SPHERE(S) Lab discussion sessions

and Wrapping in the Sound of Fringes, a performance by Eugénia Reznik and Alex Reznik

PHI Foundation, Space 4
407 Saint-Pierre Street, Tiohtiá:ke / Montreal

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SPHERE(S) Mile End / With Ukraine: Shifting Spheres and Returns will open at PHI in Old Montreal. The day of June 6 will begin with an introduction to SPHERE(S) by Chantal Pontbriand and Sasha Baydal, followed by two SPHERE(S) Lab discussion sessions in an agora-style format conceived as a space for exchange, and a performance by Eugénia Reznik and Alex Reznik created specifically for the occasion. An open bar will conclude the day.

In addition to the participating artists, the SPHERE(S) Labs will bring together researchers and knowledge holders from Quebec, across Canada, and internationally around two thematic areas of reflection.

1:30 pm  Welcome : Chantal Pontbriand and Sasha Baydal

1:45 pm  Prelude : Dominique Arel will provide historical and contemporary context for the Ukrainian question.

2:15 pm  Laboratory I : Here and Elsewhere: Rooting in Motion – Diasporic Resilience and Sustaining “Home” in Exile

This discussion invites participants to consider diaspora beyond the lens of uprootedness—as a dynamic way of inhabiting the world.

With: Sasha Baydal, Nikolay Karabinovych, Mélanie Leavitt, Galyna Lykhoshva, Anoush Moazzini, Chantal Pontbriand, and Lidia Zhigunova

3:30 pm  Break

4:00 pm  Laboratory II : What Is the Cost of Taking Root in Another’s Garden? Entanglements: Migration, Multiculturalism, and Colonial Legacies

This session examines the place of migrant communities within a territory shaped by Indigenous presence, land dispossession, and successive layers of colonization.

With: Jen Budney, David Garneau, Jacqueline Hoàng Nguyễn, and James Oscar

5:15 pm| Break

5:30 pm Wrapping in the Sound of Fringes. A performance by Eugénia Reznik and Alex Reznik

Drawing on the traditional Ukrainian headscarf, the khoustka, the artists explore its affective and symbolic dimensions through an assemblage of texts, personal narratives, and sonic compositions. Both an everyday object and a marker of belonging, the khoustka becomes here a point of entry into questions of transmission, attachment, and the movement of memory.

Over the course of the performance, the object is transformed into a space of relation—a site where gestures, stories, and identities intersect. By activating this material charged with history, the artists open a reflection on the circulation of cultures and on the ways they move, transform, and reinvent themselves across time and contexts, through encounters with others.

OPEN BAR.

Artists

Eugénia Reznik

Eugénia Reznik is a Ukrainian-French-Canadian artist. Working within a research-creation approach, she brings together sociological perspectives with performative and documentary practices, digital arts, and botanical research. Her work explores issues of uprooting, the transmission of memory, as well as the connections between the migration of plants and humans. A recipient of several grants, she has presented her work in numerous exhibitions and events across Canada, Europe, and the United States.

Alexey Reznik

Alexey Reznik is a multidisciplinary artist born in Ukraine and based in Toronto. His practice operates at the intersection of visual art and music, exploring human relationships and lived experiences in contexts of conflict. His work examines dynamics of displacement, fragmentation, and division—both historical and contemporary. An oud player, he regularly performs with his group Maayan Band, weaving musical traditions with contemporary influences. He is also engaged in international and interdisciplinary collaborations that create sensitive connections between sound, memory, and place.

VISITE GUIDÉE DE ROSEMONT MONTRÉAL UKRAINIEN 1 AVEC GALYNA LYKHOSHVA

GUIDED TOUR OF ROSEMONT WITH GALYNA LYKHOSHVA

UKRAINIAN MONTREAL Guided Tour Part I)

Meeting point: Ukraine ParkRue de Bellechasse, Tiohtiá:ke / Montreal

Free admission with reservation : info.spheresartinternational@gmail.com

Since 2022, cultural guide Galyna Lykhoshva has been actively supporting newly arrived people in Canada while leading guided tours through the neighbourhoods of Tiohtiá:ke / Montreal. Through her walks and extensive archival research, she has patiently woven together a rich constellation of stories and knowledge, bringing to light the essential role of Ukrainian communities—and particularly that of women—in the making of Montreal. Her tours invite us to discover the often discreet yet deeply rooted presence of Ukrainian communities in the city, both past and present.

What remains of these histories in the streets we walk today? What signs, memories, and traces still endure? Galyna Lykhoshva guides participants through these layered narratives, revealing fragments of memory in the turn of a street or the details of a façade.

The tour will conclude at a multi-generational Ukrainian grocery store, where participants will be invited to sample a selection of Ukrainian specialties.

PERFORMANCES IN MILE END

Featuring Nikolay Karabinovych and the Stozhary Theatre,

Adam Kinner and ensemble:

Philippe Lauzier, Frédérique Roy, Stefan Schneider, and Eliana Zimmerman

Ukrainian National Federation of Quebec
405 Fairmount Avenue West, Tiohtiá:ke / Montreal

Tickets available online through the Federation’s website or at the door.

Shifting Spheres and Returns invites audiences to an evening of performances followed by a reception at the Ukrainian National Federation of Quebec, located in the heart of Mile End. In this site of profound symbolic significance for both the neighbourhood and Montreal’s Ukrainian communities, artists Adam Kinner and Nikolay Karabinovych—the latter in dialogue with the Stozhary Theatre Ensemble, emerging from Montreal’s Ukrainian community—will present new works conceived specifically for SPHERE(S).

Où il nous soit possible d’être uh vraiment chez nous. With this new performance, Adam Kinner draws on the voices of six immigrant French-language learners reading an excerpt from Option Québec by René Lévesque, published in 1967. Through their hesitant pronunciations of this foundational text of Quebec nationalism, language emerges as a terrain through which people seek to belong to a place. These vocal recordings were first presented in 2018 at Artexte, where each was meticulously transcribed into musical notation and presented as audio tracks.

At the Ukrainian National Federation, these recordings will be reinterpreted by an ensemble composed of Philippe Lauzier (bass clarinet), Frédérique Roy (accordion), Stefan Schneider (percussion), Eliana Zimmerman (cello), alongside Adam Kinner himself, transforming hesitant spoken French into a newly conceived musical work. Where It May Be Possible for Us to Uh Truly Be at Home invites close listening while posing a series of questions: How can language initially function as a mechanism of exclusion, while simultaneously producing profound subjective transformations and, over time, generating feelings of belonging? How are questions of welcome, hospitality, and commonality negotiated here?

Adam Kinner

Adam Kinner is an artist based in Tiohtiá:ke / Montreal, originally from Washington, D.C. He develops a transdisciplinary practice grounded in research, improvisation, and collaboration, often working alongside artists from dance and music. His work takes the form of concerts, writing, exhibitions, stage works, films, and site-specific performances. MANUAL, a performance created with Christopher Willes, has been presented across Canada and internationally, including in Japan, the United Kingdom, Finland, Norway, and Thailand. Together with Jacob Wren, he co-directs the orchestra The Air Contains Honey.

The First Decolonial Detective Agency (working title). This opera-performance by Ukrainian artist Nikolay Karabinovych, developed during his residency in Tiohtiá:ke / Montreal, is created in close collaboration with the community gathered around the Ukrainian National Federation and its theatre troupe, Stozhary Theatre. Yuriy Gurzhy, a Ukrainian composer whose work bridges traditional Ukrainian musical forms and contemporary composition—and a long-time collaborator of Karabinovych—composes the score for the work, while Victor Kyrychok performs live accordion.

On the Federation’s main stage, Karabinovych presents a theatrical and musical work infused with dark humour, where personal migration stories, collective memory, and speculative fiction intertwine. 

Set in a semi-real, semi-imagined world—uncannily close to our own, yet one in which the Soviet Union never collapsed—diasporic communities once again confront multiple forms of external threat. By questioning how memory is recorded, transmitted, and reenacted, Karabinovych’s work stages an act of remembering through a form that borders on the absurd, while raising questions about how histories are told—and by whom. The sonic journey accompanying the performance traverses time, bringing audiences back to the heart of Montreal’s Ukrainian community history.

Artists

Nikolay Karabinovych, an artist originally from Odesa, Ukraine, works across video, performance, sound, and sculpture. His practice explores the histories of Eastern Europe through personal narratives, addressing questions of identity, belonging, and exclusion, often using music as a cultural lens. A graduate of HISK in Ghent (2020), he served as assistant curator of the 5th Odesa Biennale and is the recipient of the PinchukArtCentre Prize (2018, 2020, 2022). His work has been widely presented internationally and featured in major biennials, including Kyiv, Kaunas, Venice (parallel programme), and Steirischer Herbst.

Stozhary Theatre 

Stozhary Theatre is a community-based amateur theatre ensemble active within the Ukrainian National Federation of Quebec in Tiohtiá:ke / Montreal and composed of members of the Ukrainian community. Drawing inspiration from both Ukrainian classics and contemporary dramaturgies, the collective has staged works by Gogol, I. Nechouï-Levytsky, Olga Onyshchenko, and Eugene Polozhiy. To date, Stozhary productions have been presented in Tiohtiá:ke / Montreal, Toronto, and Ottawa.

Socially engaged, the ensemble also supports community and charitable initiatives, notably through its “Adaptation” workshop program, launched following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

SPHERE(S) Lab discussion sessions, a screening of a film by Alisi Telengut, and an Adam Kinner workshop centred on a work by Michael Snow

PHI Foundation, Space 4
407 Saint-Pierre Street, Tiohtiá:ke / Montreal

Reserve through the PHI website

SPHERE(S) Mile End / With Ukraine: Shifting Spheres and Returns continues at PHI in Old Montreal. The day of June 13 will feature two SPHERE(S) Lab discussion sessions in an agora-style format, a screening of an animated film by Alisi Telengut, and a workshop led by Adam Kinner, joined by other artists, centred on a historical work by Michael Snow. An open bar will conclude the day.

Day 2

1:30 PM | Welcome

Chantal Pontbriand and Sasha Baydal

1:45 PM | Prelude: Céline Galipeau

2:15 pm Laboratory I : Infrastructures of Displacement: Forms of Resistance, Persistence of Memory, and Language

The animated film Baigal Nuur – Lake Baikal (2023) by artist Alisi Telengut will be screened following the discussion.

With :  Vincent E., Jonathan Durand, Daria Hetmanova, and Alisi Telengut

3:30 pm Break

4:00 pm Laboratory II :Returns: Circulation and Transformation of Cultural Forms

The notion of return: How do cultural forms circulate through heritage, nationalist, and institutional infrastructures? How do gestures of return transform both the forms themselves and the structures into which they are reintegrated?

With: Dominic Marion, Adam Kinner, Eugénia Reznik, Alisi Telengut, and Alexandra Tsay

5:15 pm Break

5:30 pm Around SINOMS by Michael Snow

This collaborative session led by artist Adam Kinner extends reflections on circulation, transformation, and return through language, using Michael Snow's SINOMS (1989), a landmark work of Canadian art which is based on the list of the names of the mayors of Quebec City, as a starting point. An unsolicited sequel of the work, with contributions from artists Lisa Conway-Bühler and Aman Sandhu, will conclude the day. (As an improvisational jazz musician, Snow would have been delighted.) Lisa Conway-Bühler is a Swiss-Canadian composer, sound artist, songwriter, researcher, recordist, and mixer. Her recordings and sound installations make use of analog synthesizers, drum machines, and electronics, often alongside arrangements for strings and woodwinds. Aman Sandhu is an artist and writer working between Montreal and Glasgow. His installations often include drawing, moving image, sculpture, and text. He considers them as ensembles of objects that come into view through improvisation.

We would like to thank Peggy Gale for her permission to present an excerpt of the original work. 

OPEN BAR

Artists

Alisi Telengut
Alisi Telengut is a Canadian artist of Mongolian origin whose practice centres on frame-by-frame animation created under the camera using mixed-media techniques. Her work explores painterly and craft-based aesthetics, as well as relationships between humans and the natural world. Her films have been presented internationally, including at Sundance, the Whitney Biennial, TIFF (Toronto International Film Festival), and Annecy International Animation Film Festival. Nominated for the Canadian Screen Awards and recipient of an Iris Prize, her films have received numerous international distinctions. She is currently an Assistant Professor of Animation at Concordia University.

Adam Kinner
Adam Kinner is an artist based in Tiohtiá:ke / Montreal, originally from Washington, D.C. He develops a transdisciplinary practice grounded in research, improvisation, and collaboration, often working alongside artists from dance and music. His work takes the form of concerts, writing, exhibitions, stage works, films, and site-specific performances. MANUAL, a performance created with Christopher Willes, has been presented across Canada and internationally, including in Japan, the United Kingdom, Finland, Norway, and Thailand. Together with Jacob Wren, he co-directs the orchestra The Air Contains Honey.

GUIDED TOUR OF ROSEMONT WITH GALYNA LYKHOSHVA

UKRAINIAN MONTREAL Guided Tour Part 2

Meeting point: Ukrainian National Federation of Quebec
405 Fairmount Avenue West, Tiohtiá:ke / Montreal

Free admission with reservation : info.spheresartinternational@gmail.com

Since 2022, cultural guide Galyna Lykhoshva has been actively supporting newly arrived people in Canada while leading guided tours through the neighbourhoods of Tiohtiá:ke / Montreal. 

The tour will concentrate on the Ukrainian presence in Mile End, remembering the arrival of Ukrainians here starting in the XIXth C. The visit will end at the Ukrainian Federation on Fairmount…

Post-event gathering and convivial reception

Ukrainian National Federation of Quebec
405 Fairmount Avenue West, Tiohtiá:ke / Montreal

Reservations through the Federation’s website

A gathering to bring SPHERE(S) MILE END / WITH UKRAINE to a close. All participants are warmly invited—artists, organizers, technicians, and audiences alike.

Together, we brainstorm on the event and share a convivial get together accompanied by refreshments and Ukrainian light bites. Highlights from the performances will be featured throughout the afternoon. Expect music, a DJ set, and dancing as well !

Everyone is welcome!