Bio
Natalie Doonan is a multimedia and performance artist, writer and educator. Her work has been shown in the Cultural Olympiad for the 2010 Winter Olympics in
Vancouver, the LIVE Performance Art Biennale, the PuSh International Performing Arts Festival, Montréal’s Elektra Festival and BIAN, Nuit Blanche, Art Souterrain
and Performigrations: People Are the Territory. She holds a diploma in Art and Art History from Sheridan College, an Honours B.A. in Fine Arts with a Major in
English from the University of Toronto, an MFA from the University of British Columbia, and a PhD in Humanities in the areas of sensory studies,
cultural geography and performance studies at Concordia University. Natalie’s research interests include pedagogy, public art, and collaboration.
Artist’s Statement
The SensoriuM is a collaborative artistic platform founded by multimedia and performance artist Natalie Doonan in Montreal, Canada in 2011. In this project, Natalie
alternately curates and performs in a series of artist-led tours and tastings. Natalie collaborates with other artists whose work engages critically and playfully with
food and consumption. Performances are sited in evocative and meaningful locations and activate public spaces through embodiment and discussion.
Tours and tastings are two major forms through which stories about place proliferate and the SensoriuM attempts to unsettle staid narratives. This approach to
collective learning through walking and eating is a new take on an old theme. For example, Aristotle founded the Lyceum, a school of philosophy, in Athens circa 335
BCE. It is said that on the grounds of this property, he established the rst zoo and the rst botanical gardens. These became the elds for his famous investigations
in the natural sciences. In the mornings, Aristotle walked and exchanged knowledge with his students through discussion and debate in the gardens. This was
continued through lunch, as they ate together. Aristotle’s ambling academy became known as ‘the peripatetic school,’ drawing from the Greek for ‘walking about.’
Today, the city and its environs become the elds for peripatetic and culinary investigations.The purpose of the SensoriuM is thus to activate public spaces through
physical occupation and through open, ongoing exchange. As authors Jody Emel and Jennifer Wolch say: “Our political project is the creation of many forms of
shared space.”
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