About
I make ground for people to encounter volatility. I write about how we find our footing on terrain that keeps moving.
The work
For eighteen years I have been making places to stand. Situations, objects, games, and multi-day gatherings that put people out on the terrain rather than in front of descriptions of it. Most of what we are handed about artificial intelligence and a changing climate arrives already packaged and ready, our part reduced to agreement or refusal.
Two convictions hold up the ground I make.
That nobody speaks from nowhere. Whatever you say, you say from a particular place and time, and you are answerable for it from there. There is no other ground available to you, and no alibi.
And that the ground keeps moving, which is why no account of a person or a situation is ever the last one. To declare a final word about someone is a small violence — a way of insisting they stand still on ground that will not.
The writing is the other half of the same work. What the ground turns up, I think through here.
SHORT BIO — 50 WORDS
Jerrold McGrath is a cultural programmer and writer in Toronto. He makes situations, objects, and gatherings that put people inside technological and ecological volatility rather than in front of explanations of it. Founded UKAI Projects. His writing appears at Poor Footing.
BIO — 150 WORDS
Jerrold McGrath is a cultural programmer, researcher, and writer based in Toronto. For eighteen years he has made residencies, festivals, national consultations, and multi-day encounters that place people inside artificial intelligence, ecological damage, and political uncertainty rather than in front of descriptions of them. Work has been presented at Hebbel am Ufer in Berlin, the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, and SÍM Reykjavík, with commissions and partnerships across four continents. He is the author of In Praise of Disorder and Poetics of Synthetic Language, and his research has been published by Springer and Edward Elgar. He founded UKAI Projects in 2017 and was Executive Director of the Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre from 2025 to 2026. He writes every second week at Poor Footing.
RESIDENCIES AND EXCHANGES
Milieux Institute, Concordia University, Montreal — 2025
SÍM Residency, Korpúlfsstaðir, Reykjavík — 2024
Intelligent Terrain, Ferme Lanthorn, Wakefield — 2024
Ferment AI Exchange, Berlin — 2022
Ingenuity Labs Research Institute | Queen’s University — 2021
Berlin partnership research: transmediale, CTM, ZK/U, STATE Studio, Stiftung Neue Verantwortung — 2020
Leighton Artists' Colony, Banff Centre — 2019SELECTED TALKS
Creative Communities Commons, University of Toronto — 2024
Artist presentation, SÍM Residency, Reykjavík — 2024
MUTEK Forum, Montreal — 2021, 2023
University of the Arts London, School of Communication — 2022
BMW Foundation Responsible Leaders Network Global Gathering, Mérida — 2020
STATE of AI launch, Los Angeles, with STATE Studio Berlin — 2019
Keynote, Designing Spaces for Creation, World MakerFaire, New York — 2015MEMBERSHIPS AND SERVICE
Writers' Union of Canada — member, 2024–
UKAI Projects — board chair, 2025–
Centre for Sustainable Practice in the Arts — board member, 2023–24
Better Images of AI (UK) — contributor, 2021–23
BMW Foundation Responsible Leaders Network — member and program co-designer, 2017–24