Tyler Morgenstern

Tyler Morgenstern is a second-year Master’s student in Media Studies at Concordia University. Concerned with how the material, discursive, and affective conditions of (settler) colonialism and white supremacy shape experiences of intimacy in the contemporary moment, his thesis research (supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council) explores themes of embodiment, place, and race in recent works of media and screen art by racialized and Indigenous artists working Canada. Situating these works in the context of a post-9/11 Canada marked by dramatic shifts in the organization of citizenship, immigration, national security, and surveillance policy, he explores how particular aesthetic practices, by recasting the ways in which viewers experience space, throw into relief the material specificity of the contemporary Canadian state’s “atmospheric bordering regime,” disclosing and contesting its racialized, colonial, and gendered disciplinary valences. Morgenstern is also a member of the Feminist Media Studio at Concordia University, and, along with several scholars and artists from throughout the Americas, is currently in the early phases of a collaborative writing project focused on the aesthetic, political, and methodological possibilities bound up in the notion of trespass. As a member of the Arclight team, Morgenstern will be assisting in the digitization of selected archival materials and supporting the coordination of the Arclight symposium.