Making a Mess with SORCE Collective

As we prepare for our upcoming Hyperphantasic Storytelling Experience at the 2025 Intersections/Cross-Sections Conference (Interrogating the Life-World), I find myself reflecting on the past four years of being part of SORCE Collective.

Originally the brainchild of Andrew Bateman and Craig Fahner, SORCE Collective has been developing an archive of informational and cultural resources, investing in knowledge mobilization through creative and experimental research. Our process involves organizing developmental activities for research-creatives, leveraging our place in the ComCult department at TMU as an incubator for novel, forward-thinking, community-driven creative work.

Under the present stewardship of myself (iowyth hezel ulthiin), Louis Marrone, Kacie G. Hopkins, Emily Faubert, and Kyra Min-Poole and past contributions from Megan Hughes, Alexa Vachon, and Andrew Lochhead, and many others, we continue to expand our network, forging links with other graduate programs such as Information Studies at UofT, Media and Design Innovation at The Creative School, and the University of Pennsylvania’s CAMRA. These partnerships are at the core of our mission: to learn through doing.

This past year, we printed a banner with our slogan and de facto methodological statement.

SORCE: $*%# Around and Find Out

Those involved in our activities know that this motto rings true. Our collective approaches academic learning with curiosity and play, embracing the traditions of mutual aid and solidarity politics to make SORCE more than just an academic experiment; it’s also an incubator for friendships and long-term collaborations to form.

For students craving more hands-on experience, research collaboration can be a transformative way to expand skill sets and gain access to cross-disciplinary and cross-cultural perspectives. More than that, it offers a way of being in knowledge, where learning happens relationally through collective experimentation, conversation, and shared experience.

One of the most exciting aspects of this work is the way it brings together perspectives that might not otherwise share space. That’s what makes a program like ComCult so unique—we aren’t afraid to have those difficult, expansive, or chaotic conversations (in fact, we thrive on them). My learning experience has been deepened by allowing SORCE to serve as a vehicle for the ComCult community, one that has naturally extended beyond the university and into broader cultural and activist spaces.

For many of us, the thought of revolutionizing academia—while also fending off the pressures of global capitalism—can be so overwhelming that we feel burnt out by the fight itself. At SORCE, we leave all that for tomorrow. Today, we share food, we talk, and we hold deep and meaningful conversations about how life and knowledge are shaping us. By creating a space where it’s safe to come as you are, we don’t just learn; we change. In these spaces of gathering, we become different, stronger, more interconnected. Furthermore, by centering land-based and embodied knowledge in our activities, we provide an important space for Indigenous ontologies to become familiar within the institution. We acknowledge that our senses and bodies hold knowledge, knowledge shaped by our experiences in and of the world.

Deep Theorization Meets Deep Hanging Out

At SORCE, we like to mix big philosophical questions with the small, everyday details of life. We talk about space-time and the nature of the universe alongside what might seem like the insignificant minutiae of daily experience, offering scholars and the greater academic community opportunities to meet, to visit, to be present together in space.

By intentionally foregoing rigid structure in our experiments, we embrace the ways social space unfolds when not strictly controlled. Our Choose-Your-Own Adventure Conference sought to provide just enough scaffolding to enable creative play and movement in a relaxed, holistic, and trauma-informed atmosphere. This is the work we most like to do: the work of establishing cross-disciplinary, cross-institutional, and outer-institutional pathways that integrate the broader T’karonto community and beyond. But let’s be clear—blurring boundaries doesn’t mean abandoning structure. Rather, SORCE proposes that by being present together, we can discover the structures that best reflect who we are and what we are becoming.

This responsive, iterative, and reflexive form of experimentation invites us to reflect on where knowledge comes from. Perhaps it is as much about the how as the what—that is, perhaps the ways we engage with knowledge shape our research and scholarship just as much as our subjects of study.

Please Join Us for a Hyperphantasic Storytelling Experience

We hope you’ll consider attending our experiment:
Friday, March 14th | 6 - 8 PM
The Catalyst (Rogers Communication Centre)

SORCE presents a Hyperphantasic Storytelling

This event invites the community to reflect on the kind of future we want to be part of. Hyperphantasic storytelling mobilizes the “story field”—an evolving imaginary space where collective narration generates an emergent vision for the future.

By stepping into this process we do not shape, but instead discover, we invite one another to land—to recognize that our real lives, choices, and perspectives are inherently part of an unfolding collective future—a future we cannot help but co-create.

About the author: PhD student iowyth ulthiin is an interdisciplinary scholar and artist whose work explores the intersections of performance art, technology, and embodied counter-hegemonic knowledge, grounded in lived experiences and grassroots activism.  

Insights & Ideas is a ComCult blog series showcasing the research and expertise of ComCult students. Designed to engage a broad audience, the series features op-ed-style posts that connect academic insights to real-world issues, making complex ideas accessible and relevant. Each entry highlights the unique perspectives and innovative thinking within the ComCult program. We invite you to explore more stories that amplify research and inspire ideas! (News and Events Archives)