**JJJJJerome Ellis** (any pronoun) is a disabled Grenadian-Jamaican-American animal, artist, and person who stutters. Born in 1989 in Groton, Connecticut, USA the artist lives in Norfolk, Virginia, USA with their wife, poet-ecologist Luísa Black Ellis. JJJJJerome dreams of building a sonic bath house! Concepts that organize the artist’s practice include: unknowing, improvisation, inheritance, opacity, prayer, gap, contradiction, aporia, eternity, unpredictability, interruption, and silence. Ellis researches relationships among blackness, disabled speech, divinity, nature, sound, and time. The artist’s body of work includes: contemplative soundscapes using saxophone, flute, dulcimer, electronics, and vocals; scores for plays and podcasts; albums combining spoken word with ambient and jazz textures; theatrical explorations involving live music and storytelling; and music-video-poems that seek to transfigure archival documents. Their debut album, *The Clearing* (2021), was called “an astonishing, must-listen project” (The Guardian). It was co-produced by NNA Tapes and The Poetry Project, and it was released with an accompanying book published by Wendy’s Subway. The artist has received a Fulbright Fellowship (2015), a United States Artists Fellowship (2022), a Foundation for Contemporary Art Grants to Artists Award (2022), a Creative Capital Grant (2022). The artist has received residencies at MacDowell (2019, 2022), Ucross (2021), Lincoln Center Theater (2019), ISSUE Project Room (2021), and La MaMa (2021). JJJJJerome’s solo and collaborative musical/performance work has been presented by Lincoln Center, The Poetry Project, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Sawdust, WNYC, and ISSUE Project Room (New York); Venice Biennale 2023; Haus der Kunst (Munich); Rewire Festival (The Hague); Schauspielhaus Zürich; Chrysler Hall (Norfolk, Virginia); MASS MoCA (North Adams, Massachusetts); Arraymusic (Toronto); and the Center for African American Poetry and Poetics (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania), among others. The artist’s visual work (video and photography) has been presented by Oklahoma Contemporary (Oklahoma City), Juf (Madrid), Artspace New Haven (New Haven, Connecticut), and Ballroom Marfa (Marfa, Texas). They have received commissions from the Virginia Symphony Orchestra, The Shed, and REDCAT.

Toronto-based artist **Marla Hlady** makes exhibition-based kinetic and sound works and sometimes performs. Her work often consists of common objects (such as teapots, cocktail mixers, microphones, guitar amplifiers) that are expanded and animated to reveal heretofore unexpected sonic and poetic properties often using a system-based approach to composition. She has performed with Christof Migone, Allison Cameron, Eric Chenaux, Ellen Moffat, Gordon Monahan, Christopher Dela Cruz and Eric Slyfield.

**Christof Migone**’s research delves into language & voice, bodies & performance, intimacy & complicity, sound & silence, rhythmics & kinetics, translation & referentiality, stillness & imperceptibility, structure & improvisation, pedagogy & unlearning, failure & endurance. Ongoing investigations: microphone hitting, book flipping, tongue extruding, record releasing, word hyphenating, para-pedagogical positioning, careless curating, noise making, sequitur following, paper passing, interval counting, rhythm repeating, phone licking, machine fingering, and silence listening. He is currently curating a 12-year event titled *You And I Are Water Earth Fire Air Of Life And Death*. He lives in Toronto and is an Associate Professor in the Department of Visual Arts at Western University.

**Alex Raja Ven** is an interdisciplinary artist working between ambient, noise, techno, visual art, dance and the avant-garde. Their practice focuses on intersections of technology and identity which they explore through emotive sounds, shapes, textures and performances. In 2023, they presented work alongside Raven Chacon and John Dieterich for Parallel 03, a web instrument that uses mistranslations of sound to produce a continuous feedback loop of generative music. Despite their prolific nature, Alex Raja Ven remains an enigmatic figure in Canada’s artistic landscape. Their work is a temporal anomaly, reflecting a granular approach that continues to challenge and redefine the boundaries of contemporary artmaking practices.

**Sara Constant** is a Tkarón:to/Toronto-based musician and artist working in various forms of contemporary/experimental music and sound. Trained as a flute player and active as a soloist, improviser, sound artist, and ensemble musician, Sara’s work involves interpretations of composed music for flute, improvisations with instruments and electronics, curation, and installation work with objects and loudspeakers, to explore ideas around listening, resonance, and place.

**Karie Liao** is a contemporary art curator with an interest in public art, digital media, and printed matter. Her most recent curatorial work, In a Manner of Speaking, was featured in The Blackwood’s lightboxes at the University of Toronto Mississauga. Previously, she has held positions including Co-founder and Curatorial Projects Coordinator of the Toronto Art Book Fair, Curator at Cape Breton University Art Gallery, Resident Curator at Artscape Youngplace, Artistic Director of Contemporary Art Forum Kitchener and Area, and Curator-in-Residence at the Textile Museum of Canada. From 2017 to 2021, she worked as a Content Strategist for Snap Inc., contributing to the Bitmoji team. Her writing has been published by the Canada Media Fund, Vie des Arts, BlackFlash, and C Magazine. Karie holds an MA in Art History and Curatorial Practice from York University and has been the Assistant Curator at The Blackwood since 2022.