Aaron Richmond and Tamar Tembeck (Post doctorial researcher, Concordia University / Artistic Director, OBORO Gallery, Montreal, Canada)
Navigation Without a Compass - Reflections on Curating the WAYFINDERS exhibition

We wish to present some critical reflections on the exhibition WAYFINDERS, to be presented at the MAI in April 2026. WAYFINDERS explores how we orient ourselves in our bodies, within the universe, and amongst others. In a moment which is marked by social, political, and environmental disorientation, the show brings together up to nine contemporary artists who are suggesting multi- sensorial models for establishing proximity and direction. They are wayfinders of new artistic languages, artists who find novel ways to create and connect. The exhibition explores, in particular, what forms of navigation emerge when the predominance of vision is not taken for granted. Wayfinders features works by artists living with and without disabilities, and is curated by a mixed abilities collective. The exhibition is premised on the notion of “navigation without a compass” – as expressed by the blind poet and literary critic Piet Devos. Devos uses this phrase to convey how the experience of blindness challenges him to invent new ways of finding direction within the urban landscape. Extending this experience into contemporary art, Devos writes about how blindness interrupts the visual distancing that has become a hallmark of aesthetic judgment - and prompts new ways of finding intimacy and orientation amongst others.
Keywords: Critical Disability Studies, Multisensorial, Curation, Wayfinding, Access

Lauryn Mannigel and Vicky Sabourin (Media Arts and Sciences, Arizona State University, USA; Faculty of Fine Arts, Concordia University, Canada)
Activating Smell’s Political Potential by Smellwalking through Quartier Concordia

How might exploring the boundaries between olfactory comfort and discomfort in urban spaces activate the political potential of scent? In this paper, we reflect on our creative process in developing a guided smellwalk route for Quartier Concordia, Montréal, during Uncommon Senses IV, and implementing a smellwalk to foster olfactory encounters and public discussion, potentially activating the political dimensions of smell. This potential lies in smell’s ability to challenge dominant visual frameworks, influence social connections through visceral perceptions of acceptance and rejection, and, when made conscious, increase awareness of social divisions while fostering behaviors that enhance social connection and coexistence (Mannigel, Sabourin, Spackman 2024).

First, we discuss our collaborative approach to designing the smellwalk route. Drawing on the perspectives of artists who value smell’s ephemerality, contextuality, and materiality, we outline the creation of the smellwalk path, combining Mannigel’s interest in mapping a route around the Henry F. Hall building—a site with a politically contentious history—and Sabourin’s familiarity with the characteristic scents of Quartier Concordia. Second, we analyze participants’ experiences, linking them to the broader exploration of scent’s political dimensions.

Aristofanis Soulikias (School of Architecture, Université de Montréal, Canada)

Touching Atmosphere: Handmade Animation for the Animated City

Film animation has consistently dealt with and depicted physical space, as both subject matter and part of its own creative process. As built form and most visual media are increasingly translated into digital “matter”, and as the realms of the physical and the virtual blur into each other, often at the expense of the former, pertinent questions arise as to the value and importance of the physicality in all that which is meaningful in the urban experience.
The paper proposes that atmosphere may not be the sum of ideated concepts and aesthetics that are merely non-visual, but something directly emanating from the physical, as that is experienced (even touched) and remembered individually and collectively. It is an evolving dialectic between the physical ontology of the city and its inhabitants, through its reception, representation, and re- enactment in building it. Handmade film animation, straddling between the physical and the virtual, tampering with materiality through the body, while still producing sensations of movement, narratives, and a multitude of optical illusions, becomes a leading translator of atmosphere into image, accessible to the human consciousness and imagination. It translates a “language” that is as fleeting, mutating, and multisensory as animation itself.
Keywords: film animation, haptic, handmade design, city atmosphere, translating atmosphere