Complexity, care, and collaboration

The ILM Collective is a transdisciplinary platform of professional artists, scholars, and musicians working collaboratively with scientists to generate dialogue and artworks on complex systems.
The Collective centres on a systemic, arts-based interview approach developed by the Collective’s founder, Asma Khan, involving a series of interviews with interdisciplinary scientists whose work intersects with sustainability. This roundtable will be framed by a shared interest in finding new ways to make complex research more accessible, and in developing different kinds of connection bridges across disciplines and communities. Drawing on art-science dialogue, the conversation will open space for shared inquiry, sense-making, and reflection around pressing social and ecological challenges.

About the panelists

Annabelle Brault holds the Sandra and Alain Bouchard Professorship in Music Therapy at Concordia University, and has been teaching since 2018 in the Creative Arts Therapies department. She is a certified music therapist and a PhD candidate in the Individualized Fine Arts program at Concordia. Her research explores how musicking can enhance digital well-being among youth and drive social change, as well as how resource-oriented practices can foster more inclusive clinical and educational spaces. 

Rachel Burman is a cellist and composer, and founder of the new opera company Opéra FOE. She has composed and produced two operas, Notre Damn and Slideshow, and is currently at work on an audio novella set in the Montreal metro system, which showcases the music of several buskers performing there.

Nick Carpenter is a theatre artist who wears many hats: musician, composer, playwright, dramaturg and instructor at the National Theatre School of Canada.  His plays, radio plays and short librettos have been presented across Canada, the US, the UK and Germany.  He has worked as a musician and/or composer for dozens of theatres and theatre festivals across Quebec, Ontario and France and is a co-founder of Summersett Band. 

Sarah Galarneau is a multidisciplinary artist with significant experience in the field of print media. Sarah studied Art History and Studio Art (2011) and Print Media (2015) at Concordia University and holds an MFA from the University of Waterloo in Ontario (2022). She has exhibited in various locations throughout Québec and Ontario, notably at the Biennale Internationale d’Estampe Contemporaine de Trois-Rivières in 2017, where she won the Prix Télé-Québec. Most recently, in 2024, she was hired by the city of Laval to create her first public mural on the outdoor walls of Bibliothèque Émile-Nelligan.

Asma Ahsan Khan is a Pakistani-Canadian interdisciplinary artist and researcher based in Montréal. Working across drawing and mixed media, her practice bridges fine arts, theoretical physics, and systems thinking. Khan approaches mark-making as a form of inquiry, exploring non-linear time, emergent behaviour, and the invisible architectures of space-time. Khan is the founder of ILM Collective, a transdisciplinary platform that brings together artists, scientists, and systems thinkers to explore complexity through dialogue and creative practice. Her work has been exhibited internationally and supported by the Canada Council for the Arts and the Conseil des Arts et des Lettres du Québec.

Heather McLaughlin is an Assistant Professor and Art Therapy Program Coordinator in the Department of Creative Arts Therapies at Concordia University. She is the founder and director of the Concordia Arts in Health Centre, an innovative university-based initiative that integrates clinical services, community partnerships, and research to advance access to creative arts therapies and arts-in-health practices. Her work focuses on creative, systemic, and relational approaches to health and well-being, interdisciplinary collaboration, and climate action, including the C-Change events initiative, which brings communities across sectors and disciplines together to explore creative and collective responses to the climate crisis. She has been a practicing clinical art therapist, couple and family therapist, and psychotherapist for over 20 years.

Emilie O’Brien is an interdisciplinary artist, and scholar whose work spans embroidery, drawing, photography, video, and writing. Her practice explores connection and care across human, ecological, and planetary relationships, emphasizing embodiment and reciprocity as foundations for collective well-being