fragments of the city: poetics, knowledge & memory
About this Event
Held in Montreal for the first time, join us for a workshop and learning circle session of terrain and text focused on the poetics of the city.
Learning from multiple writers and thinkers from the SWANA region, we will discuss how a geopoetic approach can help us understand and narrate cities like Cairo and Beirut. Following Glissant (1990), geopoetics emphasizes the relationship between the material elements of the city and words, aesthetics, and sensory experiences. Given the current context and the totalizing and reductive narratives constructed about SWANA cities by imperial interests, what does it mean to inhabit a city, and how does a poetic approach enable us to contend with the physical materiality and the emotional landscape of a city? How do we create knowledge about the cities we relate to? Rather than a singular domineering logic of the city, how can a fragmented approach enable us to paint an open, multiplicitous version of the city that is connected to memories, senses, relations, narratives, and the material elements of the city?
The session approaches reading and group discussion as practices that extend critical theory beyond academic institutions and into collective, casual, and informal spaces. All are welcome!
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The texts relevant to the session will be emailed to registrants ahead of the session as pre-reading is encouraged. A limited amount of printed copies will be available.
Join us:
📅 Tuesday, June 16, 2026
📍 La Centrale Galerie Powerhouse - 4296 Boul. Saint-Laurent, Montréal, QC H2W 1Z3
🕕 6:00-8:30 PM
🎟️Tickets are $10, with a sliding scale option available. RSVP at fragmentsofthecity.eventbrite.com
🫖Snacks and beverages will be provided throughout the evening.
📃✍️Participants will receive a printed zine featuring excerpts, prompts, space for notes, and reflections connected to the themes of the session.
The event will also feature a curated table of books, objects, references, and other materials related to the topics and ideas explored during the gathering available for sale.
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About our hosts & collaborators:
terrain and text is a project Farida Rady started to extend critical spatial theory beyond the academy. terrain and text weaves together academic texts and everyday experience, creating collective learning spaces that are curious, forgiving, and speculative. Consisting of workshops, reading-group discussions, and learning circles, Farida’s approach positions long-form reading as a reclamation of intellectual and cognitive sovereignty amidst the attention economy. We exercise epistemic disobedience and we embrace not knowing!
Based between Cairo, Toronto, and Abu Dhabi, Farida Rady is a researcher, artist, and writer currently pursuing a PhD in urban planning at the University of Toronto. Farida explores questions of urban governance, housing justice, migrations, memory, and the poetics of place. Through various research/creation practices, including counter-mapping, alternative photography, and legal analyses, Farida prioritizes embodied and sited pedagogy and collaborative learning processes. Find Farida on a long walk, or swimming in the nearest body of water.
Born in Beirut, Lebanon, and currently based in Montreal, Rhéa Lahoud is an appreciator of all things big and small, something she reflects through her photography. She is currently pursuing a Master of Environment at Concordia University, in hopes to make the world a little less sad, and a little more just. She finds joy in gathering loved ones for home-cooked meals, and in working on collaborative projects and community events.
La Centrale Galerie Powerhouse is an artist-run centre dedicated to the dissemination and development of multidisciplinary feminist practices. They are committed to supporting practices and artists that are not very visible in the dominant cultural institutions, and this at various stages of their careers. Their programming dialogues with feminisms and supports intersectionality and social justice.
Where is it happening?
Event Location & Nearby Stays:
CAD 5.50 to CAD 11.00
