivany was a Microsoft Research Fellow at the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology, University of California-Berkeley School of Law, and a researcher at the Centre for Innovation Law and Policy, University of Toronto Faculty of Law. She was also an instructor at the University of Toronto and University of Michigan iSchools. Dr. Centivany co-directs the Starling Centre for Just Technologies & Just Societies, is a core expert in the AI Insights for Policymakers Program (AIPP), is co-founder of the Canadian Repair Coalition, and is an affiliate member of the Rotman Institute of Philosophy. Dr. Centivany has provided expert testimony before the Canadian House of Commons and Senate and is an active participant in Canadian policy consultations related to emerging technologies. Her research and expertise is regularly cited in a variety of news media including the CBC, Globe & Mail, Toronto Star, The National, Global News, The Agenda, and others. Dr. Centivany's work is motivated by interdisciplinarity, curiosity, and care. In her spare time, she makes and enjoys art, tends to living things, plays pinball whenever possible, and occasionally (secretly) co-hosts a late-night college radio show.
Laura Moore (b.1979) is a Toronto-based, multidisciplinary artist whose practice is rooted in sculpture. Moore works primarily in stone, although her practice extends into drawing, wood, mould-making and textiles. Notable exhibitions and outdoor public installations include Picture Stones in Bergen, Norway (2024), Love Languages at Art Windsor Essex, Windsor (2024), Erratic Behaviour at the Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery in Kitchener, Canada (2024), Memory Bathing at OpenArt Biennale, Örbero Sweden (2022), Memory Sticks, Baneheia & Odderøya, Kristiansand, Norway (2022), Replika/Replica at Babel Visningsrom for Kunst, Norway (2017) and Sculpture by the Sea in Aarhus, Denmark (2015). The artist is a transient member of Studio Pescarella in Pietrasanta, Italy and recently attended the USF Verftet residency in Bergen, Norway in 2024. She received an MFA from York University and a BFA from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. Her work is in the collections of the Royal Bank of Canada, the Bank of Montreal, TD Bank, the Art Gallery of Hamilton, RIMOWA, Bell Canada, The Body Shop and numerous private collections.
Dr. Kirsty Robertson is Canada Research Chair in Museums, Art, and Sustainability and Professor and Director of Museum and Curatorial Studies in the Department of Visual Arts at Western University where she also directs the Centre for Sustainable Curating (CSC). Robertson has published widely on activism, visual culture and museums, culminating in her book Tear Gas Epiphanies: Protest, Museums, Culture (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2019). Her new work focuses on small and micro-collections that repurpose traditional museum formats for critical and politically radical projects. A book titled Countering the Museum: The Non-Institution as a Site for Activism is in preparation for the Museums in Focus Series (Routledge). Robertson is a founding member of the Synthetic Collective, a group of artists, scientists and cultural researchers working on plastics pollution in the Great Lakes Region and project co-lead on A Museum for Future Fossils, an ongoing “vernacular museum” that responds curatorially to ecological crisis.
