Montreal Cultural Calendar

Many, Many Machine Agencies' Writing Workshop. AI Chantier of the Hexagram Network brings together maker-thinkers whose work spans machine learning, interaction design, and experience design, to create a community of practice through a publication process. Prompting potential contributors with an unusual format, Many, Many Machine Agencies asks for recipes, instructions, or games that centre the problem of agency and interaction and the importance of new kinds of encounters with machines. This edited collection is indeed a kind of a cookbook for engaging critically with machines, and as such, we take inspiration from celebrated cookbook authors, like MFK Fisher, who provide recipes and instructions for dishes, while embedding them in a broader biographical and cultural narrative. This cookout session invites contributors to the AI Chantier publication drive to: Learn more about the recipe methodology and its relevance for engaging with machine agencies and AI, To talk about their writing project (share ingredients) and get feedback, Get a clearer picture about what the publishing process will look like. Prospective authors and those curious about the project are invited to participate. This activity is produced in collaboration with Machine Agencies and Milieux Institute's Speculative Life Cluster as part of the 2026 Interdisciplinary Encounters. To register or for any questions, please contact nicole.debrabandere@gmail.com

Fourth 5@tech of the year, presented in collaboration with OBORO. Extended lab hours, a chance to meet other members, share your knowledge, and experiment with our equipment in a relaxed and welcoming atmosphere. Recent graduate? Slightly stressed student? Or just someone with opinions? Come give advice, receive it, or simply enjoy good company. No degree required. Open to all – members and non-members welcome! Bring your friends! Please confirm your attendance in advance by email info@ada-x.org

Conversation between artist Jakob Kudsk Steensen and curator Daniel Fiset

La Saqueboute électronique de Hugh Le Caine: inventions et imaginations, 1945-2026. Salle à déterminer [talk]

A 5 à SAT focused on inclusive design bringing together the Living Lab in immersion and the new Department of Design at ÉTS to celebrate the launch of their new collaboration. At the intersection of academic research and field experimentation, this initiative aims to explore, experiment with, and create more accessible and inclusive immersive experiences. This event is intended to be a forum for discussion and bringing together communities affected by this issue. Goal: open up the discussion, get to know you, and discover your projects. RSVP (free) and full feature via the link in the bio.

Experience an immersive exhibition by Jakob Kudsk Steensen that explores contemporary ecological realities through virtual reality, sound, and video installations. Drawing from global fieldwork, the artist creates speculative digital worlds that blend scientific observation with imagination to examine the impacts of climate change. Featuring interconnected works, including the North American premiere of Psychosphere (2025), the exhibition unfolds as a layered, dreamlike narrative.

La version francaise suit.

The Friends of the McGill Libraries and Blue Metropolis Literary Festival are delighted to present the 2026 Hugh MacLennan Lecture featuring Maria Reva, author of fiction and opera libretti.

Maria Reva's debut novel, Endling, was winner of the 2025 Atwood Gibson Writers' Trust Fiction Prize, longlisted for the 2025 Booker Prize, a finalist for the 2025 Governor General's Literary Award for fiction, nominated for the 2026 Dublin Literary Award, and longlisted for the 2026 Climate Fiction Prize. It was named a best book of 2025 by The Globe and Mail, New Yorker, Publishers Weekly, The Guardian, and many others. She won a National Magazine Award in 2019 and was a finalist for the 2020 Atwood Gibson Writers' Trust Fiction Prize for her debut short story collection, Good Citizens Need Not Fear. Maria Reva's writing has appeared in The Atlantic, McSweeney's, The Wall Street Journal, Granta, The Best American Short Stories, and elsewhere. She was born in Ukraine and grew up in British Columbia, where she now lives.

The evening will feature a conversation between Maria Reva and Allan Hepburn, James McGill Professor of Twentieth-Century Literature at McGill University. Professor Hepburn's research focuses on the novel - British, American, Irish, Canadian. His areas of interest include modernism; contemporary fiction, twentieth-century fiction, and aesthetics.

Books are on sale online through Paragraphe Bookstore. Audience members who bring their own book to the event may have it signed by Maria Reva after the lecture.

Thank you to Donald Walcot for generously supporting the Hugh MacLennan Lecture.

----

Les Amis des Bibliothèques de McGill et le Festival littéraire international Metropolis Bleu sont ravis de présenter la Conférence Hugh MacLennan 2026 sous forme d'une conversation avec l'écrivaine Maria Reva, autrice de romans et de livrets d'opéra.

Le premier roman de Maria Reva, Endling, a remporté le prix annuel de fiction Atwood Gibson Writers' Trust 2025, a été finaliste pour les Prix littéraires du Gouverneur général 2025 dans la catégorie fiction, a été retenu dans la première sélection pour le prix Booker 2025 et le Climate Fiction Prize 2026, et a finalement été nominé pour le Prix littéraire de Dublin 2026. Ce roman a aussi figuré dans la liste des meilleurs livres de 2025 du Globe and Mail, du New Yorker, du Publishers Weekly, du Guardian, et de bien d'autres journaux. Maria a également remporté un Prix du magazine canadien en 2019 et avait été finaliste pour le prix Atwood Gibson du Writers' Trust en 2020 pour son premier recueil de nouvelles, Good Citizens Need Not Fear. Ses écrits ont paru notamment dans The Atlantic, McSweeney's, The Wall Street Journal, Granta et The Best American Short Stories. Elle est née en Ukraine et a grandi en Colombie-Britannique, où elle vit actuellement.

La soirée proposera une conversation entre Maria Reva et Allan Hepburn, professeur James McGill de littérature du XXe siècle à l’Université McGill. Les recherches du professeur Hepburn portent sur le roman — britannique, américain, irlandais et canadien. Ses domaines d’intérêt comprennent le modernisme, la fiction contemporaine, la fiction du XXe siècle ainsi que l’esthétique.

L'événement se déroulera exclusivement en anglais.

Les livres sont en vente en ligne via la Librairie Paragraphe. Les participants qui apportent leur propre livre à l’événement pourront le faire signer par Maria Reva après la conférence.

Merci à Donald Walcot pour son généreux soutien à la conférence Hugh MacLennan.

Photo: Anya Chibis.

Info + registration: https://mcgill.ca/x/5YJ

Discover Paola Pivi's first major exhibition in Québec, a traveling show featuring sculptural installations that explore themes of freedom, truth, and misinformation. Through immersive and imaginative works, the artist reinterprets familiar symbols to challenge our perception of contemporary reality. At the heart of the exhibition, Lies (2018) invites visitors to reflect on the blurred line between truth and falsehood.

Activity registration confirmed. Contact Gabriel Gervais-Labelle, Librarian, if you have any questions or need to cancel your participation. [workshop]

Drawing hangout focused on comics and drawing games. Great way to loosen your hand, get creative, and have fun. Come anytime. Beginners welcome. Paper provided | Bring drawing stuff

Join us in store for poetry readings from Stephanie Bolster, Ian Pople, and Derek Webster! Stephanie Bolster's latest book of poetry, Long Exposure, began as an exploration of Robert Polidori's photographs of New Orleans and Chernobyl. Her first book, White Stone: The Alice Poems, won the Governor General's Award and the Gerald Lampert Award and was translated into French. She teaches creative writing at Concordia. Ian Pople's poems have been published in Canada in Fiddlehead and Antigonish Review, the United States in Poetry, Plume, Subtropics and in the UK in London Review of Books, Manchester Review, Poetry Review and Times Literary Supplement. His chapbook, Spillway, was published by Anstruther in Toronto in 2020. Derek Webster's first collection of poems, Mockingbird, was a finalist for the Gerald Lampert Award, and his second collection, National Animal, won the 2024 A.M. Klein Prize for Poetry. He lives in Montreal and Toronto. Masks are not required, but will be provided at the door. Please contact us at least a day in advance for elevator access to the store.

The third workshop of the 'Reimagining Research' Spring Workshop Series. This workshop will allow participants to re-imagine and transform photographs, digital images and other works through Polaroid emulsion lifts. Exploring the materiality of film and photographic practice, participants will work directly with the image of their choosing, lifting, folding, stretching and tearing it. The process of emulsion lifting briefly reduces the image to a ghostly film to then be bonded to another material such as paper, cardboard, or fabric. This physical manipulation of imagery provides a framework to discuss transparencies/opacities of identity and selfhood, thinking through ideas of disclosure and (mis)recognition. Participants are invited to bring pre-existing digital images that can be printed on Polaroid film, or to take photos on site to experiment with the process. Spaces are limited. Please RSVP to Marc Beaulieu marc.beaulieu@concordia.ca and include within the subject line 'Ghostly Image'.

Dissecting and reassembling the elements of photonovels, Gaudreau draws forth details that disrupt its usual narrative continuity. This pop literary genre is thus reconfigured into a choreographic space in which texts and images tumble out of sync.

By adopting strategies akin to visual ethnography, the trio, composed of Parastoo Anoushahpour, Faraz Anoushahpour, and Ryan Ferko, multiplies perspectives on the modernization of Iran, its rural regions, and the families witnessing their industrialization. Archives and image-making apparatuses become playgrounds and sites of subversion as much as catalysts for encounters, from which the artists conduct an autopsy of a territory.

Presented each spring at Galerie de l'UQAM, Passage à découvert showcases the work of UQAM's graduating students in the Bachelor of Visual and Media Arts program, highlighting their creative vitality, freedom, and curiosity. Thanks to the multidisciplinary approach favoured by UQAM's School of Visual and Media Arts, the student works on display address a wide variety of subjects, approaches, and techniques in dialogue with the contemporary world. This year, several projects reimagine the concept of materiality by examining its transformations and modes of perception. Others explore the relationship to the body, identities, and performativity, deploying playful displays that convey a sensitive relationship to reality.

Artists talk between artist Paola Pivi and Kanika Anand, Senior Curator at Contemporary Calgary