Guillaume Sirois

Guillaume Sirois is Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at the Université de Montréal. As a specialist in artistic and cultural environments, he has followed a multidisciplinary path in art history and communications studies. He currently conducts research on visual practices, including contemporary art, design and architecture, as well as on the creative economy and material culture. His texts have been published in several collective works and scientific journals.

The project

Title: Between urban planning and citizen appropriation of spaces: a visual survey of urban design in Montreal

"The project seeks to answer the following question: how is the value of urban design established in a city like Montreal, between the designs put forward by urban designers and the appreciation of their projects by the city's citizens? In this way, the project seeks to confront the overhanging viewpoint of urban designers with the street viewpoint of the citizens who pass through these spaces every day. The project is based on a working hypothesis, developed from preliminary observations, that urban designers and citizens make contrasting assessments of the value of design. The former generally see their practice as a response to two common criticisms of city life (the coldness of interpersonal relationships and the increasing homogenization of urban landscapes). In this context, designers seek to propose innovative, aesthetic and sustainable solutions that restore a form of authenticity to urban space. For their part, citizens react to these projects in a variety of ways, from the most enthusiastic to the most off-putting. To investigate this question, our project adopts a visual perspective that helps to underpin the theoretical and methodological approach. The notion of visibility, understood as a set of operations by which actors make their vision of the world visible, enables us to think of design as a bearer of vision, an instrument of control and an element in the staging of the city. The visual perspective continues in the methods used: photographic diaries, photo-elicitation interviews, visual analysis of projects. As design is an area of research very little explored by the social sciences, despite its growing prevalence in contemporary societies, our project will enable us to develop a finer understanding of the complexity of the positions that actors (designers and citizens) elaborate in relation to these projects."

Hosting institution: Institut d’Études Européennes - Université Paris-8

Selective Bibliography

• Sirois, G. & Vander Gucht, D., dir. (2023). Sociologie visuelle : l’image dans l’enquête de terrain. Sociologie et sociétés, vol. 55, no. 1.
• Sirois, G. & El Ouardi, M. (2023). Artiste-employé ou artiste-entrepreneur : Évolution d’un double discours dans les politiques culturelles au Québec. Recherches sociographiques. Vol. 64, no. 3, p. 581-606.
• Sirois, G. (2021). Design: An Emergent Area of Cultural Policy in Montreal. Journal of Art Management, Law & Society. Vol. 51, no. 4, p. 238-250.
• Sirois, G. (2021). Selling Authenticity: The Aesthetics of Design Boutiques in Montreal. In Christoph Lindner & Gerardo Sandoval (eds.). Aesthetics of Gentrification: Seductive Spaces and Exclusive Communities in the Neoliberal City (p. 73-90). Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.
• Sirois, G. & Bellavance, G., dir. (2021). Les arts à l’université : institutionnalisation et pluralisation. Cahiers de recherche sociologique, no. 71.