Michelle Wilson and the Coves Collective + Small File Media films at McIntosh Gallery

Documentation of A Confluence of Legacies performance, Michelle Wilson and the Coves Collective Ensemble, 2024, artLAB Gallery, Western University. Image courtesy of the Visual Arts Department, Western University.

Join us for the final program in the Art Thrive: Elemental Forces moving images series: Fire | Moving Light

December 10, 2025, 5–7pm
McIntosh Gallery, London ON
This event is free and open to the public | Visitor parking information

Curated by Imogen Clendinning
Curatorial support for Small File Media provided by Yani Kong

Fire | Moving Light is a full circle celebration of the possibilities of the moving image, exploring the flux of video and stretching its capacities by incorporating live music, improvisation, and glitches. Featuring an audiovisual performance by Michelle Wilson and the Coves Collective Ensemble (Philip Gurrey, Angus Cruikshank, Alex Shultz, Leah Friedrich, Kevin Lynn and Corentin Tcherkassof) followed by a screening of seven low-bandwidth ecomedia presented in partnership with the Small File Media Festival. Across Fire | Moving Light, artists pay homage to the warm glow of the moving image, with its unique ability to connect us.

Still from ici loin / here afar, Ghada Sayegh, 2024, Lebanon, 8mins. Image courtesy of the artist

Fire | Moving Light Program:

A Confluence of Legacies by Michelle Wilson and the Coves Collective Ensemble
December 10, 5pm

Join us at 5pm for artist Michelle Wilson and the Cove Collective’s A Confluence of Legacies, an audiovisual performance featuring a musical score, narration and overhead projector animation, which explores the layered history of the Environmentally Significant Area known as The Coves, located in London, Ontario. The narrative was informed by conversations with community members and research into local archives; this piece is an act of collaborative storytelling that reveals the “layered entanglements of contamination, memory, and kinship—between industry, family, river, and soil,” (Wilson). This performance is an extension of the work of the Coves Collective, an ad-hoc group of artists, educators, and activists who have come together to attend to our responsibilities and relationships with the Coves.

Fire | Moving Light Eco-media Screening
December 10, 6pm

Featured Films:
Matthias Grotkopp, Another Another World (2023)
Jannis Karalis, Liquid Snake Dance (2024)
Mena El Shazly and Omnia Sabry, Walking Through a Nile Codex (2021)
Ghada Sayegh, ici loin / here afar (2024)
Somayeh Khakshoor, Glints; a temple; a white wall; a ravine; a strong wind (2021)
Dag Davidge and Bernice Chau, Night Tender (2023)

Next, join us for a screening of short form films, presented in partnership with the Small File Media Festival (SFMF) with curatorial support by SFMF Managing Director Yani Kong, whose mandate is to promote slower and more conscious use of digital technologies “within limits,” including the computers and platforms we require to access video and film. The SFMF counters the mainstream excess of video streaming by only screening films that fall under a compressed rate of 1.44MB per minute, the file size of the outmoded floppy disk. Fire | Moving Images showcases alternative approaches to the creation and consumption of video art that in their data sets respond to the environmental impacts of digital technology. This program features an international collection of filmmakers pushing the boundaries of low-data film, developing their own aesthetic language through pixels, data-moshing, distortion, and colour manipulation. You can learn more about our film program on the Art Thrive: Fire | Moving Light webpage.

Visit the Small File Media Festival’s website to learn more about their work.

Visitors will also be able to create, modify, and decorate ornaments using View-master reels with artist Tia Bates.

Video still from Glints: A Strong Wind, Somayeh Khakshoor, 2021, 1min. Image courtesy of the artist.

About the Artists

Michelle Wilson is a queer, neurodivergent artist and mother who has been developing community-based programs that integrate the creative arts with health and wellness. Dr. Wilson is an organizing member of both the Coves Collective and the Unsettling Conservation Collective. She recently joined the University of Guelph as an Assistant Professor in Visual Arts and the new Bachelor of Creative Arts, Health and Wellness program.

Small File Media Artists:

Matthias Grotkopp is Assistant Professor for Digital Film Studies at the Seminar for Film Studies at Freie Universität Berlin. His research interests include the audiovisuality of the climate crisis and ecological disaster, genre theory and the relation of politics and poetics, the films of the so-called Berlin School, as well as digital methods of film analysis.

Jannis Karalis is an artist and interactive media designer based in Piraeus, GR. The main focus of his work has been on interactive installations, audio/visual projects, live video performances, and online interactive platforms.

Mena El Shazly (b. Giza, Egypt) is a visual artist active in moving image creation. Her practice speculates on notions of presence and transcendence in the digital world, and explores practices of cultivating decay to arrive at alternative forms of transformation and regeneration.

Omnia Sabry approaches plants as spatial beings, delving into their architecture and their ability to both reflect and transmit images. Her practice is native to film, and departs to photography, book-making, and botany, sometimes extending to multimedia installation.

Somayeh Khakshoor is a nomadic Iranian filmmaker and curator. She holds an MFA in Animation from Tarbiat Modares University and an MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts from Simon Fraser University.

Ghada Sayegh is associate professor at the Institute for Theater, Audiovisual and Cinematic studies, Saint Joseph University of Beirut. A member of the editorial board of the online cinema review Hors-Champ based in Montreal, she has written numerous articles on cinema and contemporary art in Lebanon.

Bernice Chau (she/her) is a recent MA graduate and teaching assistant from the Department of History at the University of Toronto. Her research looks into the intersection of erotic acts, historical consciousness and postcolonial theoretical conventions within Sinophone cinema, literature and digital media.

Dag Davidge (they/them) is an emerging Mestizo filmmaker, sound designer and recent BFA graduate from Simon Fraser University’s School for the Contemporary Arts. Their practice seeks to create audiovisual encounters and non-discursive affective rhythms to build empathy between viewers.

McIntosh Gallery
1151 Richmond Street
London, ON N6A 3K7
mcintoshgallery.ca
mcintoshgallery@uwo.ca
(519) 661-3181

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Our Hours
Monday to Friday: 10am – 5pm
Saturday: 12pm – 4pm
Sundays and Holidays: Closed
McIntosh Gallery offers free admission to all exhibitions and events.

Accessibility
We regret that McIntosh Gallery is not wheelchair accessible.

Art Thrive: Elemental Forces is a collaboration between McIntosh Gallery and Wellness & Well-being, supported by the Western Sustainable Impact Fund.