Pedagogy of the Small

Join us for a roundtable with presentations and a performance on deployments and celebrations of miniature worlds and model landscapes in art, research inquiry, poetry, and healing.

Organized by Mark Sussman and Antonia Hernández, supported by the Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Society & Culture.

How can you participate? Join us in person or online by registering for the Zoom Meeting or watching live on YouTube.

Have questions? Send them to info.4@concordia.ca  

Mark Sussman

Concordia, Theatre; CISSC, Model Theatre Pedagogy

Model Theatre - closely related to the nineteenth century form of "toy" or "paper theatre" - inhabits small spaces and demands a task-based, focused intentionality that is absorbing to watch and relatively accessible to the amateur or untrained performer. Drawing on decades of creating model theater shows and teaching the form to students from elementary to graduate level, incarcerated youth, teachers in training, professional puppeteers, and the general public, this presentation reflects on a model theater pedagogy. How might a form that depends on collaborative performance pedagogy, miniature scale, and light ecological impact play a role in the public sphere? And what does it mean for adults to seriously play with toys?

Antonia Hernández

Concordia, Communication Studies, The Research Device: A Playground of One’s Own 

This presentation introduces the idea of the research device as a conceptual and practical tool for creative praxis. Conceived as a flexible yet controlled playground, the research device draws from figures and images to provoke curiosity and worldmaking activation. Speculative and deeply pragmatic, the research device aids in completing projects through its self-contained and structured environment. The talk will present a series of principles for applying this method and examples of works created with it.

Jonathan Berger

New York University, Studio Art, a dialogue with the artist on his MOMA studio residency

For the past 20 years, Jonathan Berger's work has encompassed a spectrum of activity including sculpture, installation, performance, creative research, archival and curatorial work, education, design, and large-scale collaborative projects. All of Berger's work involves the making of exhibitions, including objects that he physically produces or asks others to produce for him; materials that he collects, seeks out, and re-contextualizes; as well as materials that are the product of conversations, exchanges, and oral histories with others.

From 2023-2025 Berger was the subject of a MoMA Studio Residency, which concluded with an exhibition and series of live events. In 2027 he will present a series of three concurrent solo exhibitions at KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin, which will travel to the Douglas Hyde Gallery in Dublin. His 2019 exhibition An Introduction to Nameless Love, was co-commissioned and presented by the Carpenter Center for Visual Arts at Harvard University and Participant Inc NYC, and later included in the 2022 Whitney Biennial. Berger’s project The Store operated from 2020-2022 as a long-term exhibition at the Aspen Art Museum, serving simultaneously as an installation, place of commerce, and meeting place. Berger has presented solo exhibition projects at the Busan Biennial, Busan; Vox Populi, Philadelphia; Maccarone, New York; Karma, New York; Grimm-Rosenfeld Gallery, New York; Frieze Projects, London; Adams and Ollman, Portland; and VEDA, Florence. Berger is a Clinical Associate Professor of Studio Art in the Department of Art and Art Professions at New York University. He lives and works between New York City and Glover, Vermont. Gallery website linked here.

Pablo Gershanik

Concordia, Individualized PhD program, 2025 Pierre Eliott Trudeau Foundation Scholar, Intimate Maquettes: Cartographies and Metaphors of Absence

Pablo Gershanik is an actor, clown, director, and university lecturer. His work explores memory, trauma, and space through artistic creation and research. He created, Intimate Maquettes Lab, an artistic and therapeutic device presented in museums, universities, and institutions in Canada, France, Argentina, Mexico, the UK, the US, and Belgium. He trained at the École Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq (Paris) and holds a Master’s in Artistic Creation with a specialization in Dramatherapy (University of Paris). He is pursuing a PhD in the INDI program in Fine Arts at Concordia University, Montreal. He created and directed the Diploma in Mask Making and Interpretation at the National University of San Martin UNSAM (Argentina). He has taught and researched in Argentina, Mexico, Canada, and France. As an actor and clown, he has appeared in over twenty international productions, including Nomade (Cirque Éloize) and 52 (directed by Daniele Finzi Pasca). He co-directed the Fibonacci Project, South America edition, with Samuel Tetreault of Les Sept Doigts de la Main. He has collaborated with companies as Philippe Genty, Tchaïka  (Natacha Belova), Gare Centrale (Agnès Limbos). His piece “Eighty Bullets to the Wing”, was awarded by Centquatre Paris and the Institut Français, and presented in Argentina, France, and Canada. His publications include work inTrauma-Informed Placemaking (Routledge, 2024) and Art & Thérapie (INECAT, 2023). He’s a Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation Schollar and a PhD candidate in Fine Arts at Concordia University. 

Caitlin Ross

Independent Artist, Montreal

A Suitcase Puppet Show