sympoeisis lead / follow drawings, 2025, Rachel Crummey, Tara Dougans, Emily Spooner, Jeff Mann – chalk pastel on newsprint
quartet, 2025, Tara Dougans – fired stoneware; approx 4.5" x 4.5"

sympoeisis
from ancient Greek sún (“with, together”) and poíēsis (“creation, production”) “making-with” or “becoming-with.“ Nothing makes itself; nothing is really autopoietic or self-organizing” 1

1 Haraway, D. 2016. Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

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All drawing is of the moment
ATELIER DE DESSIN
JE / US – Maison de la Culture Marcel Robidas
Sept 13th, 2025, 10 am - 12 30pm

nous comprenons le temps comme une spirale, un cocon, une coquille, un mouvement
multiple au rythme du système nerveux
orienté par la sagesse de la fermentation,
le temps est un ingrédient clé

SALT vise à encourager la curiosité, le rapprochement et l’incarnation à travers le jeu collaboratif – et l’imagination collective – avec le vivant. L’atelier de dessin All drawing is of the moment est fondé sur la pratique de la sympoïèse et invite les participant·e·s à expérimenter un mode de création qui allie contemplation, non-linéarité et spontanéité. Favorisant une conscience élargie du corps et du monde, l’atelier ouvre la voie à la pollinisation croisée et aux dynamiques intersubjectives, de façon à stimuler l’émergence de possibilités inattendues.

“All drawing is of the moment” is grounded in the practice of sympoiesis and invites participants to experience a mode of creation that brings together contemplation, non-linearity and spontaneity. By cultivating an expanded awareness of body and world, the workshop opens the way to cross-pollination and intersubjective dynamics, sparking the emergence of unexpected possibilities.

Gratuit, matériel fourni
Sur inscription : agregat.arts@gmail.com

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Fondé en 2010, le centre d'artistes Agrégat a pour mission de placer l’art au cœur du développement du territoire et des communautés. En initiant des projets rassembleurs, le centre d’artistes vise à transformer les dynamiques de production du territoire et à inscrire l’art comme moteur du développement des communautés, grâce à sa capacité à inspirer les imaginaires et les actions.

Avec l'objectif de transformer les conditions de production et de diffusion des arts visuels à Longueuil, ainsi que de valoriser le rôle de l'art dans la ville, les communautés et le territoire, Agrégat a lancé en 2021 la Manifestation JE/US. Ce projet, axé sur la participation citoyenne, vise à créer un milieu de vie inspirant et à stimuler les publics à réfléchir au monde qui les entoure. En collaboration avec plusieurs partenaires sur le territoire longueuillois, la Manifestation JE/US favorise la rencontre entre les arts visuels et les citoyen·ne·s avec le déploiement d’un programme d’activités et d’expositions diversifié et engageant.

09.09.25

Drawing ∞ Listening

Montreal, QC – April 7 – 11, 2025 ~~
complexity dojo // collaborative quartet

Sympoesis as score for attunement ~ choreographic ecologies
SALT with Emily Spooner and Jeff Mann

Exploring creative cross-pollination and reciprocal apprenticeship through contemplative slowing, sounding and listening together – tuning to the middle for the lines, forms and shapes that want to flow through. We ask, how can we invite or infuse properties of emergent form (choreography, lyricism) into our visual arts practice? What structures support composing emergence?

How shall we bring ourselves into ripeness ?

04.11.25

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Embodied Attention – CE Mentorship

Montreal / Toronto – March 3 – May 12th, 2025 (online)
Composing Emergence mentorship SALT with Nita Little

'A compositional score often sits within a larger score, which nestles together with other scores so that the whole of the structure is a web. These webs may live within an even larger score, the piece, and the concert in an ever- expanding structure. All is up for consideration.

(( ecological actions of tactile attention and the creative potentials present in entangled relation ))

~~~

re: re: re: playing to play

the latitude and play that allows you, the doer of the score, to make choices
the conditions within the score can change

from 'an aside: what is a score ?' nita little

03.07.25

sympoeisis seed cards, 2024 – ink on paper
more in RHIZOME
detail – mycelium matrix, Rachel Crummey, 2024

resonant bodies // fluid intelligence
Montreal, QC – Sept 14th and 15th, 2024 at White Wall Studio
Facilitation SALT (Rachel Crummey and Tara Dougans) with Linda Rabin

photos by Anna Semenova Kodak

Tune into the interstitial spaces of collective movement, silence, sounding, and drawing. This workshop explores the fertile connections between Continuum (taught by Linda Rabin) and drawing as spontaneous gesture (facilitated by SALT). These practices incline us towards inhabiting the present moment with greater ease and creative flow.

With Continuum, we slow down and become intimate with internal rhythms, inviting a fluid intelligence beyond the thinking mind. When we tune our minds and bodies in this way, drawing then becomes an embodied expression of the present moment. What can listening together teach us about collective emergence? What does it mean to relate, and make, from this place? Continuum offers us access to sensations flowing below our habitual attention, while drawing offers us a portal for expressing this fluid matrix, enabling us to share in a non verbal form.

This workshop is open to artists, writers, dancers, the MTL Continuum community and somatically curious folk. No previous experience in Continuum or with drawing necessary. Drawing materials will be provided.

“Moving fluidly increases our vitality, just as water in the natural world is vitalized by flowing freely.”
— BONNIE GINTIS

“Become the water.”
– EMILIE CONRAD

09.20.2024

field, Tara Dougans, 2024 – glazed stoneware, raw clay, brick, 12 x 16 inches
reverberating midlines // sympoeisis – SALT (Rachel Crummey and Tara Dougans) in studio residency at Artscape Gibraltar June 2023
sight is touch, Rachel Crummey, 2021 – spore print, the Bentway Oct 22 – from ‘What can fungi teach us about improvisation?’

our senses grow, SALT, 2024 – 00:54 video short

Sympoeisis // Field

invitation

we understand time as a spiral, a cocoon, a shell, a manifold
move at the pace of the nervous system
orient by fermentation wisdom,
Time is a key ingredient

// there are many ways to be a fungus

we, the dense web,
flow increasingly curious about redefining studio practice as one of encounter ~
our senses grow;

how do we cultivate a means to sense into a larger field of relationship
how does a relational ecology unfold in the context of a studio arts practice

what needs to die
what feels alive

a beginning and an end (that will end),
and then begin again

we, a field, a web
a song

04.18. 2024

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Janina, Rachel Crummey, 2023 ~ mixed media on canvas, hemp, reishi mycelium, wood, 66 x 44 inches

Dense Web // Reverberating Midlines – SALT Vol. 1 09.01.22 – 08.01.23 ~ printed zine, ink on paper, 7 x 10 inches

L – Bloom (shaggy), Rachel Crummey, 2023 ~ mixed media on canvas, hemp, reishi mycelium, wood, 21 x 14 inches
R – Lemniscate (burst), Rachel Crummey, 2023 ~ mixed media on canvas, hemp, reishi mycelium, wood, 21 x 14 inches

installation view, Sympoeisis // Fruiting Bodies @ the plumb – Aug 4th – Sept 3rd, 2023

L – sphere, Tara Dougans, 2023, stoneware, burlap, hemp, reishi mycelium
R –Spiral (the purple one), Rachel Crummey, 2023, mixed media on canvas, hemp, reishi mycelium, wood, 21 x 14 inches

Diotima, Rachel Crummey, 2023 ~ mixed media on canvas, hemp, reishi mycelium, wood, 66 x 44 inches

lingham, Tara Dougans, 2023, stoneware, glaze, hemp, reishi mycelium, 16” x 4.5” x 14.25” (growing)
diamond, Tara Dougans, 2023, stoneware, glaze, 15” x 6” x 13”

Janina, Rachel Crummey, 2023, mixed media on canvas, hemp, reishi mycelium, wood, 66 x 44 inches

L – Spiral (the purple one), Rachel Crummey, 2023, mixed media on canvas, hemp, reishi mycelium, wood, 21 x 14 inches
R – detail, lemniscate, Tara Dougans, 2023 ~ stoneware, glaze, sand, hemp, reishi mycelium, 22.5” x 6.5” x 27” (growing)

lingham, Tara Dougans, 2023 ~ stoneware, glaze, hemp, reishi mycelium, 16” x 4.5” x 14.25” (growing)

lemniscate, Tara Dougans, 2023, stoneware, glaze, sand, hemp, reishi mycelium, 22.5” x 6.5” x 27” (growing)

detail, Bloom (shaggy), Rachel Crummy, 2023 ~ mixed media on canvas, hemp, reishi mycelium, wood, 21 x 14 inches

L – LP3, 2023 ~ stoneware, glaze, hemp, reishi mycelium, 4.75” x 4.75’ x 6.25”
R – LP2 and LP3, Tara Dougans, 2023 ~ stoneware, glaze, hemp, reishi mycelium, 4” x 4” x 5”

installation view, generative root ~ Sympoeisis // Fruiting Bodies @ the plumb – Aug 4th – Sept 3rd, 2023

pelvis, Tara Dougans, 2023, wood, approx 30 1/2” x 6 3/4” x 27 1/2”

Sympoeisis // Fruiting Bodies @ the plumb – Aug 4th – Sept 3rd, 2023
Photos by @lfdocumentation

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Sympoeisis // Fruiting Bodies – Exhibition Text

Jade stone and alder flower essence combined with oil paint, the sea surrounding Fogo Island, pieces of plastic picked from the shoreline, burnette horses counted from the car; Ganoderma Lucidum merged with hemp fibre, canvas, and wood within its tapestry of tissue; Streams of sonicscape, the soundfield of the breeze amongst the blooming sumac along Caledonia Road and movement near the gazebo; Scoby — once a source of slightly effervescent kombucha; once a slippery surface floating and fermenting sweet tea — hangs as a flag, mother, motherland; aura of the earth, electromagnetic noise from various recent everydays and early days; lichen on stone, the texture of a meadow with blades of grass cupping dew, twigs, roots intertwined deep; a duck nest along with duck feathers and duck eggs, a steady single drip drip drip drip drip drip drip from the basement ceiling; fruiting reishi mushroom filling the form of ceramic vessels: sphere, shelllike cornucopia, pelvis, and lemniscate as in the geometry equation with two loops which meet at zero also referred to as the infinity symbol also seen as a eight lying lazy; paper pulp fossilized record of touch pinched with fingers, calyx: the leaflike sepals which enclose the petals, a cup-shaped cavity, and dorsal: relating to the back of an animal, plant, or organ.

Sympoeisis, which Donna Haraway writes “means making-with...It is a word for worlding-with,in company,”1is a kindred approach of the exhibiting artists: Peter Campbell, Rachel Crummey, Tara Dougans, Erin Hunt, Luke Loseth, Sara Maston, Joy Wong, and Thea Yabut. Collaboration and cross-pollination are their chosen ways of creating. This applies to their relationship with peers and extends across species and earth — particularly in the case of Crummey and Dougans who convene weekly within the framework of SALT (The Sound / Institute of Sensual Awareness, Language and Touch), for improvisatory somatic practice consisting of meditation, sounding, movement, and drawing. Their initial research questions, ‘What can fungi teach us about improvisation?’ and ‘What can listening together teach us about emergence?’, draw the participating constellation of artists together.

These fruiting bodies are the result of time listening, sensing, digging and digesting, composting, tending to, caring for, and percolating. Each exhibiting artist has crafted a unique process in which contemplation and emergence are key and yet, the urgency of “our times for learning again, or for the first time, how to become less deadly, more response-able, more attuned”2 is also present.

Text by Ashley Culver

1 Donna J. Haraway, Staying with the Trouble (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2016), 56.

2 Donna J. Haraway, Staying with the Trouble (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2016), 98.

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not knowing is most intimate, Tara Dougans, fired porcelain, approx 7” x 10”, 2022

invitation

we are curious about other voices, other intelligences, other worlds. SALT // sympoeisis is an open invitation / framework to develop literacy and capacity for inhabiting / embodying alternatives
asking, how can we cultivate ourselves like mushrooms? what can listening together teach us about collective emergence ?

what if we knew our edges to be soft, porous?
our organisms as processes: exploratory, irregular tendencies // living, growing opportunistic investigations
wiley forest sprites // playing to play // compost polyphonies

how do we practice making with
how do we practice generative attunement

exploring sensory relationships between process, presence and place;
connecting with mycelial networks as complex, emergent models for making with
supported by an ongoing exchange / apprenticeship with Ganoderma Multipileum (Reishi)

how do we cultivate right relationship with change

(( start by sitting quietly with any living thing ~~~ ))

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together, we meet 1 x week to breathe, sound and listen
drawing as documentation ~ following a line // form forming form
drawing as hyphae ~ branching and fusing

below, a meandering unfolding map of our rhizome
cross-pollination // emergent choreography // research thread

not knowing what the thing is ~~~~~~
afterward, it never was as it was before

SALT – sympoeisis // fruiting bodies
dense web // reverberating midlines volume 1

09.01.2022 – 09.03.2023

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