Save the date for âEarth (OkĂąwĂźmĂąw Askiy – á áłá§á«áá§áąáá)â, a 12-hour event from 12 noon to 12 midnight (CST) on December 12th.
âEarth (OkĂąwĂźmĂąw Askiy – á áłá§á«áá§áąáá)â follows on the heels of 2020âs You, 2021âs And, 2022âs I, 2023âs Are, and 2024âs 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, âYou And I Are Water Earth Fire Air Of Life And Deathâ, to activate the word of the year in myriad ways.
This yearâs event is hosted and presented by the University of Saskatchewan Art Galleries and Collection from its ROUNDING space at the Kenderdine Gallery in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada.
The curators of the event are Christof Migone and jake moore.
Situated between scientific documentary and sensory experimental cinema, The Great Thaw is a melancholic and mesmerizing epic that reveals the contours of our ecosystems and humanityâs impact on them. In this audiovisual work of the Anthropocene era, the notion of traces is masterfully explored by filmmakers-performers Michaela Grill and Karl Lemieux. The viewer is quickly led to reflect on existential questions: What does humanity leave behind on this already fragile Earth? Are we aware of the gravity of what we leave? Are we truly conscious of our individual impact? The cinematography is larger than life, while the reality it depicts is profoundly alarming. Permafrost melts before our eyes, just as the future darkens. Grill and Lemieuxâs strength lies in making us feel the effects of climate change visually, skillfully alternating between sublime imagery and stark, unsettling facts. A grand, universal workâessential to experience in todayâs context. (Ămilie Poirier)
Some of you might know that I have been involved in a research project about mental health and filmmaking for a while now. Our first findings have just been published and you can read them here:
A Topographical Summit is a gathering of artists, designers, filmmakers, scientists and scholars hosted by the University of Saskatchewan Art Galleries and Collections and The School for the Arts.
A Topographical Summit brings 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 projectâs manifestations. The contributorsâ 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.
Sepideh Behrouzian (IR/CA), Andrew Denton (NZ/CA), Michaela Grill (AT), Office for a Human Theatre (Filippo Andreatta (IT) and Sarah Messerschmidt (DE)), Parsons & Charlesworth (UK/US), Dawit L. Petros (CA), Paul Suchan (CA), and Arielle Walker (NZ), amongst others.
Alanis Obomsawin is one of Canadaâs first and most influential Indigenous filmmakers. As a director, singer and Abenaki Nation activist, she has been shaping documentary storytelling for over five decades â with an unmistakable voice that is uncompromisingly committed to the rights and self-determination of Indigenous communities. She sees film as a political tool, a means of resistance against colonial narratives, media distortions and the structural exclusion of Indigenous perspectives. At the centre of her work are the stories, struggles and hopes of Indigenous peoples â told from an authentic, inner perspective. With great consistency, she resists the dominance of Western perspectives and creates spaces in which voices that have all too often been ignored or distorted are heard. Her films are living chronicles of resistance: they not only preserve oral traditions, but also document the ongoing struggle against colonial violence, state repression and the loss of land and cultural identity. Obomsawin combines indigenous narrative traditions with interviews, music, drawings and archive material to create a powerful tool of resistance, a medium of political intervention that makes social injustices and the ongoing colonization of Indigenous life realities visible. Her works are indispensable archives of Indigenous memory and formulate an urgent message of resistance.
Wednesday 24.9., 20:30: Waban-Aki: People from Where the Sun Rises (2006, 104min) Alanis Obomsawin returns to her home village of Odanak, an Abenaki reserve south of the St. Lawrence River in Quebec. In her lyrical portrait, she focuses on the Abenaki community living there and their traditional culture of basket weaving and canoe building. She skillfully interweaves the multifaceted history of her people with a critical reflection on contemporary identity and the so-called âstatusâ that legally defines Indigenous belonging. The colonial Indian Act stipulates that children of Indigenous origin can lose their status â and thus their official rights â if their parents marry outside the community. A poetic portrait of the complex past and present of the Abenaki, who once inhabited large parts of what is now New England, the Canadian Maritimes and south-eastern Quebec.
Friday 26.9, 20:30 Rocks at Whiskey Trench (2000, 105min) Stories of resistance, strength and perseverance are at the centre of this powerful examination of a dark day in Canadian history. In the summer of 1990, at the height of the Oka conflict, KanienâkehĂĄ:ka (Mohawk) women, children and elders fled their community of Kahnawake. A convoy of 75 vehicles was pelted with stones by an angry mob as they attempted to cross the Mercier Bridge into Montreal. The police did not intervene. Rocks at Whiskey Trench reconstructs these traumatic events using witness testimonies, archive footage and historical analysis. The film sheds light on the background to the conflict in Oka, the consequences of centuries of land expropriation and reveals how deeply colonial violence still has an impact today. A moving document about trauma, resilience and the right to self-determination.
Saturday 27.9., 18:00: Trick or Treaty? (2014, 84min) In Trick or Treaty?, Alanis Obomsawin takes a critical look at Treaty No. 9, which was concluded in 1905 between the British Crown and the Cree and Ojibwe in Ontario. While the Canadian government sees the treaty as a cession of Indigenous sovereignty, many descendants of the signatories see it as a broken promise: an agreement to share land and resources that was never fulfilled. The film accompanies indigenous leaders on their journey to be heard â in dialog with the government and in protest on the streets. Poignant speeches, archive footage and testimonies from the Idle No More movement interweave to create an engaging document about colonial continuities, cultural self-determination and the courage to retell history. A passionate plea for recognition, self-determination and the end of colonial oppression.
It was a great pleasure to curate this retrospective and I will give an introduction to each program!
By working with light and color, adding filters and special optics, and using digital tools, experimental filmmakers and video artists give us their vision of the sea, the sky and the immeasurable expanse of the filmed space, showing us liquid surfaces split by waves and composite eddies. Sea, sky and sometimes land mingle in superimpositions or undulating layers.
