TRAIN-TO-PRESENT: SOUNDING SPACES

Workman Arts and Rendezvous with Madness invite you to submit applications for Train-To-Present 2025: Sounding Spaces.

Participants are expected to work on sound-centred artwork throughout the course, with the final artwork(s) completed and ready for exhibition by late September. The artworks will be part of the Rendezvous With Madness 2025 Visual/Media Arts Exhibition in October (dates TBC), curated by Nicole Marchesseau and Fatma Hendawy. The exhibition will take place at WA Gallery space.

The course will take place on Wednesdays from 6PM-8 PM at 32 Lisgar (2nd floor, WA Gallery space) on July 16th, 23rd & August 13th, 20th. Artists must be available and willing to commit to all 4 classes.

Selected artists will be paid an exhibition fee.

Deadline to Apply: May 26th by 11:59 PM

Nicole Marchesseau’s solo and collaborative creative work has been featured locally and internationally in artistic and academic spaces. She serves as a co-founder and curator for the multivalent platform sound braid, a space meant to ignite discussion through sound.

With sound braid, she mounted the installation “Curating Gaps” featured at the American Anthropological Association’s annual meeting, co-led a workshop at the Spoken Web Symposium in conjunction with the Sound Studies Institute at the University of Alberta, presented the sound piece “Curating Steps” at Latin America Media Arts Symposium in Toronto for the panel “Sounds of Migration”, published the sonic essay “Noisy Interference in the Becoming-Generic of Sonic Alerts” in the Danish journal Seismograf Peer, and contributed to the publication of the sound piece and its accompanied transcription “Curating Silences”, featured in Anthropology News. In keeping with her enthusiasm for collaborative work, Nicole, along with Emjay Wright and Gabz Gillespie, launched Broken Film Festival (BFF) in spring of 2025 in Guelph, a festival committed to cleaving open spaces for maneuverability through limit-pushing and filmic transgression.

Nicole has taught at The Department of Communication Studies and Media Arts at McMaster University, the Don Wright Faculty of Music at Western University, and at York University. Nicoel’s background includes a PhD in music at York, where she is also currently a PhD candidate in Social Anthropology.

Outcomes of this course include acquiring knowledge around the acoustic properties of different spaces and the application of this knowledge, working with sound-related technology in specific spaces, and seeing a sound-prioritizing project come into fruition as part of an international arts festival. While emphasis will be on bringing into fruition sound-centred works in an installation setting, focus will also involve collaboration in sonic-centred art-making.

Collaboration will involve considering the possibilities of how sound might work in shared exhibition spaces and the limitations posed by such spaces. Participants will be encouraged to think about how sound-prioritizing spaces can be accessible through other sensory channels. Other considerations involve how sound-prioritizing environments might invite active participation from gallery-goers. Participants should be prepared to take part in a number of activities that include sonic and other forms of journaling and experimentation in sound recording as they prepare works for exhibition.

• How might silence factor into spaces meant to prioritize sound?
• How might spaces that actively incorporate sound also be as accessible as possible?
• How might spaces that prioritize sound engage with the various processes we are living through in contemporary times? How might sound dismantle sanist, racist, LGBTQ+-phobic and other oppressive colonialist structures?

Participants are expected to work on sound-centred artwork throughout the course, with the final artwork(s) completed and ready for exhibition by late September.

The artworks will be part of the Rendezvous With Madness 2025 Visual/Media Arts Exhibition in October (dates TBC), curated by Nicole Marchesseau and Fatma Hendawy. The exhibition will take place at WA Gallery space.