Introduction

Agata Mergler is a PhD candidate in humanities at York University with a thesis on Cultural Translation and Latin American Digital Art. She works at an intersection of cultural translation, cultural and media studies, digital art research, and comparative literature.

Currently, she is a lecturer at Magdalena Abakanowicz Art University in Poznan in Philosophy (BA students) and Contemporary Philosophy (MA students). She is a PhD with expertise in 20^th-century German philosophy.
She has been part of a collaborative artistic research project Haptic/Visual Identities since 2015 alongside Cristian Villavicencio, which brought exhibitions, articles, and art talks in Europe, South and North America.
She is a co-creator of the CCLA research group Fantastical Constellations after Magical Realism and co-edited a Canadian Review of Comparative Literature issue on post-magical realism.

Her recent articles are “Walter Benjamin's Media Theory in the Times of Platform Nihilism” in Violence and Nihilism book, and Documenta Fifteen and Berlin Biennale 12 - Comparison published in NECSUS European Journal of Media Studies.

In unequal measures she has enjoyed working as a media artist, translator, interpreter, and an academic teacher in recent years.

Joshua Synenko is Assistant Professor of Media and Culture in the Department of Cultural Studies, Trent University, and Director of the Cultural Studies Graduate Programs. He is Co-Editor of Media Theory, an independent (scholar-led), online and (libre) open access journal of peer-reviewed, theoretical interventions into all aspects of media and communications. He also serves on the Advisory Board of the Canadian Association of Cultural Studies (CACS), and on the Executive Board of the Canadian Comparative Literature Association (CCLA). Synenko’s research is situated between media and geography. His published work explores relationships between cities and mobility (migration, displacement, settlement), cinema and geography, and on exchanges between practice-based research and artistic research. He is currently writing a monograph, Locative Art Revisited: Experimental Technologies for Social Engagement, under contract with Concordia University Press.