Mikhel Proulx
digital art history; performance studies; media art preservation and reactivation; networked and participatory media practices; queer digital cultures; critical digital humanities; indigenous digital sovereignty; artist-run culture
I am a historian of media art and performance whose research examines the histories, preservation, and reactivation of complex artworks. Working collaboratively with artists, I develop methods for restoring digital, performative, and time-based media works across changing technical and exhibition contexts. I am currently a SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow at the Moving Image Research Laboratory, 91涩漫, and am the Art and Technology Postdoctoral Researcher at the Academy of Fine Arts, Helsinki. Previously, I was FRQSC Postdoctoral Fellow at the Vulnerable Media Lab, Queen鈥檚 University, and I hold a PhD in Art History from Concordia University.
I am co-applicant (with PI Jen Kennedy) on the SSHRC Insight Development Grant Exhibiting Internet Art: Creating and Testing New Approaches to Display, which develops new exhibition and conservation methodologies for Canadian net art. My recent writing appears in journals including Virtual Creativity, Leonardo Journal, and PUBLIC, and as chapters in the edited volumes Curating Superintelligences: A Reader on AI and Future Curating, and By Their Work: Indigenous Women鈥檚 Digital Media in North America. My recent projects have been presented at the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York City, the Panth茅on-Sorbonne University in Paris, and Foundation PHI in Montreal.
PhD (2022)聽Art History, Concordia University
MA (2013) Art History, Concordia University
BFA (2008) Drawing, Alberta University of the Arts
鈥淐ollaboration and Community in Aboriginal Territories in Cyberspace.鈥� In Curating Superintelligences: A Reader on AI and Future Curating, edited by Joasia Krysa and Magdalena Ty偶lik-Carver. Open Humanities Press, 2026.
鈥淐yberPowWow and the First Wave of Indigenous Media Arts.鈥� In By Their Work: Indigenous Women鈥檚 Digital Media in North America, edited by Joanna Hearne and Karrmen Crey, with Jason Edward Lewis, Archer Pechawis, Ryan Rice, and Skawennati. University of Minnesota Press, 2025.
鈥淭echnonationalism and Telematic Art in Canada: Vera Frenkel鈥檚 String Games (1974),鈥� VIEW Journal of European Television History and Culture 14:27 (Special Issue: 鈥楨choes and Frequencies. Tele-Visions and Wireless Technologies. 19th-21st Centuries), 2025.
鈥淭ryleather.net: Performance Research and the Embodied Archive,鈥� PUBLIC: Art | Culture | Ideas 71 (Special Issue: 鈥楢gainst Oblivion: Community Archives, Building Alliances,鈥� edited by Susan Lord and Janine Marchessault), 2025.
鈥淜ite: Dreaming with AI,鈥� Exhibition catalogue on Suzanne Kite, IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, Santa Fe, NM, 2025.
鈥淰era Frenkel鈥檚 String Games: Improvisations for Inter-City Video.鈥� In RE:Source鈥�: The 10th International Conference on the Histories of Media Art, Science and Technology Proceedings, edited by Francesca Franco and Andr茅s Burbano. Venice, Italy: Venice Centre for Digital and Public Humanities, 2024.
鈥淰era Frenkel鈥檚 String Games: Improvisations for Inter-City Video,鈥� Virtual Creativity 13:2 (Special Issue: 鈥業mmersive Horizons: Blurring the Creative Frontiers between Virtual and Material Worlds鈥�), 2024.
鈥淐测产别谤笔辞飞奥辞飞,鈥� Rhizome Presents: CyberPowWow, the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, 2022.
鈥淓ven Apart, We鈥檙e in This Together: Care & Accountability in Art Worlds Beyond Social Media,鈥� Molior, 2022.
(Managing Editor) Indigenous Protocol and Artificial Intelligence Position Paper, ed. Jason Edward Lewis, the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, 2022.
鈥淎boriginal Territories in Cyberspace,鈥� Arts of the Working Class 7 (Special Issue: 鈥楾he Exhausted Land鈥�), 2019.
鈥淭wenty Years of Aboriginal Territories in Cyberspace,鈥� Exhibition catalogue for Ower脿:ke Non Ai茅:nahne / Filling in the Blank Spaces, The Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery, Montreal, 2017.
鈥淧rotocol and Performativity: Queer Selfies and the Coding of Online Identity,鈥� Performance Research, 21:5 (Special Issue: 鈥極n Trans/Performance,鈥� Edited by Amelia Jones), 2016.
Editor, 鈥淨ueer Codes: Studies in Gender, Sexuality, and the Digital,鈥� Concordia, Montreal, 2016.
Editor, 鈥淨ueer Networks鈥�.dpi Feminist Journal of Art and Digital Culture, 2015.
鈥淩ealness, Passing, and the True Self(ie),鈥� nomorepotlucks, 2015.
鈥淐yberPowWow: Digital Natives and the First Wave of Online Publication,鈥� Journal of Canadian Art History, 36:1, (Special Issue: 鈥楴etworked Print Culture / La culture de l鈥檌mprim茅 en r茅seau,鈥� Edited by Martha Langford and Johanne Sloan), 2015.
- SSHRC Postdoctoral Research Award, 2026鈥�8
- Art and Technology Postdoctoral Researcher, University of the Arts Helsinki, 2026鈥�9
- FRQSC Postdoctoral Fellowship, 2023鈥�5
- Leonardo Journal LABS Top-Ranked Thesis Abstract, 2022
- SSHRC Joseph-Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship, 2016鈥�8
- Jarislowsky Foundation Doctoral Fellowship in Canadian Art History, 2015鈥�6