TERA is an experiment in collaborative thinking about the encounters between technology, ecology, and religion.
It brings together scholars and artists working across Canada, the United States, and the Caribbean
to creatively reimagine these themes as expressed in scholarship, art, and design.
It brings together scholars and artists working across Canada, the United States, and the Caribbean
to creatively reimagine these themes as expressed in scholarship, art, and design.
meet our team
our collaborative method
TERA is a contemporary subversion of nineteenth-century naturalist clubs and cabinets of curiosities, which categorized the world's natural and human phenomena, including sacred items. In these spaces of elite knowledge making, technology, ecology, and religion collided.
We inherit from naturalist clubs an awareness of our intimacy with others: as scholars and artists, we never think alone. At the same time, we subvert their lingering authority as we, too, become (irreverent) collectors of natural and human-made artifacts. In 2022, TERA met online each month to present "artifacts" to each other -- an online performance, an academic text, a photograph, a sonic recording, or anything else. Later, we gathered in Montreal to map our artifacts into creatively weird taxonomies. Through our encounters with the artifacts and with each other, we sparked new forms of collective thinking. Now, we invite you to join us.
TERA's website is an outcome of our collective experiment. It's a tool for you to think alongside us. You can map your own artifacts. You can use the site for classroom teaching. Or, you can simply enjoy looking and listening to what we found.