Guelph Jazz Festival Colloquium 2026

Artists On/Off the Record: Living Archives and Embodied Memory

September 10–11, 2026
ImprovLab
University of Guelph

In what ways can/do artists engage with archival materials—those held in institutional and community archives as well as those typically referred to as ephemera—to interrogate the aesthetic and political dimensions of cultural memory? How can/do they generate new, future-oriented archives through creative practice, research, and community-based work? To what extent can/do they enact and expand repertoires of embodied memory to build and sustain community?

The 2026 edition of the Guelph Jazz Festival Colloquium explores archival heritage as a dynamic, open-ended process. Bringing together artists, scholars, and community practitioners, it considers how archives are constituted, activated, contested, and transformed by—and in the hands of—artists engaged in improvisatory worldmaking.

Approaching archives as both accrued and curated, inherited and self-generated, the colloquium also attends to archives as living and embodied. Through presentations, creative works, and discussion, it foregrounds diverse perspectives, community engagement, experimental practices, and innovative methodologies that illuminate the aesthetic and political dimensions of cultural memory while imagining archives as sites of future possibility.

This event is free and open to all! Please RSVP by selecting a free ticket via EventBrite (link forthcoming).

Full schedule with abstracts coming soon. 

GJFC Personnel

Colloquium Director: Eric Fillion
Colloquium Manager: Julia Busatto
Communications and Media Coordinators: Chris Worden, Sam Boer
Co-Technical Directors: Emma Bortolon-Vettor, Colin Harrington
Technicians: TBC
Administrative Assistant: Madeline Morais
Program Committee: Eric Fillion, Curtis Sassur, Sam Boer, Emma Bortolon-Vettor

DAY 1 (1:00 pm to 11:00 pm)  

1:00–1:10 pm – Opening Remarks  
Eric Fillion 

1:10–1:40 pm – On the Exhibit XRoads
Lufuki

1:45–2:30 pm – The Improvising Archive: Reanimating Sonic Memories 
Jesse Stewart

2:35–3:05 pm – A Radio Active Community: Remixing Storytelling 
David Dacks and Sydney Dacks

3:05–3:20 pm – Coffee Break

3:20–4:35 pm – Archiving the Scene: Jazz Musicians and the Making of Community Memory  
Keisha Bell, “Archie Alleyne Archives: Remembering Black Musicians in Toronto between 1940-1960”; Brandon Hocura, “Adaptogenic Rhythms: Milford Graves, Self-Reliant Community Building, and His Archive of Heartbeats”; Brian Edward Jones, “Paul Motian, Armenian American: Improvising in the Space Between Black and White”; and Miles B. Jordan, “On the Road, On the Record: Touring, Family Memory, and the Living Archive of a New Orleans Musician”

4:40–5:30 pm – Statesman of the Piano: The Music of Lou Hooper
Sean Mills, Eric Fillion, and Désirée Rochat
With piano performance by (TBC)

5:30–7:15 pm – Dinner  

7:15–9:15 pm – Big Ideas in Improvisation
Ahmed Abdullah and Monique Ngozi Nri

9:30–11:00 pm – Film Screening
Sun Ra: Do the Impossible (Christine Turner, 2026)

DAY 2 (8:30 am to 4:00 pm)  

8:30–9:00 am – Coffee and Refreshments  

9:00–9:50 am – Workshops (Parallel Sessions)
Lara Hill, “Seeing Like an Improviser: Building a Living Archive”
Mike Hansen, “Disruptor, the Archive as a Constructed Fiction Through the Act of Co-Authorship”

9:55–11:05 am – Secret Lives of Colour: A Conversation
Myra Melford, François Houle, Joëlle Léandre, Gerry Hemingway, and Gordon Grdina

11:10–Noon – Improvising the Archive/Archiving the Improvisatory:  Medea Electronique and the Archive in the Post-Digital Age
Eric Lewis

Noon–1:00 pm – Lunch

1:00–1:45 pm – Artist Communities and the Living Archive
Michael Palumbo, “Before, During, and After: Documenting Improvised Music through the Exit Points Catalogue”; as well as Curtis Sassur and Simon Rogers, “Own Your Own Sound: Imagining a DIY Post-Custodial Archival Network”

1:50–3:10 pm – Resonant Bodies, Living Memory
Megan Harton, “On The Being & Breaking of Silence”; kat estacio, “Resonant Inter-Remembering”; Monika Herzig, “Transparent – Building Archives of Embodied Knowledge and Social Reflection”; and Kathryn Ladano, “Anatomy of the Recovering Brain: Performance as Living Archive and Embodied Memory”

3:15–3:50 pm – We Are Archives
Georgia Simms and Heather Cornell

3:50–4:00 pm – Remarks
Eric Fillion

4:00–6:00 pm – Colloquium and Festival Reception  
Hosted at Brothers Brewing Company (5 Wyndham St. N., Unit A, Downtown Guelph)