INGRID
OLIVIA
NORRMÉN-SMITH

My path has moved from brain circuits towards stories. Over the last decade, I have navigated multiple spheres and lenses: the neurobiological, the phenomenological, the artistic. My investigations hold central examinations of narrative, subjectivity, and psychic life, probing relationships between context, belief and experience. I hold a B.S. in Neuroscience and an M.Sc. in Psychiatry. I am a Watson Fellow, a Pulitzer Center Reporting Fellow, and an alumnus of the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies.

I have over ten years of qualitative research inquiry across multiple domains. Presently, I am a member of an international research team conducting a patient-oriented qualitative research project on individuals’ experiences with psychiatric drug use and withdrawal, and am currently working clinically as a psychosocial caseworker with vulnerable and formerly homeless women. Prior to this, during my masters degree, I led an interdisciplinary qualitative research study on perinatal mental health, findings from which were published in a special issue of the journal Frontiers in Sociology.

My artistic practice is equal parts critical inquiry and poetic expression. My explorations are by way of intimate portraiture, nonlinear narrative, oral history, states of enchantment, and meditations on memory, recollection, and time. My experience and hybrid projects have straddled intersections of the worlds of journalistic reportage, the documentary film industry, the artists’ moving image through digital experimentation and analog, material practice, and nascent works of fiction. I have worked as a producer on feature projects for award-winning, Montréal-based boutique independent documentary film production company, CatBird Productions. My emergent auteur works have shown in New York, London, Oslo, Los Angeles, and Montréal. My Pulitzer Center reporting was nominated for an RFK Humanitarian Journalism Award. In the fall of 2022, I was an artist in residence at OBORO (Montréal) and was selected for the talent lab affiliated with 2022’s B3 Moving Image Biennale (Germany).

I hail from New York City and am currently operating in Montréal.