PART 6
You And I Are Water Earth Fire Air Of Life And Death - PART 6
Earth (2025)
DECEMBER 12, 2025
12 NOON TO 12 MIDNIGHT
In-person at USask Galleries, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. Plus streaming via YouTube and various streaming partners.
HOSTED AND PRESENTED BY the University of Saskatchewan Art Galleries and Collection from its ROUNDING space at the Kenderdine Gallery.
CURATED BY jake moore and Christof Migone.
"Earth (Okâwîmâw Askiy - ᐅᑳᐧᒫᐊᐧᐢᑭᕀ)” is a 12-hour event that follows on the heels of 2020’s You, 2021’s And, 2022’s I, 2023’s Are and 2024’s Water. It is the sixth in a series of twelve annual events taking place on December 12 from 12 noon to 12 midnight. Each year the event moves through each word of the 12-word phrase, You And I Are Water Earth Fire Air Of Life And Death, to activate the word of the year in myriad ways.
FEATURING
Filippo Andreatta, Jessica Marion Barr, Christina Battle, Sepideh Behrouzian, Joshua Bonnetta, Andrew Denton, Tanya Doody, Ufuk Ali Gueray, Michaela Grill/Karl Lemieux, Jessica Karuhanga, Masha Kouznetsova, Ella Dawn McGeough, Erica Mendritzki, Sarah Messerschmidt, Joseph Naytowhow, Cassie Packham, Parsons & Charlesworth, Danielle Petti, Laura St. Pierre, Dawit L. Petros, Jackson 2bears, Arielle Walker, Aurora Wolfe, Worried Earth, Melanie Zurba, and more.
STATEMENT
The word ‘earth’ when preceded by a direct article becomes planetary, the Earth. This proximity shifts our understanding of ‘the substance of the land surface; soil’ into ‘the world’. It moves from ground under your feet and soil you can hold in your hand, to expanse you walk on and territory you live within. This perceptual transformation makes clear the potency of spatial relationality in language and worldmaking and opens the parallel in this year’s title and prompt, Earth (Okâwîmâw Askiy - ᐅᑳᐧᒫᐊᐧᐢᑭᕀ).
The planet Earth is the only one in this solar system whose English name is not taken from Greek or Roman mythology. The word Earth comes from Old English and simply means ground. Ground-, grounded, defined as the solid surface of the earth, a limited or defined extent of the earth's surface; land, land of a specified kind, an area of knowledge or subject of discussion or thought, factors forming a basis for action or the justification for a belief, a prepared surface, solid particles that form a residue; sediment. While the planets that exist light years away are assigned narratives already in existence, it is Earth’s spatial and relational proximity to us, that invites beings to story it directly with experiences born of connections between living and place. Humans continue to re-story the world as Earth’s topography informs us while we simultaneously inform, deform and re-form.
One story goes that when Earth was a young planet, a large chunk of rock smashed into it, displacing a portion of Earth's interior. The resulting chunks clumped together and formed our Moon. Unlike other discrete moons in this solar system, Earth and Moon were once one. Moon is made of Earth, and Earth, like its human inhabitants, is mostly made up of water. These critical correspondences and seeming oppositions of liquids that produce the appearance of solids make clear the intra-relations at play, the co-constitutive nature of things, and how our wounded planet maintains balance through its spatial tether to its long-lost entrails.
We understand well that a single narrative is inadequate. There has never been just one, there have always been many. There are indeed other stories, but they are not our own to tell.
How do we definitively describe something still coming into being? How do we definitively describe something that is brought into being by multitudes, and regardless of consensus of origin, fully exists?
What becomes clear through the stories is the relationship between the earth and the moon is one of deep entanglement, they are made from each other and continue to rely on each other in reciprocal ways.
These co-constitutions, interreliance, and fluidity of meaning reflect how Earth is primarily made up of water—its seeming material opposite—and the ground itself is made up of a series of relations. Western science describes it as the only planet in this solar system to support life as ‘we’ know it (knowing Western understanding of life is limited). In this cosmology, Earth is an ocean planet reliant on its moon to keep it from wobbling uncontrollability. There is an intimacy implied and required in making our world a whole constructed of millions of parts, distributed and connected, reliant on their ongoing transmission and reception. Electronic communications require grounding to flow uninterrupted and make clear our species’ reliance on Earth to both imagine and articulate connections and the potential to be whole, if wounded, through them. Amplifying Earth as a series of relations becomes our grounding premise.
Samuel Beckett concludes one of his Fizzles with these words “ruinstrewn land, little panic steps.” As both unsettled settlers of Argentinian/Austrian and Scottish/Dutch heritage, the paths we take are teeming with these little panic steps, but they are steps nonetheless.
We are coming towards you from this ground here. Here, kisiskâciwan, the traditional territories of the Nehiyawak, Maškékowak, Nîhithaw, Lakota, Nakoda, Dakota, Saulteaux (Anihšināpē), Dene, and the ancestral lands of the Métis, specifically Treaty 6 on the Canadian Prairies.
HOST AND MAIN PRESENTER
The University of Saskatchewan Art Galleries and Collection make public historical and contemporary art and creative practices that confront the urgent and critical matters of our time, whether they be social, political, aesthetic, intellectual, environmental or cultural in nature. We are local and planetary in our scope and outlook, guided by relationality. While the galleries are tasked to animate the creative environment of the University in an interdisciplinary spirit of provocation and inquiry, they are also necessarily permeable spaces that foster reciprocal exchange with community in civic, territorial and national reach, and beyond. Collectively, the galleries – Kenderdine Art Gallery, College Art Galleries and Gordon Snelgrove Gallery – along with our collection, serve as an autonomous cultural research institution within the University, dedicated to intellectual exploration and freedom of expression, fostering open debate and dialogue. We are fully committed to the principles and Calls to Action of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and participate in co-creating the future these calls seek. Access for all is fundamental to a public art gallery and critical to the inquiry we undertake. We recognize the importance of the past as it shapes the present and future and affirm our obligation to interpret and interrogate our collective memory. Our mission is to engage the communities we are in relation with through artistic production, dissemination, and collection in response to the urgent, emergent, and vital matters of our time. Our offerings will be determined through a critical evaluation of relevancy, will seek reciprocity, and aim for resonance.
PRESENTING PARTNERS
STREAMING PARTNERS
FUNDING BODIES
PROGRAMME
PRESENTED BY: University of Saskatchewan Art Galleries and Collection
DECEMBER 12, 2025
12 NOON - 12 MIDNIGHT (EST)
LIVE IN-PERSON:
ROUNDING space at the Kenderdine Gallery, USask Galleries, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan (free) (venue is accessible)
ARCHIVE OF LIVESTREAM:
YouTube Livestream
STREAMING PARTNERS:
NAISA, Radius, Radio Bloc Oral, Resonance Extra, and Wave Farm Radio
EARTH (OKÂWÎMÂW ASKIY - ᐅᑳᐧᒫᐊᐧᐢᑭᕀ) - HOUR 1
12 CST, 13 EST, 18 GMT, 19 CET
University of Saskatchewan Art Galleries and Collection PRESENTS Aurora Wolfe, and Joseph Naytowhow
Joseph Naytowhow, kēhtē-aya (elder), musician, story teller and artist, Plains Cree/Woodland Cree, Sturgeon Lake First Nation, Treaty 6 Territory, is the advisor to the Indigenous Law Centre, College of Law, Usask and a steering committee member for kihci-okāwīmāw askiy (Great Mother Earth) Knowledge Centre (Great Mother Earth) Knowledge Centre. kihci-okāwīmāw askiy is founded on the principle that the land is our first teacher and of central importance to Indigenous peoples. The centre serves as a resource for Indigenous communities and organizations seeking information, training, and research partnerships. He will welcome us and begin this event in a good way.
Credit for background image: Driftland (2020) by Fatemeh Ebrahimnejadnamini
bounty by Aurora Wolfe
Fragments can take many forms. Sounds, images, and memories are brought together in this composition, grounded in the grasslands of my childhood. Wrapped in the bones of my kin, 15 years after my departure - I returned. I laid down tobacco and searched for answers. I expected to see the hurt that I had been holding within myself reflected in the landscape. Instead, I found transformation and the quiet strength in those reconfigurations.
Time (Less) - 1
The last twenty-five minutes of the 1st hour feature the contribution of Laura St. Pierre to the Time (Less) series.
All Flourishing 1 by Laura St. Pierre
Laura St. Pierre’s speculative practice has engaged The Sower as a primary character for a while now. In her 2022 exhibition, SÈME LA PEAU / SEED THE SKIN, the Sower had begun to integrate her body into the care required for the proliferation of foodstuffs and plant matter, there was a unique tenderness to this vulnerability that was also heavily surveilled. This new work reveals a next level of intimacy and interdependence as The Sower has both found and produced sites for growth between the bodies of others now present in her interpreted world. All Flourishing becomes the line that carries through because it reflects the relational nature of liveness, but also the spatial proximity required to engage in well-being, and how it must be fostered. This extends to thoughts about borders perceived and actual, and the care our species must take up urgently is we are planning to survive. There is a slowness to the work that becomes the time keeper, the chorus, the return.
EARTH (OKÂWÎMÂW ASKIY - ᐅᑳᐧᒫᐊᐧᐢᑭᕀ) - HOUR 2
13 CST, 14 EST, 19 GMT, 20 CET
University of Saskatchewan Art Galleries and Collection PRESENTS Parsons & Charlesworth, Dawit L. Petros, Michaela Grill & Karl Lemieux
Algae Kin Gatherer by Parsons and Charlesworth
A floating sanctuary for multispecies communion, the Algae Kin-Gatherer is a public sculpture and is the first physical manifestation from the climate fiction Multispecies Inc. This woven willow raft, mounted on ash and sealed with dyed ballistic nylon, enables humans to forge intimate relationships with microscopic aquatic life.In a time of ecological upheaval, the Algae Kin-Gatherer serves as both functional tool and provocative symbol—challenging us to envision futures where humans develop meaningful connections with non-human life forms, particularly those invisible to the naked eye yet crucial to our planetary systems.
The Sea In Its Thirst Is Trembling by Dawit L. Petros
Dawit L. Petros’ The Sea In Its Thirst Is Trembling (2019) documents a collaborative sound intervention conceived for Ríos Intermitentes (Intermittent Rivers) during the 13th Havana Biennial in Matanzas, Cuba. The live performance took place along the San Juan River, under a bridge, which ultimately connected musical traditions, histories, and cultures.
The Great Thaw (intro) by Michaela Grill and Karl Lemieux
What does it mean to represent the visual traces of environmental destruction? How to communicate the temporality of global heating in a time-based medium? The Great Thaw is ultimately an experiment in documentary filmmaking and a foray into scientific communication. Collaborating with scientific researchers, the filmmakers shift between relaying facts and creating an experience of those facts, allowing the spectator to feel the environmental changes and sense the physical transformations. The interplay of analogue and digital imagery (the media of choice of Lemieux and Grill respectively), combined with the intricately composed soundtrack and the oscillation between abstraction and figuration, opens a space for embodied understandings and the fluid movement of thought.
Time (Less) - 2
The last twenty-five minutes of the 2nd hour feature the contribution of Laura St. Pierre to the Time (Less) series.
More info under Hour 1 above or here.
EARTH (OKÂWÎMÂW ASKIY - ᐅᑳᐧᒫᐊᐧᐢᑭᕀ) - HOUR 3
14 CST, 15 EST, 20 GMT, 21 CET
University of Saskatchewan Art Galleries and Collection PRESENTS Michaela Grill & Karl Lemieux
The Great Thaw (2024) by Michaela Grill & Karl Lemieux
What does it mean to represent the visual traces of environmental destruction? How to communicate the temporality of global heating in a time-based medium? These are the questions tackled by Michaela Grill and Karl Lemieux’s experimental documentary exploring permafrost thaw and its effects on diverse ecosystems. The film does not shy away from the gravity of the situation, the title alluding not only to potential futures but equally to a very tangible and disastrous present. Gliding camera movements reminiscent of Grill’s Into the Great White Open reveal the surfaces and contours of Arctic snow-covered landscapes that drift in and out of abstraction, confusing scale and perspective. As we settle into the beauty of the images, it becomes clear that what we are seeing is the great thaw itself, evidenced in the exposed rock faces, the melting ice and the sounds of water that gradually seep through the layers of electronic music. If these opening drone images draw us into a sense of the sublime, the scientific facts presented in a series of intertitles bring us solemnly back down to earth, informing us of the consequences of inaction.
The Great Thaw is ultimately an experiment in documentary filmmaking and a foray into scientific communication. Collaborating with scientific researchers, the filmmakers shift between relaying facts and creating an experience of those facts, allowing the spectator to feel the environmental changes and sense the physical transformations. The interplay of analogue and digital imagery (the media of choice of Lemieux and Grill respectively), combined with the intricately composed soundtrack and the oscillation between abstraction and figuration, opens a space for embodied understandings and the fluid movement of thought. Avoiding the didactic, the film nonetheless wills us to confront reality. As the final intertitle states, quoting from Thomas Halliday’s book Otherlands: A World in the Making, ‘We know that change is occurring, we know that we are responsible, we know what will happen if it continues, we know that we can stop it, and we know how. The question is whether we will try.’ (Kim Knowles)
The Great Thaw is a project about permafrost thaw and how landscape is changed by it. We take a close look at ecosystems like the boreal forest, the tundra and the arctic coastline to document the impacts of the melting permafrost caused by climate change and to present the beauty of permafrost itself. After Antarctic Traces, The Great Thaw is a new part of the Ecological Grief Series which focuses on different aspects of human interaction with nature in the Anthropocene. The series investigates environmental melancholia and the loss of places, species and ecosystems.
credits: sound recording, sound design and original music: Nick Kuepfer / production: Michaela Grill / scientific advisor: Jennifer Watts, Woodwell Climate Research Centre / additional research and production assistant: Peter Burton / additional camera: Caleb Molinar / image restoration consultant: Patrick Bergeron / additional scientific advisor: Dr. Christopher Burn, Chancellor’s Professor of Geography Carleton University, President International Permafrost Association
with (in order of appearance): Dr. Alexander L. Kholodov, Permafrost Laboratory, Geophysical Institute, University of Alaska Fairbanks / Valeria Briones, Research Assistant, Woodwell Climate Research Centre / Dr. Jennifer Watts, Ecologist, Woodwell Climate Research Centre / Christina Minions, Research Assistant, Woodwell Climate Research Centre / Anne Yutrzenka, Alaska resident and science teacher / Martin Edwardsen, Arctic Indigenous Traditional Ecological Knowledge Specialist at Ukpeaġvik Iñupiat Corporation Science / Jeremiah Goodwin / Van Edwardsen / Terza Brower
scientific input: Dr. Gaku Amada, Institute of Arctic Climate and Environment Research, Research Institut for Global Change, Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology / Tom Douglas, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Permafrost Tunnel / Celtie Ferguson, GIS Technician, Western Arctic Research Centre, Aurora Research Institute / Dr. Helene Genet, Institute of Arctic Biology at University of Alaska Fairbanks / Prof. Stephan Gruber, Geography and Environmental Studies, Carleton University / Nick Hasson, Water and Environmental Research Center at University of Alaska Fairbanks / Adrienne Hill, implementation and governance manager First Nation of Na-Cho Nyäk Dun / Jennifer Humphries, Permafrost Specialist, Western Arctic Research Centre, Aurora Research Institute / Dr. Hideki Kobayashi, Institute of Arctic Climate and Environment Research, Research Institute for Global Change, Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology / jake moore, Faculty Member in Art & Art History, Head of University Art Galleries and Art Collection at University of Saskatchewan / Darcy L. Peter, Alaska Conservation Foundation / Dr. Ted Schuur, Ecosystem Science and Society, Department of Biological Sciences at Northern Arizona University
production input: Chad Diesiger, Assistant Station Manager, Toolik Field Station, Institute of Arctic Biology / Randy Fulweber, GIS & Remote Sensing Manager, Toolik Field Station, Institute of Arctic Biology / Peter C. Griffith, Lead Scientist Arctic Boreal Vulnerability Experiment (ABoVE), NASA Carbon Monitoring System / Torre Jorgenson, Alaska Ecoscience / Krystyna Kozioł, Department of Analytical Chemistry, Gdansk University of Technology / Nikki Lindt / Mia Vlacich, Helo Coordinator, Toolik Field Station, Institute of Arctic Biology / Amanda Young, Spatial & Environmental Data Center Manager, Toolik Field Station, Institute of Arctic Biology
thanks: Steve Bates / Alexis Cadorette-Vigneau / Gina Deyoung / Mariana Frandsen / Thomas Halliday / Lukas Marxt / Barbara Pichler / Deanna Radford
in memory of Philip Jeck
supported by: Canada Council for the Arts Research grant / Bm:koes Bildende Kunst, Architektur, Design, Mode, Foto und Medienkunst / Woodwell Climate Research Centre / Stadt Wien Kultur Arbeitsstipendium.
Time (Less) - 3
The last twenty-five minutes of the 3rd hour feature the contribution of Laura St. Pierre to the Time (Less) series.
More info under Hour 1 above or here.
EARTH (OKÂWÎMÂW ASKIY - ᐅᑳᐧᒫᐊᐧᐢᑭᕀ) - HOUR 4
15 CST, 16 EST, 21 GMT, 22 CET
The Centre for Sustainable Curating (CSC) PRESENTS Christina Battle and Jessica Karuhanga
Maybe…EARTH by Christina Battle (2025) 19:10
It is very easy to die on Mars. Yet the race to the cold, dark and oxygen-deprived planet has never been stronger. Maybe it’s some kind of self-fulfilling prophecy driven by billionaires. Maybe plants can help break the spell. Maybe…EARTH.
being who you are there is no other by Jessica Karuhanga (2018) 14:58
“being who you are there is no other” critically examines the positioning of Blackness within entrenched colonial conceptions of Canadian identity by situating Black femme bodies in regional landscapes that have historically excluded them. By reflecting on place, wilderness, and embodiment, the project interrogates which bodies are represented, omitted, or imagined within these environments. Through a return to the post-industrial context of southwestern Ontario, the artist reveals a space frequently assumed to lack Black experience, inviting viewers to witness moments of private contemplation that highlight the beauty and complexity of the natural world. Ultimately, the work asserts a grounded and self-defined presence within these spaces.
The Centre for Sustainable Curating (CSC) is a hub for teaching, learning, and sharing information focused on museums and environmental and social justice. Located in the Department of Visual Arts at Western University in Ontario, Canada, the CSC encourages research into waste, pollution, and climate crisis, and the development of low-waste, low-carbon exhibitions and artworks. Our focus is on outreach, sharing resources, and training the next generation of cultural workers. CSC research is available for cultural institutions of all sizes and can be found in the regularly updated Resource Guide and other toolkits and resources on its website.
Time (Less) - 4
The last twenty-five minutes of the 4th hour feature the contribution of Laura St. Pierre to the Time (Less) series.
More info under Hour 1 above or here.
EARTH (OKÂWÎMÂW ASKIY - ᐅᑳᐧᒫᐊᐧᐢᑭᕀ) - HOUR 5
16 CST, 17 EST, 22 GMT, 23 CET
University of Saskatchewan Art Galleries and Collection PRESENTS Jessica Marion Barr, Ufuk Ali Gueray, Ella Dawn McGeough, Erica Mendritzki, Melanie Zurba
Worried Earth by Jessica Marion Barr, Ufuk Ali Gueray, Ella Dawn McGeough, Erica Mendritzki, Melanie Zurba
Worried Earth—originally titled "Creating vocabularies and rituals for climate grief through multiple knowledge systems and the artistic process"—is a multidisciplinary project focusing on the ways that people from diverse backgrounds express and process the emotions associated with environmental change. For this event, a selection of artists and researchers associated with Worried Earth (Jessica Marion Barr, Ufuk Ali Gueray, Ella Dawn McGeough, Erica Mendritzki, and Melanie Zurba) collaboratively created a series of interconnected video works. The project builds from Gueray’s recent work Irk Bitig—A Catalogue of Omens—a dysfunctional oracle inspired by a 9th-century Turkic divination manual, spitting out prophecies with the mechanical indifference of an error-prone fortune teller. Through the roll of a die, each collaborator will draw and interpret a singular omen, visualizing messages of deep earthly relation—gestures toward forms of connection and communication beyond human subjectivity, accessed through a system whose logic continually slips out of reach.
Time (Less) - 5
The last twenty-five minutes of the 5th hour feature the contribution of Laura St. Pierre to the Time (Less) series.
More info under Hour 1 above or here.
EARTH (OKÂWÎMÂW ASKIY - ᐅᑳᐧᒫᐊᐧᐢᑭᕀ) - HOUR 6
17 CST, 18 EST, 23 GMT, 00 CET
University of Saskatchewan Art Galleries and Collection PRESENTS Joshua Bonnetta
Arc of Night by Joshua Bonnetta
Arc of Night unfolds over the course of a year in a Bavarian forest, tracing both the nocturnal life of the landscape and the presence of the recordist within it. Using remote cinematography and acoustic monitoring methods rooted in scientific practice, the work reveals unseen and unheard layers of the night, opening a quiet encounter with the nonhuman world.
Commissioned by Nantesbuch, Stiftung Kunst und Natur.
Time (Less) - 6
The last twenty-five minutes of the 6th hour feature the contribution of Laura St. Pierre to the Time (Less) series.
More info under Hour 1 above or here.
EARTH (OKÂWÎMÂW ASKIY - ᐅᑳᐧᒫᐊᐧᐢᑭᕀ) - HOUR 7
18 CST, 19 EST, 00GMT, 01 CET
University of Saskatchewan Art Galleries and Collection PRESENTS Car Martin, coyote and Alexis Kinloch
Cannibal lot Excavations
The cannibal lot is a small house in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan that has become the site of an ongoing demolition and collective building experiment. Collaborators Car Martin and coyote invited artists to intervene in the space as they carefully dismantled it from within, peeling away the layers of its structure and history. Over time, the house transformed from a functional dwelling into a site of experimentation, ritual, and community gathering - a way to memorialize a century of embodied stories held within its walls. Guided by the phases of a collective meal — prepare, feast, chew, digest — the project unfolds as an act of shared consumption and renewal. The house now sits empty at the trail end of a beautiful conversation, awaiting the moment it will be fully “chewed up” and digested into a new form. This video work gathers current footage of the home’s empty, liminal interiors and interlaces them with documentation of the artistic actions that shaped its current state. It contrasts the loneliness of a space awaiting erasure with the vitality and resonance of those who engaged with it — their memories, gestures, and emotional traces. Through this interplay, the piece reflects on unexpected themes that came out of the project such as environmental grief and human loss, and on the collective process of transforming decay into dialogue. The film will be accompanied by an original narration expanding on these themes.
Narration: Laura Hosaluk, Jon Fiddler
Music: Excerpts from Conscious Sedation, Bobby Gadda
Live Performances: Sara Gold, KSAMB Dance Company
Art: The cannibal lot artists listed here.
Time (Less) - 7
The last twenty-five minutes of the 7th hour feature the contribution of Laura St. Pierre to the Time (Less) series.
More info under Hour 1 above or here.
EARTH (OKÂWÎMÂW ASKIY - ᐅᑳᐧᒫᐊᐧᐢᑭᕀ) - HOUR 8
19 CST, 20 EST, 01 GMT, 02 CET
University of Saskatchewan Art Galleries and Collection PRESENTS Office for a Human Theatre
A Fireside Reading Event (The Nomadic School echo in Saskatoon)
During our gathering, A Topograhical Summit, OHT made a small invitation to the practice Filippo Andreatta and Sarah Messerchmidt share that manifests in the Nomadic School in the Italian Alps. The artist researchers present were all invited to bring a book, a poem, an essay, or any other recent or beloved reading they might have for a fireside reading. The reading material could take any form, in consideration for the land we were inhabiting together and some of the dominant themes of the Summit.
A Topographical Summit (ATS) brought together an ecology of practices in performance, visual arts, moving images, and natural sciences that are invested in the capacity for social change through artist-led activity. Using topography as an anchoring concept, contributors will engage in discourse that conceives of ecological crisis as a product of the Western colonial modernist project and, therefore, as a condition that must be addressed through worldviews and epistemologies that are antithetical to the project’s manifestations. The contributors’ practices mark distinct turns away from techno-liberalism and individuation, providing examples of how we might lessen our compulsion to act like modern individuals, in favour of an ethics of inter-existence. They engage multiple modalities and speculative fictions in critique of the techno-rational approach to ecological crisis and show how art might provide the affective frameworks for reconfiguring our response to the complex after-effects of the modernist project.
Voices in order: Sepideh Behrouzian, Tim Parsons, Michaela Grill, Laura St. Pierre, Filippo Andreatta, Sarah Messerschmidt
Camera: Leanne Read, Sound and video edit: Steve Bates.
Time (Less) - 8
The last twenty-five minutes of the 8th hour feature the contribution of Laura St. Pierre to the Time (Less) series.
More info under Hour 1 above or here.
EARTH (OKÂWÎMÂW ASKIY - ᐅᑳᐧᒫᐊᐧᐢᑭᕀ) - HOUR 9
20 CST, 21 EST, 02 GMT, 03 CET
University of Saskatchewan Art Galleries and Collection PRESENTS Sepideh Behrouzian
Portrait or Landscape, Anahita? by Sepided Behrouzian
Behrouzian’s Portrait or Landscape, Anahita? (2023) follows the continuous shaping of a colonial frontier: from oil-mining as a colonial practice, spanning through the promise of development becoming the new placeholder for “overcoming” extractive colonial practices, all the way to a flattened representation of a dystopian climate devastation that obscures its asymmetrical effects.
Time (Less) - 9
The last twenty-five minutes of the 9th hour feature the contribution of Laura St. Pierre to the Time (Less) series.
More info under Hour 1 above or here.
EARTH (OKÂWÎMÂW ASKIY - ᐅᑳᐧᒫᐊᐧᐢᑭᕀ) - HOUR 10
21 CST, 22 EST, 03 GMT, 04 CET
Otekhnòtshera Ratirihwisaks Etho:onhwentsyáke (OTEKH) PRESENTS Tanya Doody & Jackson 2bears, Cassie Packham
Earth Resonances (2025) by Tanya Doody + Jackson 2bears
Blending elements of magical realism with tactile materiality, Earth Resonances invites viewers to speculate on the natural world and our entanglement within it. It asks us to consider not only the Earth around us but the Earth as us—to reflect on the permeability of boundaries between bodies and environments, technology, imagination, and matter. A project between long-time collaborators, Earth Resonances unfolds as an extended dialogue between real-world embodied artmaking and the generative capacities of digital processes. At its core lies a commitment to listening to the land, to material, to emergent form, and to the subtle exchanges that occur while working across modes. The work traces the intertwining methods of shaping earth with the hand and continuing that shaping in the virtual sphere, where forms are reinterpreted, translated, and allowed to evolve through digital touch. Through layered processes, form suggests sound and the Earth pulses... thrums... breathes. In this bodying forth of familiar and uncanny presences, embodiments resonate with disquieting urgency.
techno natural cyber forest by Cassie Packham
High above our world rests another: Sky World. In Haudenosaunee oral tradition, Sky Woman descended from Sky World after asking for a celestial tree to be uprooted. She fell in the hole it left behind, pregnant and holding strawberry and tobacco plants, plunging for a long time before landing on the back of a turtle in our world …
techno natural cyber forest considers Sky World as its origin. The vision and sounds of this environment are attributed to space/opal, an avatar and resident on the Second Life grid. Through the blending of space and sound in a virtual realm, space/opal outlines a self-portrait and diary entry. Sonic materials gathered from the Firestorm viewer, bird songs from the BBC Sound Library, fragments of music heard on the Grid, and a gift from myself to space/opal combine with underlying synth loops and rhythmic strategies of ASMR.
Otekhnòtshera Ratirihwisaks Etho:onhwentsyáke (OTEKH) is an Indigenous research-creation and teaching environment based in the Dish with One Spoon Region (Southern Ontario). OTEKH brings together Indigenous arts, cultural knowledge, and advanced technologies through land-based and relational methodologies. Guided by the Dish with One Spoon principle of shared responsibility and sustainability, OTEKH fosters collaboration among artists, researchers, and communities. The lab supports projects in digital media, 3D modeling, sound, VR/XR, environmental sensing, and land-based AI, positioning Indigenous knowledge systems at the forefront of technological innovation. OTEKH empowers creative exchange and decolonial approaches to art, research, and technology.
Time (Less) - 10
The last twenty-five minutes of the 10th hour feature the contribution of Laura St. Pierre to the Time (Less) series.
More info under Hour 1 above or here.
EARTH (OKÂWÎMÂW ASKIY - ᐅᑳᐧᒫᐊᐧᐢᑭᕀ) - HOUR 11
22 CST, 23 EST, 04 GMT, 05 CET
Otekhnòtshera Ratirihwisaks Etho:onhwentsyáke (OTEKH) PRESENTS Masha Kouznetsova, Danielle Petti
Moscow recordings by Masha Kouznetsova
Moscow recordings is an ongoing multidisciplinary research and documentation project emerging from the field recordings I collected during returns to my home city amid escalating repressions that force verbal communication into doublespeak and, figuratively, create a sense of double vision. The current iteration of moscow recordings is a pathway through the city’s ambiance and a search for the sense of ground within its landscapes, personal and collective voices, resistance, and un/belonging within divided spaces. Sounds of the city and the voices were all recorded on cassette tapes, then spliced, looped, and manipulated by hand. Many thanks to a Moscow artist who gifted me deteriorated tapes with recordings of a radio program, which became the subject of this work by way of fragmented dialogues and fictional translation.
Rusty resonance by Danielle Petti
The work explores the landscape of the Tablelands, exposed sections of Earth’s mantle, through sound, colour, and light. Created during a month-long residency with The Rooms in Gros Morne National Park, the work emerges from a process of reciprocal pigment foraging and sensory engagement with Land. As the artist becomes (re)acquainted with geologically significant terrain, recordings offer a way to tune into the material expressions of deep time and imagine the deep future. How might we come to know Earth through rusty resonance?
Time (Less) - 11
The last twenty-five minutes of the 11th hour feature the contribution of Laura St. Pierre to the Time (Less) series.
More info under Hour 1 above or here.
EARTH (OKÂWÎMÂW ASKIY - ᐅᑳᐧᒫᐊᐧᐢᑭᕀ) - HOUR 12
23 CST, 00 EST, 05 GMT, 06 CET
University of Saskatchewan Art Galleries and Collection PRESENTS Andrew Denton
Crude by Andrew Denton
An essayist film that attempts to see and hear some of the elusive signs of anthropogenic climate change to make what is invisible, visible, to evoke contemplations on the subject of ecological crisis. The film seeks to evoke a space of reflection, uneasiness, and sadness by engaging with the residual and stratified signs of our collective impact on our environment.
Time (Less) - 12
The last twenty-five minutes of the 12th hour feature the contribution of Laura St. Pierre to the Time (Less) series.
More info under Hour 1 above or here.
PARTICIPANTS
Filippo Andreatta is an artist and curator. He has established the Office for a Human Theatre to create works that disrupt the hierarchy of sight and listening. He realises shows, performances, installations and unconventional formats in urban and non-urban contexts; he has read Frankenstein around a bonfire at the 79th parallel north in the Svalbard archipelago, staged an abandoned tower-bell via Arvo Pärt’s tintinnabuli, created Little Fun Palace a parasitic caravan that has travelled Europe and North America, curated the feminist futures festival for Centrale Fies and initiated the Nomadic School that moves between mountains, swamps and other rural areas contaminating performing arts with natural and social sciences. Filippo Andreatta develops his artistic research with the productive and organisational collaboration of Office for a Human Theatre (OHT), the research studio he founded in 2008. Together, they explore private and public spaces shaking the centre and margins of theatre and redefining the map of our positions in shared spaces. OHT works in the domain of theatre and beyond by collaborating with festivals, public administrations, contemporary art museums, theatres and underground realities.
Jessica Marion Barr (she/her) is an artist, educator, researcher, and single mother of Scottish, English, Dutch, and matrilineal Haudenosaunee ancestry. Her interdisciplinary practice incorporates artmaking and research-creation, investigating creative, collaborative, queer, embodied/somatic, and Indigenous-led approaches to environmental issues and social/ecological justice. Her work is vibrant and in constant motion, with projects including drawing and painting (including from handmade materials), collage, sculptural and found object assemblage pieces, ephemeral place-based and site-specific creations, soundscapes, zines, performances, poetry, and participatory works. Her arts-practice-based Ph.D. in Cultural Studies at Queen's University focused on ecological elegies. An Assistant Professor at Trent University, she teaches and supervises in the Cultural Studies Department (visual arts) and the Honours Bachelor of Arts and Science Program, and approaches her work with creativity, enthusiasm, and attentiveness to care and wellbeing. Jessica has exhibited artwork across Canada, and has attended trainings and artist residencies nationally and internationally.
Christina Battle is an artist based in amiskwacîwâskahikan (Edmonton), within the Aspen Parkland: the transition zone where prairie and forest meet. Her practice focuses on thinking deeply about the concept of disaster: its complexity, and the intricacies that are entwined within it. She looks to disaster as a series of intersecting processes including social, environmental, cultural, political, and economic … which are implicated not only in how disaster is caused but also in how it manifests, is responded to, and overcome. Through this research, Battle looks closer to both online models and plant systems for strategies to learn from, and for ways we might help to frame and strengthen such response. Much of this work extends from her 2020 PhD dissertation which looked closer to community responses to disaster: the ways in which they take shape, and especially to how artistic and online models might help to frame and strengthen such response. Battle’s practice prioritizes collaboration, experimentation, and failure; she has a B.Sc. with specialization in Environmental Biology from the University of Alberta, a certificate in Film Studies from Toronto Metropolitan University, an MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute, and a PhD in Art & Visual Culture from the University of Western Ontario.
Sepideh Behrouzian is an interdisciplinary artist/researcher originally from Iran, who recently moved to Toronto. Her artistic practice explores the coloniality of the image, ocular-centric critique, and its active role in shaping the colonial frontier, extraction, and environmental issues. Behrouzian’s work critically engages with extractivist culture and ocular-centric governance, using research, writing, and creative production to reveal hidden gaps in totalizing governing regimes and open up spaces for alternative knowledge transmission, both human and non-human. Before moving to Toronto, Sepideh Behrouzian completed a one-year residency program at Jan Van Eyck Academie in the Netherlands. Sepideh holds an MFA from the Dutch Art Institute, an MA in Artistic Research, and a BA in Visual Arts from Tehran University of Art.
Joshua Bonnetta is a Canadian sound artist and filmmaker based in Munich, Germany. Working across installation, publication, and traditional film exhibition his artistic practice conceives of cinema as a sound forward medium historically situated in relation to both film history and a greater aggregate of sonic arts. A continuum throughout his career has been the creative exploration of environmental sound through cinematic frameworks, and re-imagining what could constitute site-specific sound in documentary film. His upcoming projects explore the environmental effects of anthropogenic noise through the world of scientific listening, from the inner geological sounds of mountains to the depths of the Pacific Ocean. His sound works are published by Shelter Press and Canti Magnetici and his films are distributed by The Cinema Guild and Arsenal Institute für Film und Video Kunst. He is a 2025 Guggenheim Fellow in the Creative Arts.
Andrew Denton’s research engages with climate and geological change through cinematic affective devices, video and photographic media. His practice challenges the ‘cinematic’ indexically (through aesthetic devices which distort and recalibrate viewers’ experience of time and space); harnessing affective approaches to cinematic making and thinking. These approaches manifest in works invested in the ecological (land, air, ocean), and the body (dance). The dance works are collaborative and experiment with technology and performance – specifically dance integrated with live cinema, motion capture and VR (360 cinema) technology. Alongside his practice-based research, he is committed to the development of postgraduate curricula, applying an approach to learning and teaching that seeks to enable meaningful research practices that are agile, responsive and collaborative. He has presented and published papers and chapters on creative-based pedagogical approaches, and project-based curriculum design, locally and internationally. Denton is the inaugural director of the School for the Arts at the University of Saskatchewan.
Tanya Doody is an artist and researcher and is Assistant Professor in Studio Art at Western University, situated on the banks of the Deshkan Ziibi and within the traditional lands of Anishinaabek, Haudenosaunee, Lūnaapéewak, and Chonnonton Nations. Her research explores objects, materials, and the senses together as a site of inquiry, with modes spanning performance art, object making, and land-based site-responsive practices rooted in sustainability. She is part of the Abundant Intelligences network of researchers dedicated to interdisciplinary intercultural research methodologies, engaging with AI through an Indigenous lens, and is studio lead, materials research with OTEKH.
Michaela Grill (AT/CA) studied in Vienna, Glasgow, and London (Goldsmith College) and has been producing film and video works, installations, and live visuals since 1999. Performances and screenings of her work have spanned 5 continents, including institutions such as MOMA NY, National Gallery of Art in Washington, Centre Pompidou in Paris, Museo Reina Sofía and La Casa Encendida in Madrid, ICA in London, and many cinematheques. Her videos have been screened at over 200 festivals worldwide. Grill received the Outstanding Artist Award from the Austrian Ministry of Art & Culture in 2010 and is currently an Art-Science Fellow at the Woodwell Climate Research Centre, Collaborating to create new insights and inspire action.
Ufuk Ali Gueray is Assistant Professor of Painting at NSCAD University. Born in Germany to Turkish immigrant parents, he is based in Kjipuktuk/Halifax. He holds a BFA from Concordia University and an MFA from the Glasgow School of Art. His work has been shown internationally and supported by residencies and grants from the Canada Council for the Arts and other funding bodies.
Jessica Karuhanga is a first-generation Canadian artist of British-Ugandan heritage who addresses politics of identity and Black diasporic concerns through lens-based technologies, sculpture, writing, drawing, and performance. Karuhanga’s work has been presented at venues including Warehouse9 (Copenhagen, DK), Sarajevski Otvoreni Centar (Sarajevo, BA), Mitchell Art Gallery (Edmonton), Robert McLaughlin Gallery (Oshawa), Nuit Blanche (Toronto), Onsite Gallery (Toronto), Remai Modern (Saskatoon), Pallas Art Projects (Dublin, IE), WNDX Festival (Winnipeg), ROM (Toronto), and Goldsmiths University (London, UK). She holds a BFA (Western University) and an MFA (University of Victoria) and is an Assistant Professor at Western University.
Masha Kouznetsova’s work brings together analogue sound processes, performance, sculpture, and drawing/printmaking, with a focus on portable studio practices, salvaged materials, and site-responsive installations. Her practice and research are grounded in personal experiences of transience and the search for im/perceptible connections within/between geographic and cultural worlds she moves through. Born in Moscow, Russia, Masha received her BFA from Georgia State University in 2012 and from 2012-2021 has worked in cultural institutions and arts education in San Francisco, CA. She completed her MFA in 2023 at Western University in London, ON where she is currently pursuing a PhD in Art and Visual Culture. Her works have been performed and exhibited in Berlin, Moscow, Atlanta, San Francisco, and London, ON.
Ella Dawn McGeough negotiates sticky sites of affection & infection, influence & inheritance, obligation & commitment, encounter & entanglement, inside & outside, you & me, they & we. Their doctoral research drew on the vast potential of beds, human and otherwise (York University, 2023). Alongside Liza Eurich and Colin Miner, they co-edit the publishing project Moire.ca. They recently relocated to Saskatoon (Treaty 6, homeland of the Métis), where they became area chair of Sculpture at the University of Saskatchewan’s School for the Arts.
Erica Mendritzki was born in Sarnia, Ontario, on the edge of Chemical Valley, in the ancestral land of the Chippewa, Odawa, and Potawatomi people. She now lives and makes art in Kjipuktuk/Halifax, and teaches painting and drawing at NSCAD University.
Sarah Messerschmidt is a writer who works across anthropology, art, and critical theory. Her current research examines nonfiction and artists’ films as ways of representing experience, particularly those that respond to legacies of colonialism. Looking at moving image practices as methods of reinvention and world-making, she is interested in the mediation of memory via footage, taking into consideration the politics of representation and relations of power in image making, while also considering film and video as insurgent media capable of establishing political and social solidarity. Her inquiries also consider the ways in which film can merge fiction with research, cultural analysis, and critique in order to draw out complex ideas about the relationships between visual culture, power and colonial violence. Messerschmidt regularly contributes essays and written texts to exhibition catalogues, journals, and magazines internationally, including Artforum, Art Monthly UK, Texte zur Kunst, and Third Text, among others.
Tékeniyáhsen Ohkwá:ri (Jackson 2bears) is a Kanien’kehà:ka (Mohawk) artist, cultural theorist, and Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Arts Research and Technology at Western University. His research-creation practice explores Haudenosaunee cosmologies, land-based knowledge, and the creative use of digital technologies and AI to express and sustain Indigenous cultural practices. 2bears is Associate Professor of Art Studio and Indigenous Studies and Director of OTEKH, a network of labs at Western dedicated to Indigenous-led research-creation. He is also Co-Director of 2RO MEDIA and the Abundant Intelligences project, a global initiative reimagining AI through Indigenous epistemologies and community-centered design.
Cassie Packham is an Onyota'a:ka (Oneida) artist born and raised in Mi'kma'ki (Nova Scotia). Her work considers rearrangement, oscillation, transmission and reciprocity in manifestations of writing, video, sculpture, sound, installation, printed matter, drawing and performance. Enduring interests include the use of personal narrative to interrupt dominant modes of understanding, representations of media and its effects/affects, natural movement, and the body as resistance. In 2011 Cassie graduated from NSCAD with a BFA in Intermedia. In 2022, they were awarded a Canada Council for the Arts grant and a Nova Scotia Arts Grant for Individuals for their on-going art explorations of the metaverse. Cassie is presently based in London, Ontario and is pursuing their Master of Fine Arts at Western University.
Parsons & Charlesworth , co-founded by Jessica Charlesworth and Tim Parsons, creates visually provocative objects, installations and digital media that invite viewers into meticulously crafted and designed alternate realities. Working with materials such as cast resins, woven willow, bent metal, inflatable PVC, molded fabrics and readymades they transform conventional materials into artifacts from imagined futures that feel both strange and familiar. Their studio operates as an artistic laboratory where speculative scenarios take physical form, challenging viewers to reconsider their relationship with technology and ecology. Through their richly detailed worlds, Parsons & Charlesworth examines the complex mythology of progress that underpins contemporary society. Each project begins with extensive research and dialogue with scientists, specialists and communities, resulting in works that blur the boundaries between art, design, and critical inquiry. Like archaeologists of possible futures, they excavate the moral dilemmas embedded in our technological aspirations. Rather than offering utopian solutions, their work creates spaces where uncomfortable questions can surface. By materialising abstract concepts into tangible experiences, they invite audiences to physically engage with alternate ways of living and being. Their practice ultimately serves as a mirror, reflecting our collective anxieties and desires about what lies ahead and how we might chart a more just and enlightened future ahead. Tim Parsons studied (MA) Design Products at the Royal College of Art and Jessica Charlesworth studied Design Interactions at the Royal College of Art. They both teach at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Dawit L. Petros is a visual artist, researcher and educator. His work is informed by studies of global modernisms, theories of diaspora, and postcolonial studies. Throughout the past decade, he has focused on a critical re-reading of the entanglements between colonialism and modernity. These concerns derive from lived experiences: Petros is an Eritrean emigrant who spent formative years in Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Kenya before settling in central Canada. The overlapping cultures, voices, and tenets of this constellation produced a dispersed consciousness, global and transnational in stance and outlook. His works aim for an introspective and textured analysis of the historical factors that produced these migratory conditions. Petros installs photographs, moving images, sculptural objects, and sound work according to performative, painterly, or site responsive logics. Moving between the works echoes the extensive travel taken to produce them; while recurrent visual or formal devices quietly indicate the complex backdrops against which his projects are set. Petros completed the Whitney Independent Study Program, an MFA in Visual Art from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and Tufts University; a BFA in Photography from Concordia University and a BA in History from the University of Saskatchewan. Petros is represented by Tiwani Contemporary in London, UK and Bradley Ertaskiran in Montreal, Canada.
Danielle Petti is a mother and an artist whose work engages with material agency, geological time, sustainability, and care. Her practice challenges anthropocentric views and bridges scientific, domestic, and environmental narratives. Danielle has a BFA from Toronto Metropolitan University, and an MFA from Western University, where she is currently pursuing a PhD in Art and Visual Culture. She is cross-disciplinary, drawing from experience in photography, painting, sculpture, several crafts, and folk arts. Danielle aims to create responsibly by sourcing discarded material and by foraging for earth both globally and locally, on the traditional territories of Anishinaabek, Haudenosaunee, Lūnaapéewak, and Attawandaron.
Laura St. Pierre is Fransaskoise, and lives on Treaty 6 Territory. Her home incorporates a studio, native plant and food garden, and a refuge for insects, birds and wild creatures. She studied psychology at UBC and visual art at the U of A and Concordia University, where she completed an MFA. She has recently mounted solo exhibitions at the MacKenzie Art Gallery in Regina and the Galerie d’art Louise et Ruben Cohen in Moncton, and is currently part of a traveling exhibition titled Storied Telling: Performativity and Narrative in Photography. Her work has recently been featured in BlackFlash Magazine and the Malahat Review. She works primarily in photo, video and installation, and her current research explores sustainable approaches to image making. She also teaches part time at the University of Saskatchewan and writes about art.
Arielle Walker (Taranaki, Ngāruahine, Ngāpuhi, Pākehā) is a Tāmaki Makaurau-based contemporary artist, writer, and maker. Her practice seeks pathways towards reciprocal belonging through the intersections and connections between land, language, and craft, weaving together tactile storytelling and ancestral narratives. Contexts that surround this include the intrinsic ties of language and land, migration across the swell and pull of the ocean, the interconnectedness of islands, pūrākau, textile traditions passed down through generations of tūpuna wāhine, tension, balance, and weight as material metaphors, roots and botanical belongings. In 2024, she completed a PhD — Mending the Kupenga: Towards a Language of Reciprocity Between Ancestral Textile & Storytelling Practices — at AUT University, where she is currently a Postdoctoral Research Fellow with RAU Textiles Research, Te Kura Toi a Hoahoa School of Art and Design.
Aurora Wolfe is a multimedia artist, researcher, and musician of Cree (Beardy’s and Okemasis Cree Nation) and Scottish descent. Her work centers on the relationships between Indigeneity and institutions, teasing out stories that have been overshadowed by the dominant colonial narrative. She holds an interest in exploring dynamic relationality and creating art that generates acts of kinship with the past, present, and future. Grounded within lived experience, her works dance between mediums, genres, and disciplines. Blending a tongue-in-cheek sensibility with historical reference, she unravels what it means to be displaced, and the simple yet complicated rituals of return. Alongside acts of truth-telling, aesthetics serve as both an entry point for viewers and a weapon against the fetishization of Indigenous pain. Through this lens, she firmly locates us in the here and now, and within our own complexities as living, feeling, and interactive beings.
Melanie Zurba is the Nominate Principal Investigator of the Worried Earth project and is an Associate Professor at the School for Resource and Environmental Studies at Dalhousie University. Her academic work focuses on social sciences and humanities related to community-engagement and wellbeing connected to the natural environment. She also maintains an emerging professional artistic practice in ceramic sculpture and installation.