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“It was snowing. [My elder] sent us up to the river to have a bath… His reasoning behind that was, in order for us to become a good man when we grow up, we had to go bathe in the river,” elder Everson Waters explains in a recording describing the coming-of-age rituals of the Xwémalhkwu (Homalco) people. “He said going to the river will help you make those good decisions in your life.”
\n\n\n\nWaters’ account is included in an episode of Remember—Recordings of Elders Explored, a podcast put out by 100.7 The Raven, the nation’s radio station. His story, along with others from the same batch of recordings, is now being reinterpreted as a graphic narrative titled Xwémalhkwu Hero Stories, set to be released on November 22.
\n\n\n\n
The Homalco First Nation recorded Waters and other elders in the 1990s and early 2000s. They discussed history, tradition, and daily life in their territory, which encompasses the Homathko Icefield and all of Bute Inlet (some 200 km northwest of Vancouver) on the BC mainland and the 100-odd km stretch of Vancouver Island coast between Sayward and Comox.
The recordings were a “treasure that they didn’t know what to do with,” says podcast host Tchadas Leo, a member of both Homalco First Nation and the Stillaguamish Tribe in Washington State. Education Without Borders (EwB)—a Vancouver-based charity that funds educational activities for marginalized communities in both South Africa and Canada—initially approached The Raven about supporting the station’s language and culture programming. The station manager pitched the idea of a series featuring the recordings. He recommended Leo to host based on his past broadcasting experience, and a podcast featuring 11 of the elders was launched to mark 2022’s National Day of Truth and Reconciliation.
\n\n\n\nIn conjunction with the podcast, the comic project aims to help preserve the Xwémalhkwu language—ayʔaǰuθɛm (Ayajuthem)—and, according to Leo, “help Indigenous youth reconnect to their culture even more.” Co-sponsored by EwB, the UBC Comic Studies Cluster (a research group that studies comic art and supports local comic artists), and other UBC departments, the book includes a glossary of translated ayʔaǰuθɛm terms paired with illustrations referencing where they were mentioned in each story. At first, 100 copies of the book will be given to the Nation. Distribution to the wider public is being figured out and will be announced at a later date.
\n\n\n\nThe recordings of elders were a treasure that Homalco First Nation didn’t know what to do with.
Leo selected three BC-based Indigenous artists to write and illustrate: Valen Onstine, who is Nehiyaw (Cree) and Dane-zaa; Gord Hill, who is Kwakwaka’wakw; and Alina Pete, who is Nehiyaw from Little Pine First Nation in Saskatchewan.
\n\n\n\nIn November 2023, a group including Leo, the artists, Homalco First Nation Chief Darren Blaney, the UBC Comics Studies Cluster’s Biz Nijdam, and EwB co-founders Cecil and Ruth Hershler took a trip up to Bute Inlet to kick off the project and build relationships with each other and Xwémalhkwu elders. The visitors toured historic village sites like Muushkin (Old Church House) and New Church House, went whale-watching, and visited Xwémalhkwu hunting camps.
\n\n\n\nArtist Alina Pete spoke with me over Zoom.
\n\n\n\n(This interview has been edited for length and clarity.)
\n\n\n\nBring me back to the beginning of the project. How did it start for you?
\n\n\n\nWe spoke to Tchadas online, and he filled us in on what he was wanting to do. He sent us a bunch of recordings beforehand, and I was assigned river bathing and coming-of-age ceremonies, specifically. I listened to that and compared it to some of my own reserve’s coming-of-age ceremonies, which are very different.
\n\n\n\nFrom the beginning, we knew that we were going to listen to the recordings and then have this amazing trip out to the traditional territories to meet with some of the elders. Part of working with First Nations communities is developing a relationship with the people that you work with. Biz was really big on trying to set up relationships that go forward and are reciprocal, so we’re each receiving something from this and it’s not just monetary.
\n\n\n\nOnce we got out there, we had a big meal with the elders, one of whom was Tchadas’ father! We got to hear some stories about Tchadas as a kid. We teased each other…it was really fun.
\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/Tchadas-photo-.jpg\")
One of the elders was saying that once colonization happened, the government was like, “You used to range in this territory seasonally. We can’t let you do that anymore, so we’re going to round you up and put you over here.”
\n\n\n\nThe elders at that time said “That’s a bad island to set us up on, because the winter storms there are really bad.” They lived there for a few years, and then Old Church House was destroyed in a winter storm.
\n\n\n\nThey were moved to New Church House, which is what’s marked on most maps as Church House. No one lives there today, but most of the buildings are still standing. We went out to Old Church House and New Church House, and the elders were telling us about the fishing areas. They pointed out oyster beds they used to maintain.
\n\n\n\nWhat were you curious to ask the elders about?
\n\n\n\nOne of the things that struck me was that, though the cultural differences are really big, talking with the elders felt like talking with my own elders. Often when you ask a specific question, they won’t answer it completely, or they’ll answer it in an oblique way. It’s because part of Native teaching is that people are supposed to figure things out for themselves.
\n\n\n\nI knew the responsibility that had been put in my lap to tell these stories correctly, even though I’m not from that community. I really wanted to represent them accurately and faithfully, while being aware of the fact that, especially for coming-of-age ceremonies, there’s ceremonial aspects that you don’t talk about outside the community.
\n\n\n\nSo it was like, what can I tell about these stories? We went back and forth on the script. It’s not censorship, but it is protecting intimate knowledge.
\n\n\n\nThe purification ceremonies in our culture would be like one or two ceremonies and the teachings that had led up to it, whereas here it was a year of bathing in the river at all seasons. It has multiple connotations. There’s the physical cleansing, but there’s also the toughening up. You need some physical and mental fortitude to force yourself to go into the waters. The young boy [in my section of the book] doesn’t want to go into the river.
\n\n\n\nHow would you describe your illustration style?
\n\n\n\nMy art style is very cartoony and really appeals to younger kids. I was aware that though [the book] was geared more toward teenagers, it was also relevant to younger kids [who] would be wondering about what would happen when they come of age. I leaned into the kid-friendliness of my art.
\n\n\n\nWe wanted a raven character who was the throughline, that was telling all the different stories about the community. I had a trickster raven appear in the story to talk to this boy, and [the raven] convinces the boy that he should probably just wet his head! I had a cheeky cartoon raven inject a little comedy into an otherwise fairly serious story about a boy coming to terms with what’s required of him to become a man.
\n\n\n\nValen has a gorgeous style—it’s more suited to a serious, almost documentary, style of comic. And Gord’s got this amazing style that blends traditional formline art with comic art. I think Tchadas did a really good job pairing us up with our subject matter to take advantage of the strengths of our art.
\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/Raven-cartoon-panel.jpg\")
What does it mean for you to be selected to work on this project?
\n\n\n\nThis was life-changing for me. I’ve been working as a freelance artist [for over ten years] and I’m used to jumping in on a project, learning what I need to get it out the door, making the comic, running it by editors, and then I walk away. And I don’t think about it again.
\n\n\n\nI knew going in that it was going to be more relational, because they were asking such an intimate thing of me. I approached it in a really different way. I smudged. I went into it with a really true mind of what I wanted to accomplish, knowing that getting to know them as people was going to be really important.
\n\n\n\nGift-giving is part of this relational way of working in comics, and I want to carry it forward.
Now, they’re organizing a follow-up as the book is going out. We’re going to do a launch party that all of us are going to travel to. We’re going to have gone on this amazing journey together.
\n\n\n\nI intend to take some of my originals, frame them up, and give them as gifts back to the elders as a full-circle for my story [of] working with them: “Hey, you entrusted me with your stories, and I hope I told them right. Here is how I want to thank you, by gifting you with the art I made to honour what you have given me.”
\n\n\n\nThat fits with the teachings from my people, but also from out here. The potlatches are famous as a way to show what the artisans of your community can contribute, but also that you have wealth and you’re willing to give it away to other people for their gain and benefit. That gift-giving is part of this relational way of working in comics, and I want to carry it forward into working with Native communities in the future.
\n\n\n\nWhat do you want young readers to take from reading the book?
\n\n\n\nI hope that young kids want to engage their elders and even just their parents. My story was only about a young boy, so girls can ask their female relatives and be like, “What was our coming-of-age [ceremony]?” I also hope that it inspires other kids to tell their stories through comics. They’re just so accessible—they’re so engaging. It’s one thing to pick up a historical book and have to dig through that. It’s another to read a comic.
\n","protected":false},"featured_media":2322,"template":"","meta":[],"categories":[13,42,50,7,9],"tags":[534,568,127,569,170,70,283,570,358],"class_list":["post-2321","articles","type-articles","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-art-design","category-bc","category-indigenous","category-society","category-west-coast","tag-artists","tag-comics","tag-education","tag-language","tag-nehiyaw","tag-podcasts","tag-sun-woo-baik","tag-xwemalhkwu","tag-youth"],"yoast_head":"\nOne of Alina Pete’s comic panels for the new book Xwémalhkwu Hero Stories
\n"},"alt_text":"","media_type":"image","mime_type":"image/jpeg","media_details":{"width":1500,"height":1000,"file":"2024/11/Homalco-header-image.jpg","filesize":444375,"sizes":{"medium":{"file":"Homalco-header-image-300x200.jpg","width":300,"height":200,"filesize":29548,"mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/Homalco-header-image-300x200.jpg"},"large":{"file":"Homalco-header-image-1024x683.jpg","width":1024,"height":683,"filesize":236512,"mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/Homalco-header-image-1024x683.jpg"},"thumbnail":{"file":"Homalco-header-image-150x150.jpg","width":150,"height":150,"filesize":12005,"mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/Homalco-header-image-150x150.jpg"},"medium_large":{"file":"Homalco-header-image-768x512.jpg","width":768,"height":512,"filesize":149251,"mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/Homalco-header-image-768x512.jpg"},"full":{"file":"Homalco-header-image.jpg","width":1500,"height":1000,"mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/Homalco-header-image.jpg"}},"image_meta":{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0","keywords":[]}},"source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/Homalco-header-image.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/media/2322","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/media"}],"about":[{"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/types/attachment"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/users/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/comments?post=2322"}]}}],"wp:term":[[{"id":13,"link":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/category/society/art-design/","name":"Art & Design","slug":"art-design","taxonomy":"category","yoast_head":"\nFor the majority of the time that people have been able to listen to music at home, it’s been in a physical format. Recorded-music lovers first listened to their favourite songs on phonograph records. Invented in the late 1800s, phonograph records were made of shellac, a resin made from lac insects. In the 1950s, a new format took over: vinyl LPs—made of a hard-to-recycle plastic called polyvinyl chloride—soon outpaced phonographs in popularity. Though cassettes, which gained popularity in the ‘70s, were well-loved by listeners for their ability to rewind, pause, play, and stop, it wasn’t until the 1980s that vinyl records were usurped by a new format: CDs. These thin plastic discs took over the music industry and outpaced vinyl sales in the US by 1988, relegating LPs to a collectors’ format.
\n\n\n\nAll that changed at the turn of this century, when music went from physical to virtual. Digital downloads became the mode du jour in the early 2000s, competing directly with CDs. In the 2010s, streaming took over as a frictionless way to access your entire music library. Today, most music is consumed through streaming services. Twenty-four percent of global music listeners are subscribed to a service like Spotify or Apple Music, and an additional 19% stream music on video platforms like YouTube. Other formats aren’t as popular. Only 10% of people buy their music—as either physical forms or digital downloads.
\n\n\n\nBut don’t count the physical out: while video might’ve killed the radio star, vinyl records have recently been resurrected. “People are buying more vinyl records now than they have basically since the peak of vinyl in the late 1970s,” says Kyle Devine, a Canadian professor of musicology at the University of Oslo and the author of Decomposed: the Political Ecology of Music. In 2022, vinyl LP sales outpaced CD sales for the first time since 1987—a sign that these PVC discs are still a popular way to consume music, even as technological advances make streaming more common and more profitable for big music companies and executives. (Streams account for 76% of the American music industry’s total revenue, though the system isn’t profitable for many smaller labels and artists.)
\n\n\n\nSo with the growing (re)popularity of vinyl and the continued prevalence of streaming, what is the greenest way to listen to music?
\n\n\n\nCompact discs, or CDs, are made of a clear polycarbonate plastic substrate, with the music data etched onto a reflective metallic layer and covered with a clear protective coating of acrylic plastic. CDs can’t be recycled because they’re made from mixed materials that are hard to separate.
\n\n\n\nVinyl LPs are typically made from PVC, a plastic derived from fossil fuels. It’s produced using massive amounts of toxic chemicals like chlorine, which also leads to the formation of dioxins, a group of environmental pollutants. Not to mention all the ancillary plastic: new records usually come shrink-wrapped, with shiny promotional stickers. Record owners are also encouraged to buy polythene sleeves (another plastic product) to protect their records from dust and scratches.
\n\n\n\nUndoubtedly, the growing demand for vinyl LPs, and the plastic needed to make them, is bad for the environment. But unlike vinyl’s first wave, many labels and manufacturers are looking into ways to green LPs. University of Oslo’s Devine says projects like Green Vinyl Records in the Netherlands are looking into making records using polyethylene terephthalate (PET), which is less toxic than PVC. “PET is part of the microplastics problem,” Devine says. “But it’s not as bad as PVC.”
\n\n\n\nVinyl LPs are made from PVC, which is produced using massive amounts of toxic chemicals.
Some companies are experimenting with making records from bioplastics made from feedstocks like sugar or corn, Devine says. But these records aren’t used widely and the sound quality isn’t as good as PVC records.
\n\n\n\nSome record labels, like Don Giovanni Records, an independent music label based out of Philadelphia, try to minimize plastic use by eliminating shrink-wrapping or using lighter records. Heavier vinyl LP records of 180 g are often touted for superior sound quality, but experts like Joe Steinhardt, owner of Don Giovanni Records and a professor in Drexel University’s music industry program, says that it’s just marketing—more PVC for the same sound quality.
\n\n\n\nOn the plus side, records are reusable. “People will pay hundreds, sometimes thousands, for records from the 50s and 60s,” notes Steindhardt. “And when you’re done with a record, if you don’t want it in your collection anymore, you’re likely bringing it somewhere in your community like a thrift store or record store that will resell it,” Steinhardt says. “That’s not happening with streaming.”
\n\n\n\nWhile streaming doesn’t come with the physical excesses of vinyls or CDs (the music industry used almost 61 million kg of plastic in 2000 when CDs were at their peak), it relies on energy generated with fossil fuels, increasing music’s carbon footprint. In 2016, the American music recording industry emitted between 200 and 350 million kg of greenhouse gasses, up from 157 million kg in 2000, according to a study by Devine.
\n\n\n\nWhen you stream music, your device accesses electronic files stored on active, cooled servers in data centres, which are notorious energy guzzlers. According to some estimates, the world’s data centres (which also store data like YouTube videos and Netflix shows) use up to 651 terawatt-hours of electricity annually, which is equal to the electricity produced by the entire Canadian energy sector.
\n\n\n\nOf course, not all electricity is powered by fossil fuels, but it’s hard to discern what is and what isn’t. Devine says that—because streaming services offload both streaming and data centre maintenance to cloud services (like Amazon Web Services, for example)—music labels don’t report these emissions in their own environmental reports.
\n\n\n\nWhen you stream music, your device accesses electronic files stored in data centres, which are notorious energy guzzlers.
Steinhardt likens streaming a song to using a plastic fork or styrofoam cup. “What you’re doing [when you stream a song] is creating the file from scratch, sending it to your phone, listening to it and then throwing it away until the next time you want to listen to it,” he says. The constant adding-deleting-re-adding makes streaming more energy-intensive than downloading: while the initial download of a song or album might have the same energy usage as a single stream, there’s no need to retrieve the file from the cloud once it’s downloaded, which cuts down on energy use.
\n\n\n\n“It’s planned obsolescence and it’s incredibly inefficient,” says Devine. But for executives and those with power in the music industry, Devine points out, “it’s profitable.”
\n\n\n\nThat’s the problem with streaming: while listeners can have any song or album they want (with some exceptions), they must use energy-intensive servers to get it. The format’s carbon footprint is significant—and growing. “Something like 70,000 new albums are uploaded to the streaming infrastructure every day,” Devine says.
\n\n\n\nWhile the plastic that goes into making physical versions of music like vinyl LPs and CDs is certainly unsustainable, streaming requires energy from far-off servers, much of which is generated by burning fossil fuels. There are a couple of ways to help: while a single stream is negligible, downloading your most-listened-to music (which is an option on most services) is the most effective way to lower your music consumption’s carbon footprint. Buying an album on a physical medium—be it on vinyl, CD, or cassette, which is also making a comeback—can also be a greener option, especially if it’s an album you listen to a lot. One study found that streaming an album more than 27 times creates more emissions than simply buying the CD instead.
\n\n\n\nUltimately, music isn’t just a product. It’s art, and people form meaningful relationships to their favourite songs. “It’s a very valid use of our planet’s resources, and a very good use of our resources to make art and culture,” says Steinhardt. “It’s about not being wasteful as much as possible.”
\n","protected":false},"featured_media":2168,"template":"","meta":[],"categories":[13,10,6,40,7,23,28],"tags":[516,71,88,104,281,517],"class_list":["post-2165","articles","type-articles","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-art-design","category-magazine","category-planet","category-science-tech","category-society","category-start-small","category-decider","tag-art","tag-climate-crisis","tag-music","tag-pollution","tag-rebecca-gao","tag-streaming"],"yoast_head":"\nPhysical media and streaming each have their own significant environmental impacts.
\n"},"alt_text":"A Lionel Richie vinyl record sitting atop a box filled with record sleeves next to an iPhone streaming the same album.","media_type":"image","mime_type":"image/jpeg","media_details":{"width":1500,"height":1000,"file":"2024/05/Gus-Social-Media-Music-Decider.jpg","filesize":265179,"sizes":{"medium":{"file":"Gus-Social-Media-Music-Decider-300x200.jpg","width":300,"height":200,"filesize":16802,"mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Gus-Social-Media-Music-Decider-300x200.jpg"},"large":{"file":"Gus-Social-Media-Music-Decider-1024x683.jpg","width":1024,"height":683,"filesize":128134,"mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Gus-Social-Media-Music-Decider-1024x683.jpg"},"thumbnail":{"file":"Gus-Social-Media-Music-Decider-150x150.jpg","width":150,"height":150,"filesize":7498,"mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Gus-Social-Media-Music-Decider-150x150.jpg"},"medium_large":{"file":"Gus-Social-Media-Music-Decider-768x512.jpg","width":768,"height":512,"filesize":77976,"mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Gus-Social-Media-Music-Decider-768x512.jpg"},"full":{"file":"Gus-Social-Media-Music-Decider.jpg","width":1500,"height":1000,"mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Gus-Social-Media-Music-Decider.jpg"}},"image_meta":{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"©2023 Sun Woo Baik","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0","keywords":[]}},"source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Gus-Social-Media-Music-Decider.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/media/2168","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/media"}],"about":[{"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/types/attachment"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/users/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/comments?post=2168"}]}}],"wp:term":[[{"id":13,"link":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/category/society/art-design/","name":"Art & Design","slug":"art-design","taxonomy":"category","yoast_head":"\nA man walks down the middle of an empty road, veering to the right when a white gas truck passes him. Though the shadow of his white hat obscures his face, the rest of his outfit—jeans, denim shirt, brown shoes, red neckerchief, bag slung across his body, and a walking stick fashioned from a broken branch—suggest that this man is well acquainted with the jagged terrain nearby. Subsequent shots of him single-handedly hauling corn stalks and then throwing them into a goat pen confirm it.
\n\n\n\nThe man is Don Roberto de la Rosa, a land defender based in Zacatecas, Mexico, and one of the main subjects of Montreal-based filmmaker Julien Élie’s 2023 feature-length documentary film: La Guardia Blanca (“The White Guard,” also known as La Garde Blanche).
\n\n\n\nThe film weaves together three stories in a heartbreaking narrative about land defenders in Mexico and their ongoing fight against foreign mining companies and the criminal gangs these companies hire to be their “white guards.”
\n\n\n\nThe first thread belongs to de la Rosa, who lives in between two mines in Penasqueña and Salaverna, Zacatecas. The second involves the villagers trying to protect their local river from pollution by mining and hydro companies in Paso de la Reina, Oaxaca. The final thread tells the story of the family of martyred land defender Julián Carrillo, exiled for their own safety to Chihuahua City, Chihuahua. Despite the geographical distance between the three regions, their residents are united in their experience of having their land usurped by (predominantly Canadian and American) mining companies who exploit its resources for profit, collaborating with criminal gangs and cartels to violently silence dissent while the state looks the other way.
\n\n\n\nLa Guardia Blanca combines the testimonies of land defenders across Mexico with lingering shots of the country’s natural landscape to illustrate a story about a people’s determination to keep fighting in the face of continuous displacement and death. The film juxtaposes scenes of children playing in the blue water, lush and verdant valleys, and seemingly endless grass fields with scenes of homes reduced to rubble, noisy active mining sites, and hauntingly empty abandoned mines to establish why these land defenders are risking their lives. In one of the film’s most impactful scenes, the camera slowly zooms into a forest-filled valley to reveal an oil pumpjack disturbing what would otherwise be an idyllic landscape.
\n\n\n\nÉlie described faking mechanical failures on the road to film a mine beside it.
The documentary took Montreal-based filmmaker Élie approximately three years to put together. Though he shot it over the course of three months in 2021, he spent two years before that building relationships with potential subjects. Gaining his subjects’ trust wasn’t always easy, however, since many of the mining companies threatening their land and lives were Canadian—and so was Élie.
\n\n\n\n“We have a really bad reputation as Canadians in these places where international mining companies steal lands [and] threaten people,” Élie told Asparagus during an interview.
\n\n\n\nEven after he had built those relationships, the filming process wasn’t always smooth due to the security threat posed by the mining companies, and their white guards, in many of the areas where Élie and his crew were filming.
\n\n\n\n“You don’t go into those places unprepared,” Élie says. “It’s too risky for the crew, but also, of course, for the people we were going to interview. So sometimes you need to cancel a trip, cancel a [few] days of shooting.” He recalled having to change number plates once while driving across states in order to avoid being linked to an enemy cartel. He also described faking mechanical failures on the road to film a mine beside it.
\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/LGB-landscape.jpg\")
Élie considers La Guardia Blanca a companion to his previous film, 2018’s Dark Suns, a feature-length documentary about the femicides occurring across Mexico due to state and cartel violence. He says La Guardia Blanca answers some of the questions raised in Dark Suns.
\n\n\n\n“It’s something that maybe we did not focus on in La Garde Blanche, but women…are among the first to rise up and to fight for the lands, and so they’re among the first victims,” he said.
\n\n\n\n“I decided to do La Garde Blanche by travelling during the shooting of Dark Suns in Mexico and by seeing land devastation in the most [resource-rich] part of the country,” explained Élie. He was also inspired by photographs, art, history museums, and especially literature, noting the work of German author B. Traven and Chilean author Roberto Boleaño were particularly influential. A quote from Boleaño appears at the beginning of the film.
\n\n\n\nThis way of destroying the lands is something so Canadian.
It was not lost on Élie during filming both Dark Suns and La Garde Blanche that much of the violence he saw wasn’t limited to Mexico, but was also occurring across the world—including his own country.
\n\n\n\n“This way of destroying the lands is something so Canadian,” Élie said. “We’re doing this not just in Mexico, but in so many countries—in our country, also. Native people in Canada are the first victims of this land exploitation.” These parallels aren’t just limited to land degradation. Élie points out that the femicide in Mexico mirrors the epidemic of missing and murdered Indigenous women in Canada.
\n\n\n\n“This film would be possible to do in so many countries: in Brazil, in Colombia, in [the] Middle East,” Élie continues. To demonstrate the universality of the land defenders’ stories, Élie made the artistic choice to not to explicitly name his subjects, geographical locations, or even mining companies.
\n\n\n\n“I really believe that the main character [of La Guardia Blanca] is the land,” says Élie. And by illustrating how the land is pillaged to benefit people and corporations that won’t experience the consequences due to living [in] luxury elsewhere in the world, like Canada—as one of the film’s subjects states—La Guardia Blanca compels audiences to reckon with their own complicity in land degradation and the violence faced by the people that defend it.
\n\n\n\nLa Guardia Blanca (109 min) screens May 10 at 8:20 pm at The Cinematheque. Tickets are available on the DOXA website.
\n","protected":false},"featured_media":2155,"template":"","meta":[],"categories":[13,49,6,39,7],"tags":[459,110,460,67,482,515,179,284],"class_list":["post-2154","articles","type-articles","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-art-design","category-human-rights","category-planet","category-plastic-pollution","category-society","tag-art-for-social-change","tag-documentary","tag-doxa","tag-film-tv","tag-land-protectors","tag-mexico","tag-mining","tag-zeahaa-rehman"],"yoast_head":"\nIn La Guardia Blanca, Roberto de la Rosa copes with the aftermath of a foreign-owned mine destroying his village.
\n"},"alt_text":"Roberto de la Rosa faces away, looking down at a vast, green valley, wearing a wide-brimmed hat and jean jacket.","media_type":"image","mime_type":"image/jpeg","media_details":{"width":1500,"height":1000,"file":"2024/05/LGB-header.jpg","filesize":161931,"sizes":{"medium":{"file":"LGB-header-300x200.jpg","width":300,"height":200,"filesize":14027,"mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/LGB-header-300x200.jpg"},"large":{"file":"LGB-header-1024x683.jpg","width":1024,"height":683,"filesize":96263,"mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/LGB-header-1024x683.jpg"},"thumbnail":{"file":"LGB-header-150x150.jpg","width":150,"height":150,"filesize":6878,"mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/LGB-header-150x150.jpg"},"medium_large":{"file":"LGB-header-768x512.jpg","width":768,"height":512,"filesize":60764,"mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/LGB-header-768x512.jpg"},"full":{"file":"LGB-header.jpg","width":1500,"height":1000,"mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/LGB-header.jpg"}},"image_meta":{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0","keywords":[]}},"source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/LGB-header.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/media/2155","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/media"}],"about":[{"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/types/attachment"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/users/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/comments?post=2155"}]}}],"wp:term":[[{"id":13,"link":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/category/society/art-design/","name":"Art & Design","slug":"art-design","taxonomy":"category","yoast_head":"\nWhen Justice Moore says “I wouldn’t be here if Tea Creek weren’t here,” you can tell he means it.
\n\n\n\nTea Creek—a family farm turned award-winning Indigenous food sovereignty training centre—is the subject of a new eponymous documentary directed by Ryan Dickie. Tea Creek the film is having its world premiere at this year’s DOXA Documentary Film Festival.
\n\n\n\nMoore started out as one of many trainees spending a growing season at Tea Creek Farm, and is now a landscape horticulture apprentice there. The farm is in Gitxsan territory, colonially known as northwestern British Columbia. Jacob Beaton co-owns the farm with his partner Jessica Ouellette and says in the film that as Tea Creek grew, they found themselves unexpectedly leading a movement for Indigenous food sovereignty.
\n\n\n\nThe land they’re on is particularly fitting for what Tea Creek has blossomed into. Beaton explains that he was told by a hereditary chief that the valley has long been “what we’d now call farm and ranch land.” But colonization disrupted Indigenous food systems, and has largely erased Indigenous agricultural history with them. According to Beaton—who has Haida, Heiltsuk, Tsimshian, and British ancestry—Canadian society largely brushes over the fact that Indigenous peoples intentionally stewarded their lands for agricultural use. Beaton says the myth that Indigenous societies depended only on hunting and gathering is so pervasive because it makes it easier to justify the theft of their lands.
\n\n\n\nAgainst this historical backdrop—and the intergenerational trauma, food insecurity, and climate change it has wrought—the film follows Beaton through Tea Creek’s successes and financial challenges. Highlighting human stories like Moore’s within this context was the shared vision of director Dickie (who has Dene and Kwakwaka’wakw ancestry) and producer Ben Cox.
\n\n\n\n“There are so many stories like Justice’s at Tea Creek,” Cox told me over the phone. The filmmakers knew they wanted to focus on a junior farmer to help tell the story, but at the beginning of production, they didn’t know who that would be. “It turned out that person was Justice—and Justice is incredible.”
\n\n\n\nMoore—who is Gitxsan and Tsimshian from Gitwangak village (also known as Kitwanga) south of Tea Creek—says in the film that he’s benefitted from the consistent support at the farm. “You’re always appreciated, you’re always valued, you’re always respected.” Explaining that he was in a “dark place” before getting involved with Tea Creek, Moore credits his new environment with keeping him sober and making him more confident.
\n\n\n\nThe farming activities of Tea Creek are in lockstep with its service as a healing space for Indigenous community members.
Running Tea Creek has been a transformative experience for Beaton, too. “I’ve always struggled with my identity as an Indigenous person, being white as well,” he says in the film. He sought out therapy to disrupt “the multigenerational mechanism” of trauma that was passed down from his grandfather—a residential school survivor—and affected Beaton’s life as a young man.
\n\n\n\n“In the last few years, with Tea Creek, I’ve definitely become more comfortable,” he says, “because I have a heart-to-heart connection with so many of our participants and staff.”
\n\n\n\nMany of the participants depicted throughout the film echo similar sentiments of healing and transformation. The farming activities of Tea Creek are in lockstep with its service as a healing space for Indigenous community members.
\n\n\n\nBeaton says the “Tea Creek Model” is “a natural evolution of being a good community member.” This includes simple, neighbourly acts like picking up people who don’t have a ride to the farm and feeding someone if they’re hungry. In the documentary, Beaton expresses surprise at how rare this kind of approach was among other trades training programs.
\n\n\n\nTea Creek’s multifaceted approach to community resilience—including social, environmental, and economic elements—is what makes it special. Beaton says median incomes for Indigenous people in the valley where Tea Creek sits range “between $13,000 and $20,000 a year,” which makes it hard for families to maintain food security with limited resources. Beaton calls the farm’s style of agriculture “Indigenous-inspired modern agricultural food production, where you can easily feed your family in your front yard or backyard with very basic tools.”
\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/tea-creek-body.jpg\")
Local food production like Tea Creek’s has environmental benefits and helps build food-system resilience. Beaton points out in the film that more than half of the produce consumed in Canada is imported. The risk of system breakdown—which could be induced by anything from a pandemic to climate disasters—is high when we rely so heavily on our current fragile systems.
\n\n\n\nBut despite the important niche Tea Creek fills, finding funding has been a consistent challenge. For Beaton, this precarity descends directly from the food-system destruction that Canadian public policy wrought on Indigenous nations. He says action to repair that damage is missing from official efforts at reconciliation. Producer Cox says he believes that, for Beaton, “public policy created this problem, and therefore, public policy and government should fund Tea Creek.”
\n\n\n\nTea Creek’s precarity descends directly from the food-system destruction that Canadian public policy wrought on Indigenous nations.
A cycle of excitement, opportunity, and dashed hopes have plagued Beaton’s efforts. In one scene, Beaton shares an update after a call with a company initially interested in providing funding: “It’s just… there’s no money.”
\n\n\n\n“It was heartbreaking to see their ups and downs,” Cox told me. “We followed them for two, three years, and the funding problem that we captured in the final scene… that happened like every second week.”
\n\n\n\nThe costs of running the program are high for Beaton, but the costs of not running it are higher. In one dramatic scene, he explains that over the winter—when funding ran out and the farm was forced to shut down—the farm lost four community members who had relied on Tea Creek as a healing space. “People die because Tea Creek isn’t operating,” Beaton says.
\n\n\n\nTea Creek staff have asked Beaton to emphasize this during fundraising efforts to communicate how essential Tea Creek is to the wider Indigenous community. Viewers of the film can feel the urgent need for the support Tea Creek provides, but it remains to be seen whether funders will feel that pull, too.
At the beginning of Tea Creek, Indigenous food sovereignty is defined as “the right for Indigenous people to produce, distribute, and consume their own food.” By the end, however, it’s clear that it’s also a radical embrace of hope and a commitment to healing in the face of traumatic history.
Tea Creek (73 min) screens May 4 at 4:15 pm (at The VIFF Centre) and May 9 at 8:45 pm (at the SFU Cinema). Tickets are available on the DOXA website.
\n","protected":false},"featured_media":2146,"template":"","meta":[],"categories":[13,42,14,50,8,7,9],"tags":[30,81,55,110,460,214,339,432,550,283,514],"class_list":["post-2142","articles","type-articles","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-art-design","category-bc","category-food","category-indigenous","category-living","category-society","category-west-coast","tag-agriculture","tag-canada","tag-colonization","tag-documentary","tag-doxa","tag-food-security","tag-gitxsan","tag-local-food","tag-stewardship","tag-sun-woo-baik","tag-tsimshian"],"yoast_head":"\nJustice Moore harvests kale in a film still from Tea Creek.
\n"},"alt_text":"Justice Moore, a young Gitxsan/Tsimshian man wearing a cap and hi-vis vest harvests kale at Tea Creek.","media_type":"image","mime_type":"image/jpeg","media_details":{"width":1500,"height":1000,"file":"2024/05/tea-creek-header.jpg","filesize":199596,"sizes":{"medium":{"file":"tea-creek-header-300x200.jpg","width":300,"height":200,"filesize":17339,"mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/tea-creek-header-300x200.jpg"},"large":{"file":"tea-creek-header-1024x683.jpg","width":1024,"height":683,"filesize":116610,"mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/tea-creek-header-1024x683.jpg"},"thumbnail":{"file":"tea-creek-header-150x150.jpg","width":150,"height":150,"filesize":7478,"mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/tea-creek-header-150x150.jpg"},"medium_large":{"file":"tea-creek-header-768x512.jpg","width":768,"height":512,"filesize":74980,"mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/tea-creek-header-768x512.jpg"},"full":{"file":"tea-creek-header.jpg","width":1500,"height":1000,"mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/tea-creek-header.jpg"}},"image_meta":{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0","keywords":[]}},"source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/tea-creek-header.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/media/2146","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/media"}],"about":[{"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/types/attachment"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/users/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/comments?post=2146"}]}}],"wp:term":[[{"id":13,"link":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/category/society/art-design/","name":"Art & Design","slug":"art-design","taxonomy":"category","yoast_head":"\nVancouver’s DOXA Documentary Film Festival starts today, and for the third year in a row Asparagus Magazine has partnered to present some documentaries we think will appeal to our readers. As always, the festival’s program is bursting with an abundance of delicious storytelling from around the world. To help you narrow down your choices, we’ve put together a roundup of films we think Asparagus readers might find especially interesting this year.
\n\n\n\nOnce you’ve booked your tickets to join us at Tea Creek and La Guardia Blanca, consider adding some of these films to your schedule! (The following list is ordered based on the date and time of the first screening of each film or program.)
\n\n\n\nStorytelling by humans is so anthropocenic. In its impressionistic portrayal of planetary history, Last Things hands the mic instead to the rocks, crystals, and microbes that were on this planet for all the geologic eras before ours—and will be here long after humanity has ceased being the major driver of change on Earth.
\n\n\n\nLast Things (50 min) screens May 2 at 6 pm, at The Cinematheque.
\n\n\n\nTortoises, blue jays, and toads, oh my! Shorts programs are always a highlight of film festivals, serving up a smorgasbord of perspectives in a single sitting. The five films included in An Animal Gaze feature migratory birds (When Grey Falls), sexy amphibians (Some Thoughts on the Common Toad), a family of busy jays (Minutes), and tortoises in both the Galapagos (Los Dos Lados de la Tortuga) and the Austrian Alps (Testudo Hermanii).
\n\n\n\nAn Animal Gaze (58 min) screens May 2 at 9:20 pm, at The Cinematheque.
\n\n\n\nWe love exploring the intersections between activism and art—after all, our one and only themed issue was titled Art for Earth’s Sake. So Where Zebus Speak French—documenting the Malagasy people’s creative resistance to neocolonial land grabs in Sitabomba, Madacascar—looks right up our alley. Down with dispossession, up with puppetry!
\n\n\n\nWhere Zebus Speak French (104 min) screens May 4 at 6:35 pm, at the VIFF Centre.
\n\n\n\nDown with dispossession, up with puppetry!
For immersion in a green very different from what we’re used to on the west coast of Turtle Island, look no further than this French doc, having its North American premiere at DOXA. Le sentier des asphodèles follows Jean and his dog Léon as they travel through the Brittany countryside by foot, bike, and even wheelbarrow, taking in both natural beauty and the harms caused to it by humans.
\n\n\n\nLe sentier des asphodèles (87 min) screens May 5 at 11:45 am, at The Cinematheque.
\n\n\n\nCloser to home, Singing Back the Buffalo takes viewers to the Great Plains to witness the challenges and triumphs of efforts to reintroduce wild buffalo. Sweeping landscapes, Indigenous leadership, majestic wildlife, and climate hope combine to create—in the words of one of the film’s human protagonists—“pretty potent stuff.”
\n\n\n\nSinging Back the Buffalo (98 min) screens May 8 at 5 pm (at the VIFF Centre) and May 9 at 10 am (at the SFU Cinema).
\n\n\n\nIn another North American premiere, A Man Imagined compassionately follows Lloyd, a 67-year-old man who has lived unhoused for decades. The film was made collaboratively with Lloyd and lyrically portrays not only his life and external surroundings, but also his internal landscape as he copes with mental illness and painful memories.
\n\n\n\nA Man Imagined (62 min) screens May 8 at 6:30 pm, at The Cinematheque.
\n\n\n\nVirtually every molecule of plastic ever created still exists somewhere on Earth.
If you joined us at last year’s screening of The Golden Thread, you may find parallels in Meezan, which also explores relationships between intergenerational industries, landscape, capitalism, and labour, this time in Iran’s Khuzestan province. Starting in Abadan—an oil-production centre for over a century—the film paints an attentive portrait of local fishers plying their trade in the Persian Gulf, the dock where they barter their catch, and a shrimp-processing plant staffed by women shuttled in from surrounding villages.
\n\n\n\nMeezan (75 min) screens May 9 at 6:30 pm, at The Cinematheque.
\n\n\n\nIn the trailer for Plastic People, a voiceover declares that “virtually every molecule of plastic ever created still exists somewhere on Earth. The plastic never disappears, it just breaks down into tinier and tinier particles.” This documentary follows science journalist Ziya Tong as she comes to terms with the extent to which plastic has inundated not only our environments, but also our bodies—and then goes looking for the ways we can extract ourselves from this mess of our own making.
\n\n\n\nPlastic People (96 min) screens May 10 at 5:30 pm, at the SFU Cinema.
\n\n\n\nIn this world premiere from Canadian director Claire Sanford, we encounter Byong Kyon Kwan, a former South Korean ambassador to China who is determined to “tame the yellow dragon” of dust storms originating in Inner Mongolia’s Kubuqi Desert with a simple but ambitious strategy: planting a billion trees. Twig screens with Ottu, a short about searcing for the eight winds of the Mediterranean.
\n\n\n\nTwig and Ottu (59 min) screen May 10 at 6:30 pm (at The Cinematheque) and May 11 at 1:15 pm (at the SFU Cinema).
\n\n\n\nCongolese director and visual artist Nelson Makengo brings us to the neighbourhoods of Kinshasa, where access to electricity has been limited. Despite the literal darkness surrounding them, the communities on screen come together to find both literal and metaphorical light.
\n\n\n\nTongo Saa (Rising Up at Night) (96 min) screens May 11 at 8 pm, at The Cinematheque.
\n\n\n\nThere are so many exciting films in this year’s program, we really struggled to put together a list of only 10. So if you’re looking for further ideas, here is another handful of docs that could easily have been included in the list above.
\n\n\n\nVancouver’s DOXA Documentary Film Festival runs from May 2–12, 2024. Tickets are available on the DOXA website.
\n","protected":false},"featured_media":2136,"template":"","meta":[],"categories":[13,7,51,9],"tags":[82,77,459,86,81,154,55,110,460,67,366,383,141,125,61],"class_list":["post-2135","articles","type-articles","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-art-design","category-society","category-vancouver-area","category-west-coast","tag-africa","tag-animals","tag-art-for-social-change","tag-asia","tag-canada","tag-climate-change","tag-colonization","tag-documentary","tag-doxa","tag-film-tv","tag-industry","tag-jessie-johnston","tag-nature","tag-plastic","tag-social-justice"],"yoast_head":"\nStills from films presented during the 2024 DOXA Festival (starting from upper left corner): A Man Imagined, Minutes, Some Thoughts on the Common Toad, Singing Back the Buffalo, Los Dos Lados de la Tortuga, Tongo Saa, Tea Creek, Last Things, When Grey Falls, Plastic People, Twig, Le sentier des asphodèles, La Guardia Blanca, Meezan, Testudo Hermanii, and Where Zebus Speak French.
\n"},"alt_text":"","media_type":"image","mime_type":"image/jpeg","media_details":{"width":1500,"height":1000,"file":"2024/05/DOXA-24-grid.jpg","filesize":1716027,"sizes":{"medium":{"file":"DOXA-24-grid-300x200.jpg","width":300,"height":200,"filesize":23101,"mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/DOXA-24-grid-300x200.jpg"},"large":{"file":"DOXA-24-grid-1024x683.jpg","width":1024,"height":683,"filesize":163638,"mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/DOXA-24-grid-1024x683.jpg"},"thumbnail":{"file":"DOXA-24-grid-150x150.jpg","width":150,"height":150,"filesize":10158,"mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/DOXA-24-grid-150x150.jpg"},"medium_large":{"file":"DOXA-24-grid-768x512.jpg","width":768,"height":512,"filesize":102086,"mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/DOXA-24-grid-768x512.jpg"},"full":{"file":"DOXA-24-grid.jpg","width":1500,"height":1000,"mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/DOXA-24-grid.jpg"}},"image_meta":{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0","keywords":[]}},"source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/DOXA-24-grid.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/media/2136","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/media"}],"about":[{"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/types/attachment"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/users/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/comments?post=2136"}]}}],"wp:term":[[{"id":13,"link":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/category/society/art-design/","name":"Art & Design","slug":"art-design","taxonomy":"category","yoast_head":"\nEleanor Boyle is not the first person to compare the fight against climate change to a war. Or even the first to write a book comparing it specifically to World War II. Seth Klein’s 2020 bestseller, A Good War: Mobilizing Canada for the Climate Emergency, explicitly used WWII-era public policy as a guide for the changes we need to make to ward off the climate crisis.
\n\n\n\nBut while she may not be the first, the Vancouver-based food policy writer is uniquely qualified to make the argument laid out in her 2022 book, Mobilize Food! Wartime Inspiration for Environmental Victory Today. Boyle was captivated by the story of how Britain transformed its national food system in service of the war effort. With her backgrounds in journalism, sustainable food policy, and psychology, she’s ideally situated to recount the story of how citizens were convinced to enthusiastically accept the restrictions placed upon them, and connect that history to the possibility of climate-conscious food policy today.
\n\n\n\nBoyle spoke with Asparagus editor Jessie Johnston about Victory Gardens, inspirational leadership, and the not-at-all radical policy of rationing. (This interview has been edited for length and clarity.)
\n\n\n\nJessie Johnston: What inspired you to write this book?
Eleanor Boyle: I had been writing about food—especially animal agriculture—and its impact on climate, and coming to feel that climate of our “war.” And discovered the story of how Britain prepared for WWII, in part, by completely redoing its food system in ways that would feed everybody, make the country more self-sufficient, and would help it in winning the war. It was just the most amazing story. And what it told me is that systems can change.
When most people in 2023 think of WWII food policies, they might be familiar with rationing and maybe Victory Gardens. But I know from your book that those were only part of a much larger package of policies. Can you share some of the other changes to the food system that were employed?
One of the thrusts of the programs was Victory Gardens: growing a lot of your own, relocalizing the food system. In terms of the entire country’s agriculture, it was revamped. In the 1930s, Britain’s agriculture was not very productive and was too much oriented to livestock and meat production. And so is ours. It is not a very efficient way of producing food. Animals eat a lot to produce a mere kilogram of meat.
So the government said, “OK. You’re going to plough up a whole bunch of pasture. You’re going to cut down on your livestock numbers. People will still be able to eat meat, but there won’t be quite as much. And we’re going to share it fairly, and we are going to devote more cropland to food for people.” Grains, vegetables, legumes, all those good things.
\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Mobilize-Food.jpg\")
And one of the themes that comes up a lot is that the changes were mandatory. I know Seth Klein talks about this [in A Good War]. In a crisis, you can’t just ask people politely to please consider wasting less food. Wasting food became illegal. And people were a little ticked off at first at the number of rules that had to be followed. But ultimately, the vast majority were super on board. Basically everybody got fed, which was way better than pre-war, when in Britain half the country had been either undernourished or malnourished.
\n\n\n\nI’m a huge fan of rationing. I think that for climate, we, Canada, whatever jurisdiction, should consider limiting or giving limited allocations to all of us: of how much we can drive, how much we can fly, and how much meat we can eat. Especially beef. It would be an amazingly effective way of lowering emissions.
\n\n\n\nWhat was done to make people accept and even feel enthusiastic about these measures?
How do we effect behaviour change? How do we inspire? How do we rally people to be part of this great project, which is to beat the climate crisis? To change behaviour, you need reasons and you need strategies. Reasons, that’s the education piece. And we all know that that is not enough. Average human beings can hear about things we need to do—that doesn’t necessarily make us do them.
You need strategies that are very specific: “This is what you should do.” I don’t hear much of this from the government. [For example], “Everybody should go three days a week without driving.” We need specifics. We need strategies for how we actually effect behaviour change. That’s number one.
\n\n\n\nIn a crisis, you can’t just ask people politely to please consider wasting less food.
Number two, We need leadership that we can get behind. People who tell us tough realities, but we can tell that they’re being absolutely honest and that they are right. Britain, luckily, had a few of those. They had the Minister of Food, who was amazing. The number one best-known nutritionist in Britain at the time, Marguerite Patten—people loved her. They would flock to the community centres and church basements and people’s homes to hear her talk about how to cook on rations. She was just so likable and so knowledgeable. We need people like that.
\n\n\n\nYou’ve got to have leadership to rally people, to let them what needs to be done, to be honest with them. And then you need specifics that the society can assign to people so that everybody’s involved. Little kids would be out in the garden with their parents and grandparents digging. People need meaningful tasks that really assist in the great project that everyone sees needs to be done.
\n\n\n\nYou touched briefly on Lord Woolton, the Minister of Food. Tell me a little more about him.
Lord Woolton, he was not an elected official; he was plucked from industry and asked if he would please do this. And he was the best kind of leader, which is a reluctant leader. He was a guy who was accustomed to administering huge businesses, but who also had a real heart. He had been a social worker in his youth.
He’d go to soup kitchens and talk to people. He also was a great negotiator. Britain was still importing some foods internationally. The money they had to spend to prosecute the war was unbelievable, and so Lord Woolton had very small budgets to bring in enormous amounts of whatever it was. And he was a tough negotiator.
\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/food-posters.jpg\")
The climate crisis doesn’t feel as immediately life-threatening to many people as war did. And the things we’re trying to achieve are different. Which of the policies that you learned about do you think really would translate to making progress on the climate crisis?
My focus is on food. Although it’s not our primary creator of greenhouse gasses today—burning of fossil fuels is—food is up there. Food produces between a quarter and a third of anthropogenic greenhouse gasses.
I think we need more government oversight of food production and also consumption. We have relegated food policy, to a large degree, to corporations. There are—in key sectors like livestock and meat—just a few big owners of mega production facilities, and they have enough power to really set a lot of goals. For example, all the science says, “We can’t eat meat every day anymore.” We don’t have enough planet to produce that. But the big beef companies are on both the defense and the offense to convince people that beef [is] not a climate problem. I think we need to seriously consider breaking up some of those monopolies.
\n\n\n\n[Haarlem] in the Netherlands, has banned meat advertising in the city centre. The gutsy Netherlands has decided to lower the number of livestock animals in the entire country. Again, you want to eat meat, fine. But we can’t give that much land to animals and that much control to a small number of companies.
\n\n\n\nWe ration things all the time, by price: if you can pay for it you can get it.
And I like the idea of some mandatory measures. I think it could be effective to limit the amounts of meat that people are allowed to eat so that it is within sustainable levels. And I always say there is nothing radical about rationing. We ration things all the time, by price: if you can pay for it you can get it. Which is not the best way to ration goods that produce a lot of greenhouse gasses. Another quick example of rationing: to walk the West Coast Trail, you can’t just go and start walking—you’ve got to apply for a permit. That is a kind of rationing. Because they are protecting the ecosystem.
\n\n\n\nBehaviour change is tough. There is nothing easy about the shifts that we need to make to beat back the climate crisis. But I think that we will find, if our societies can boldly do the things that need to be done, that it will be more than worth the effort.
\n\n\n\nIf I just look to this small case study, there were benefits that nobody predicted. Nobody thought that health would get better in Britain during the war. But because people were eating less sugar, less processed foods, less meat and more plants, people got healthier. There was less heart disease, there was less diabetes, etc. When you take on a challenge that needs to be taken on, it’s going to be really hard. But it’s also going to produce benefits beyond what we can even see.
\n","protected":false},"featured_media":1998,"template":"","meta":[],"categories":[13,11,14,8,6,7],"tags":[30,69,71,83,505,236,383,506,535,503],"class_list":["post-1956","articles","type-articles","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-art-design","category-climate-change","category-food","category-living","category-planet","category-society","tag-agriculture","tag-books","tag-climate-crisis","tag-europe","tag-food-policy","tag-gardening","tag-jessie-johnston","tag-united-kingdom","tag-war","tag-wwii"],"yoast_head":"\nIllustration—A white man with brown hair, holding greens and a pitchfork in his right hand, with a cigar in his mouth.The words “Dig on for victory” are printed in red across the blue sky.
\n"},"alt_text":"Key text: \"Dig on for victory\"","media_type":"image","mime_type":"image/jpeg","media_details":{"width":1500,"height":1000,"file":"2023/06/Dig-for-victory-header.jpg","filesize":280263,"sizes":{"medium":{"file":"Dig-for-victory-header-300x200.jpg","width":300,"height":200,"filesize":18006,"mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Dig-for-victory-header-300x200.jpg"},"large":{"file":"Dig-for-victory-header-1024x683.jpg","width":1024,"height":683,"filesize":126462,"mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Dig-for-victory-header-1024x683.jpg"},"thumbnail":{"file":"Dig-for-victory-header-150x150.jpg","width":150,"height":150,"filesize":10148,"mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Dig-for-victory-header-150x150.jpg"},"medium_large":{"file":"Dig-for-victory-header-768x512.jpg","width":768,"height":512,"filesize":75312,"mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Dig-for-victory-header-768x512.jpg"},"full":{"file":"Dig-for-victory-header.jpg","width":1500,"height":1000,"mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Dig-for-victory-header.jpg"}},"image_meta":{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0","keywords":[]}},"source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Dig-for-victory-header.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/media/1998","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/media"}],"about":[{"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/types/attachment"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/users/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/comments?post=1998"}]}}],"wp:term":[[{"id":13,"link":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/category/society/art-design/","name":"Art & Design","slug":"art-design","taxonomy":"category","yoast_head":"\nThe first 16 minutes of the documentary film The Golden Thread are wordlessly magical. Long takes show workers on their bicycles, machines at Kolkata’s Hukumchand Jute Mill operating in rhythmic unison, a worker’s hand skillfully guiding golden-coloured threads, accompanied by a soundtrack of chirping birds, clicking bicycle spokes, a wailing shift-start siren, whirring machines. The viewer is invited into this world and asked to take it all in. No explanation is required or offered.
\n\n\n\n“Somebody called this film a symphony of jute and I think that’s so true,” says director Nishtha Jain, on the phone from Paris where she’s working on her next project. The word “jute” refers to both a variety of reed-like plants that thrive in humid weather and to the natural fibre derived from those plants. It has been an important crop in South Asia—especially Bengal—for millennia. Today, jute is primarily used to make packaging textiles like burlap. It is known as “the golden fibre” because of its colour and economic value.
\n\n\n\nFrom the factory floor where the fibre is processed, the viewer is transported to a West Bengal jute field where a farmer is busy cutting down reeds of the plant. Crickets chirp in the background, a soft breeze rustles, everything in rhythm.
\n\n\n\n“I am looking at how manual labour is soon going to be a thing of the past because of being replaced by automation,” says Jain. “So, in this particular sequence, just looking at this person working at something that is backbreaking is also a meditative experience. It’s such skillful work, almost like a dance. So I like to give these little things time, things which we don’t really have the time for in our daily lives.”
\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/Golden-thread-jute-body.jpg\")
The Golden Thread will be screened as part of the DOXA Documentary Film Festival’s Thin Places programming—a collection of films described by the festival as “exploring liminal and precarious zones.” Mills like Hukumchand—which was built more than 100 years ago—were designed to be expansive, sunlit spaces, where workers park their bicycles and store their lunch boxes. Spaces Jain says were imbued with a homey-ness lacking in modern factories.
\n\n\n\n“Most of this ambience is gone now,” she says. “It’s only in India that somehow, you know, old things live longer in a way because everywhere else the turnaround is much faster. It’s because of a certain culture of repairs and reuse that a lot of the past kind of rolls into the present.”
\n\n\n\nJute is being called “the fabric of the future” because of its environmentally friendly qualities.
India has long been one of the leading global producers and exporters of jute. The state of West Bengal, where the crop is primarily harvested, was once considered the hub of the jute industry. Then came the plastic revolution of the ‘60s and jute lost its lustre. For mill workers, these changing circumstances have often meant low wages and exploitation.
\n\n\n\nFast-forward to today, and jute is being called “the fabric of the future” because of its environmentally friendly qualities, like sturdiness and biodegradability. Jute products are in demand from eco-friendly businesses. In 2022, India manufactured over 1 million metric tonnes of jute goods, with West Bengal the leading producer. But even with this demand, new automated looms would cut factories’ labour force by half.
\n\n\n\n“There’s been a lot of scientific work that has happened in terms of the utilization of jute in many other forms,” says Jain. “So it is making a kind of a comeback, but still it’s quite a struggle.”
\n\n\n\nDocumenting the lives of workers is a familiar theme for Jain. Her past work includes Lakshmi and Me (2007) about a domestic worker in Mumbai and At My Doorstep (2009) focused on the city’s migrant labourers: garbage collectors, security guards, and delivery boys. But she approached making The Golden Thread differently, not wanting it to be about just one thing. “When a film about workers is made, the first theme that jumps out is exploitation,” says Jain. “But I wanted to focus on broader topics. This factory is a place where dreams are made and broken.”
\n\n\n\nHistorically, jute mills provided housing known as “labour lines,” that would be passed between generations of workers. For older generations, the mills and surrounding communities where they began their lives and livelihoods instilled a sense of pride and belonging. Maqsood Alam, who has worked at Hukumchand since 1965, speaks emotionally in the film about how the mill is the source of workers’ sustenance, “just as farmers sow and harvest grain that feeds their families.” He’s among numerous workers voicing concern about the shutting down or modernization of these mills.
\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/Golden-Thread-vishwakarma-body.jpg\")
However, the documentary also shows younger generations who are less enthusiastic about working at a job that these days offers little in terms of compensation and long-term benefits. Pulkit Singh—a teen who celebrates his birthday in the film—is blunt about why he would opt for a career working for “Defence” (by which he could mean policing or India’s armed forces) over the mill.
\n\n\n\n“Other jobs need us to study a lot,” he says. “We need to do specialisation and advanced courses. Who is going to pay for those specialised, advanced courses? My father’s an ordinary mill worker, and higher studies need money.”
\n\n\n\nI’m looking at labourers as part of an ecosystem like jute is part of an ecosystem.
Jain points out that though youngsters who leave the protective environs of their mill town might earn a bit extra in another city, the payoff isn’t enough. Migrants end up living in claustrophobic conditions, sometimes five people to a room to save on rent. And being away from family takes a toll on their mental well-being, as can harsher working conditions.
\n\n\n\n“In these factories and mills like Hukumchand, they get long lunch breaks,” she says. “But in modern setups you’re not even allowed time to go pee.”
\n\n\n\n“With this film,” Jain elaborates, “I’m looking at labourers as part of an ecosystem like jute is part of an ecosystem. How when you destroy one thing—in replacing jute with plastic and therefore harming the jute industry as well as the environment—you’re destroying an entire ecosystem. Today, even though there is talk about the environment, there is not enough talk about human labour itself. And that, I think, is an important concern, because … human beings are also part of that environment.”
\n\n\n\nVancouver’s DOXA Documentary Film Festival runs from May 4–14, 2023. The Golden Thread (91 min) screens in person on May 10 at 6:15 pm, at The Cinematheque. Tickets are available on the DOXA website.
\n","protected":false},"featured_media":1889,"template":"","meta":[],"categories":[13,46,49,6,38,7],"tags":[459,373,110,460,67,85,567,239],"class_list":["post-1888","articles","type-articles","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-art-design","category-economy","category-human-rights","category-planet","category-plants-animals","category-society","tag-art-for-social-change","tag-baisakhi-roy","tag-documentary","tag-doxa","tag-film-tv","tag-india","tag-plant-fibre","tag-textiles"],"yoast_head":"\nA worker kneels down to pray on the factory floor of Kolkata’s Hukumchand Jute Mill.
\n"},"alt_text":"A man offers prayers on Hukumchand Mill's floor surrounded by jute stacks.","media_type":"image","mime_type":"image/jpeg","media_details":{"width":1500,"height":844,"file":"2023/05/Golden-Thread-header.jpg","filesize":"182896","sizes":{"medium":{"file":"Golden-Thread-header-300x169.jpg","width":300,"height":169,"filesize":"10191","mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/Golden-Thread-header-300x169.jpg"},"large":{"file":"Golden-Thread-header-1024x576.jpg","width":1024,"height":576,"filesize":"79147","mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/Golden-Thread-header-1024x576.jpg"},"thumbnail":{"file":"Golden-Thread-header-150x150.jpg","width":150,"height":150,"filesize":"6106","mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/Golden-Thread-header-150x150.jpg"},"medium_large":{"file":"Golden-Thread-header-768x432.jpg","width":768,"height":432,"filesize":"47585","mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/Golden-Thread-header-768x432.jpg"},"full":{"file":"Golden-Thread-header.jpg","width":1500,"height":844,"mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/Golden-Thread-header.jpg"}},"image_meta":{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}},"source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/Golden-Thread-header.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/media/1889","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/media"}],"about":[{"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/types/attachment"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/users/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/comments?post=1889"}]}}],"wp:term":[[{"id":13,"link":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/category/society/art-design/","name":"Art & Design","slug":"art-design","taxonomy":"category","yoast_head":"\nLeftover fabric scraps from industrial sewing operations and film productions. Textile factory surplus and fabric printed with discontinued patterns. Bundles of cloth handed down from someone’s relative who has stopped sewing. Typically, these textiles would wind up in the landfill. But for East Vancouver designer Tina Ozols, they’re the starting place for the garments she sells under her indie fashion label, Oona Clothing Company.
\n\n\n\nOona is a one-woman show, and visitors to Ozols’ Clark Drive studio are immediately immersed into a work space humming with her creativity, focus, and effort. A sewing area faces the street windows, while the adjacent open studio houses new designs displayed alongside tidy stacks of folded clothing, ready to label and ship. Racks of around 1,000 brown paper patterns hang from clothes hangers.
\n\n\n\nOzols’ path to design started early. “With dolls, I never actually got to them doing anything or talking to each other,” she muses. “I always made sure that their outfits were right first. And when that was settled, I put them away.”
\n\n\n\nThe fashion industry itself gives me a lot of tough feelings.
Her skill is a gift from her grandmothers; both were seamstresses. Her paternal grandmother Alma was born in Latvia in 1920. Once in Canada, she worked at a factory in Toronto using machines to embroider swimming and Brownie badges until she retired. Maternal grandmother Mary, on the other hand, knitted “a million” items for family, made quilts and clothes for children and grandchildren, and also had a doll-making business.
\n\n\n\n“Just seeing someone making things with confidence—and not focusing on any one skill set—allowed me to feel a freedom to explore whatever creative endeavour caught my fancy,” shares Ozols.
\n\n\n\nIn 1999, she completed a three-year fashion design program at Fanshawe College in London, ON. When Ozols first started Oona in 2001, she was making anything she could out of very little. She made jewelry out of small things she had collected over time: beads, chains, pieces of hardware from her parents’ garage. As she started out with almost no budget, one of the first things she made was a run of skirts that were sewn from yardage she assembled herself by weaving strips of scrap fabric together.
\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/OonaClothing_WebBody1-1.jpg\")
This creative problem-solving probably has something to do with how Ozols identifies: she introduces herself as a maker, rather than a “fashion designer.” When she was younger, she cared about magazines and the designers in them. But now the word “fashion” is loaded for her, both because of its association with fast fashion, and how wasteful that entire industry can be. “I do appreciate the art of it,” she says of high fashion. “I know that it has a place, but the actual industry itself gives me a lot of tough feelings.”
\n\n\n\nInstead of buying into the fast-fashion model, she chooses “to be creative with existing materials—some I may not have chosen.” And she puts energy into thinking about “how to prevent as much waste as I can, and think of ways to use it.” Some of the ways she’s come up with include creating what she calls “frankenfabrics” (yardage she stitches together from fabric scraps that would be otherwise too small to make anything out of), and repurposing thrown-out artists’ canvas frames for making silkscreens. She has used karate belts, zippers, rope, and leather to make accessories like braided belts, toiletry bags, glasses and pencil cases, purses, and wallets. This year, she’s challenged herself to use only what she already has in the studio.
\n\n\n\nOne of those things in the studio is her very first serious sewing machine—and it’s not just for decor. The 26-year-old Pfaff 6085 is still her go-to for some tasks, including sewing every single button hole. Old machines can be fixed, Ozols explains, whereas new ones are made with many plastic parts that can’t be repaired. We’re not taught to take care of things, she says, “because we can get another one or we already have 12 more. Unfortunately that allows us to devalue everything, which is really too bad.”
\n\n\n\nI hear from folks who have had an Oona item for 15-plus years, and it is still holding together.
Planned obsolescence in electronics parallels the way textiles are no longer made to last. Wool is no longer the quality it once was, says Ozols, but we can find vintage coats that last for years. “Being mindful of buying things that will last,” she says, “can balance some of the other choices that we’re forced to make.”
\n\n\n\nOzols makes sure that Oona articles are indeed made to last. “I still hear from folks who have had an Oona item for 10- or 15-plus years and—while faded and worn—[it] is still holding together,” she says. “And it pleases me greatly!”
\n\n\n\nIn addition to her interests in reducing waste and making garments that last, she’s motivated to create clothing that fits as many bodies as possible. Her line of underwear for all bodies—which she calls “Unders”—has been a big hit. The underwear is generally made from all new fabric sourced locally, though she also makes “Heavy Metal Hot Pants” for which the fronts are made from upcycled heavy-metal or punk band t-shirts. She will also make custom Unders out of special t-shirts clients provide.
\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/OonaClothing_WebBody5-1.jpg\")
Custom underwear might sound like the ultimate luxury, but Ozols makes sure her undergarments are available to community members who can’t afford extravagance. She explains that underwear is something that isn’t donated enough for those in need. Or, if it is, the quality is often poor. So Ozols donates her products regularly to the Evelyne Saller Centre in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, which provides support services to low-income and at-risk adults in that neighbourhood.
\n\n\n\nRegular prices for Unders range from C$16-40, depending on the style. But anyone can donate a pair for only C$5, and Ozols will add it to her next delivery. She also tops up the pile each time from her own stock. “Spending $5 for someone to feel that they are being treated with some dignity—instead of being asked to wear used or ill-fitting cheap underwear—is worth it to me!”
\n","protected":false},"featured_media":1498,"template":"","meta":[],"categories":[13,19,8,10,7,23,51,9],"tags":[554,118,124,263,363,283,239,93],"class_list":["post-1477","articles","type-articles","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-art-design","category-fashion-beauty","category-living","category-magazine","category-society","category-start-small","category-vancouver-area","category-west-coast","tag-circular-economy","tag-design","tag-fashion","tag-odette-auger","tag-small-business","tag-sun-woo-baik","tag-textiles","tag-zero-waste"],"yoast_head":"\nWhen I was a child living on the Navajo Nation, I’d ride along on trips to nearby border towns in New Mexico with my parents and grandparents. My sister and I would be in the back seat of my dad or grandfather’s old pickup truck, sharing snacks, playing, or napping as we made the 45-minute journey to Gallup, NM. Sometimes we would detour to the trading posts and pawn shops downtown.
\n\n\n\nAs we approached the trading posts, my eyes would be drawn to the tall windows and the massive Diné weavings I could see through them (Diné is the name our nation uses for ourselves). The walls were covered in art, wooden dolls representing Zuni and Hopi kachinas (spiritual deities) were arranged in dancing scenes, countless pieces of silver jewelry sat neatly placed on pedestals. Baskets were stacked and elegantly displayed, and other forms of Indigenous expressive culture were arranged so precisely I could rarely see any empty wall or floor space.
\n\n\n\nTrading posts have long done harm under the guise of supporting communities.
I recall the smell of leather saddles, moccasins, hides, and bridles. Antique wooden furniture would be covered by piles of Diné weavings and horse blankets. Taxidermy animals and hides hung high up on the walls. All around the room, glass cases displayed hundreds upon hundreds of precious stones and antique Indigenous-made jewelry.
\n\n\n\nEstablishments like this dot the southwestern US. They’re mostly owned by non-Indigenous settlers who purchase goods from local Indigenous artisans and craftspeople at rock-bottom prices and resell them for a profit. With few work alternatives, talented Indigenous artisans reproduce their nations’ culturally sacred items without ever earning a comfortable living. Trading posts have long done harm under the guise of supporting communities. But the Covid-19 pandemic has broken some of those patterns, exposed the harms, and opened the door for Indigenous artisans to use the digital realm and Indigenous-led efforts to share their work with the world.
\n\n\n\nTrading posts were first established by settlers in the mid-to-late 19th century, to foster economic trade between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people. Typically, Indigenous people would trade handcrafted jewelry, textiles, baskets, and other goods in exchange for food, enamelware, fabric, manufactured wool, tools, saddles, and other necessities. The development of capitalism, industry, and reservations as part of westward expansion altered social relations and created a brand new market for “Indian-made goods.” Trading posts were an integral feature and facilitator of these changes.
\n\n\n\nHistorically, trading posts played a major role in the expansion of Indigenous art markets in the southwestern US, which shaped popular ideas, myths, and stereotypes about the region and the tribes who inhabit it. Those who shop at trading posts may falsely believe that the items for sale have been ethically acquired, and that the shops have established friendly relationships that support Indigenous communities.
\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Finding-our-Way-Past-Trading-Posts_WebBody2.jpg\")
In fact, the posts take advantage of people who have been systemically impoverished through colonial policy, forcing them to create and sell items of personal, familial, and spiritual value. The posts also fail to honor the countless individual creators and knowledge-holders whose talents they benefit from, and the generations of Indigenous people who have passed through these spaces as a means of survival, to share their craft, or to search for their family’s heirlooms.
\n\n\n\nFor non-Indigenous tourists, trading posts and pawn shops are spaces where they can indulge in Indigenous culture. But for the Indigenous people who frequent the shops, these are often spaces of memory and loss where their tribe’s objects are being pawned, traded, or sold, stirring complicated, painful, and overwhelming emotions.
\n\n\n\nTrading posts fail to honor the countless individual creators and knowledge-holders whose talents they benefit from.
My sensory memory of trading posts is intimately tied to my childhood sense of wonder. As a kid, I constantly questioned older family members about who made the objects being sold, and why they ended up in trading posts.
\n\n\n\nMy family taught me the value and meaning behind various pieces of our regalia, family heirlooms, and the sacred items we use to protect our families and homes. When I had my kinaaldá (coming of age ceremony), I received my first basket to hold and protect my jewelry, medicine bags, and cultural treasures. So when I saw our baskets for sale — far from their homes and families — it stirred difficult questions in me. More than that, I wondered who would care for them and where they would find their final resting place.
\n\n\n\nMany trading posts advertise Indigenous, antique goods as “authentic,” perpetuating the idea that Indigenous cultures are frozen in time. Non-Indigenous people then treat living, breathing Indigenous people as objects of the past and colonial subjects. For the non-Indigenous consumer, these Indigenous-made crafts do not come from sovereign nations with distinct cultures and languages, or any ounce of autonomy or agency. They’re just artifacts from a distant past.
\n\n\n\nIn recent years, mainstream media has increased coverage of Indigenous communities and issues, which in theory could counteract this ignorance. But there can be negative consequences to this effort. For example, non-Indigenous led or owned entities will seek to exploit issues in our communities to further their own business profits or organizational agendas.
\n\n\n\nThe Navajo Nation and other nearby Indigenous nations and communities were hit hard by the Covid-19 pandemic. Not only did individuals’ health suffer, but many families faced dangerous economic impacts. Tribal leaders, activists, youth, and grassroots organizations have stepped up and gathered resources to support those most at risk.
\n\n\n\nBut in Gallup, the owners of trading posts and pawn shops were more concerned with losing revenue from low inventories and staff shortages. In July 2021, Albuquerque TV station KRQE interviewed shop owners about the impact Covid-19 has had on their businesses. Journalist Jackie Kent reported that “a few shops in Gallup say they’re hopeful more artists will return to work once the unemployment bonuses go away in September.”
\n\n\n\nTrading posts on the reservation and in border-towns — which are major economic centers along and outside reservation boundaries — have a particular historical importance. Beyond that, and considering all the points above, what purpose do trading posts serve? And who do they ultimately serve and benefit?
\n\n\n\nI imagine a future art market that creates a foundation for sustaining our traditional knowledge and cultures.
The trading posts that are recognized as National Historic Sites help us understand the material, social, and economic conditions and relationships within the southwest region. But if, instead of looking at them historically, we consider trading posts as active sites of capitalist exploitation in the present, it is clear we must move forward toward a different model.
\n\n\n\nIf we consider the depth and importance of these questions and our ongoing relationship with trading posts, I believe we can come to a place where we put Indigenous people first and create our own self-sustaining and self-sufficient Native founded and led cultural art markets that truly benefit Indigenous artisans. I imagine a future, self-sustaining art market that not only supports Native people and communities, but that creates a foundation for sustaining our traditional knowledge, languages, and cultures. Where we can practice art and dance, speak and teach our languages, and nurture future generations in taking on this project.
\n\n\n\nThere are a number of grassroots organizers, artists and musicians, culture-bearers, and mutual aid groups who’ve begun to establish networks and sites of trade that are economically sustainable, community-oriented, and focus on the well-being of land, spirit, and people. I hope that in recognizing the harmful history of exploitative trade in the Southwest, we can begin to build each other up from the center, rather than from the periphery. I hope we can cast aside the idea that we need someone to save our cultures from disappearing: Since time immemorial we have been here, and we have the power to support an art market that allows our people to flourish.
\n","protected":false},"featured_media":1099,"template":"","meta":[],"categories":[13,37,50,10,7,22],"tags":[534,55,533,440,365,321,60,245],"class_list":["post-780","articles","type-articles","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-art-design","category-first-voice","category-indigenous","category-magazine","category-society","category-voices","tag-artists","tag-colonization","tag-craft","tag-dene","tag-economy","tag-larissa-nez","tag-opinion","tag-us-southwest"],"yoast_head":"\nHubbell Trading Post in Ganado, AZ
\n"},"alt_text":"Interior of a trading post. Leather goods hang from log rafters. Souvenir shelves and a wooden counter wrap around the room.","media_type":"image","mime_type":"image/jpeg","media_details":{"width":1500,"height":1000,"file":"2022/09/Finding-our-Way-Past-Trading-Posts_WebHeader.jpg","filesize":"256283","sizes":{"medium":{"file":"Finding-our-Way-Past-Trading-Posts_WebHeader-300x200.jpg","width":300,"height":200,"filesize":"17874","mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Finding-our-Way-Past-Trading-Posts_WebHeader-300x200.jpg"},"large":{"file":"Finding-our-Way-Past-Trading-Posts_WebHeader-1024x683.jpg","width":1024,"height":683,"filesize":"142217","mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Finding-our-Way-Past-Trading-Posts_WebHeader-1024x683.jpg"},"thumbnail":{"file":"Finding-our-Way-Past-Trading-Posts_WebHeader-150x150.jpg","width":150,"height":150,"filesize":"7648","mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Finding-our-Way-Past-Trading-Posts_WebHeader-150x150.jpg"},"medium_large":{"file":"Finding-our-Way-Past-Trading-Posts_WebHeader-768x512.jpg","width":768,"height":512,"filesize":"88988","mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Finding-our-Way-Past-Trading-Posts_WebHeader-768x512.jpg"},"full":{"file":"Finding-our-Way-Past-Trading-Posts_WebHeader.jpg","width":1500,"height":1000,"mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Finding-our-Way-Past-Trading-Posts_WebHeader.jpg"}},"image_meta":{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}},"source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Finding-our-Way-Past-Trading-Posts_WebHeader.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/media/1099","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/media"}],"about":[{"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/types/attachment"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/users/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/comments?post=1099"}]}}],"wp:term":[[{"id":13,"link":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/category/society/art-design/","name":"Art & Design","slug":"art-design","taxonomy":"category","yoast_head":"\n“If you’re going to have a kid, you have to worry about the future,” said composer and singer Leah Abramson, 40, while speaking to Asparagus about her upcoming show Songs for a Lost Pod. The multimedia concert features live narration and takes the audience through a series of deep, haunting songs that explore science, environmental grief, Abramson’s traumatic family history, and the story of BC’s A5 pod of northern resident orca whales.
\n\n\n\n“Having children is a very hopeful act, but it also feels a little bit scary to bring someone into the world in a climate emergency,” Abramson said. Becoming a mom amplified her resolve to process her environmental grief and traumatic family history through music, and to share that journey with others.
\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nIf you’re going to have a kid, you have to worry about the future.
\n
“I spend all this time worrying about passing my own [trauma] stuff down to her, but we’re also passing down this world to our children,” she added. “It felt urgent for a long time, but now it feels desperate… [for me] to reach people, and have them connect on a human level to other creatures. Being able to relate to other species and animals is even more important right now.”
\n\n\n\nScheduled for May 28 and 29 at SFU’s Goldcorp Centre for the Arts in Vancouver, Abramson’s show is a reimagining of her 2017 album of the same name. The album’s songs will be interwoven with a live narration performed by artist and musician Barbara Adler, who will tell the story of how and why the project came to be. Local shadow puppet troupe Mind of a Snail will project visuals to illustrate the story in real time.
\n\n\n\nAs a kid, Abramson had recurring dreams of beluga whales. As an adult, she began having these dreams again, but this time around they featured orcas.
\n\n\n\nSoon after the whale dreams returned, Abramson happened upon a record featuring whale songs in a thrift shop. It had been recorded at Alert Bay, BC, a small town located on Cormorant Island, off the northeast coast of Vancouver Island. She took the record home.
\n\n\n\nA few years later, in 2012—10 years into her music career— Abramson began learning to play the theremin, an electronic instrument invented in 1928. She describes making music with the theremin as “play[ing] space around two antennas,” and the resulting sound inspired her to pull out the whale sounds record.
\n\n\n\n“I realized I could play along with the whale sounds on the theremin. And then it just kinda spiralled into whale research.”
\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Exploring-Environmental-Grief-through-Whale-Songs_WebBody.jpg\")
Abramson quickly realized that she wanted to go deeper into that research and realm of songwriting. But she wanted structure and support to ensure she would see the project through. At the time, she was teaching songwriting for the University of British Columbia’s creative writing department, so embarking on a Master of Fine Arts within the department was a natural fit.
\n\n\n\n“It was just really obvious to me how I could structure [my course of study] and who my mentors would be,” she said.
\n\n\n\nThe degree, which she started in 2014, gave Abramson time to take several research trips up to Sointula—a village on Malcolm Island that’s a half-hour ferry ride from Alert Bay—as well as Alaska. During her journeys she was able to see and hear orcas, and take field recordings. Those, along with pre-existing audio of the A5 pod’s vocalizations, were turned into beats and tracks that formed the musical building blocks of the album.
\n\n\n\nSomething about studying whale families allowed me to dip into my own family.
Turning the album into a multidisciplinary performance was a gradual process. Songs for a Lost Pod was first mounted in 2017, and then again in 2018. During the first show, Abramson had Adler read some very basic research facts between the songs. But this only made Abramson want to take it further.
\n\n\n\n“I realized there was a lot more behind the songs that I wasn’t saying, and I felt like I needed to write something more, that the show wasn’t really finished,” she said.
\n\n\n\nShe continued developing the narration script for a 2018 concert at the Vancouver International Jazz Festival, but after that performance, she still didn’t feel satisfied. “The narration was incomplete, and missing a big part of the story, and I wanted it to be in a theatre, to tie it all together.”
\n\n\n\nNorthern resident orcas live off the coast of BC and up through southeastern portions of Alaska. These fish-eating orcas are divided into three vocally distinctive groups: the A clan, the G clan and the R clan. Abramson’s master’s research narrowed quickly towards the A5 pod, a small group within the A clan that had lost several family members.
\n\n\n\nOn December 11, 1969, the pod lost at least three members to capture. This story is featured on the album in a song called “Pender Harbour,” its title referencing an area on BC’s Sunshine Coast where the capture took place.
\n\n\n\nAccompanied by synth, guitar and piano, Abramson sings softly — amidst echoes of her own voice — from the point of view of the pod.
\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nThey drove us into the bay (dark messengers), into the net pen. Overhead the raven, underneath the rockfish (dark messengers).
\n
Losing family members is something Abramson is acutely familiar with, even though she wasn’t alive when it happened. Her grandparents survived the Holocaust, but lost everyone else in their families.
\n\n\n\n“It’s been really hard for me to process that family history, and for a long time I turned away from it,” she said. “I really didn’t want to think about it too much, because it’s just too intense.”
\n\n\n\nBut learning about the history of the A5 pod allowed her to finally turn towards it. “There was something in studying whale families that felt a little manageable, and allowed me to dip into my own… family. Kind of in and out, like a mirror image.”
\n\n\n\nIt’s been five years since Abramson released the album, and four years since she has performed the show it inspired before an audience. In the interim she became a parent and lived through a pandemic, which have both propelled her forward.
\n\n\n\nThe pandemic has been “terrible” for Abramson — as it was for most people — and caused the performance to be rescheduled several times. But she says that, for better or worse, it also gave her more time with the material.
\n\n\n\n“I’ve completely rewritten the script — it’s much more of a stage show than it ever was,” she said.“I think… [having a child] made everything just more relevant and more emotional and more interesting.”
\n\n\n\nSongs for a Lost Pod has also served as a way for Abramson to process climate grief. The album and show make reference to issues such as oil spills, the threat of species extinction, and the impacts of underwater shipping noise, all of which affect whale populations. However, the production isn’t explicitly about climate change.
\n\n\n\n“There’s certain things that refer to aspects of climate change, but it’s not an overt reference,” she said. “It’s definitely, like, subtext.”
\n\n\n\nIt will take countries making big sweeping changes to actually make a difference.
But the climate crisis is something she’s constantly thinking about. Being a parent of a 3-year-old, Abramson often worries about the future and wellbeing of the planet.
\n\n\n\n“It will take countries making big sweeping changes to actually make a difference in terms of ocean temperatures,” she said. Yet the herculean task of seeing that those changes happen weighs heavily.
\n\n\n\n“It’s scary…not knowing how exactly to do that,” she said. “Or trying your best, but knowing that you’re [only] one person.”
\n","protected":false},"featured_media":1112,"template":"","meta":[],"categories":[13,42,6,38,7,9],"tags":[459,71,444,103,267,329,344],"class_list":["post-598","articles","type-articles","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-art-design","category-bc","category-planet","category-plants-animals","category-society","category-west-coast","tag-art-for-social-change","tag-climate-crisis","tag-eco-art","tag-oceans","tag-tessa-vikander","tag-theatre","tag-whales"],"yoast_head":"\nComposer Leah Abramson’s dreams featuring orcas inspired her to create an album, and then a multimedia performance, called Songs for a Lost Pod.
\n"},"alt_text":"An orca leaps out of the water. A tree-covered, rocky outcrop sits in the distant background.","media_type":"image","mime_type":"image/jpeg","media_details":{"width":1500,"height":1000,"file":"2022/09/Exploring-Environmental-Grief-through-Whale-Songs_WebHeader.jpg","filesize":"208876","sizes":{"medium":{"file":"Exploring-Environmental-Grief-through-Whale-Songs_WebHeader-300x200.jpg","width":300,"height":200,"filesize":"12540","mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Exploring-Environmental-Grief-through-Whale-Songs_WebHeader-300x200.jpg"},"large":{"file":"Exploring-Environmental-Grief-through-Whale-Songs_WebHeader-1024x683.jpg","width":1024,"height":683,"filesize":"104046","mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Exploring-Environmental-Grief-through-Whale-Songs_WebHeader-1024x683.jpg"},"thumbnail":{"file":"Exploring-Environmental-Grief-through-Whale-Songs_WebHeader-150x150.jpg","width":150,"height":150,"filesize":"5234","mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Exploring-Environmental-Grief-through-Whale-Songs_WebHeader-150x150.jpg"},"medium_large":{"file":"Exploring-Environmental-Grief-through-Whale-Songs_WebHeader-768x512.jpg","width":768,"height":512,"filesize":"62767","mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Exploring-Environmental-Grief-through-Whale-Songs_WebHeader-768x512.jpg"},"full":{"file":"Exploring-Environmental-Grief-through-Whale-Songs_WebHeader.jpg","width":1500,"height":1000,"mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Exploring-Environmental-Grief-through-Whale-Songs_WebHeader.jpg"}},"image_meta":{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}},"source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Exploring-Environmental-Grief-through-Whale-Songs_WebHeader.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/media/1112","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/media"}],"about":[{"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/types/attachment"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/users/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/comments?post=1112"}]}}],"wp:term":[[{"id":13,"link":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/category/society/art-design/","name":"Art & Design","slug":"art-design","taxonomy":"category","yoast_head":"\nThe calm that’s present throughout the film Belle River is unsettling and compelling. Like that moment before it all goes sideways in a horror movie. Except, in this case, the catastrophic events don’t seem to bother the people living through them, and the boogey monster is climate change.
\n\n\n\nShot in Pierre Part, LA — a waterside community of around 3,000 in Assumption Parish — this documentary shows the impacts of a 2019 flood in the Atchafalaya Basin (one of the largest wetlands in the US). Shot in French and subtitled in English, Belle River is the third installment of Québec filmmakers Guillaume Fournier, Samuel Matteau, and Yannick Nolin’s trilogy about life in Louisiana and the Cajun culture there.
\n\n\n\nThe film is part of the Changing Landscapes program at this year’s DOXA Documentary Film Festival. The program features six shorts focused on the changing nature of land and its connection with people.
\n\n\n\nThe catastrophic events don’t seem to bother the people living through them, and the boogey monster is climate change.
Belle River’s opening sequence consists of aerial shots of waterways coupled with the faint tintinnabulation of wind chimes, as a woman’s voice speaks in French about the beauty of the bayou. All is calm.
\n\n\n\nBut then you notice the water is covering people’s yards, and the front steps of their homes and restaurants. It’s creeping up tires and along roadways, places where water is not supposed to be. From the onset of the 11-minute documentary, there is the sense that flooding here is a common phenomenon and one that the community has grown used to. They see it as part of life rather than a consequence of climate change. In fact, the locals in the film never bring up climate change, not once.
\n\n\n\nWhether they see it or not, the situation is undoubtedly getting worse. Louisiana experienced widespread flooding as a result of Hurricane Isaac in 2012 and again in 2016 because of record rainfall. The 2019 water levels in the Atchafalaya River reached 75 cm above flood stage levels — the result of snow melting in the northern parts of the country due to warmer temperatures, and flowing south through the vast Mississippi River System. (The highest recorded level was an additional 65 cm higher, in 1973.)
\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/This-Town-Doesnt-Blame-Climate-Change-for-its-Floods_WebBody1.jpg\")
News stories in 2019 were filled with questions about whether the Morganza Spillway would be opened for only the third time since it was built in 1973 (the other time was 2011). If the spillway had been opened to relieve pressure on the rising Mississippi — which it wasn’t in the end — communities like Pierre Part and Belle River would have flooded even further.
\n\n\n\n“The feeling is surreal,” explains Fournier. “Looking at these places that are completely flooded. It’s so sad and so beautiful.” Fournier and his fellow filmmakers went back to Louisiana to make the final movie of their trilogy without knowing what it was going to be about. He says they knew they wanted to address climate change, especially since the state’s Isle de Jean Charles, also in the Mississippi Delta, is considered the home to the US’ first climate refugees; locals have been relocated because of erosion and flooding. After a chat with some local friends, the filmmakers knew they should check out a flooded community.
\n\n\n\nA stark contrast between the climate crisis and a population in denial runs through the film, making it hard to watch at points. The subjects spend much of the short talking about their community, their neighbours, the way they help each other out in times of need. It’s comforting and frustrating. You want the people on screen to be more upset about the situation in the Atchafalaya Basin, show more outrage at the state of things as a result of climate change. But they just talk about how they grew up here, that this is the way it is, and how they’ll find a way to live with it.
\n\n\n\nThere’s no formal catharsis or closure for the audience at the end of Belle River, because the problem is real and ongoing.
Fournier says this seemingly laissez-faire attitude is the result of generations of resilience on the part of Cajuns. It’s not complacency, it’s survival.
\n\n\n\n“The Cajun people are a very resilient people, all starting in 1755,” he says, referring to the expulsion of French-speaking Acadians from Nova Scotia by the British as part of a military power play over the French. “They had to go live in [French-ruled] Louisiana by force. It has a lot of impact on their culture and the way they see life. And just the fact that they found a way to live on the bayou, it’s all very interesting.”
\n\n\n\nEconomics also has a lot to do with why they don’t leave. Louisiana has the second-highest poverty rate (17.8%) in the US, according to data from the US Census Bureau. Fournier points out that the subjects in his film are dependent on employment from the oil producers who are still a major player in the state’s economy: “Their land is completely destroyed because of the companies they work for, but they have a house because of that company and that job, and they don’t necessarily see the link.”
\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/This-Town-Doesnt-Blame-Climate-Change-for-its-Floods_WebBody2-1024x1024.jpg\")
There’s no formal catharsis or closure for the audience at the end of Belle River, because the problem is real and ongoing. Near the end of the film, a man speaks about his love for where he lives, saying “There’s no better place in the world,’’ followed by images of him dancing in his kitchen in rubber boots after entering his home, which is surrounded by water.
\n\n\n\nIt is clear that the people in this place want to overcome the flooding as they have so many hardships before. But as the last shots of the film show the Morganza Spillway holding back the swelling Mississppi from flowing into the Atchafalaya Basin, there is the sense that the coming challenges of climate change may prove to be too much.
\n\n\n\nVancouver’s DOXA Documentary Film Festival runs from May 5–15, 2022. Changing Landscapes (including the shorts Nuisance Bear, Forests, Planktonium, Belle River, Galb’Echaouf, and Listen to the Beat of our Images) screens in person on May 14 at 8 pm, at The Cinematheque. All of the Changing Landscapes films except Forests can also be screened virtually from anywhere in Canada throughout the festival. Tickets to in-person and online screenings are available on the DOXA website.
\n\n\n\nCorrection: The closing shots of the film were originally described as showing “water spilling out the sides of a local levee.” They show a trickle of water passing around one of the Morganza Spillway’s sluice gates.
\n","protected":false},"featured_media":1333,"template":"","meta":[],"categories":[13,11,6,7],"tags":[220,317,110,460,67,233,76,141,234,544],"class_list":["post-1196","articles","type-articles","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-art-design","category-climate-change","category-planet","category-society","tag-climate-migration","tag-daina-lawrence","tag-documentary","tag-doxa","tag-film-tv","tag-louisiana","tag-natural-disaster","tag-nature","tag-quebec","tag-wetlands"],"yoast_head":"\nFrom the onset of the 11-minute documentary, there is the sense that flooding in Pierre Part is a common phenomenon and one that the community has grown used to.
\n"},"alt_text":"A flooded neighbourhood in Pierre Part, Louisiana. Trees loom over wooden homes sitting on struts above the floodwater.","media_type":"image","mime_type":"image/jpeg","media_details":{"width":1500,"height":1000,"file":"2022/09/This-Town-Doesnt-Blame-Climate-Change-for-its-Floods_WebHeader-1.jpg","filesize":"275907","sizes":{"medium":{"file":"This-Town-Doesnt-Blame-Climate-Change-for-its-Floods_WebHeader-1-300x200.jpg","width":300,"height":200,"filesize":"16603","mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/This-Town-Doesnt-Blame-Climate-Change-for-its-Floods_WebHeader-1-300x200.jpg"},"large":{"file":"This-Town-Doesnt-Blame-Climate-Change-for-its-Floods_WebHeader-1-1024x683.jpg","width":1024,"height":683,"filesize":"145775","mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/This-Town-Doesnt-Blame-Climate-Change-for-its-Floods_WebHeader-1-1024x683.jpg"},"thumbnail":{"file":"This-Town-Doesnt-Blame-Climate-Change-for-its-Floods_WebHeader-1-150x150.jpg","width":150,"height":150,"filesize":"7165","mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/This-Town-Doesnt-Blame-Climate-Change-for-its-Floods_WebHeader-1-150x150.jpg"},"medium_large":{"file":"This-Town-Doesnt-Blame-Climate-Change-for-its-Floods_WebHeader-1-768x512.jpg","width":768,"height":512,"filesize":"88982","mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/This-Town-Doesnt-Blame-Climate-Change-for-its-Floods_WebHeader-1-768x512.jpg"},"full":{"file":"This-Town-Doesnt-Blame-Climate-Change-for-its-Floods_WebHeader-1.jpg","width":1500,"height":1000,"mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/This-Town-Doesnt-Blame-Climate-Change-for-its-Floods_WebHeader-1.jpg"}},"image_meta":{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}},"source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/This-Town-Doesnt-Blame-Climate-Change-for-its-Floods_WebHeader-1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/media/1333","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/media"}],"about":[{"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/types/attachment"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/users/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/comments?post=1333"}]}}],"wp:term":[[{"id":13,"link":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/category/society/art-design/","name":"Art & Design","slug":"art-design","taxonomy":"category","yoast_head":"\n“The traffic is ridiculous. And the people that come to work here don’t understand or respect the territory as it is.” The young woman who speaks these words near the midpoint of the documentary Wochiigii lo: End of the Peace is a member of the West Moberly First Nation. She’s shown standing in the heart of the Peace River valley, with two children and two older family members, a man and a woman.
\n\n\n\nThe people she’s speaking about are the construction workers building the Site C hydroelectric dam across the Peace. “They don’t understand the people,” she continues. “They don’t respect the land, and they go through it like it’s nothing.”
\n\n\n\nSite C is a hydroelectric project currently under construction 7 km southwest of Fort St. John, BC. It is scheduled for completion around 2025. The project was approved in 2014, but a coalition of First Nations and settler residents in the valley have continued fighting it in the courts and on the ground. Haida filmmaker Heather Hatch began documenting their efforts in 2016. Once in the community, she found that doing this story justice meant she had to take it slow. Five years slow, to be precise.
\n\n\n\nThey don’t understand the people. They don’t respect the land, and they go through it like it’s nothing.
If completed, the Site C dam will flood over 55 square km of land at the bottom of the Peace Valley. Those protesting the project argue it would destroy local ecosystems, animal migration routes, sacred First Nations burial grounds, farmland, and fish stocks, and permanently harm Indigenous cultural identity.
\n\n\n\nThey say these changes violate Treaty 8, in which the government of Canada guaranteed 39 First Nations (including those in the Peace) rights to hunt, trap, and fish on their traditional territories “as long as the sun shines, the grass grows and the river flows.” The activists’ objections aren’t hypothetical: the WAC Bennett dam built further upstream on the Peace had similar impacts when it was completed in the 1960s, and still impacts local First Nations today.
\n\n\n\nProvincial electric utility BC Hydro began engineering studies on Site C in 1971. In the 1980s the studies were presented to the BC Utilities Commission, which rejected the project in 1983. However, Site C was revived by former Premier Christy Clark, who promised to get the dam to a “point of no return” before her government was voted out (in 2017). Construction began on the dam in the summer of 2015, and the following year Hatch arrived to document activists’ ongoing efforts to get the dam cancelled.
\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/The-Story-of-Site-C-Took-Time-to-Tell-Right_WebBody.jpg\")
Hatch’s previous work has also focused on telling Indigenous stories. She wrote for the CBC’s Peace River Rising — a documentary short about violence against Indigenous women — and penned the pilot for The Girl Who Talks to the Moon, a CBC Children’s show featuring Haida language and culture. Wochiigii lo, which is screening as part of the 2022 DOXA Documentary Film Festival, is Hatch’s first feature.
\n\n\n\n“This documentary has been near to my heart for five years and this process has granted me the immense privilege of trusting relationships with members of West Moberly First Nations,” Hatch wrote in her Director’s Statement. “Through them, I learned the absolute importance of consultation ethics to the craft of truth telling.”
\n\n\n\nWhat took five years? Capturing the depth of the story she wanted to convey.
\n\n\n\n“I’ve been following the story on the ground since 2016,” Hatch said in an interview. “Just really getting to understand the story spiritually as well as… historically and intellectually. Who to talk to and where the information should come from, but also creating a bond between me and the main character.”
\n\n\n\nThat main character is Diane Abel, the older woman in the family grouping mentioned above. The former executive director of the Treaty 8 Tribal Association, Abel is a mother and grandmother who is committed to resisting the construction of Site C. Throughout the film, Abel acts as the audience’s guide to the land she is fighting to protect for future generations.
\n\n\n\nIn addition to Abel and her family members, the film features West Moberly First Nations Chief Roland Wilson, settler farmers Ken Boon and Esther Pedersen, and a diverse cast of community members and academics. Hatch said she felt a bond with many of the people whose voices are featured in the film.
\n\n\n\n“This is one of the upsides of working in the field,” she said. “Meeting all these incredible, beautiful, spiritual, artistic people.”
\n\n\n\nI’ve been following the story since 2016, just really getting to understand it spiritually, historically, and intellectually.
Hatch served as writer, director, and producer on the project. With a small budget, she said she had to pick people she felt understood the subject matter, and had a heart for it. “I also really wanted a strong female team.”
\n\n\n\nThe long process has had the desired results, according to Hatch. After the film screened at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2021, she received the kind of feedback that means the most to her as a filmmaker. “A woman… just said that I had done a good job capturing [the characters in the film],” she said. “I had done justice for them.”
\n\n\n\nAs for the documentary’s future, now that it’s out in the world “I hope it makes a change,” said Hatch. “I hope it changes somebody’s mind.”
\n\n\n\nVancouver’s DOXA Documentary Film Festival runs from May 5–15, 2022. Wochiigii lo: End of the Peace (85 min, English) screens in person on May 11 at 6 pm, at the Djavad Mowafaghian Cinema, and on May 12 at 8:30 pm, at the VIFF Centre. It can also be screened virtually from anywhere in Canada throughout the festival. Tickets to in-person and online screenings are available on the DOXA website.
\n","protected":false},"featured_media":1336,"template":"","meta":[],"categories":[13,42,12,50,6,7,9],"tags":[318,459,110,460,67,200,242,551,65,61,172],"class_list":["post-1197","articles","type-articles","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-art-design","category-bc","category-energy","category-indigenous","category-planet","category-society","category-west-coast","tag-angelina-ravelli","tag-art-for-social-change","tag-documentary","tag-doxa","tag-film-tv","tag-government","tag-hydroelectricity","tag-indigenous-rights","tag-politics","tag-social-justice","tag-sovereignty"],"yoast_head":"\nDocumentary director Heather Hatch (left) and anti-Site C activist Diane Abel look over the Peace River.
\n"},"alt_text":"Heather Hatch and Diane Abel sit together, embracing each other by the shoulder, atop a hill overlooking the Peace River.","media_type":"image","mime_type":"image/jpeg","media_details":{"width":1500,"height":1000,"file":"2022/09/The-Story-of-Site-C-Took-Time-to-Tell-Right_WebHeader.jpg","filesize":"218493","sizes":{"medium":{"file":"The-Story-of-Site-C-Took-Time-to-Tell-Right_WebHeader-300x200.jpg","width":300,"height":200,"filesize":"14766","mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/The-Story-of-Site-C-Took-Time-to-Tell-Right_WebHeader-300x200.jpg"},"large":{"file":"The-Story-of-Site-C-Took-Time-to-Tell-Right_WebHeader-1024x683.jpg","width":1024,"height":683,"filesize":"122777","mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/The-Story-of-Site-C-Took-Time-to-Tell-Right_WebHeader-1024x683.jpg"},"thumbnail":{"file":"The-Story-of-Site-C-Took-Time-to-Tell-Right_WebHeader-150x150.jpg","width":150,"height":150,"filesize":"6432","mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/The-Story-of-Site-C-Took-Time-to-Tell-Right_WebHeader-150x150.jpg"},"medium_large":{"file":"The-Story-of-Site-C-Took-Time-to-Tell-Right_WebHeader-768x512.jpg","width":768,"height":512,"filesize":"75435","mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/The-Story-of-Site-C-Took-Time-to-Tell-Right_WebHeader-768x512.jpg"},"full":{"file":"The-Story-of-Site-C-Took-Time-to-Tell-Right_WebHeader.jpg","width":1500,"height":1000,"mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/The-Story-of-Site-C-Took-Time-to-Tell-Right_WebHeader.jpg"}},"image_meta":{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}},"source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/The-Story-of-Site-C-Took-Time-to-Tell-Right_WebHeader.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/media/1336","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/media"}],"about":[{"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/types/attachment"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/users/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/comments?post=1336"}]}}],"wp:term":[[{"id":13,"link":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/category/society/art-design/","name":"Art & Design","slug":"art-design","taxonomy":"category","yoast_head":"\nWhen I first met Sharon Kallis in October 2020, she was weaving a coat she had been working on for 12 years. That is if you account for the process as she does: 11 years of knowledge-gathering, added to the time taken to hand-harvest, prepare, and weave the lustrous brown fibres for the fabric. After that, the coat could be assembled: the various pieces could be stitched together, the pockets knit and sewn in, and the seams finished. But the length of Kallis’ undertaking wasn’t the only reason this would be an extraordinary coat. She was also crafting the garment from a plant most people fear: stinging nettle.
\n\n\n\nKallis is an artist, but not the kind that you’ll find holding gallery shows or lounging around a paint-speckled urban studio. In the late 1990s, she had just graduated from the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design, too broke to afford art materials. Then she discovered a green-waste pile in her local park, where the park’s gardener had been discarding grounds-work clippings.
\n\n\n\n“I started poking that pile of sticks with this attitude of like, ‘Enough of anything can be made into something.’” That moment led to two decades of learning about, and working with, unwanted plants from Vancouver’s public parks — like nettle.
\n\n\n\nNettle thread creates a fabric even softer and stronger than linen.
Kallis, who has a shock of short white hair and a dimple in her right cheek, talks with her hands as she tells me that people often misunderstand nettle. They often see it as invasive, even though it’s native to the northern hemisphere. Plus, most people associate it with its sting: the plant’s deep-green, toothed leaves and long stems are coated in tiny hairs that inject acids and neurotransmitters into the skin, causing a rash. In Kallis’ experience, though, the pain isn’t extreme. “The fear is worse than the thing itself,” she says with a wry smile.
\n\n\n\nIn the history of textile agriculture, nettle was once used in clothing, thread, fishing nets, and travel bags, but Kallis says that it became sidelined in favour of plants like flax and cotton because it’s difficult to process. Kallis harvests the plant with her bare hands — she says she feels only minor stings, and there is medicine in the plants that helps with her arthritis. She softens bundles of nettle stems underfoot, and cracks the stems open to reveal precious fibres.
\n\n\n\nFollowing that, she rolls the nettle fibres on her thighs, makes them run parallel by “carding” or combing them, and boils them in borax, which removes oils and prepares the fibres for dyeing. Only then are they ready to be spun into thread. That thread creates a fabric even softer and stronger than linen. To Kallis, that’s a fabric whose value cannot be easily measured.
\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Reclaiming-a-Tradition-of-Weaving-with-Nettle_WebBody.jpg\")
“I have ancestral roots that connect me to Ireland, Wales, Britain, Scotland, and Germany, all of which are places that nettle has a very strong history in clothing.” Nettle, Kallis says, allows her to connect her own ancestral traditions with those of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples, upon whose unceded territory she lives and works. The Indigenous people of the BC coast used to make mats and fishing nets out of nettle: “There’s a shared tradition that we have.”
\n\n\n\nThe tradition of weaving with nettle indeed spans many cultures. Kallis tells me she has learned that in ancient agrarian societies, enslaved people and the poor would clothe themselves with nettle, while landowners wore linen. Years ago, Kallis heard someone call nettle “the clothing of the landless.” As someone who doesn’t anticipate ever owning property, that term resonates with her.
\n\n\n\nIn Vancouver, real estate is among the most expensive in Canada, and Kallis lives below the poverty line. Her work is funded through grants and small stipends from the province and the city, but those funds don’t cover all her work hours. A production grant from the BC Arts Council covered only around 35–40% of the time she spent producing the nettle coat. Still, Kallis says she has an excellent life, which she attributes to social housing: She rents a small co-op apartment in the Downtown Eastside, often called Canada’s poorest neighbourhood. That apartment is where she rode out the first pandemic winter weaving her coat.
\n\n\n\nWeaving with nettle — which springs up from the roadsides, ditches, and wastelands of the Vancouver area — has brought Kallis to the roots of what we wear.
An outsider might assume that weaving is a solitary process, but Kallis’ practice is deeply rooted in community and collective discovery. She says that working with and learning from four Squamish women — Sesemiya-Tracy Williams, Meagan Innes, T’uy’t’tanat-Cease Wyss, and Senaqwila Wyss — enabled her to reframe and deepen her relationship to plants in the first place.
\n\n\n\nWhen she works with nettle fibres today, she is drawing upon techniques she learned from two “textile skillholders” in her community — Penny Coupland and Karen Barnaby — as well as nettle weaver Allan Brown based in Brighton, UK. As part of EartHand Gleaners Society, Kallis’ art nonprofit, she also runs conversation circles with people interested in the stories of their own ancestral textiles.
\n\n\n\nIn August 2021, Kallis put the finishing touches on the coat. When we caught up several months later, she likened the feeling to completing a good book. “You have this moment of mourning,” she says. “Of like, ‘Now what?’” She’s looking ahead to the next cloth she wants to weave and the next garment she wants to make — for her, there’s so much left to explore. “Nettle Pants 2030,” she jokes. In the meantime, the coat will be included in an exhibition called Plant Kingdom opening at the Dalhousie Art Gallery in Halifax, NS, this May.
\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Reclaiming-a-Tradition-of-Weaving-with-Nettle_WebBody2.jpg\")
There is a disconnect between mass-produced fast fashion and the effort required to create a single garment from locally sourced materials; Kallis’ process speaks to this. We often don’t understand that effort because we don’t know where our clothing comes from. Kallis tells me that she posted a picture of the unfinished coat in a Facebook group called Nettles for Textiles. A stranger messaged her to ask about commissions: how much would it cost for her to make them a similar garment? As she recounted this for me, she laughed. “It’s like, trust me. You can’t afford it.”
\n\n\n\nFive years ago, Kallis was learning to grow and spin linen with local weaver Rebecca Graham. “I counted my hours of labor — just the spinning for linen would have put this skein of yarn at about $300 if I was paying myself a living wage. That wasn’t taking into consideration Rebecca’s time in growing the flax and processing it into strips ready for spinning, nor the value of the land that we were growing the flax on.”
\n\n\n\nWe often don’t understand the effort required to create a single garment from locally sourced materials because we don’t know where our clothing comes from.
Kallis believes that once you start to unpack how labour-intensive it is to make clothing, you’ll realize how much our wardrobes are “subsidized” by exploited workers. “We are so indebted to people living poor lives in order for us to clothe ourselves the way we do.” That was true even before fast fashion: the history of cotton in the United States is intertwined with the history of slavery.
\n\n\n\nSo weaving with nettle — which springs up from the roadsides, ditches, and wastelands of the Vancouver area — has brought Kallis to the roots of what we wear. “The story of Rumpelstiltskin and the farmer’s daughter spinning straw into gold — that’s the story of clothing,” she tells me. “The gold is cloth.”
\n","protected":false},"featured_media":1346,"template":"","meta":[],"categories":[13,19,8,6,38,7],"tags":[30,298,567,239,240],"class_list":["post-784","articles","type-articles","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-art-design","category-fashion-beauty","category-living","category-planet","category-plants-animals","category-society","tag-agriculture","tag-jadine-ngan","tag-plant-fibre","tag-textiles","tag-weaving"],"yoast_head":"\nSharon Kallis took 12 years to make a coat from stinging nettle, including 11 years of knowledge-gathering, and hand-harvesting, preparing, and weaving the lustrous brown fibres into fabric.
\n"},"alt_text":"Sharon Kallis's hands sewing panels of woven nettle into a coat. She wears rings on her right thumb and left ring finger.","media_type":"image","mime_type":"image/jpeg","media_details":{"width":1500,"height":1000,"file":"2022/09/Reclaiming-a-Tradition-of-Weaving-with-Nettle_WebHeader.jpg","filesize":"117811","sizes":{"medium":{"file":"Reclaiming-a-Tradition-of-Weaving-with-Nettle_WebHeader-300x200.jpg","width":300,"height":200,"filesize":"15341","mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Reclaiming-a-Tradition-of-Weaving-with-Nettle_WebHeader-300x200.jpg"},"large":{"file":"Reclaiming-a-Tradition-of-Weaving-with-Nettle_WebHeader-1024x683.jpg","width":1024,"height":683,"filesize":"104511","mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Reclaiming-a-Tradition-of-Weaving-with-Nettle_WebHeader-1024x683.jpg"},"thumbnail":{"file":"Reclaiming-a-Tradition-of-Weaving-with-Nettle_WebHeader-150x150.jpg","width":150,"height":150,"filesize":"6762","mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Reclaiming-a-Tradition-of-Weaving-with-Nettle_WebHeader-150x150.jpg"},"medium_large":{"file":"Reclaiming-a-Tradition-of-Weaving-with-Nettle_WebHeader-768x512.jpg","width":768,"height":512,"filesize":"66909","mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Reclaiming-a-Tradition-of-Weaving-with-Nettle_WebHeader-768x512.jpg"},"full":{"file":"Reclaiming-a-Tradition-of-Weaving-with-Nettle_WebHeader.jpg","width":1500,"height":1000,"mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Reclaiming-a-Tradition-of-Weaving-with-Nettle_WebHeader.jpg"}},"image_meta":{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}},"source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Reclaiming-a-Tradition-of-Weaving-with-Nettle_WebHeader.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/media/1346","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/media"}],"about":[{"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/types/attachment"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/users/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/comments?post=1346"}]}}],"wp:term":[[{"id":13,"link":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/category/society/art-design/","name":"Art & Design","slug":"art-design","taxonomy":"category","yoast_head":"\n“It was like all they cared about was the money,” Tsay Keh Dene Nation member Sylvia Pierre says midway through the documentary DƏNE YI’INJETL — The Scattering of Man. Speaking about BC Hydro — the provincial electrical utility whose dam flooded her nation’s territory — she continues: “They never thought about us as human beings being there, and our needs.”
\n\n\n\nThis failure of colonial powers-that-be to recognize the presence and humanity of Indigenous peoples is a thread woven through both DƏNE YI’INJETL (directed by Luke Gleeson) and Ali Kazimi’s Beyond Extinction: Sinixt Resurgence, two of the five films included in the Landscapes of Resistance spotlight at 2022’s DOXA Documentary Film Festival. The festival’s program describes this collection of films as “rooted in stewardship and grounded in political freedom.” From these roots, Gleeson and Kazimi have grown a pair of films that are equal parts haunting and healing.
\n\n\n\nDƏNE YI’INJETL recounts how the construction of the WAC Bennett Dam on the Peace River flooded the Tsay Keh Dene Nation off their land, and continues to disrupt the community decades after its completion. Ground was broken on the northeastern BC project — named after the premier who spearheaded its creation — in 1961, and construction finished ahead of schedule in 1968. That process flooded more than 175,000 hectares of the territory of the Tsay Keh Dene (a band of the larger Sekani people). The new dam drowned villages, graveyards, and other culturally significant sites; the animals and natural resources the nation members relied on; and even some people.
\n\n\n\nThe new dam drowned villages, graveyards, animals, and even some people.
The Bennett dam is one of the world’s largest earth-filled structures, and its GM Shrum Generating Station currently creates nearly a quarter of BC Hydro’s total hydroelectricity. Yet the Tsay Keh Dene Nation doesn’t “benefit” from it: the power the dam generates is all sent south, so the Tsay Keh Dene community to its north is instead powered entirely by diesel.
\n\n\n\nThe film weaves together archival footage — of dam construction and the displacement of the Tsay Keh Dene — with present-day interviews of the nation’s members, juxtaposing the harrowing details of members’ personal and communal losses with imagery of machines ushering in “progress” and prosperity for the surrounding colonial society.
\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/When-Settler-Society-Erased-Them-These-First-Nations-Fought-Back_WebBody.jpg\")
DƏNE YI’INJETL is told in six acts. Each act begins with a snippet of a Sekani story narrated by Tsay Keh Dene member Seymour Isaac, about a man named Tsawəya and his persistence in the face of centuries of attempts to slay him by Old Man (a character Isaac describes as an “ancient creature”). Here, Old Man has an obvious parallel in the federal and provincial governments, and subsidiaries like BC Hydro. This structure, the film’s emotional original score, and sweeping landscape shots all make for evocative cinema.
\n\n\n\nThe force behind it all is Tsay Keh Dene musician and filmmaker Gleeson. In an interview, Gleeson said he proposed the documentary to the Nation in 2014, after the community had been approached by BC Hydro about featuring in some informational short films about the dam. The Tsay Keh Dene declined.
\n\n\n\n“We just felt that it was inappropriate for us to participate in that, since we still are dealing with a lot of the impacts,” explained Gleeson. Ongoing impacts include trees drowned by the reservoir that float to the surface and endanger boats, and poor air quality resulting from dust storms that occur on the beaches created when the dam lowers water levels. “The elders… told me that they were ready to tell their story, but we wanted to do it on our own terms.”
\n\n\n\nThe elders told me they were ready to tell their story, but we wanted to do it on our own terms.
And DƏNE YI’INJETL accomplishes exactly that. It is a film about the Tsay Keh Dene, by the Tsay Keh Dene, that unflinchingly explains how colonial greed and apathy destroyed their land, loved ones, and way of life, and emphasizes how the nation has resisted that destruction. For instance, the Tsay Keh Dene collect and burn the logs as part of a debris management contract they were awarded by BC Hydro. They irrigate the beaches to curb the dust storms. And members continue to pass down their language, culture, and knowledge to their kids, to maintain the nation’s presence on their land for generations.
\n\n\n\n“This is our stomping ground,” says Tsay Keh Dene member Violet Messenger a third of the way into the film, “and this is where we’re going to be buried.”
\n\n\n\nAli Kazimi’s Beyond Extinction explores similar themes of Indigenous resilience and revitalisation. In 1995, filmmaker, author, and media artist Kazimi visited the Slocan Valley in southeastern BC for four days. He intended to document the court case of Robert Watt, a Sinixt man facing deportation from Canada due to being born on Sinixt land south of the colonial US-Canada border.
\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/When-Settler-Society-Erased-Them-These-First-Nations-Fought-Back_WebBody2.jpg\")
The documentary Kazimi hoped to make at the time did not get funded, but Kazimi kept his tapes of interviews with Sinixt elders and footage of them cooking, laughing, and bonding. He also stayed in touch with people he had met, including Nation spokesperson Marilyn James, and Watt’s lawyer Zool Suleman. In 2019, Kazimi won the Governor General’s Award for Visual and Media Arts, and decided to use the C$25,000 prize to continue his unfinished project.
\n\n\n\nThe resulting film documents the Sinixt’s nearly three-decades-long struggle to be recognized by the Government of Canada after being declared legally “extinct” in 1956. A significant portion of the Sinixt were pushed off their land and forced to move south of the border, where the US government eventually resettled them onto a reservation along with members of 11 other Indigenous groups. The Sinixt population remaining in Canada were incorporated into the Arrow Lakes Indian Band, and members in the US were prevented from accessing their traditional territory by the Government of Canada.
\n\n\n\nWhen the last registered member of the Arrow Lakes Band died in 1953, Canada declared the Sinixt “extinct.” A Supreme Court of Canada ruling from 2021 included the assertion that the nation is not in fact “extinct,” but this judgment has yet to result in the kind of recognition James is seeking from the Government of Canada.
\n\n\n\nBeyond Extinction exudes hope by offering a glimpse of the Sinixt Nation’s persistence in the face of erasure.
The film stitches Kazimi’s original footage together with new footage of his from 2019, and archival fragments sourced from others. Lingering shots of the lush Slocan Valley, old and recent interviews with James, Suleman, and Sinixt matriarchs, and intimate footage of the Sinixt community nurturing their traditions and territory combine into a film that enlightens and inspires action.
\n\n\n\nBeyond Extinction unpacks the disastrous consequences of centuries of ongoing, intentional genocide on the Sinixt Nation — alongside numerous Indigenous groups across Canada (and the US). It asks its audience to re-examine their own complicity in this colonial project, and exudes hope by offering a glimpse of the Sinixt Nation’s persistence in the face of erasure.
\n\n\n\n“My vision and my dream is that my grandkids will remember these stories, these places,” says James, toward the end of Beyond Extinction. “They’ll honour them, they’ll respect them.” Thanks to her efforts, viewers of Beyond Extinction have every reason to believe they will.
\n\n\n\nVancouver’s DOXA Documentary Film Festival runs from May 5–15, 2022. DƏNE YI’INJETL — The Scattering of Man (75 min, English and Sekani with English subtitles) screens in person on May 7 at 4:45 pm, at the VIFF Centre, and on May 9 at 6:15 pm, at The Cinematheque. Beyond Extinction: Sinixt Resurgence (98 min, English) screens in person on May 7 at 2 pm, at the VIFF Centre, and on May 9 at 4 pm at the Djavad Mowafaghian Cinema. The films can also be screened virtually from anywhere in Canada throughout the festival. Tickets to in-person and online screenings are available on the DOXA website.
\n\n\n\nCorrection: An earlier version of this article misidentified Tsay Keh Dene members Seymour Isaac and Violet Messenger with the wrong names, and stated that the film was told in three acts. It is told in six.
\n","protected":false},"featured_media":1309,"template":"","meta":[],"categories":[13,49,50,7],"tags":[459,110,460,67,551,284],"class_list":["post-729","articles","type-articles","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-art-design","category-human-rights","category-indigenous","category-society","tag-art-for-social-change","tag-documentary","tag-doxa","tag-film-tv","tag-indigenous-rights","tag-zeahaa-rehman"],"yoast_head":"\nSinixt elder Marilyn James has spent decades fighting the Canadian government’s claim that her nation is “extinct.”
\n"},"alt_text":"Marilyn James, a Sinixt woman with tan skin & medium grey hair wears a grey hat and grey patterned sweater, sits in a forest.","media_type":"image","mime_type":"image/jpeg","media_details":{"width":1500,"height":1000,"file":"2022/09/When-Settler-Society-Erased-Them-These-First-Nations-Fought-Back_WebHeader.jpg","filesize":"331679","sizes":{"medium":{"file":"When-Settler-Society-Erased-Them-These-First-Nations-Fought-Back_WebHeader-300x200.jpg","width":300,"height":200,"filesize":"20430","mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/When-Settler-Society-Erased-Them-These-First-Nations-Fought-Back_WebHeader-300x200.jpg"},"large":{"file":"When-Settler-Society-Erased-Them-These-First-Nations-Fought-Back_WebHeader-1024x683.jpg","width":1024,"height":683,"filesize":"143732","mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/When-Settler-Society-Erased-Them-These-First-Nations-Fought-Back_WebHeader-1024x683.jpg"},"thumbnail":{"file":"When-Settler-Society-Erased-Them-These-First-Nations-Fought-Back_WebHeader-150x150.jpg","width":150,"height":150,"filesize":"9611","mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/When-Settler-Society-Erased-Them-These-First-Nations-Fought-Back_WebHeader-150x150.jpg"},"medium_large":{"file":"When-Settler-Society-Erased-Them-These-First-Nations-Fought-Back_WebHeader-768x512.jpg","width":768,"height":512,"filesize":"90586","mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/When-Settler-Society-Erased-Them-These-First-Nations-Fought-Back_WebHeader-768x512.jpg"},"full":{"file":"When-Settler-Society-Erased-Them-These-First-Nations-Fought-Back_WebHeader.jpg","width":1500,"height":1000,"mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/When-Settler-Society-Erased-Them-These-First-Nations-Fought-Back_WebHeader.jpg"}},"image_meta":{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}},"source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/When-Settler-Society-Erased-Them-These-First-Nations-Fought-Back_WebHeader.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/media/1309","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/media"}],"about":[{"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/types/attachment"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/users/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/comments?post=1309"}]}}],"wp:term":[[{"id":13,"link":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/category/society/art-design/","name":"Art & Design","slug":"art-design","taxonomy":"category","yoast_head":"\nA mud-caked truck roars through a patch of razed Amazon rainforest. Two men trudge through dense thickets as the din of machinery pierces the gentle forest hum. One of them sharpens his chainsaw blade with a steel file. Only a minute into director Alex Pritz’ documentary feature The Territory, an invasion is underway.
\n\n\n\nThe land these men are invading belongs to the Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau, an Indigenous people whose territory is subsumed by Brazil’s western state of Rondônia. (Their name for themselves is Jupaú, but the more familiar Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau — given to them by the neighbouring Wari’ people — is used throughout the film.) Settlers have been invading Indigenous land in Brazil with increasing frequency and boldness in recent years, particularly since the start of the pandemic.
\n\n\n\nShot from 2018 to 2021 in Portuguese and Tupi-Kawahiva, The Territory is a portrait of how the Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau people are blending traditional knowledge with the power of cinema to resist the forces that fuel invasions and justify land grabs. It is screening as part of this year’s DOXA Documentary Film Festival.
\n\n\n\nSettlers have been invading Indigenous land in Brazil with increasing frequency and boldness.
The documentary follows Bitaté — an Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau land defender chosen at 18 to lead his community of nearly 200 — and his mentor Neidinha Bandeira, a Brazilian environmental activist. It also features two settlers: Sérgio (a poor farm worker organizing with others like him to legitimize their seizure of a land parcel they call Rio Bonito), and Martins, a settler clandestinely logging and burning swathes of the forest for himself.
\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/his-Amazonian-People-Took-Up-Cameras-to-Protect-their-Territory_WebBody1.jpg-1024x436.jpg\")
In an interview, Pritz described the land-grabbers as largely skeptical of the media. They saw anyone “reporting anything that sniffed of environmentalism,” as likely to portray them unfairly, he said. He came face-to-face with that skepticism in one of his first interviews, with a settler who does not appear in the final cut. “He sat me down before the interview, started picking up his cell phone and said ‘I’m gonna record this. Can you list to me everybody that’s given you funding for this film and what their affiliations are?’”
\n\n\n\nPritz said he was surprised by the “confidence and impunity [the settlers] felt they had. They were operating with complete fearlessness in terms of any repercussions from the law, for even things that they admitted were illegal.”
\n\n\n\nTheir brazenness was partly fuelled by the 2018 election of President Jair Bolsonaro, who campaigned using unabashed anti-Indigenous rhetoric. “The first invasion that we [captured] on film happened just 10 days after Bolsonaro was inaugurated,” Pritz said. “People were saying ‘Our guy’s in power.’ and ‘He gave us the land.’”
\n\n\n\nThey were operating with complete fearlessness of any repercussions for things they admitted were illegal.
The documentary highlights similarities between North American settler-colonialism and how the farmers and land grabbers imagine themselves. “For those who live here, the Brazilian dream is to own some land, and make your living from it,” Sérgio says in the movie. “I’m 49 years old, and I’ve spent my whole life working other people’s land.”
\n\n\n\nIn another scene, a member of Sérgio’s organization wears a beige baseball cap emblazoned with the words “TEXAS FARM.” Others wear cowboy hats. Sérgio wears a cap with an embroidered red-white-and-blue outline of Texas overlaid by a bull skull.
\n\n\n\n“They are laying bare the foundations of this settler-colonial project, in a way that in the US — and I think in Canada as well — becomes a bit abstracted,” said Pritz. “People [in North America] have semantic arguments about what is or isn’t settler-colonialism, [but] it’s the same thing. It’s just what [Sérgio and Martins] are doing is a more physical, obvious version of it.”
\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/This-Amazonian-People-Took-Up-Cameras-to-Protect-their-Territory_WebBody2.jpg\")
When the pandemic hit Brazil in March 2020, Bitaté swiftly sealed off the Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau’s territory from outside visitors, including Pritz’ crew and Bandeira. This response was informed by collective memory. The Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau’s first contact with the Brazilian government (and society generally) was only 41 years ago, after which more than half the population died from communicable diseases.
\n\n\n\nSo community members took up the cameras themselves. “[Bitaté] took this idea of participatory filmmaking 10 steps further, and [we] relied on the community to produce, shoot, conceptualize, execute entire scenes of the film,” Pritz recalled.
\n\n\n\nThough the pandemic divided them physically, it generated a “much closer partnership” between the filmmakers and what became the community’s media team, Media Jupaú. This approach was particularly fruitful because of Bitaté’s media savvy. “Bitaté has his interest in the media prior to our film team arriving,” said Pritz. “It was one of the reasons that he was elected president of the Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau people. He represented this young new hope that they could begin to translate their messages into new forms.”
\n\n\n\nAfter the Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau’s first contact with Brazilian society 41 years ago, more than half the population died from communicable diseases.
The role of evidence in upholding a group’s claims is central to the movie. “Bitaté picks up the camera, not because he wants technology for technology’s sake,” said Pritz, “[but] because it’s a tool to translate his community’s message — that they’ve been sounding for generations — into a form that these Western institutional structures will accept as evidence.”
\n\n\n\n“As leader of the Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau,” Bitaté says in the film, “my role is to bring connectivity to the villages. I’m connecting Indigenous land to the rest of the world, so that others can support us.”
\n\n\n\nBut documents can also be tools of colonial violence. “By the same token, Sérgio is trying to create maps,” Pritz explained. “These land [grabbers] often will draw up a fake map, and then that fake map becomes real, once enough people agree on it.”
\n\n\n\nSince wrapping The Territory, Pritz and his team have continued to work with the Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau to build a multimedia and cultural centre they can use to make their own productions. “For me, a really exciting part of the film is that the story of the Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau media team doesn’t finish at the credits.” Pritz said. “It’s really the beginning for Bitaté and the rest of his colleagues to continue telling these stories themselves.”
\n\n\n\nVancouver’s DOXA Documentary Film Festival runs from May 5–15, 2022. The Territory (84 min, Portuguese and Tupi-Kawahiva with English subtitles) screens in person on May 7 at 8:45 pm, at the VIFF Centre, and on May 15 at 12:45, pm at The Cinematheque. It can also be screened virtually from anywhere in Canada throughout the festival. Tickets to in-person and online screenings are available on the DOXA website.
\n\n\n\nCorrection: This article originally described the documentary as being only in Portuguese. It also contains scenes in the Tupi-Kawahiva language.
\n","protected":false},"featured_media":1303,"template":"","meta":[],"categories":[13,11,49,50,6,7],"tags":[108,459,71,109,110,460,67,551,61,283],"class_list":["post-720","articles","type-articles","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-art-design","category-climate-change","category-human-rights","category-indigenous","category-planet","category-society","tag-amazon-rainforest","tag-art-for-social-change","tag-climate-crisis","tag-community","tag-documentary","tag-doxa","tag-film-tv","tag-indigenous-rights","tag-social-justice","tag-sun-woo-baik"],"yoast_head":"\nA settler rides through a patch of burning Amazon rainforest, within the territory of the Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau people.
\n"},"alt_text":"A helmeted man rides a red motorbike through a smoky, burning patch of the Amazon Rainforest.","media_type":"image","mime_type":"image/jpeg","media_details":{"width":1500,"height":1000,"file":"2022/09/This-Amazonian-People-Took-Up-Cameras-to-Protect-their-Territory_WebHeader.jpg","filesize":"284404","sizes":{"medium":{"file":"This-Amazonian-People-Took-Up-Cameras-to-Protect-their-Territory_WebHeader-300x200.jpg","width":300,"height":200,"filesize":"16867","mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/This-Amazonian-People-Took-Up-Cameras-to-Protect-their-Territory_WebHeader-300x200.jpg"},"large":{"file":"This-Amazonian-People-Took-Up-Cameras-to-Protect-their-Territory_WebHeader-1024x683.jpg","width":1024,"height":683,"filesize":"128730","mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/This-Amazonian-People-Took-Up-Cameras-to-Protect-their-Territory_WebHeader-1024x683.jpg"},"thumbnail":{"file":"This-Amazonian-People-Took-Up-Cameras-to-Protect-their-Territory_WebHeader-150x150.jpg","width":150,"height":150,"filesize":"6905","mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/This-Amazonian-People-Took-Up-Cameras-to-Protect-their-Territory_WebHeader-150x150.jpg"},"medium_large":{"file":"This-Amazonian-People-Took-Up-Cameras-to-Protect-their-Territory_WebHeader-768x512.jpg","width":768,"height":512,"filesize":"81406","mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/This-Amazonian-People-Took-Up-Cameras-to-Protect-their-Territory_WebHeader-768x512.jpg"},"full":{"file":"This-Amazonian-People-Took-Up-Cameras-to-Protect-their-Territory_WebHeader.jpg","width":1500,"height":1000,"mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/This-Amazonian-People-Took-Up-Cameras-to-Protect-their-Territory_WebHeader.jpg"}},"image_meta":{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}},"source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/This-Amazonian-People-Took-Up-Cameras-to-Protect-their-Territory_WebHeader.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/media/1303","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/media"}],"about":[{"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/types/attachment"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/users/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/comments?post=1303"}]}}],"wp:term":[[{"id":13,"link":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/category/society/art-design/","name":"Art & Design","slug":"art-design","taxonomy":"category","yoast_head":"\nAs a reader, you have more options than ever when it comes to how you consume books. You could pick up an old-fashioned paperback for a familiar reading experience. Or you could use an electronic device and take your reading material with you digitally; you’d be joining about 90.5 million e-book users from the US, and 9 million from Canada, according to the Statista Global Consumer Survey.
\n\n\n\nBut are e-readers actually better for the planet? Amazon and others with an agenda push this narrative, but the truth is a lot more complicated.
\n\n\n\nA US market research company, the NPD Group, reports that e-book sales were buoyed last year by a Covid-19 pandemic that made actual books harder to obtain. E-book sales grew 22% in 2020 and accounted for about one in six US book sales in mid-2020.
\n\n\n\nBut with bookstores open again, e-book sales are now declining — by 8% in 2021, so they’re still higher than before the pandemic. Loyal print fans will tell you that the tactile experience of reading a book will remain a draw no matter how portable digital books can be — and even when sustainability is a factor.
\n\n\n\nIt’s not easy to get a clear answer about the emissions caused by written materials, because every publisher measures its impact differently.
Actually, environmental concerns aren’t usually the main draw of e-readers, says Michael Rogowsi, office coordinator for the Canadian Federation of Library Associations. “If anything, the sustainability is a great by-product from the electronic format, even when you compare it with hosting costs and viewing costs,” he says. “But rarely is it the driving force, from my experience.” Instead, he believes, the convenience of the format is what makes e-readers so popular.
\n\n\n\nE-books have been around since Project Gutenberg digitized the US Declaration of Independence in 1971, according to the US Government Publishing Office. But it wasn’t until 2004 that Sony launched an e-reader for the public, followed by Amazon’s Kindle in 2007. Research about the environmental impacts of these devices began at about this time.
\n\n\n\nUnfortunately, it’s not easy to get a clear answer about the emissions caused by written materials, because every book, magazine, and newspaper publisher measures its environmental impact differently, and the statistics they use are not always directly comparable. Oft-cited studies on the topic also measure different factors in various ways.
\n\n\n\nIn general, we know that books printed on virgin fiber (as most books are) require cutting down trees, which removes vital carbon sinks. And all book production involves chemicals for processing paper, glues, and ink, which each have separate carbon footprints. Paper book emissions are also caused by the transportation of physical copies, paper recycling, retail energy-use, and unsold books destroyed by publishers.
\n\n\n\nLocations where printing takes place matter, because different cities and countries have different manufacturing processes and power sources. So does whether a book is being printed on demand (resulting in potentially fewer unwanted copies), whether it has images in it (resulting in the use of more inks and more chemicals), and what kind of paper it uses (some papers are made whiter and more absorbent through bleaching).
\n\n\n\nOne study found that replacing a paper book with a digital version would avoid emitting 50 kg of CO₂ equivalents.
What is clear is that the environmental impacts of a printed book have all happened by the time it reaches a reader. So second-hand purchases and library copies have a lower impact per reading than new books read only once.
\n\n\n\nThe Green Press Initiative in 2008 did what it called the first study of the environmental impacts of the US book industry, finding that each book emitted 4 kg of CO₂ per book as a result of production, publication, and retail activities, with the industry as a whole emitting 12.4 metric tons a year.
\n\n\n\nIn 2009, the Cleantech Group estimated that the average Kindle user would buy 144 e-books in four years, preventing the sale of 22.5 physical books each year, since Kindle readers bought 1.6 e-books for every paper book they would have purchased. The study estimated that, all told, e-book and e-reader sales would save about 9.9 million metric tons of carbon emissions from 2009–2012.
\n\n\n\nMore recent studies have resulted in different numbers, based on varying assumptions and data. As part of his studies at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Joachim Felix Aigner determined in 2018 that replacing a paper book with a digital version would avoid emitting 50 kg of CO₂ equivalents. A 2018 Japanese case study in the Journal of Cleaner Production found that greenhouse gas emissions weigh in at 1.2 kg per paper book (1.1 if books are later recycled), while e-books had emissions of 0.3-.09 kg.
\n\n\n\nOn the other hand, in 2020 researcher Pierre-Olivier Roy (then working at Québec-based life-cycle research center CIRAIG) attempted to determine whether student use of electronic textbooks reduced emissions over paper books. He found that — depending on how the paper books were produced — the threshold over which reading on an iPad emitted less than paper books occurred when a student was working with between 13 and 30 textbooks. Below the threshold, his calculations said paper textbooks would likely emit less than e-books.
\n\n\n\nElectronic devices have their own sustainability issues. These include mining for materials that go into electronic components such as the screen and central processing unit (the unit’s “brains”); battery usage; and the impact of data centers and services that store e-books. As pointed out by Roy in his CIRAIG research, electronic devices have a shorter shelf life (about three years) than paper books, and recycling electronics remains problematic.
\n\n\n\nEvery electronic device also has a different carbon footprint, with e-ink devices like Kindle having less ecological impact than phones and tablets with liquid crystal display (LCD). Eri Amasawa, an assistant professor of chemical system engineering at the University of Tokyo, explained: “An e-ink display is mostly made of plastics and [requires] much less electricity to operate compared to an LCD display. An LCD… consumes 10 times more electricity than an e-ink display.”
\n\n\n\nYour reading’s impact depends on how often you pick up your e-reader and how often a paper book is shared.
But technology continues to adapt and evolve — and so do the companies making it. For example, if you visit the Rakuten Kobo website, you’ll find that the company purports to offset 100% of its emissions associated with the shipment of Kobo e-readers by planting trees.
\n\n\n\nMeanwhile, an Amazon representative claims that in the last two years, Kindle readers in the US saved 2.6 million metric tons of carbon by choosing e-books. Amazon doesn’t share its research, but claims to have conducted a life-cycle analysis that shows it has reduced its carbon footprint year-over-year. “We are incorporating recycled plastics, fabrics, and metals into many new devices,” said Rachel Praetorius, director of sustainability and hardware operations for the Amazon subsidiary responsible for Kindle.
\n\n\n\nAlthough there is no way to generalize as a result of all the possible variables, many experts will tell you that reading e-books is the more sustainable option — but only if you read a lot.
\n\n\n\nFor example, a 2017 study in the International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment by University of Tokyo researchers including Amasawa, calculated that paper books and e-books read on e-ink devices break even in terms of carbon emissions at 4.7 books. That is, once five new books are purchased, the annual emissions of reading paper books exceeds the annual emissions of e-ink reading (assuming that people are reading fewer than 11 hours per day).
\n\n\n\nIn other words, your reading’s environmental impact depends on factors such as how often you pick up your e-reader and how often a paper book is shared. If you only pick up one or two books a year, or only ready copies shared among many people, reading paper books might actually be more beneficial for the environment.
\n\n\n\nJean-François Ménard, an analyst at CIRAIG who recently created a life-cycle performance study on electronic books, concluded that the answer has to do with your behavior as a reader: where you buy, how you buy, and how you dispose of your reading material. “And the answer to those questions will maybe not identify which [type of] book is better, but they’ll give you pointers as how you can improve your footprint,” he said.
\n\n\n\nHe also raises another complication: books don’t just provide content. People often have relationships with special books they love, and won’t discard them for that reason. “A book,” he notes, “is a very special product.”
\n","protected":false},"featured_media":1014,"template":"","meta":[],"categories":[13,10,6,40,7,23,28],"tags":[69,260,104,94,283],"class_list":["post-553","articles","type-articles","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-art-design","category-magazine","category-planet","category-science-tech","category-society","category-start-small","category-decider","tag-books","tag-helen-lee","tag-pollution","tag-recycling","tag-sun-woo-baik"],"yoast_head":"\nMany experts will tell you that reading e-books is the more sustainable option, but the truth is a lot more complicated.
\n"},"alt_text":"On a wooden desk, a laptop displays an e-book of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, next to a print version of the book.","media_type":"image","mime_type":"image/jpeg","media_details":{"width":1500,"height":1000,"file":"2022/09/reading-decider.jpg","filesize":"263903","sizes":{"medium":{"file":"reading-decider-300x200.jpg","width":300,"height":200,"filesize":"13615","mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/reading-decider-300x200.jpg"},"large":{"file":"reading-decider-1024x683.jpg","width":1024,"height":683,"filesize":"103023","mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/reading-decider-1024x683.jpg"},"thumbnail":{"file":"reading-decider-150x150.jpg","width":150,"height":150,"filesize":"6250","mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/reading-decider-150x150.jpg"},"medium_large":{"file":"reading-decider-768x512.jpg","width":768,"height":512,"filesize":"62447","mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/reading-decider-768x512.jpg"},"full":{"file":"reading-decider.jpg","width":1500,"height":1000,"mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/reading-decider.jpg"}},"image_meta":{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"@T.C.XPRO","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}},"source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/reading-decider.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/media/1014","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/media"}],"about":[{"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/types/attachment"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/users/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/comments?post=1014"}]}}],"wp:term":[[{"id":13,"link":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/category/society/art-design/","name":"Art & Design","slug":"art-design","taxonomy":"category","yoast_head":"\nTo the untrained eye, a pile of logs or slab of wood might appear uninspiring, lifeless. To a luthier, they can hold the key to music yet unplayed. An instrument-builder can look at this raw material and see the finished product: carefully joined wood, polished surfaces, and stretched strings ready to come to life in a guitarist’s hands.
\n\n\n\nGuitars can be a tangible journey, connecting disparate parts of the globe all in one instrument: a fretboard of dark ebony from Cameroon, a soundboard of golden Sitka spruce from Alaska, a body of ruddy sapele from Ghana. Musicians treasure their instruments for cultural, spiritual, and artistic reasons, but may not know the ecological stories built into their prized possession.
\n\n\n\nFor centuries, luthiers have selected “tonewoods” like spruce and rosewood for their acoustic properties. But some tonewood species have become vulnerable, making them harder to source for those who wish to work with them, and causing others to question whether it’s ethical to do so. Faced with these challenges, environmentalists, researchers, and luthiers alike are seeking ways to make instruments whose materials and ecological bonafides both ring true.
\n\n\n\nEvery continent with forests produces tonewoods, which include: mahogany, maple, Sitka and red spruce, ebony, Brazilian and Indian rosewoods, and koa. An article on guitar manufacturer Fender’s website describes woods on this list as having tones that are “punchy,” “transparent,” “powerful,” “rich,” and “sparkly.”
\n\n\n\nWhile instrument-making uses only a tiny proportion of harvested wood, luthiers are increasingly concerned about the sustainability and ethics of using certain tonewoods. Sitka spruce, for example, is one of the most popular woods in guitar-making, valued for its sound and durability. But the ideal Sitka for guitars is at least 400 years old, and logging old-growth forests is controversial, even if the species being logged isn’t endangered.
\n\n\n\nLet’s pause briefly to discuss endangered species. This article refers to two resources that assess whether a species is threatened. The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) is an international treaty whose “aim is to ensure that international trade in specimens of wild animals and plants does not threaten the survival of the species.” There are three CITES appendices, each for species under different levels of threat: Appendix I, “threatened with extinction”; Appendix II, “not necessarily threatened with extinction” but still in need of protection; and Appendix III “protected in at least one country.” The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species marks species as being of the “least concern,” “near threatened,” “vulnerable,” “endangered,” “extinct in the wild,” and “extinct,” if it has data about them.
\n\n\n\nIt is a tragedy to see wood from 400-year-old trees made into budget guitars that aren’t playable and won’t last.
So, back to Sitka spruce. It isn’t listed in CITES and is rated of “least concern” on the Red List, but there are plenty of arguments made against logging 400-year-old trees. “Guitar industry figures are coming to grips with the ethics of using old-growth Sitka, and it may be that the line is looming where it is no longer justifiable,” Dr. Chris Gibson wrote in an email. Along with Dr. Andrew Warren, a colleague at Australia’s University of Wollongong, Gibson wrote The Guitar: Tracing the Grain Back to the Tree, published earlier this year. To research the book, Gibson and Warren conducted interviews and visited forests on five continents over six years.
\n\n\n\n“Burdening guitar makers with the entire ethical burden for Sitka’s future is unfair,” continued Gibson, who has no relation to the guitar-making Gibson family. He pointed out many factors can be considered when deciding whether using a particular species is ethical: threats to the species, but also First Nations’ rights, biodiversity loss, and the purpose it’s being used for.
\n\n\n\n“It is a tragedy to see wood from 400-year-old trees being made into budget guitars that aren’t playable and won’t last, simply because large scale offshore manufacturers use their market power to leverage down prices with timber suppliers,” Gibson said. “But at the same time, the guitar industry is a tiny player compared with industrial forestry, monocultural plantations, and most other timber-dependent industries.”
\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Turning-Up-the-Volume-on-Greener-Guitars_WebBody1.jpg\")
Another controversial tonewood is ebony, prized by luthiers as a material for fingerboards. There are over 700 species of Diospyros around the world, and only a few have solid black heartwood. It has been threatened due to illegal logging, agriculture and other factors. Madagascar banned exports of both ebony and rosewood (genus Dalbergia) in 2010.
\n\n\n\nIn 2013, all Diospyros and Dalbergia from Madagascar were listed in Appendix II of CITES, helping to shelter them. In 2019, the CITES standing committee recommended continuing a trade suspension on Malagasy rosewoods and ebonies it first instituted in 2013. The committee also asked Madagascar to take more action against illegal logging.
\n\n\n\n“Shortages of rosewood and CITES controversies in the guitar industry are the tail end of an ongoing, uninterrupted process of colonization, urbanization and development,” Gibson and Warren wrote in The Guitar. They also pointed to the Chinese market for rosewood furniture as a factor in its disappearance, noting that “an expertly crafted rosewood bedroom suite can reportedly sell for as much as US$1 million.”
\n\n\n\nBrazilian rosewood (Dalbergia nigra) is treasured for guitar-making, but the IUCN Red List marks the species as “vulnerable” due to logging and deforestation. (“Vulnerable” species “have a high risk of extinction in the wild.”) The species is also listed in Appendix I of CITES.
\n\n\n\nBeyond conservation issues, harvesting trees valued as tonewoods can sometimes cause human rights concerns.
The largest guitar manufacturers have largely switched from Brazilian rosewood to Indian rosewood due to declining supply and quality, according to Gibson and Warren. But Indian rosewood (Dalbergia latifolia), is also listed as “vulnerable” by the IUCN.
\n\n\n\n“The possibility that Brazilian rosewood could one day return as a factory guitar species seems forever gone,” wrote Gibson and Warren. “Grieving for losses and past mistakes will be necessary.”
\n\n\n\nBeyond conservation issues, harvesting trees valued as tonewoods can sometimes cause human rights concerns, according to Rolf Skar, a special projects manager with Greenpeace USA.
\n\n\n\nSkar compared certain woods to “blood diamonds” when looking at how they might be used, saying that because of their value, unethical harvesting can lead to deforestation, damage to land belonging to Indigenous peoples, and supporting dictatorships. The amount harvested doesn’t always fully represent the problem, he said, since the “first cut can be pretty deep.”
\n\n\n\n“It’s the thing that starts the domino effect of full deforestation and human rights abuses and land-grabbing in these places because of the high value.”
\n\n\n\nGiven the downsides of using traditional tonewoods, environmentalist groups, guitar manufacturers, and academics are all involved in promoting ethical harvesting or exploring alternatives. An early effort in this direction was Greenpeace’s Music Wood campaign. In 2007, the nonprofit partnered with major guitar manufacturers like Fender, Martin, Gibson, and Taylor to encourage the Sealaska logging corporation to seek Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification for forests where Sitka spruce are harvested.
\n\n\n\nThe manufacturers were interested in protecting future wood supplies. Skar gave the example of Martin Guitars (founded in 1833). “They started experiencing something they hadn’t seen before: ‘We can’t get that wood like we used to. What’s going on?’”
\n\n\n\nWhile the campaign didn’t achieve its goal, Skar says the partnership created opportunities for conversations with forestry interests that wouldn’t have happened without the guitar companies. It helped Greenpeace understand the companies’ tonewood needs, and created a foundation for future collaborations among instrument companies.
\n\n\n\nIf you can make it valuable to grow maple, you start making an argument for re-invigorating the diversity of the local forest.
Some more recent efforts have focused on planting new trees. Pacific Rim Tonewoods (PRT) — a sawmill in Concrete, WA — is working with Taylor Guitars to plant koa in Hawaii. “We’re making that forest from what is now a grassland, from what was 150 to 200 years ago the biggest koa forest in Hawaii,” said PRT founder Steve McMinn “It’s not reforestation at this point because there’s no remnant of the original forest in the soil.” Koa isn’t listed in CITES, and is deemed of “least concern” by the IUCN, but McMinn and Taylor want to ensure a long-term source for the wood.
\n\n\n\nPRT also started the 100 Figured Maples Project to create genetic lines of fast-growing big-leaf maple trees that have favored figuring—ripples and waves in the wood grain—for use as the back and side pieces of guitars. The project is early in its development, and admittedly not critical to the industry as other woods are available. But McMinn said it could help both luthiers and local forests.
\n\n\n\nHe explains that this native maple species has often been eliminated from working forests in the Pacific Northwest in favor of lumber species like Douglas fir. And while they’re not currently classed as endangered, recent studies show they’re threatened by climate change. “If you can make a reason for re-introducing it and you can make it valuable to grow maple,” McMinn explained, “you start making a good argument for re-enriching, for re-invigorating, the diversity of the local forest.”
\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Turning-Up-the-Volume-on-Greener-Guitars_WebBody2.jpg\")
Another effort, Taylor Guitars’ Ebony Project, is working to grow and sustainably harvest ebony, while also changing minds about using marbled ebony, which contains natural streaking and variations in color. According to the company’s website, co-founder Bob Taylor realized a large amount of ebony was wasted if it wasn’t the pure black traditionally used for instruments. He committed to using marbled ebony in order to reduce waste. The company also now co-owns an ebony mill in Cameroon and works to replant ebony there. Taylor switched to sourcing from Cameroon after realizing illegal logging and sustainability issues plagued ebony from Madagascar even before exports were halted.
\n\n\n\nInitiatives to restore forests valuable to instrument makers extend beyond tonewoods and the guitar industry. Bowmaker Marco Raposo and British non-profit RAIN (which stands for “regenerative agroforestry impact network”) launched the Trees of Music campaign in 2021 with a focus on saving Pernambuco trees (Paubrasilia echinata), which are favored for making bows for stringed instruments. Pernambuco is listed in Appendix II of CITES, and as ‘endangered’ by the IUCN.
\n\n\n\nAccording to the World Wildlife Fund, 96% of coastal Pernambuco forests are now gone. Trees of Music announced plans to plant 50,000 Pernambuco trees within two years, with half of the trees intended for creating bows and half to help restore the forest.
\n\n\n\nGreenpeace’s Skar said tonewoods can be sustainably harvested, but there must be restraint. Using old-growth Sitka spruce as an example, he suggested it could still be carefully used if properly valued and thoughtfully cut. “You can make soundboards for cellos and everything else for a long time to come,” he said. “As long as you live within the limits … and you’re more selective.”
\n\n\n\nMcMinn also believes tonewoods can be ethically harvested. He added that other industries use far more lumber. “Meanwhile, houses have burgeoned from 800 feet to 1200 square feet to 2500 square feet, and those are huge drivers of lumber,” he said.
\n\n\n\nA 2018 study published in the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America found that the type of wood used for the back and sides of a guitar may not make a large difference in sound quality. Part of the study tested six instruments built with with backs and sides made from different woods, some rare and highly valued (Brazilian rosewood, Indian rosewood, and Honduran mahogany), others “less well regarded” and more widely available (North American maple, claro walnut, and sapele — which is rated “vulnerable” by the IUCN but not listed by CITES). All had Sitka spruce soundboards, the top piece of the instrument McMinn calls “the engine of the guitar.”
\n\n\n\nFor the study, 52 guitarists were given the different instruments to play. To prevent them from visually identifying the woods, they wore goggles and played in a dark room. Afterwards, the guitarists assigned “very similar” ratings for each instrument’s sound quality.
\n\n\n\nIn a press release, one of the study’s authors — Lancaster University’s Dr. Christopher Plack — summarized its findings: “Overall our results suggest that the back wood has a negligible effect on the sound quality and playability of an acoustic guitar, and that cheaper and sustainable woods can be used as substitutes of expensive and endangered woods without loss of sound quality.”
\n\n\n\nSome luthiers are avoiding wood altogether and exploring materials ranging from aluminum to linen to carbon fiber.
\n\n\n\nAluminati Guitar Company in Asheville, NC, makes guitars from aluminum and lucite. James Little, Aluminati’s CEO, began the company in 2009 to spread the love of aluminum guitars he first developed on a friend’s 1970s Travis Bean model. “It was a little hard to play,” he said, “but something about the sound — it hooked me in.”
\n\n\n\nUnlike the prohibitively heavy aluminum guitars of the past, Aluminati’s models benefit from new technology that allows Little to build instruments that are at least as light as their wooden counterparts.
\n\n\n\nWhile Little appreciates their sound, he also values their longevity. Aluminati instruments are largely made from recycled materials, and don’t need to be tuned or maintained as frequently as wooden guitars, he said. They can also be recycled rather than trashed. (Repairs to broken, cracked, or warped wooden instruments can become expensive.) Waste material from Aluminati production is sent back to the Alcoa Corporation for recycling as well.
\n\n\n\nThey’re expensive, though, ranging from US$2,899 to US$5,700. Decent entry-level wooden guitars can start as low as US$149, though prices do increase significantly from there. Gibson’s electric guitars range from US$1,000 to US$3,999, with custom instruments listed up to US$9,999.
\n\n\n\nSan Francisco-based Blackbird Guitars has created Ekoa, a composite material made from linen fiber and resin derived from industrial waste, which it touts as an environmentally friendly and durable alternative to wood. “It is lighter than carbon fiber, stiffer than fiberglass and makes a better soundboard than spruce because of its superior stiffness-to-weight values,” the company states on its website. Guitars made from it retail for approximately US$3,000 to US$4,000.
\n\n\n\nThe traditionalists will likely insist on “classic” woods…but the market is opening up for alternative materials.
Another company, KLOS, uses carbon fiber in its designs. Typically derived from fossil fuels and difficult to recycle, carbon fiber isn’t an obvious environmental choice (though in future it may be made from algae). The current argument in its favor is its incredible durability, reducing the need for musicians to replace their instruments.
\n\n\n\nCarbon fiber guitars stay in tune longer, have more consistent tone, and are less prone to damage, according to KLOS. On its website, the company shows a carbon fiber ukulele surviving being run over by a Prius. (It is afterwards crushed by a heavier Toyota 4Runner.) They’re also cheaper than the previous examples, with a travel-sized instrument priced as low as US$839.
\n\n\n\nKLOS makes a controversial claim: “Wood guitars had their place for a couple hundred years, but the times have changed.”
\n\n\n\nWood is still the traditional favorite among guitar-buyers, but Guitar-author Gibson said consumers are becoming receptive to alternatives if they’re well-made.
\n\n\n\n“The traditionalists will likely insist on ‘classic’ woods, and frankly, most players believe that you need wood rather than synthetic materials,” said Gibson. “But the market is opening up for alternative materials. Some of that demand for alternatives will be driven by environmental concern. But a lot of it will be driven by other factors such as playability, maintenance, and sound.” Alternative instruments must be made affordable to gain popularity and be accessible to children and those with limited budgets, he added.
\n\n\n\nWith consumers interested in sustainably made instruments, and non-traditional materials rising in popularity, Aluminati’s Little sees other companies looking at their options. “More and more companies are starting to get on board with building sustainable instruments and using different materials other than wood,” Little said.
\n\n\n\nBuying new instruments made from alternative woods or materials isn’t the only way individual musicians can help effect change. Shopping for quality used instruments, or repairing old ones are also good ideas.
\n\n\n\n“Encourage the small industry that does repairs and refurbishing of instruments,” Greenpeace’s Skar suggested. “That can go a long way.” Consumers buying new instruments can look for those made with FSC-certified wood, he added.
\n\n\n\nSawmill-owner McMinn suggested consumers can purchase guitars made by manufacturers interested in ethical and sustainable practices.
\n\n\n\nUltimately, author Gibson feels the question of sustainability in guitars will be answered in a variety of ways: “Use of more plentiful plantation timbers, use of local, native and urban trees, careful salvaging, and composite and manufactured materials such as laminates, carbon fiber and metals are all part of the mix,” he said. “Like many other industries, the guitar industry is gradually becoming a kaleidoscope of niches rather than an oligopoly dominated by a small number of companies and standard designs.
\n\n\n\nConsumers should encourage the industry that repairs and refurbishes instruments. That can go a long way.
Customers can also let companies know they want ethically harvested materials used in their instruments. Skar recommended musicians reach out to manufacturers through their customer service lines to ask about environmentally friendly options with questions like “Where is this wood coming from? … What can you tell me about the sourcing of this wood, and how do I know it’s free of human rights abuses?”
\n\n\n\nEven though customers might feel too small to cause change, Skar said the pressure can add up.
\n\n\n\nThe more manufacturers are asked about the source of their wood, said Skar, “the more they’ll realize their customers care.”
\n","protected":false},"featured_media":1354,"template":"","meta":[],"categories":[13,10,6,38,40,7],"tags":[205,32,342,300,88],"class_list":["post-786","articles","type-articles","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-art-design","category-magazine","category-planet","category-plants-animals","category-science-tech","category-society","tag-biodiversity","tag-conservation","tag-doan-truong","tag-imari-scarbrough","tag-music"],"yoast_head":"\nDescription needed.
\n"},"alt_text":"Illustration—vignettes of various stages of the guitar-making process dotted around a dirt path through a forest clearing.","media_type":"image","mime_type":"image/jpeg","media_details":{"width":1500,"height":1000,"file":"2022/09/Turning-Up-the-Volume-on-Greener-Guitars_WebHeader.jpg","filesize":"297797","sizes":{"medium":{"file":"Turning-Up-the-Volume-on-Greener-Guitars_WebHeader-300x200.jpg","width":300,"height":200,"filesize":"19744","mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Turning-Up-the-Volume-on-Greener-Guitars_WebHeader-300x200.jpg"},"large":{"file":"Turning-Up-the-Volume-on-Greener-Guitars_WebHeader-1024x683.jpg","width":1024,"height":683,"filesize":"194011","mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Turning-Up-the-Volume-on-Greener-Guitars_WebHeader-1024x683.jpg"},"thumbnail":{"file":"Turning-Up-the-Volume-on-Greener-Guitars_WebHeader-150x150.jpg","width":150,"height":150,"filesize":"8047","mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Turning-Up-the-Volume-on-Greener-Guitars_WebHeader-150x150.jpg"},"medium_large":{"file":"Turning-Up-the-Volume-on-Greener-Guitars_WebHeader-768x512.jpg","width":768,"height":512,"filesize":"114011","mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Turning-Up-the-Volume-on-Greener-Guitars_WebHeader-768x512.jpg"},"full":{"file":"Turning-Up-the-Volume-on-Greener-Guitars_WebHeader.jpg","width":1500,"height":1000,"mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Turning-Up-the-Volume-on-Greener-Guitars_WebHeader.jpg"}},"image_meta":{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}},"source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Turning-Up-the-Volume-on-Greener-Guitars_WebHeader.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/media/1354","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/media"}],"about":[{"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/types/attachment"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/users/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/comments?post=1354"}]}}],"wp:term":[[{"id":13,"link":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/category/society/art-design/","name":"Art & Design","slug":"art-design","taxonomy":"category","yoast_head":"\nAward-winning author and science journalist Alanna Mitchell says that the creation of Sea Sick, her one-woman play about the oceans and climate change, was “a total fluke.”
\n\n\n\nMitchell’s path to performing started with a book, also titled Sea Sick, which became the basis for the play. “After the book was published, I started giving talks about the research and I was terrible at it. One of the first talks I ever gave was in Vancouver… and there was just way too much information. It was just this wretched, wretched talk,” Mitchell recalls.
\n\n\n\nBut in 2012, Franco Boni (then Artistic Director of Toronto’s Theatre Centre) attended one of Mitchell’s talks. “He came up to me afterwards and said, ‘I think we can make this into a play.’ And I just said yes,” she recalls. Now, Sea Sick is in its eighth year of touring. The unlikely blend of science communication, memoir, and theatre (directed by Boni with Why Not Theatre’s Ravi Jain) returns to Vancouver, BC, from February 9 to 19, 2022, for a run at the Cultch’s Historic Theatre.
\n\n\n\nAs Mitchell gave talks on the book around the world, her approach changed. “I learned to tell the stories of the scientists. That’s the really important stuff,” says Mitchell. “It’s not just the findings — it’s the story of who made the findings and what drove them to do it.”
\n\n\n\nThose findings have changed as our carbon use has continued, so Mitchell has consistently re-written the play since it first opened in 2014. “The play evolves. It keeps changing because… the numbers in the science keep changing.” Atmospheric carbon is one example: during Sea Sick’s first run, the carbon concentration in the air had just breached 400 ppmv (parts per million volume). It is now approximately 420 ppmv.
\n\n\n\nThe cultural impact of climate change changes, so I keep rewriting the play.
“I think the cultural impact of climate change changes as well, and so I keep rewriting the play,” Mitchell says. “The version I’m going to perform in Vancouver has, I think, the fifth ending.”
\n\n\n\nThe show has a modest format. Mitchell stands alone for the whole play, a chalkboard behind her, a pitcher of water beside her. This intimate arrangement, Mitchell says, helps everyone in the theatre feel engaged and present. “It’s not always verbal, but I can feel that energy. There’s quite a bit of laughter, strangely, or they sometimes cry. And I’m feeling all that,” she says. “The degree of intimacy is intoxicating.”
\n\n\n\nOver the years, Mitchell has noticed a shift in how audiences respond to the show. “I think it lands differently with people now than it did in 2014. There wasn’t the same kind of cultural context for the play that there is now,” she explains. “Now, it feels like there’s greater general knowledge… and greater need to understand what we should do about it.”
\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/seasick-header-1024x681.jpg\")
In the reactions to the main performance and in the after-show talk-back sessions, audiences are letting their feelings out. “[They are] more engaged. More emotional. I think there’s an emotional release that happens in the play. Because… there’s greater knowledge of how high the stakes are.”
\n\n\n\nOften, though, the audience’s catharsis comes with anxiety or dread about the uncertain future of the ocean, and the planet as a whole. Mitchell knows the feeling too well. “That’s exactly what I encountered when I wrote the book.” She describes the profound depression she experienced during and after writing the book. Eventually, though, she emerged with a sense of purpose and a new medium for her work.
\n\n\n\nUltimately for Mitchell, the goal is to help audiences overcome insurmountable-feeling climate dread, despite the grim news: “What I want is for people to feel as if they can step over the mountain after they get out of the play.”
\n\n\n\nThe last few years have been a period of reflection for Mitchell and her team. One point of consideration has been the carbon footprint of touring around the world. “In 2019, we [asked ourselves], were we ever going to go on tour again.” In the end, they decided getting the message out was worth it. “And of course,” she explains, “we offset the carbon by planting seagrasses. We have a carbon offset budget built into the play.”
\n\n\n\nMitchell still wrestles with whether the offset efforts are enough, but feels that the show should continue. “I had a choice. I could either fold up my tent, knowing the situation we’re in and not do the play, and just hope that somehow things change,” she says. “Or, I could do what I felt was my part to try to encourage people to understand what was at stake. And ultimately I decided to keep going.”
\n\n\n\nI have a line in the play that “science can only take us so far.” And you see that played out time and time again.
Then, the pandemic took Sea Sick off the stage in 2020. Mitchell returned to performing in fall 2021 with a small tour to Ireland and Scotland, and felt a renewed appreciation for theatre. “It was just amazing to be back with live people again. I could feel again this sense of community, this sense of being with people, learning and communicating with each other. And it… made me fall in love with the play all over again.”
\n\n\n\nMitchell says that the intimacy of live theatre can reveal the role of art in fighting climate change. “I have a line in the play that is something like ‘science can only take us so far.’ And you see that played out time and time again in the public sphere.” Scientists continue to better measure and predict our impact on the world. But Mitchell finds that data points alone aren’t enough to get through to the emotional aspects of the issue. “I feel that art is the way that the material can really penetrate. It can puncture.”
\n","protected":false},"featured_media":1386,"template":"","meta":[],"categories":[13,11,6,7,51,9],"tags":[459,71,444,76,103,104,283,329],"class_list":["post-722","articles","type-articles","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-art-design","category-climate-change","category-planet","category-society","category-vancouver-area","category-west-coast","tag-art-for-social-change","tag-climate-crisis","tag-eco-art","tag-natural-disaster","tag-oceans","tag-pollution","tag-sun-woo-baik","tag-theatre"],"yoast_head":"\n2022 marks Alanna Mitchell’s eighth year touring Sea Sick, her one-woman show about the climate change’s impact on the oceans.
\n"},"alt_text":"Alanna Mitchell on stage, right hand held out, in front of a chalkboard. She has light skin, short grey hair, and glasses.","media_type":"image","mime_type":"image/jpeg","media_details":{"width":1500,"height":998,"file":"2022/09/seasick-header.jpg","filesize":"128781","sizes":{"medium":{"file":"seasick-header-300x200.jpg","width":300,"height":200,"filesize":"7193","mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/seasick-header-300x200.jpg"},"large":{"file":"seasick-header-1024x681.jpg","width":1024,"height":681,"filesize":"53557","mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/seasick-header-1024x681.jpg"},"thumbnail":{"file":"seasick-header-150x150.jpg","width":150,"height":150,"filesize":"4058","mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/seasick-header-150x150.jpg"},"medium_large":{"file":"seasick-header-768x511.jpg","width":768,"height":511,"filesize":"31620","mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/seasick-header-768x511.jpg"},"full":{"file":"seasick-header.jpg","width":1500,"height":998,"mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/seasick-header.jpg"}},"image_meta":{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}},"source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/seasick-header.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/media/1386","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/media"}],"about":[{"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/types/attachment"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/users/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/comments?post=1386"}]}}],"wp:term":[[{"id":13,"link":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/category/society/art-design/","name":"Art & Design","slug":"art-design","taxonomy":"category","yoast_head":"\nDriving along Highway 16 up from the BC coast, you’ll wind along a wide river through the curved, misty peaks of slow mountains densely populated by cedar, spruce, fir, hemlock, and alder. This river, the Skeena, has tides up until about Terrace, from where it begins to lose its memory of the ocean. During the spring ooligan-fishing season, families park on the sandbars to fish while seagulls, eagles, and ravens swarm waiting for their fill.
\n\n\n\nThe Skeena guides salmon into other rivers, including that of my own nation, the Babine River. However, before you reach the northern part of the river to follow that branch, you’ll arrive where the Skeena meets the Bulkley, at the home of two Gitxsan artists and siblings, Alex and Michelle Stoney.
\n\n\n\n“I don’t know if all young kids think this way, but I kind of took where I lived for granted, and always said to myself I was going to move away, can’t wait to get out of Hazelton,” Michelle muses. “But after living down south and going to school in Vancouver, and travelling a lot of the world, I realized how special we have it here.”
\n\n\n\nIt is difficult to describe the depth of our relationship as Indigenous people to the water and salmon fed by this watershed. But I, like Michelle, also find my appreciation of our home communities has evolved over time. A few years ago, while I travelled in the southern part of Sápmi — the traditional homelands of the Saami people in northern Europe — I was reminded heart-wrenchingly of home. When I began to see the fish farms dotting the fjords, I was overcome with a choking grief, imagining what could become of our waters. For many families, our reliance on the salmon run is, without exaggeration, life or death: If the salmon stop returning, it would mark the death of one of our deepest and longest-standing relationships.
\n\n\n\nI took where I lived for granted, and always said I was going to move away. But after travelling a lot of the world, I realized how special we have it here.
But this relationship isn’t over, and with artists like the Stoneys, its importance often becomes centred in their artwork. That art can be found along the banks of the Skeena and Bulkley: large-scale works composed of long, slender pieces of driftwood and stones carefully selected for their colour and how they contrast against the sand.
\n\n\n\nThese pieces, designed by Michelle, are contemporary takes on traditional Gitxsan formline art. Formline is a style that varies between Indigenous nations along the Pacific coast and its waterways, most quickly recognized for its use of ovoid shapes with connective “s” and “u” shapes. It’s used to create portraits and animal forms, and can be applied across many mediums, including paintings, carvings, and tattoos.
\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/StoneySiblingsArt_WebBody1.jpg\")
Formline work from this region tends to be marked by bold shapes, with thick swathes of solid colour. In the work of the Stoney siblings, with these natural materials gathered from the shores of the rivers, they’re muted. Each piece has a precise spareness. Rather than giving a diminishing appearance, however, they look lively, as though they’ve been washed in by the water for a brief appearance.
\n\n\n\nThe land art that is taught within art history is largely from the 1960s and ’70s. Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty (1970) comes to mind first: a massive man-made berm curling into Utah’s Great Salt Lake. Or Michael Heizer’s Double Negative (1969), two enormous trenches cut into the Moapa Valley near Overton, NV. Though the movement is characterized by largely white, male creators, I would be remiss to not mention Nancy Holt’s Sun Tunnels (1973–76), a work that placed concrete tunnels large enough to walk through in the Great Basin Desert outside the ghost town of Lucin, UT.
\n\n\n\nWhat marks that movement is that its works often leave an impression or monolith on the earth. The land is a medium or backdrop, and less of a relational exchange between land and human entities. The works are intended to stay, until the people who made them decide to have them removed.
\n\n\n\nI imagine walking along the river and seeing the form of a hand with a palm so large that two people can comfortably lay in it, as demonstrated by Alex’s drone photographs of the work. What marks this as separate from the land art of the 70s is the modesty of the engagement despite its scale. Both say that initially they’d done the work for themselves, and Michelle adds wryly that she was “being selfish — I just wanted to see how it would look.” How it looks is warm, inviting, and joyful — and like it’s about to be lovingly subsumed back into the middle place of water and land.
\n\n\n\nThe work caught on though. Soon it appeared in Facebook feeds, with community members delighted and asking who was responsible. It’s a small community; there couldn’t possibly be a way to stay anonymous. As new iterations came, the artists encouraged the community to add their own embellishments. People are usually shy about the invitation, however.
\n\n\n\nI ask them about the impermanence, if it feels like a natural part of the work. They both say yes, with the caveat that Alex’s photographs preserve them, and say that as the work became more known they started getting questions about if they could make it a permanent public work. They’ve thus far declined, because, as Alex says, “what’s important to us is we didn’t want to harm—we’re making art from nature and it’s going back into nature.”
\n\n\n\nHow it looks is warm, inviting, and joyful—like it’s about to be lovingly subsumed back into the water and land.
For this reason, they were approached by a friend, Leah Pipe, a non-Indigenous artist in the area. Pipe asked if they would like to create a community-engaged work on behalf of the Skeena Watershed Conservation Coalition (SWCC) to raise awareness of the dangerously low salmon runs that have been plaguing the region for the past dozen years.
\n\n\n\nMichelle and Alex tell me about growing up smoking fish in the traditional way. “We were working all summer growing up, and now we only work a couple weeks,” Michelle tells me. This strikes close to home. Several years ago, my nation decided to take no fish from this same watershed due to low counts. “A bad year” can’t explain what’s happening to the salmon anymore, and the word “catastrophic” has begun to loom larger each year.
\n\n\n\nThey accepted the invitation from SWCC and with the help of volunteers, created a more than 4o-metre salmon on the riverbanks. A befitting, communal work to reflect the increasing enormity of the issue.
\n\n\n\nTo describe these works as an act of decolonizing suggests that Michelle and Alex have been inspired by and are working back from the land art movement of the 1970s. But in my mind they’re more connected to a different tradition. I think instead of Rebecca Belmore’s sound installations Ayum-ee-aawach Oomama-mowan: Speaking to Their Mother (1991, 1992, 1996) and Wave Sound (2017).
\n\n\n\nIn each work, Belmore places large sculptural horns on the land. The sculpture from Speaking amplifies the voices of participants, and Wave Sound coalesces the natural sounds of the land to be reverberated back for listening. These contemporary Indigenous works invite audiences, especially Indigenous ones, to engage in instinctive, frank conversation with the land we’re on — to recognize the land as in dialogue with human life, rather than as a static entity without agency, to be extracted from.
\n\n\n\nSimilarly, Michelle and Alex Stoney encourage participation by extending an invitation to draw materials from your surroundings to collaborate with the banks of the river. Beyond spoken language, the time spent with their works — and potentially with your own welcome embellishments — places you between land and water to listen to the shape of the land, to consider who else, human and non-human, is in the conversation.
\n","protected":false},"featured_media":1115,"template":"","meta":[],"categories":[13,42,50,7,9],"tags":[340,79,339,462,68,280],"class_list":["post-698","articles","type-articles","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-art-design","category-bc","category-indigenous","category-society","category-west-coast","tag-alex-stoney","tag-bc","tag-gitxsan","tag-photography","tag-visual-art","tag-whess-harman"],"yoast_head":"\nMichelle and Alex Stoney sit in the centre of one of their formline artworks.
\n"},"alt_text":"Michelle & Alex Stoney sit inside a formline hand made of driftwood and rocks. Mountains rise in the distance.","media_type":"image","mime_type":"image/jpeg","media_details":{"width":1500,"height":1000,"file":"2022/09/Making-Art-from-Nature_WebHeader.jpg","filesize":"226146","sizes":{"medium":{"file":"Making-Art-from-Nature_WebHeader-300x200.jpg","width":300,"height":200,"filesize":"12858","mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Making-Art-from-Nature_WebHeader-300x200.jpg"},"large":{"file":"Making-Art-from-Nature_WebHeader-1024x683.jpg","width":1024,"height":683,"filesize":"123359","mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Making-Art-from-Nature_WebHeader-1024x683.jpg"},"thumbnail":{"file":"Making-Art-from-Nature_WebHeader-150x150.jpg","width":150,"height":150,"filesize":"5790","mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Making-Art-from-Nature_WebHeader-150x150.jpg"},"medium_large":{"file":"Making-Art-from-Nature_WebHeader-768x512.jpg","width":768,"height":512,"filesize":"72658","mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Making-Art-from-Nature_WebHeader-768x512.jpg"},"full":{"file":"Making-Art-from-Nature_WebHeader.jpg","width":1500,"height":1000,"mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Making-Art-from-Nature_WebHeader.jpg"}},"image_meta":{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}},"source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Making-Art-from-Nature_WebHeader.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/media/1115","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/media"}],"about":[{"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/types/attachment"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/users/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/comments?post=1115"}]}}],"wp:term":[[{"id":13,"link":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/category/society/art-design/","name":"Art & Design","slug":"art-design","taxonomy":"category","yoast_head":"\nWhen Joy Buolamwini was a student, she had to interact with a social robot that couldn’t detect her face. This was because the robot’s artificial intelligence had only been trained on white skin tones and facial structures, and Buolamwini is Black. Repeated experiences of not being “seen” by AI inspired Buolamwini — a self-described “warrior artist, computer scientist” — to take creative action in addressing this problem. And she’s not alone. As artificial intelligence creeps further into our lives, artists and scientists are working to creatively expose the ways it favours white people and harms people of colour.
\n\n\n\nA 2019 photography exhibit, Training Humans, laid bare the source of the problem with how facial-recognition AIs have been trained to see and categorise the world since the 1960s. The exhibit featured thousands of photographs taken from “training sets” used to teach AI what faces look like. “We wanted to engage with the materiality of AI, and to take those everyday images seriously as a part of a rapidly evolving machinic visual culture,” stated data scientist Kate Crawford, who put the exhibition together with artist Trevor Paglen. “That required us to open up the black boxes and look at how these ‘engines of seeing’ currently operate.”
\n\n\n\nRuha Benjamin, a race, justice, and technology researcher, says AI can’t be impartial because machines — even so-called intelligent ones — do not exist in a vacuum. “Social norms, values, and structures all exist prior to any given tech development,” she explained in a 2019 episode of the podcast Data & Society.
\n\n\n\nAs artificial intelligence creeps into our lives, artists and scientists are exposing the ways it harms people of colour.
One of those social inputs is the systemic racism and gender bias that comes from a history of colonialism, imperialism, white supremacy, and patriarchy. These biases, which inevitably favour the rich and powerful, show up in the AI gadgets produced and sold by Amazon, Google, IBM, Microsoft, and others. One of the most glaring examples are the ways facial recognition softwares discriminate against people of colour, and anyone who isn’t a cisgender man.
\n\n\n\nBuolamwini’s experience with the robot AI inspired her to found the Algorithmic Justice League (AJL), which uses research and art to promote equity and accountability in AI. But what could the subjectivity of art possibly have to do with the cold, hard logic of machines and algorithms? As it turns out, everything, says Buolamwini. “Art can explore the emotional, societal, and historical connections of algorithmic bias in ways academic papers and statistics cannot,” she wrote in a Time magazine opinion piece.
\n\n\n\nHer experiences of being invisible to facial recognition led to Coded Bias, a film that explores the dangers of unchecked AI and the threats it poses to civil rights and democracy. The film tells individual stories of everyday harms caused by technology, especially to women and people of colour, and of Buolamwini’s transformation from scientist to activist.
\n\n\n\nWe often talk about science as purely objective, but not about how it is produced and who produced it.
There is another way artistic expression and artificial intelligence intersect: how we imagine AI and its role in our future, as seen in pop culture and in the media. When researchers Stephen Cave and Kanta Dihal studied this, they found that the representation of AI in the public imagination is overwhelmingly white. This, they said, points not to just the whiteness of the AI industry in general, but also represents attributes that are ascribed to being white, those of intelligence and power. They go on to argue that, “AI racialised as White allows for a full erasure of people of colour from the White utopian imaginary.” The fallout is representational harms, including amplifying racial prejudice, and distortion of perceptions of risk and benefit.
\n\n\n\nRuha Benjamin’s Ida B. Wells Just Data Lab explores these intersections between “stories and statistics, power and technology, data and justice.” The lab uses social and scientific research along with art to visualise the complexities that exist when human beings interact with AI. Its projects span mental health, urban housing, surveillance, and the prison system. For example, in Digital IDs & Smart Cities, an interactive graphic of a woman walking down a street shows the many ways in which AI tracks our movements and behaviours.
\n\n\n\nThe connections between art and technology, however, are not always obvious — a gap that the Poetry of Science public art installation in Cambridge, MA, set out to fill. A collaboration between the Cambridge Arts Council and the People’s heArt Project, the project paired scientists of colour at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with local poets of colour. The aim: to create “positive associations between people of color, the arts, the sciences, how nature is perceived, and what it means to generate knowledge.”
\n\n\n\nOne of the pairs consisted of poet Rachel Wahlert and MIT PhD student Huili Chen, an AI scientist who studies how humans and robots interact. Chen said the project was an opportunity to make AI less of an enigma to non-scientific folks. “In daily life, when we talk with each other, we often talk about science…as purely objective, neutral facts or knowledge,” Chen said in an interview. “But we barely pay attention to the process of scientific production, how [it] is produced and who produced [it].”
\n\n\n\nThe representation of AI in the public imagination is overwhelmingly white.
Chen and Wahlert’s partnership was driven by the shared belief that demystifying the nebulousness of science (in this case, AI) must lie at the heart of an inclusive future, and that art was one medium to achieve that.
\n\n\n\nWahlert’s poem based on her interactions with Chen was called “To be Understood,” it contains the following stanza:
\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nI have 10 light sensors for eyes
\n
But can’t perceive tricks or lies
I’m designed in pink, orange and blue
All my undertones are decided by you
The exhibition, comprising 13 poems and photographic portraits of the poets and scientists, will be on display at the Mass General Cancer Center until the end of November 2021, then moves to the MIT Rotch Library for exhibition through January 2022.
\n\n\n\n“It’s like creating a narrative that is alternative to how sci-fi portrays [artificial intelligence],” said Chen. “Only by doing that demystification and democratisation, [can we] empower the public to know more…and [enable] young generations to shape the future of this field.”
\n","protected":false},"featured_media":1103,"template":"","meta":[],"categories":[13,49,6,40,7],"tags":[459,67,265,462,461,63],"class_list":["post-569","articles","type-articles","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-art-design","category-human-rights","category-planet","category-science-tech","category-society","tag-art-for-social-change","tag-film-tv","tag-payal-dhar","tag-photography","tag-poetry","tag-technology"],"yoast_head":"\nScientist, artist, and activist Joy Buolamwini.
\n"},"alt_text":"Joy Buolamwini, a dark-skinned woman with short dark hair, stands in front of a demonstration of facial recognition software.","media_type":"image","mime_type":"image/jpeg","media_details":{"width":1500,"height":1000,"file":"2022/09/AI-has-a-Bias-Problem-Could-Art-be-the-Solution_WebHeader.jpg","filesize":"229960","sizes":{"medium":{"file":"AI-has-a-Bias-Problem-Could-Art-be-the-Solution_WebHeader-300x200.jpg","width":300,"height":200,"filesize":"11338","mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/AI-has-a-Bias-Problem-Could-Art-be-the-Solution_WebHeader-300x200.jpg"},"large":{"file":"AI-has-a-Bias-Problem-Could-Art-be-the-Solution_WebHeader-1024x683.jpg","width":1024,"height":683,"filesize":"75260","mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/AI-has-a-Bias-Problem-Could-Art-be-the-Solution_WebHeader-1024x683.jpg"},"thumbnail":{"file":"AI-has-a-Bias-Problem-Could-Art-be-the-Solution_WebHeader-150x150.jpg","width":150,"height":150,"filesize":"5764","mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/AI-has-a-Bias-Problem-Could-Art-be-the-Solution_WebHeader-150x150.jpg"},"medium_large":{"file":"AI-has-a-Bias-Problem-Could-Art-be-the-Solution_WebHeader-768x512.jpg","width":768,"height":512,"filesize":"44496","mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/AI-has-a-Bias-Problem-Could-Art-be-the-Solution_WebHeader-768x512.jpg"},"full":{"file":"AI-has-a-Bias-Problem-Could-Art-be-the-Solution_WebHeader.jpg","width":1500,"height":1000,"mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/AI-has-a-Bias-Problem-Could-Art-be-the-Solution_WebHeader.jpg"}},"image_meta":{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}},"source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/AI-has-a-Bias-Problem-Could-Art-be-the-Solution_WebHeader.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/media/1103","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/media"}],"about":[{"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/types/attachment"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/users/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/comments?post=1103"}]}}],"wp:term":[[{"id":13,"link":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/category/society/art-design/","name":"Art & Design","slug":"art-design","taxonomy":"category","yoast_head":"\nIn media res. Latin, meaning “into the middle of things.” It’s a storytelling principle that dates back to Homer’s epic poem The Iliad. The ancient Greek tale opens not at the beginning of the Trojan War, but in the midst of battle.
\n\n\n\nBut when it comes to climate fiction, or “cli-fi,” Hollywood usually skips right to the apocalypse. The beginning of the movie is often the end of the world. Think the ice-age catastrophe of The Day After Tomorrow, in which melting ice sheets trigger major disruptions in climate-regulating ocean currents just 10 minutes into the film. Then there’s the dusty hellscape of Mad Max: Fury Road, which opens on an endless desert through which deranged man-boys driving tricked out pick-up trucks hunt survivors. Can Hollywood imagine a future where humanity thrives? Can we?
\n\n\n\nBy rewinding from the end of the world and diving into the middle of things, filmmakers can flip the script on depressing disaster tropes. The mucky, ferociously fought struggles for a liveable world are teeming with stories: tender, loving, gut-wrenching, hilarious, twisted, and incandescent with rage. By leaning into this complexity, climate movies can become playgrounds for ideas — “imaginariums,” if you will — to help chart our course to a better future.
\n\n\n\nThe US-based environmental nonprofit Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) is trying to supercharge Hollywood’s climate takes. Its Rewrite the Future initiative aims to “enlist the power of storytelling to help us turn the climate crisis around.” The program offers filmmakers support with legislative advocacy for climate, production tax incentives, writers’ room presentations, and more. In September, the NRDC partnered with entertainment industry groups to award US$15,000 each (plus mentorships) to three screenwriters working on climate justice stories.
\n\n\n\nCan Hollywood imagine a future where humanity thrives? Can we?
Dorothy Fortenberry, a writer and producer on Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale, spoke at an NRDC panel in February. “The most challenging, most important stories are ones where there are no easy fixes, but there are also no easy catastrophes,” she said. “Instead, what you show is the difficult and valiant work of communities congregating and finding common cause and organizing against the entrenched interests that want us to perceive ourselves as powerless.”
\n\n\n\nIt’s a dogged kind of resistance we’ve seen play out in The Handmaid’s Tale. The spirit and aesthetics of the on-screen rebellion by young women forced into reproductive slavery inspired women from Argentina to the UK to don handmaid costumes as part of real-life protests against the Trump administration and abortion bans.
\n\n\n\nContrast that with HBO’s Reminiscence, which depicts residents of a future Miami escaping the despair of rising seas and blistering heat into a virtual reality of their own happier memories. Like Christopher Nolan’s mind-bending science-fiction film Tenet — in which the denizens of the future seek to escape climate disaster through time travel — Reminiscence tells us humanity’s best days are behind us.
\n\n\n\nInstead, the silver screen could galvanize people through stories of communities fighting tooth and nail for their futures. An example Hollywood could draw on? The 1996 disaster flick Twister. Inspired by actual American scientists, Twister pits a ragtag crew of university researchers against a sleek squad of corporate scientists in a race to collect atmospheric data to design better tornado warning systems that could save lives.
\n\n\n\nBut good cli-fi storytelling needs more than scrappiness. To be relevant, the genre will need to reckon with its own #OscarsSoWhite tendencies. Inclusive casting is inching up, but rarely does cli-fi centre worldviews outside White, middle-class America’s imagination. A welcome exception will be the upcoming adaptation of Black feminist sci-fi trailblazer Octavia Butler’s environmental dystopia Parable of the Sower.
\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Apocalypse-Never-Climate-Movies-for-the-Here-and-Now_WebBody.jpg\")
University of Manitoba film professor Dr. Hee-Jung Serenity Joo points out that racialized people tend to enter the frame only at the end of the world, like when the White protagonists in The Day After Tomorrow seek refuge in Mexico. Busying itself with disasters affecting White heroes, cli-fi “racializ[es] the Anthropocene by depicting the end of the white world as the end of the world,” she explains in a 2018 article for Environment and Planning.
\n\n\n\nThis is a missed opportunity to make sense of both resistance and apocalypse, since colonized peoples have already lived through the end of the world as they knew it. “We’ve survived genocide. We’ve survived ice ages,” says Mark Tilsen, an Oglala Lakota poet and educator with the Indigenous-led NDN Collective in the US. “This is not our first rodeo. This is not our first apocalypse.”
\n\n\n\nTilsen, joined by other young Indigenous leaders, was speaking on a virtual panel about Indigenous storytelling methodologies at September’s Hollywood Climate Summit. For him, impactful storytelling means seeding “narratives that are unabashedly radical and revolutionary,” ones that don’t flinch away from the notion that people can unite to create lasting anti-capitalist change.
\n\n\n\nClimate fiction racializes the Anthropocene by depicting the end of the white world as the end of the world.
The early episodes of the hacktivist thriller series Mr. Robot is a great example, he says. Tilsen saw the series galvanize youth around him to organize against digital surveillance (though he was disappointed the series watered down this theme in later episodes).
\n\n\n\nClimate change can also be a compelling backdrop — like in Parasite, in which the fictional Kim family’s banjiha (semi-basement apartment) floods, underscoring the environmental precarity of the poor. In the 2019 raunchy rom-com The Long Shot, Seth Rogen stars as a lefty journalist wooed by an American Secretary of State (Charlize Theron) and her diplomatic gambit to save “bees, trees, and seas.”
\n\n\n\n“I think any story can and probably should be a climate change story,” said Handmaid’s Tale writer Fortenberry at another NRDC-led virtual panel at the 2021 Sundance film festival.
\n\n\n\nClimate change is part of the fabric of our reality now. How will it shape the stories we tell about nature and our relationship to it? What could a political thriller with a climate emergency backdrop involve? How might plots take on fossil fuel producers?
\n\n\n\nAmong the 70 or so cli-fi movies Yale University researchers say were produced in the past 30 years, many leave the reason for the withering of the world ambiguous. Blame is lazily assigned to “humanity” or overpopulation (think Avengers Infinity War or Downsizing). Not only is this a missed opportunity for provocative storytelling, but it holds back crucial mindset shifts. A problem without a clear cause breeds apathy, since there is little we can do about it.
\n\n\n\nSo, let’s give whistleblowers on the oil and gas industry the full Erin Brockovich treatment. Reboot Thank you for Smoking as a dark comedy about Big Oil’s shills. Channel The Trial of the Chicago 7 vibes with stories of badass activists and land defenders fighting legal cases against extractive industries and the governments backing them.
\n\n\n\n“I wanna see a pilot of a bunch of young, Indigenous people counting coup on oil executives and holding trials for them,” says Tilsen. (“Counting coup” refers to the Lakota practice of shaming your enemy by being unafraid to get close enough to touch them without harming them.) “I’d watch that show. I’d watch it twice.” I’d watch it, too.
\n\n\n\nA problem without a clear cause breeds apathy, since there is little we can do about it.
Cinematic stories about people coming into their own as political beings can help us map out our future en masse. A retreat of cinema apocalyptica would cede space for the movies we need here and now, giving us permission to dream that our best days are still to come.
\n\n\n\n“Losing our imagination is a symptom of trauma,” writes activist adrienne maree brown in her book Emergent Strategy. Finding our way back to it is a healing act.
\n\n\n\nAudaciously hopeful and subversive speculative stories are wormholes, transporting us to a better future lurking somewhere out in spacetime. In a world where capitalism and White supremacy have colonized the outer limits of what is deemed possible, this is not an escape. It’s a radical exercise of political imagination.
\n","protected":false},"featured_media":850,"template":"","meta":[],"categories":[13,10,7,25,22],"tags":[459,71,55,67,252,60,434,283],"class_list":["post-485","articles","type-articles","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-art-design","category-magazine","category-society","category-views-from-inside","category-voices","tag-art-for-social-change","tag-climate-crisis","tag-colonization","tag-film-tv","tag-jesse-firempong","tag-opinion","tag-pop-culture","tag-sun-woo-baik"],"yoast_head":"\nMovies can ignite our imaginations. But what if they’re limiting us instead?
\n"},"alt_text":"A movie theatre with red seats, seating an almost full audience. The front row is lit softly by the blue light of the screen.","media_type":"image","mime_type":"image/jpeg","media_details":{"width":1500,"height":1000,"file":"2022/09/Apocalypse-Never-Climate-Movies-for-the-Here-and-Now_WebHeader.jpg","filesize":"151232","sizes":{"medium":{"file":"Apocalypse-Never-Climate-Movies-for-the-Here-and-Now_WebHeader-300x200.jpg","width":300,"height":200,"filesize":"14694","mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Apocalypse-Never-Climate-Movies-for-the-Here-and-Now_WebHeader-300x200.jpg"},"large":{"file":"Apocalypse-Never-Climate-Movies-for-the-Here-and-Now_WebHeader-1024x683.jpg","width":1024,"height":683,"filesize":"122479","mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Apocalypse-Never-Climate-Movies-for-the-Here-and-Now_WebHeader-1024x683.jpg"},"thumbnail":{"file":"Apocalypse-Never-Climate-Movies-for-the-Here-and-Now_WebHeader-150x150.jpg","width":150,"height":150,"filesize":"6725","mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Apocalypse-Never-Climate-Movies-for-the-Here-and-Now_WebHeader-150x150.jpg"},"medium_large":{"file":"Apocalypse-Never-Climate-Movies-for-the-Here-and-Now_WebHeader-768x512.jpg","width":768,"height":512,"filesize":"74079","mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Apocalypse-Never-Climate-Movies-for-the-Here-and-Now_WebHeader-768x512.jpg"},"full":{"file":"Apocalypse-Never-Climate-Movies-for-the-Here-and-Now_WebHeader.jpg","width":1500,"height":1000,"mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Apocalypse-Never-Climate-Movies-for-the-Here-and-Now_WebHeader.jpg"}},"image_meta":{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}},"source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Apocalypse-Never-Climate-Movies-for-the-Here-and-Now_WebHeader.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/media/850","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/media"}],"about":[{"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/types/attachment"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/users/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/comments?post=850"}]}}],"wp:term":[[{"id":13,"link":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/category/society/art-design/","name":"Art & Design","slug":"art-design","taxonomy":"category","yoast_head":"\nEvery Thursday night for nearly 10 years, Ross Dauk has walked to the corner of 26th and Main Street in Vancouver, BC, and set out a sandwich board that reads “Jokes Please.” The sign has a big white arrow pointing toward Little Mountain Gallery — a nonprofit comedy venue you might miss if not for the sign.
\n\n\n\nLittle Mountain Gallery (LMG) is housed in a former auto shop, now painted bright orange, and tucked on a side street that quickly turns into residential housing. This Thursday, like most, there’s a line of people waiting to get in. Those in the lineup may be here to laugh, but there’s an issue casting a shadow on the stage. The building has been approved for redevelopment, and the landlord is evicting the performers to make way for apartments. After tonight, there are only a few weeks left for Dauk and others to put on shows in the tiny but cherished community arts space.
\n\n\n\n“I love Little Mountain Gallery, and I love Jokes Please, and I love standup comedy in general,” says Dauk. This has been what he describes as his “home comedy club” for the past decade. It’s been a place where he and other comedians can take risks, build their own audiences, and develop their art.
\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Vancouvers-Affordability-Crisis-is-No-Laughing-Matter_WebBody1.jpg\")
Fellow comedians and best friends Abdul Aziz, 32, and Brent Constantine, 36 — who both play key roles at LMG — have been working hard to find an affordable new space for the comedy club. After two years of searching, they’re still empty-handed.
\n\n\n\nIt’s possible, they say, that the organization will fold if they don’t find a new space. “We’re really worried that if LMG doesn’t exist, if there isn’t a hub for comedians, we’ll see a deterioration of the art form in the city quite quickly,” says Aziz, LMG’s operations executive.
\n\n\n\nThere’s a serious lack of available arts space in Vancouver, just like the housing affordability crisis.
The urgency to save LMG comes at a moment when comedians are still feeling the impacts of Covid-19 restrictions, and several comedy venues in Vancouver have closed. In April 2019, the Comedy Mix, a major venue, closed its doors. Then it was the local Yuk Yuk’s, and most recently the Kino Cafe, a bar that frequently hosted comedy shows. “This is the last permanent comedy venue in the city,” says Aziz. There are other spaces that focus on improv, but for standup comedy this is it.
\n\n\n\nLMG closing for good would mean that standup comedy would exist primarily in bars, explains Dauk. “Regular patrons are going to be there, not for comedy, just there at a bar. And obviously those venues can be great, but it’s just a different thing.”
\n\n\n\nAs a nonprofit, LMG’s mandate is to provide a financially accessible space for comedy to happen — whether it’s classes for amateurs, or professionals performing live. Comedians can rent out and host a show in the space for C$150 (about US$120), and admission price is capped at C$15 (about US$12). Any money from ticket sales and the bar goes straight to the comedians. Ultimately, the goal is to create an appetite for the artform, while giving comedians a way to sustainably earn money from their work.
\n\n\n\nRent on their current space, which seats up to 90 people, is quite low at only C$2,300 (about US$1,800) per month. But the market has become pricier, and a new space will cost them at least double, Aziz says. And they will need to renovate and get new permits if they are to create a sustainable live comedy venue.
\n\n\n\nThere’s a serious lack of available arts space in Vancouver, explains Alix Sales, head of cultural infrastructure for the City of Vancouver. “It’s just like the housing affordability crisis,” says Sales. “It’s a huge challenge.”
\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Vancouvers-Affordability-Crisis-is-No-Laughing-Matter_WebBody2.jpg\")
The perceived crisis of affordable arts space is backed up by data. In a one-year period, 16 studios in industrial spaces, accommodating approximately 300 artists, either closed or were at risk of closing due to increasing property taxes, rental costs, and development pressures. A report by the nonprofit Eastside Arts Society found that about 37,000 square metres of artist studio space had been lost in a 10-year period. It also describes how landlords welcome artist tenants in their old and poorly maintained buildings, and then evict them as soon as developers express interest.
\n\n\n\n“Most arts groups are in old buildings because they’re affordable,” explains Sales. “You always have gentrification within cities, and in Vancouver it’s astronomical.” LMG is a textbook example. The venue has been on a month-to-month lease for about 20 years. When it registered as a nonprofit five years ago, the comedians renovated the former auto shop themselves, insulating the space and adding a stage and bar.
\n\n\n\n“Everyone’s put a lot of themselves into it,” says Aziz. On any given night you can find award-winning comedians, folks who have Netflix specials, Juno awards, regular sets on CBC shows, and more. “If this space goes away, comedy in this city will take a real hit,” says Aziz.
\n\n\n\nHousing affordability is arguably the most pressing issue in Vancouver, and the city has implemented myriad policies to try to address it. But, much like with housing, the cost of commercial and industrial real estate has skyrocketed here. Many of the city’s independent arts and culture hubs operate out of commercial and industrial spaces, and are vulnerable to rapidly increasing land values and redevelopment. “It’s an affordability crisis for arts and culture,” says Sales.
\n\n\n\nAfter the comedians are out, the LMG building will be knocked down and a four-storey mixed-use building will go up in its stead. Within that building there will be 10 secured market-rate rental apartments. “There’s competing priorities,” says Constantine, LMG’s executive director. “We all want more housing, we all want to make safe cultural spaces. So when the two come into conflict, I mean, what is the ultimate good there?”
\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Vancouvers-Affordability-Crisis-is-No-Laughing-Matter_WebBody3.jpg\")
Aziz and Constantine point to Hot Art Wet City, a former art gallery and comedy venue about 20 blocks north of LMG on Main Street. The venue was evicted to make way for condos. When it was announced in 2017, the building proposed for the location was branded Main Street Arts, in tribute to the Vancouver Mural Festival that originated in the neighbourhood.
\n\n\n\nThe mural festival itself has been a lightning rod for debate. Critics denounce festival organizers for accepting funding from major condo developers, only to pay artists to make neighbourhoods more appealing to wealthier people. But supporters of the festival say artists should have well-paid opportunities to showcase their work, and argue that developers play an important role in increasing the city’s housing supply.
\n\n\n\n“I don’t know what’s good and what’s bad,” says Aziz. “I do know how it feels to have a developer come in and use the cultural foundation that you’ve built over 20 years of doing your art, to then be like, ‘Yeah, let’s use this coolness to give me more money.’ That feels really bad.”
\n\n\n\nAziz and Constantine are open to talking with developers or anyone else who might have a lead on a new space. They’ve met with local and provincial government officials, developers, and other arts organizations. Constantine, who was the driving force behind turning LMG into a nonprofit, even did a master’s in urban planning motivated, in part, by what was happening with the venue.
\n\n\n\nThey’ve found a number of places that seemed promising, but between accessibility, zoning bylaws, code issues, and affordability, nothing has come to fruition. “If we find another space, it will be through grit and luck,” Aziz says.
\n\n\n\nThe City of Vancouver currently has a 10-year plan for the arts. Its vision is to make space for arts and culture, prevent displacement, and support “affordable, accessible, secure spaces.” The goal is to have no net loss of arts space. “We need to know when a development permit comes up and someone’s going to be renovicted. And then we need to say ‘Why and how do we fix it?’” says the City’s Sales.
\n\n\n\nHer small team is working on planning and policy so these issues don’t continue to come up in the future, but it’s hard to support everyone who needs help now. “For groups losing their space, we do what we can, but we don’t have a lot of time to work with them because we’re working on long-term planning,” says Sales. Among those long-term goals is making it easier for arts organizations to own their venues.
\n\n\n\nBut, the team is still trying to help LMG. Sales recognizes that comedy is under-resourced in Vancouver and, all things considered, the size of space they need is quite small.
\n\n\n\nI don’t want these people that have done all this work to lose what they’ve done.
As part of LMG’s efforts to keep their doors open, they received an C$11,000 grant (about US$8,700) from the city in 2019 to support space planning. They now have a 97-page document that outlines their exact needs. There’s the dreamy “full-scale” version that’s about 300 square metres, has two performance spaces and a licensed bar, allowing LMG to grow and meet the ever-increasing demand for affordable space for artists. Or there’s the “modest” approach, which would have one performance space and require about 115 square metres. “We have a very good idea of what we need to be sustainable and exist for a long time,” says Aziz.
\n\n\n\nBoth comedians say they know more about zoning requirements and liquor licensing than they ever wanted to. “This feels like it shouldn’t be us that is doing this, it should be someone else that has this responsibility,” says Aziz.
\n\n\n\n“I inherited this as a curse,” jokes Constantine, who took over running LMG six years ago. He and Aziz continue to volunteer their time to find a new space out of their love for comedy.
\n\n\n\n“It’s tough to start a whole venue. And it’s also very tough to start a show somewhere from scratch,” Constantine says. “The work people have done to get people out to their shows week after week is something I feel responsible for. I don’t want these people that have done all this work to lose what they’ve done.”
\n\n\n\nUntil the end of December, LMG will continue to be a place for comedians to run their shows. Their fundraising efforts include an eviction party, a GoFundMe, and limited edition t-shirts. “Give us money and give us a venue and we promise that we won’t waste most of it,” says Constantine.
\n\n\n\nWhether they find a new venue or not, the last shows in this comedy community centre are imminent. Aziz says he’s hardly had time to consider how he’ll feel when their time in that space is up. “[LMG] makes a tapestry of what comedy is in the city. And losing it … it’ll feel like losing a part of that history.”
\n\n\n\nThinking about his last Jokes Please show at the venue, Dauk says he’s rotating between nostalgia, gratitude and heartbreak. “I’m trying to enjoy every show to the maximum while also having to navigate that my life is about to be turned upside down.”
\n","protected":false},"featured_media":1370,"template":"","meta":[],"categories":[13,45,46,10,7,51,9],"tags":[557,109,199,200,201,302,198,283],"class_list":["post-788","articles","type-articles","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-art-design","category-cities","category-economy","category-magazine","category-society","category-vancouver-area","category-west-coast","tag-affordability","tag-community","tag-gentrification","tag-government","tag-housing","tag-lindsay-sample","tag-real-estate","tag-sun-woo-baik"],"yoast_head":"\nA crowd gathers outside Little Mountain Gallery before a show.
\n"},"alt_text":"Groups of 4-5 people stand outside an orange building with the letters \"LMG\" painted in purple above the front door.","media_type":"image","mime_type":"image/jpeg","media_details":{"width":1500,"height":1000,"file":"2022/09/Vancouvers-Affordability-Crisis-is-No-Laughing-Matter_WebHeader.jpg","filesize":"214706","sizes":{"medium":{"file":"Vancouvers-Affordability-Crisis-is-No-Laughing-Matter_WebHeader-300x200.jpg","width":300,"height":200,"filesize":"13097","mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Vancouvers-Affordability-Crisis-is-No-Laughing-Matter_WebHeader-300x200.jpg"},"large":{"file":"Vancouvers-Affordability-Crisis-is-No-Laughing-Matter_WebHeader-1024x683.jpg","width":1024,"height":683,"filesize":"93216","mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Vancouvers-Affordability-Crisis-is-No-Laughing-Matter_WebHeader-1024x683.jpg"},"thumbnail":{"file":"Vancouvers-Affordability-Crisis-is-No-Laughing-Matter_WebHeader-150x150.jpg","width":150,"height":150,"filesize":"6235","mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Vancouvers-Affordability-Crisis-is-No-Laughing-Matter_WebHeader-150x150.jpg"},"medium_large":{"file":"Vancouvers-Affordability-Crisis-is-No-Laughing-Matter_WebHeader-768x512.jpg","width":768,"height":512,"filesize":"58183","mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Vancouvers-Affordability-Crisis-is-No-Laughing-Matter_WebHeader-768x512.jpg"},"full":{"file":"Vancouvers-Affordability-Crisis-is-No-Laughing-Matter_WebHeader.jpg","width":1500,"height":1000,"mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Vancouvers-Affordability-Crisis-is-No-Laughing-Matter_WebHeader.jpg"}},"image_meta":{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}},"source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Vancouvers-Affordability-Crisis-is-No-Laughing-Matter_WebHeader.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/media/1370","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/media"}],"about":[{"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/types/attachment"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/users/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/comments?post=1370"}]}}],"wp:term":[[{"id":13,"link":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/category/society/art-design/","name":"Art & Design","slug":"art-design","taxonomy":"category","yoast_head":"\nI am in awe of young children, first as an educator and now as a mother of two young kiddos. I wish we were more like these thoughtful, empathetic, loving little humans. The way they notice and observe the tiniest of bugs on the sidewalk, the wholehearted love they have for their family, their natural kindness towards others, and their continual efforts to strive for justice and fairness.
\n\n\n\nAs expectant parents, we begin to think about how we will teach our children about life. We lie awake at night questioning our job as parents and teachers. What kind of role model will I be? How will I educate my child about kindness, empathy, and a belief in equality and inclusivity in a world that challenges these qualities even as an adult?
\n\n\n\nWhen my son entered grade 1, my skills and abilities as an educator and mother were tested. Every day as I picked my little man up from school, we had discussions about the “happenings” of the day, what words were used by students, what actions were displayed and what feelings were expressed. He now had to navigate a new world full of different people with diverse beliefs, values and behaviours, just like an adult entering a new job environment.
\n\n\n\nHow will I educate my child about kindness and empathy in a world that challenges these qualities even as an adult?
As my son’s world transformed, my guidance and teachings suddenly required modification and questioning: How do I teach my child to be kind and stand against injustice? How do I encourage empathy among students that mistreat him? How do I teach him to be brave and use his voice for peace?
\n\n\n\nBooks have a way of influencing. They’re also a great tool to teach children some of the most important lessons in life. Here are five books (appropriate for ages 4–7, give or take a year) that will inspire children and adults to try and make the world a better place with their words and bravery.
\n\n\n\nwritten and illustrated by Peter H. Reynolds
\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Books-For-Budding-Activists_WebBody1.png\")
Say Something, written by Canadian author and illustrator Peter H. Reynolds, uses simple yet powerful words to encourage his readers to, “Say something. With your words. With your art. With your music. With your poetry. With your courage. Or simply with your presence.” The positive messages like, “If you see someone lonely… SAY SOMETHING… by just being there for them,” resonate like a choir in a concert hall. Large bold words are combined with colourful textured backgrounds.
\n\n\n\nAs an artist, I appreciate how he creatively uses specific colours to create emotions. For example, blue for loneliness, green to represent speaking up for nature, and red for standing up against a bully. His artwork is simple yet impactful. This book sits on my special bookshelf at home, and is a favourite with both of my kiddos. I love this book for the powerful evocations and messages of positivity and kindness.
\n\n\n\nwritten and illustrated by Kathryn Otoshi
\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Books-For-Budding-Activists_WebBody2.jpeg\")
One is a symbolic book about standing up to bullies. This story is about Blue, a quiet colour who enjoys looking up into the sky and splashing in puddles. The conflict occurs when Red, a hothead, picks on Blue. With colours as characters in the story, Otoshi does a wonderful job evoking compassion and empathy from readers by incorporating relatable human qualities into each character. Even as an adult, I have authentic sad emotions when Blue is mistreated.
\n\n\n\nThe story continues as Red picks on Blue and the other colours, and grows more powerful, hotter, and redder until One comes along. Number One uses his voice, brings the colours together, and stands up to Red. This thoughtful, character-building book brings the reader into the story with a brave and positive message of how to stand one’s ground. It really does only take one person, one child, one “number” to make a difference.
\n\n\n\nwritten by Miranda Paul, illustrated by Ebony Glenn
\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Books-For-Budding-Activists_WebBody3.jpeg\")
“There are times we should be quiet. There are days for letting go. But when matters seem important一SPEAK UP! Let others know.” Miranda Paul uses a melodic, rhythmic writing style to voice a clear message: SPEAK UP! Paul provides opportunities for young readers to participate in the story by using repetition. My own children love joining me on each page in unison as we cheer loudly, “SPEAK UP!”
\n\n\n\nThe story gives tangible examples of how together — through kindness, thoughtfulness, empathy and resilience — we make a positive difference with our everyday actions. “When a rule just isn’t fair, or has gotten much too old — SPEAK UP! Work for change. Justice comes when we are bold.” This book is a no-nonsense, literal guide that provides solutions to simple, real life scenarios. As an educator, I appreciate all the teachable moments and opportunities for discussion and learning.
\n\n\n\nwritten by David A. Robertson, illustrated by Julie Flett
\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Books-For-Budding-Activists_WebBody4.jpeg\")
When We Were Alone won Canada’s 2017 Governor General’s Literary Award for picture books. In this touching story, a grandmother (Nókom) and her granddaughter garden together. The little girl asks her Nókom about her colourful clothes, long hair, and Cree language.
\n\n\n\nThe grandmother describes how the residential school she attended “far away from home” attempted to strip away Indigenous children’s culture through haircuts, uniforms, and language rules, and prohibited them from seeing their own families. Nókom shares how she and her friends resisted these injustices, and how as an adult she lives true to herself and her Cree culture.
\n\n\n\nJulie Flett’s art captures our hearts with her soft colour washes and overlapping collages creating texture and depth. I love how she contrasts Nókom’s bright red dress with the neutral colours of the environment, symbolizing the strength and determination of a woman who found joy in a difficult, unjust time in her life. Robertson addresses a painful topic in a story children can relate to and empathize with. Through his words, they are empowered to embrace their own cultures and respect others’. It’s the kind of story that instills the importance of standing up for each other to prevent future injustices.
\n\n\n\nwritten by Alice Schertle, illustrated by Jill McElmurry
\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Books-For-Budding-Activists_WebBody5.jpeg\")
This book was my children’s favourite read when they were young, and we still share our love for it today, years later. Little Blue Truck is a fun book, full of heartwarming messages, and teachings of friendship. The author uses sing-song rhyming that creates a joyful reading experience for all. Children are captivated by the cheerful illustrations and the anthropomorphic farm animals.
\n\n\n\nThe story follows the eponymous little blue truck who shows compassion and love towards his community, including a rude, grumpy dump truck. In the end, Blue’s animal friends rally behind him when he finds himself stuck. “Now I see / a lot depends / on a helping hand / from a few good friends.” Like all the books in this list, Schertle’s story motivates readers to be kind, help each other, and to join together to make a difference.
\n","protected":false},"featured_media":1404,"template":"","meta":[],"categories":[13,43,20,8,10,7,22],"tags":[57,69,127,316,170,60,61],"class_list":["post-1163","articles","type-articles","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-art-design","category-black-sheep-parent","category-kids-parenting","category-living","category-magazine","category-society","category-voices","tag-activism","tag-books","tag-education","tag-janel-nail","tag-nehiyaw","tag-opinion","tag-social-justice"],"yoast_head":"\nOn a drizzly, overcast afternoon in late August, I gear up to go for it.
\n\n\n\nGetting there is gonna be annoying, I think to myself. And I’m going to get soaked.
\n\n\n\nI’m from Vancouver, but I have lived in Brooklyn for almost a decade. Like most people I know, I rely on the train to get around. Usually that’s fine, but getting from my home in the center of Brooklyn to Bushwick in the borough’s northern tip requires a jaunt on the L Train through Manhattan.
\n\n\n\nI’m off to Bushwick to partake in an interactive theater experience called Textilandia, described on its website as “[immersing] its audience in the flavors, sounds, sights and dynamic history of a neighborhood confronting social stigmas and the realities of gentrification.” My goals in seeking out this experience? Try something new, learn about an historic neighborhood, and get out of my comfort zone.
\n\n\n\nI’ve been to Bushwick a handful of times, but I never spent much time there. I don’t know much about it other than the fact I’ve met many Latino individuals over the years that called Bushwick home. According to a 2019 study done by NYU’s urban-policy focused Furman Center, over 56% of Bushwick’s 127,000 residents identified as Hispanic.
\n\n\n\nTextilandia is a texting-based walking experience that shows participants the neighborhood through the eyes of creator Modesto Flako Jimenez, who grew up there. Jimenez is a multidisciplinary artist who drives a taxi to make ends meet between theater gigs. During April and May of this year, he drove small audiences around Bushwick in his cab in an intimate theater piece called Taxilandia.
\n\n\n\nAs an artist, my goal is to bring people together to start a dialogue over political and social issues critical to our community’s growth.
I’m embarking on its offshoot, Textilandia, a text-based version that was available through September for those of us who didn’t get to ride with Jimenez in person. (An audio taste of the taxi experience is still available thanks to “Bushwick and the Beast,” an episode of the podcast Resistance.)
\n\n\n\nFor Jimenez — who moved to Bushwick from the Dominican Republic when he was just 9 years old — Taxilandia and Textilandia are rooted in his struggles growing up in the neighborhood. He told the Resistance host, Saidu Tejan-Thomas, Jr., that “Erasure is happening to me and my peoples, and the only way I know how to talk is through my art. If not, we’re gonna fight or some weird shit.”
\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/textilandia-body.jpeg\")
Jimenez told the Foundation for Contemporary Arts that, “As an artist, I feel my goal is to bring people together to start a dialogue over political and social issues critical to our community’s growth.” It was through this passionate desire — to help preserve his neighborhood’s identity and educate people about its legacy — that his immersive theater experiences were born.
\n\n\n\nTextilandia aims to capture both the past and the present of a changing neighborhood. And certainly, the neighborhood is changing as a result of gentrification. (Quick refresher: “Gentrification” is when an influx of middle-class and wealthy people enters a historically poor neighborhood, bringing with them building renovations, increased property values, and often increasingly unaffordable rents for long-time tenants.)
\n\n\n\nThe Furman Center also found that between 2000 and 2019 the white population of Bushwick more than doubled, while the Latinx population declined from nearly 68% to just over 56%.
\n\n\n\nIt wasn’t fully gentrified, but it was starting to happen. More and more bougie and expensive places started to pop up.
Though she isn’t present with me on this stroll, that’s something my friend Sharon Davila told me she noticed firsthand. Sharon is from Puerto Rico, but came to New York in 2015 for work. She found her first apartment in Bushwick. “I had just moved to the city, and it felt like home,” she told me. “The barbershop with the bachata or the reggaeton [music]. It minimized the homesickness.”
\n\n\n\nBut things didn’t stay like that for long. “It wasn’t fully gentrified yet, the way that Downtown Brooklyn or Fort Greene is, but it was starting to happen. You could notice on Wyckoff Avenue that things were starting to bump up. Coffee shops, restaurants, bars. More and more bougie and expensive places started to pop up.”
\n\n\n\nEventually, she moved to Queens.
\n\n\n\nBut while Sharon was looking for a taste of home in Bushwick, for Jimenez, Bushwick was home. This becomes apparent the minute I start the tour, which begins on a side street just off of one of the neighborhood’s main drags, Knickerbocker Avenue.
\n\n\n\nI find the location via my free downloadable “ticket,” which directs me to look for the sign with big letters at the listed address on a densely populated residential street similar to many others in the neighborhood.
\n\n\n\nI find the address and don’t see a sign. I look up a floor. Nothing.
\n\n\n\nThen on the third level I see something.
\n\n\n\nO Y E.
\n\n\n\nWait, is that it? That has to be it. Is that where he lives? Maybe.
\n\n\n\nThe directions instruct me to text that word to a listed number. This begins the flow of text messages which direct me through an approximately 35-minute stroll through some of Jimenez’ old haunts in Bushwick.
\n\n\n\nMurals dismantle the idea that art is exclusive.
Two doors down from the starting spot is a wall of vibrant murals featuring prominent Puerto Rican figures, including independence advocate Pedro Albizu Campos, baseball legend Roberto Clemente, and champion boxers and Bushwick natives, sisters Amanda and Cindy Serrano.
\n\n\n\nMurals are such an important part of Puerto Rican culture and identity. Damaly Gonzalez wrote on HipLatina.com, “Murals are an important form of art accessible to people who usually wouldn’t go to museums. Not only are they necessary, but they also dismantle the idea that art is exclusive.” To me, this wall stands out as a clear beacon of the neighborhood’s deep connection to Puerto Rico.
\n\n\n\nTextilandia directs me to various destinations while Jimenez offers memories tied to those locales. I can’t remember ever having done anything like this before, and juggling my phone, notebook, and quickly-running-out-of-ink pen while trying to read the directions makes for an extra layer of stimulation.
\n\n\n\nHey, at least it isn’t raining anymore.
\n\n\n\nOne of the first stops is the Hope Gardens housing project, which Jimenez notes as an important symbol of white flight (the gradual departure of white populations from urban centers as they become more racially diverse). It happened here in the 1970s and 1980s, when many of the neighborhood’s German and Italian residents moved north to Ridgewood, across the Queens border, or decamped to the suburbs.
\n\n\n\nThe texts I receive point out that these apartments were constructed after the devastating fires of 1977, which torched a large portion of the neighborhood and put a national spotlight on the plight of one of the city’s poorest areas at the time.
\n\n\n\nWhite flight happened here in the 1970s and 1980s, when German and Italian residents moved north to Queens, or decamped to the suburbs.
The fire, a result of insurance-fraud-spurred arson and electrical fires in unmaintained buildings, also resulted in looting and a widespread blackout.
\n\n\n\nA few blocks down, I’m told to stop at the Santa Barbara Roman Catholic Church. The Baroquish-style building, which is currently covered in scaffolding, was originally built in the early 20th century to serve the neighborhood’s German population. However, by the 1960s, it was largely attended by the growing Hispanic population.
\n\n\n\nJimenez notes that I should pay close attention to the adjoining building, which houses El Puente (The Bridge) after-school program. He mentions that this was a crucial place for him and other youth in the neighborhood. Homework, snacks, resumé-building, and a safe alternative from the perils of the street were on offer.
\n\n\n\nCool name, I decide. Very apt.
\n\n\n\nAlong the walk, Jimenez frequently advises me to use all my senses.
\n\n\n\n“Breathe it in.”
\n\n\n\n“Close your eyes.”
\n\n\n\n“What do you smell?”
\n\n\n\n“What do you hear?”
\n\n\n\nAt that point, it is mainly cars driving over wet streets. This is an unfamiliar way to learn about and appreciate a neighborhood. But my guide is clearly so passionate about it, and I am starting to pick up on his rhythm and hints. I start listening a little more closely.
\n\n\n\nI’d heard the term “gentrification” many times. Maybe I’ll never be able to fully internalize it, but at least now I have some stronger reference points and visualizations.
\n\n\n\nOne thing I pick up on on nearly every block is some variety of Spanish-language music or radio blaring out of a car or window. And I mean every block.
\n\n\n\nI’d heard the term “gentrification” many times. Maybe I’ll never fully internalize it, but now I have stronger reference points.
Whether it is due to the dreary weather, or the lingering impact of the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, the streets are fairly unpopulated today. The unmistakable pulse of reggaeton and salsa wafting out of the closely packed buildings helps to balance that out a little.
\n\n\n\nThe rest of the stroll highlights a handful of other notable spots for Jimenez and the community: where he got his first job; where he would grab a haircut; where the local dope-slangers would hide their stashes.
\n\n\n\nI think it may be impossible for a non-native New Yorker to fully comprehend the impact of gentrification, but Jimenez’s unique creation certainly helped me get closer.
\n\n\n\n“I wrote these letras for us,” Jimenez texts near the end of the tour, “to journey into the past and see the flaws and resilience of the people. Step in the concrete, peep the traces fighting to survive this beast!”
\n\n\n\nAs I head for the L train, I look around and listen for the bachata once more.
\n\n\n\nHey, the sun’s out!
\n","protected":false},"featured_media":1589,"template":"","meta":[],"categories":[13,45,10,34,7,22],"tags":[459,199,320,235,60,73,329],"class_list":["post-1199","articles","type-articles","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-art-design","category-cities","category-magazine","category-monetary-values","category-society","category-voices","tag-art-for-social-change","tag-gentrification","tag-jeremy-friedrichs","tag-new-york","tag-opinion","tag-race","tag-theatre"],"yoast_head":"\nMurals along the Textilandia walking route—the lefthand panel depicts Puerto Rican independence advocate Pedro Albizu Campos.
\n"},"alt_text":"Murals of a man shouting, a tennis player, and a blue-skinned woman with colourful hair and goggles in Bushwick, Brooklyn.","media_type":"image","mime_type":"image/jpeg","media_details":{"width":1500,"height":1125,"file":"2022/10/textilandia-header.jpg","filesize":"324384","sizes":{"medium":{"file":"textilandia-header-300x225.jpg","width":300,"height":225,"filesize":"27503","mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/textilandia-header-300x225.jpg"},"large":{"file":"textilandia-header-1024x768.jpg","width":1024,"height":768,"filesize":"256844","mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/textilandia-header-1024x768.jpg"},"thumbnail":{"file":"textilandia-header-150x150.jpg","width":150,"height":150,"filesize":"10331","mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/textilandia-header-150x150.jpg"},"medium_large":{"file":"textilandia-header-768x576.jpg","width":768,"height":576,"filesize":"154267","mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/textilandia-header-768x576.jpg"},"full":{"file":"textilandia-header.jpg","width":1500,"height":1125,"mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/textilandia-header.jpg"}},"image_meta":{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"© 2017 Mario Burger","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}},"source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/textilandia-header.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/media/1589","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/media"}],"about":[{"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/types/attachment"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/users/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/comments?post=1589"}]}}],"wp:term":[[{"id":13,"link":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/category/society/art-design/","name":"Art & Design","slug":"art-design","taxonomy":"category","yoast_head":"\nCreating art in a climate crisis, while the world is on fire, sometimes feels frivolous. People are fleeing their homelands due to natural disasters, we’re living through a global pandemic, and I want to produce a comedy show? Aren’t there better things I can do with my time?
\n\n\n\nIn September, I observed part of a workshop with 100 artists who were asking similarly vexing questions. Over two days, they explored how art can transform the environmental movement, and discussed what the organizers called “the art-shaped hole in the climate problem.”
\n\n\n\nThe event, called Greenhouse, took place at the University of British Columbia’s botanical gardens near Vancouver, BC, and was hosted by the Only Animal, a local theatre company that mounts shows in natural, outdoor spaces. Greenhouse was part of the Only Animal’s larger project of engaging artists in climate action through a movement they call the Artist Brigade.
\n\n\n\nIn the morning of the last day of workshops, several dozen of us gathered in a circle to hear Sherry Yano speak about the philosophical intersections of art and activism. Yano is an oil and gas engineer who’s now a climate activist. “Artists are change-makers, and activists are always about change,” she pointed out. But, Yano said, the human brain is resistant to change and craves familiarity. Getting people to change their daily habits to more sustainable ones is a hard sell because it’s in most people’s nature to resist change.
\n\n\n\nYano asked how we felt about the climate emergency. We — a group of actors, dancers, writers, puppeteers, painters and more — told her we felt anxious, overwhelmed, frustrated, and that we wanted to cry all the time. Yes, we are feelers, and I have a lot of climate feelings. That’s why I was assigned to write about this workshop. Sara, you’re an artist who cares about the climate, my editor said. Go meet a bunch of other touchy-feely artist types and see what’s going on.
\n\n\n\nDuring the workshop, Yano shared her critiques of leafleting and petitioning. She’d seen activists use horrifying images of fire and brimstone to convince others to sign a petition, but saw how those who’d signed never actually got involved. She had also seen activists pour hours into making pamphlets without actually building relationships or sparking a movement.
\n\n\n\nInstead, Yano encouraged us artists to create experiential learning to build community, and then help raise voices from within those spaces. We cannot connect through guilt and anxiety, she said. For example, she told us that the UBC Climate Hub has a policy of putting on a dance party after its events, because there is no community without joy. And we need to connect with each other if we’re going to change the world.
\n\n\n\nIt reminded me of the quote attributed to activist and writer Emma Goldman, “If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be in your revolution.”
\n\n\n\nHistorically, artists have been activists. A quick Google search of “activist artist” turns up names like Banksy the street artist, the Dada artists who opposed bourgeois culture, and Diego Rivera who created socialist murals in Mexico. More recent examples include Keith Harring (whose pop art advocated for safer sex and AIDS awareness), the Guerilla Girls (who create feminist protest art), and Ai Weiwei (who opposes Chinese authoritarianism) — and that’s just to name a few.
\n\n\n\nAt the workshop, I was among activist artists addressing the climate crisis locally. Janey Chang makes art using discarded fish skins, to draw attention to the plight of our oceans. Alisha Lettman is an eco artist who teaches people about farming sustainability. Munish Sharma is a theatre artist who spent the second pandemic summer putting on impromptu dance parties in parks around Vancouver.
\n\n\n\nApart from refusing to sell merchandise at my comedy shows, I hadn’t thought about how my art and activism intersect.
And then there was me, a performing artist of two decades. I’ve been an actor, a storyteller, and a comedy show producer. I also used to run a weekly dance party class, which offered women a judgement-free dance space that didn’t require them to dress up or worry that they were going to get hit on.
\n\n\n\nI’ve also been passionate about preserving the environment and reducing consumption since I was a kid. But apart from refusing to sell merchandise — also known as “stuff you don’t need” — at my comedy shows, I hadn’t really thought about how my art and activism intersect. I mean, I have a show, Teen Angst Night, where people read from their embarrassing teenage notebooks, and transforming adolescent angst into comedy gold is a form of recycling.
\n\n\n\nIn another Greenhouse workshop, Coast Salish dancer and theatre artist Tasha Faye Evans sat under a cedar tree and asked the group, “Who has ever loved a tree?” Several people raised their hands and told stories of their relationships to specific trees. Evans told us how she had loved a forest in Kaxi:ks (the Pacheedaht name for the Walbran Valley on Vancouver Island) and protested for years to save it from destruction. But despite her and others’ efforts, it was razed to the ground, and it broke her heart.
\n\n\n\nAfter the forest was destroyed, a fellow Indigenous artist suggested she focus her efforts locally, advice that inspired her to become a leader in her community, the Vancouver suburb of Port Moody.
\n\n\n\nWhen artists engage with our communities, it has ripple effects on the greater world.
With the goal of sharing knowledge about Indigenous history, Evans coordinated a project that supported First Nations carvers to create house posts that would be publicly displayed in the area. House posts are tall, cedar carvings traditionally displayed in longhouses. As part of that project, Kwikwetlem First Nation artist Brandon Gabriel carved a 600-year-old cedar tree into a house post called The Spirit of Kwikwetlem, which tells the Kwikwetlem’s “Strong Fish” story.
\n\n\n\nEvans said she was once told by Chief Arvol Looking Horse — a Lakota spiritual leader who opposes the Dakota Access Pipeline — that we are all born with our own unique gift. And, it’s our sacred responsibility to use that gift to ensure the health and wellbeing of all our relations. This made me think of how artists who are activists might not do or create what we traditionally think of as “art,” or “activism,” but their contributions are just as worthy.
\n\n\n\nAt the end of my day at Greenhouse I felt inspired. The message I was receiving was that my artistic gifts and impulses were powerful, and part of my gift to the world. I learned that I should act locally to guide people into a more sustainable, compassionate, and joyful world. When artists engage with our communities, it has ripple effects on the greater world. And we are best positioned to inspire change within our own communities, where people know and trust us.
\n\n\n\nAs the workshop was coming to a close, I could see the faces of the artists light up with inspiration and motivation.
\n\n\n\n“When in doubt, be in reverence,” Evans advised us, as we sat with her under the cedar tree. “Be in service to the things that mean the most to you, and you never know what might help change the world.”
\n","protected":false},"featured_media":672,"template":"","meta":[],"categories":[13,11,27,10,6,7,22],"tags":[57,122,459,79,71,109,444,60,87,251,107],"class_list":["post-465","articles","type-articles","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-art-design","category-climate-change","category-environmentalist-from-hell","category-magazine","category-planet","category-society","category-voices","tag-activism","tag-anxiety","tag-art-for-social-change","tag-bc","tag-climate-crisis","tag-community","tag-eco-art","tag-opinion","tag-pacific-northwest","tag-sara-bynoe","tag-vancouver"],"yoast_head":"\nArtists gather in UBC’s botanical gardens for September’s Greenhouse workshop.
\n"},"alt_text":"A large group seated in an outdoor ampitheatre. A woman sits in a chair centre-stage. Trees grow in the distance.","media_type":"image","mime_type":"image/jpeg","media_details":{"width":1500,"height":1000,"file":"2022/09/artists-brigade.jpg","filesize":"302597","sizes":{"medium":{"file":"artists-brigade-300x200.jpg","width":300,"height":200,"filesize":"23537","mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/artists-brigade-300x200.jpg"},"large":{"file":"artists-brigade-1024x683.jpg","width":1024,"height":683,"filesize":"220775","mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/artists-brigade-1024x683.jpg"},"thumbnail":{"file":"artists-brigade-150x150.jpg","width":150,"height":150,"filesize":"9872","mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/artists-brigade-150x150.jpg"},"medium_large":{"file":"artists-brigade-768x512.jpg","width":768,"height":512,"filesize":"131653","mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/artists-brigade-768x512.jpg"},"full":{"file":"artists-brigade.jpg","width":1500,"height":1000,"mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/artists-brigade.jpg"}},"image_meta":{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}},"source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/artists-brigade.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/media/672","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/media"}],"about":[{"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/types/attachment"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/users/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/comments?post=672"}]}}],"wp:term":[[{"id":13,"link":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/category/society/art-design/","name":"Art & Design","slug":"art-design","taxonomy":"category","yoast_head":"\nAfter leaving Afghanistan as a refugee in 1996, textile artist Hangama Amiri migrated through numerous countries before arriving in Canada in 2005. Reflecting on those experiences, her identity, and her connections to family and the broader Afghan diaspora, she addresses themes of home, identity, belonging, women’s rights, and global politics in her large-scale quilts.
\n\n\n\nShe’s had a busy 2021: gallery shows in Toronto and New York, and a commission from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to design an emoji for World Refugee Day. Her newest show, Mirrors and Faces, runs at Toronto’s Cooper Cole Gallery until November 6, 2021. It deals with similar themes, but focuses on feelings of isolation and betrayal — things she felt intensely during the Covid-19 pandemic. Amiri, 32, says these new pieces are more figurative and surreal than her previous work.
\n\n\n\nThe weeks leading up to her show were shadowed by the recent Taliban takeover in Afghanistan. In light of this, Amiri has been working on new pieces. Our conversation began there. (This interview has been edited for length and clarity.)
\n\n\n\nSun Woo Baik: What are you working on right now?
Hangama Amiri: Right now, I am starting on two textile artworks that will depict the current situation in Afghanistan. It’s through my personal take, but it’s also through my engagement with my family back home during the last week of August. That month was very heavy for everyone, especially for the diasporic communities of Afghans living abroad. I’m making two works that reflect those social and political shifts and how [they impact] Afghan youths and their future.
How have you navigated the recent Taliban takeover in Afghanistan, besides working on these new pieces?
My parents are in Canada, but my cousins, my aunts, they all live in Kabul city. I can feel close with the events with them, and [I’m] trying to ask them how they are doing, what are they up to, and what process their evacuation is [in]. Because a majority of them are still stuck there and they couldn’t get a chance to fly on one of those international military planes.
![\"\"](\"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Fiction-Tells-the-Truth-A-Q-A-with-Hangama-Amiri_WebBody1.jpg\")
How has this experience changed the way you think about your work?
There’s a certain pause that happened, and I said, “Let me take a moment here and process the grief, but not so much think about the work.” At the same time, the works that I have made previous of this event [became] archival to me. There’s that history of [the] past, but also what is present. I’m still grieving, I’m still trying to understand.
I’m trying to reflect [and] bring more contemporary voices [into] my textile pieces. I hope that having this little privilege as an Afghan artist, I could give some platform for those other unheard voices to be in my work. And especially, I’m hoping to reflect on ideas of education, since women are still banned from education — especially young girls. I feel like art [is] a way for people, even from diasporic communities, to understand what’s going on. Art has that power of reflection. It has fiction, but the fiction tells the truth. And [right now] it’s the best time for artists not to be silent, but be much more vocal.
\n\n\n\nYou’ve talked about how working with other Afghan people informs your work. Why is working with the Afghan diaspora so important to you?
When I meet other Afghans who have lived here more than me, it becomes an educational platform to know more about their life in the western culture and the western societies.
But when I communicate with these people, it’s also to bring their knowledge and their political views into my work. We have so many different intergenerational views. I’m a post-war generational person, so I’ve only known about the destruction of the Taliban regime in my country and what sort of impact they have done to my life and to many other Afghan women. My mom and dad have lived through those politics too, but they also lived through the civil war as well — so they might have different views on certain social or political things in Afghanistan.
\n\n\n\nAfghan women have been misrepresented by whoever had the access to film or photograph them.
Much of your work focuses on the representation of women. How do you go about representing women, and why?
If you consider the representation of Afghan women in the art context, it’s very [little]. If they are, they have been misrepresented by whoever had the access to film or photograph them. I’m basically targeting the white viewer or the white male having access to go into the country and photograph and [represent] that “this is the Afghan woman.” Like Steve McCurry’s [famous] photo. Part of me envies, [and] I respect his medium, but there are things that, anthropologically, do not sound right to me. I want to create more of this sort of representation through my voice because I am an Afghan.
What themes do you want to tackle in your work, moving forward?
I will keep making work while being aware of what’s going on back home, through a third[-person] point of view. I do not have any access anymore. I can consider myself an exiled artist, but I am also a diasporic body. I’m also interested in my own experience of what the diaspora means, and what sort of migration or immigration stories take place in my life.
My recent exhibition, which was a couple of months ago in New York, was [on] ideas around home. Once you live for such a long time away, home becomes about feeling. It becomes about memory, not a territorial thing, because we are so distanced from the physical context. For me right now, home is a huge question again in relation to my identity, because what happened in Afghanistan is like repetitive history.
\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Fiction-Tells-the-Truth-A-Q-A-with-Hangama-Amiri_WebBody2.jpg\")
You have a new exhibit, Mirrors and Faces, at Cooper Cole Gallery in Toronto. Can you tell us about it?
This exhibition [was] actually completed before [the recent Taliban takeover], so I was thinking maybe it’s not the right time to show any of this work, because [it] reflected my time during this pandemic life [with] very dreamy, very surrealist landscapes that involve my personal, everyday stories. I’m touching on feelings such as loneliness, isolation, love, intimacy, hope, and rage.
These are the feelings that not only me, but maybe [most] people, have experienced. I felt [it was] really important to consider, and [not] forget about this time in my life.
\n","protected":false},"featured_media":1296,"template":"","meta":[],"categories":[13,47,10,7,23],"tags":[57,459,86,99,102,61,283,239,68,101],"class_list":["post-723","articles","type-articles","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-art-design","category-gender","category-magazine","category-society","category-start-small","tag-activism","tag-art-for-social-change","tag-asia","tag-human-rights","tag-international-development","tag-social-justice","tag-sun-woo-baik","tag-textiles","tag-visual-art","tag-women"],"yoast_head":"\nA collection of Hangama Amiri’s smaller works on display as part of 2021’s Wandering Amidst the Colors exhibit, at New York’s albertz benda gallery.
\n"},"alt_text":"6 Hangama Amiri quilts hang on a white gallery wall. They each depict different Afghan foods.","media_type":"image","mime_type":"image/jpeg","media_details":{"width":1500,"height":1000,"file":"2022/09/Fiction-Tells-the-Truth-A-Q-A-with-Hangama-Amiri_WebHeader1.jpg","filesize":"182888","sizes":{"medium":{"file":"Fiction-Tells-the-Truth-A-Q-A-with-Hangama-Amiri_WebHeader1-300x200.jpg","width":300,"height":200,"filesize":"14451","mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Fiction-Tells-the-Truth-A-Q-A-with-Hangama-Amiri_WebHeader1-300x200.jpg"},"large":{"file":"Fiction-Tells-the-Truth-A-Q-A-with-Hangama-Amiri_WebHeader1-1024x683.jpg","width":1024,"height":683,"filesize":"105069","mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Fiction-Tells-the-Truth-A-Q-A-with-Hangama-Amiri_WebHeader1-1024x683.jpg"},"thumbnail":{"file":"Fiction-Tells-the-Truth-A-Q-A-with-Hangama-Amiri_WebHeader1-150x150.jpg","width":150,"height":150,"filesize":"6675","mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Fiction-Tells-the-Truth-A-Q-A-with-Hangama-Amiri_WebHeader1-150x150.jpg"},"medium_large":{"file":"Fiction-Tells-the-Truth-A-Q-A-with-Hangama-Amiri_WebHeader1-768x512.jpg","width":768,"height":512,"filesize":"66736","mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Fiction-Tells-the-Truth-A-Q-A-with-Hangama-Amiri_WebHeader1-768x512.jpg"},"full":{"file":"Fiction-Tells-the-Truth-A-Q-A-with-Hangama-Amiri_WebHeader1.jpg","width":1500,"height":1000,"mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Fiction-Tells-the-Truth-A-Q-A-with-Hangama-Amiri_WebHeader1.jpg"}},"image_meta":{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}},"source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Fiction-Tells-the-Truth-A-Q-A-with-Hangama-Amiri_WebHeader1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/media/1296","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/media"}],"about":[{"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/types/attachment"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/users/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/comments?post=1296"}]}}],"wp:term":[[{"id":13,"link":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/category/society/art-design/","name":"Art & Design","slug":"art-design","taxonomy":"category","yoast_head":"\nLong before Bangalore was known as India’s tech capital, it was known for its 200 lakes. But the title City of Lakes no longer holds true. In the face of rapid urbanisation and pollution, many have disappeared or turned into dead zones. Concerned that many Bangaloreans don’t understand the lakes’ plight, a local playwright has created Once There Was a Lake, a game that aims to spur conversations about ecology.
\n\n\n\n“I thought about what art can do,” explained creator Chanakya Vyas, artistic director of the theatre company Indian Ensemble. “…It can make people more aware, more conscious. It can make people see something that they don’t see, while keeping it playful and entertaining.”
\n\n\n\nBangalore lacks a major water source like a large river, so Kempe Gowda, a chieftain who founded Bangalore in the 16th century, built more than 100 lakes. Over the years, rulers and communities added to this system, which is made up of a series of interconnected reservoirs (known locally as “tanks”) that gather water from streams and rainfall.
\n\n\n\n“Bangalore never had lakes. They were tanks made by building bunds,” explained Naresh Narsimhan, a local architect and urban designer. The lakes often led to the establishment of new villages (now annexed by Bangalore). They helped with flood control, recharged groundwater, and created opportunities for fishing, while providing water for drinking, irrigation, and livestock.
\n\n\n\nSome lakes have grabbed international headlines by foaming and catching fire.
Only a handful of lakes remain healthy. Urban growth has sounded the death knell for many others, thanks to new buildings, the accumulation of silt, uncontrolled weed growth, and garbage dumping. Some lakes have grabbed international headlines by foaming and catching fire, due to a buildup of inflammable gases like methane from untreated sewage, industrial effluents, and solid waste.
\n\n\n\nBut the story of Bangalore’s lakes is also a story of citizen activism. With the resolve to save these water bodies, citizen groups and campaigns have emerged in the last decade. Retirees, schoolchildren, techies, filmmakers, professional environmentalists, and homemakers are all actively engaged with conservation efforts. Volunteer groups draw attention to the problem, file petitions, work with authorities to revive the water bodies, and meet on weekends to pick up garbage in and around lakes.
\n\n\n\nOnce There Was a Lake aims to draw more citizens to the effort. A confluence of folk performance, traditional board games, live action role-playing, and theatre, the game—which was created with a grant from India Foundation for the Arts—is designed to be intimate, with room for up to 12 players.
\n\n\n\nIt begins with a folk song about Dugilamma and Gangamma, water goddesses worshipped by the local Kannada community. Then, an actor narrates the story of the players’ neighbourhood, which has been cursed by the goddesses and run out of water.
\n\n\n\n“As villages turned into towns, towns into cities and cities into smart cities, one by one [the lakes] disappeared. What lies in the middle of your neighbourhood is a vast dry patch of land,” the actor says. “Gangamma and Dugilamma are still there — old, angry, and cranky — waiting for you to revive the lake and reimagine your neighbourhood.”
\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Chanakya.jpg\")
A grid stands in for the neighbourhood, with cards representing dry land, water, greenery, industry, and settlements. Resources shift throughout the game as players make moves, like laying greenery on dry land or industry on water. They are motivated by victory conditions outlined on their cards. One might need to build industry, while another is focused on greenery. By throwing light on this tug of war between urbanisation and ecology, the game sensitizes participants to issues like replacing lakes with buildings and cutting down trees to make way for a highway.
\n\n\n\nActors read out stories at regular intervals to highlight environmental challenges. The story of a crow and a vulture underlines citizens’ indifference to their surroundings. Flying over a neighbourhood, the birds are disturbed to find a lake being filled with mud. They try to alert a human who is too busy watching a melting glacier on her smartphone to take in her surroundings.
\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/bangalore-cards.jpeg\")
Vyas moved to Bangalore in 2012 and settled in Sarjapur, an IT cluster in southeast Bangalore where Kaikondrahalli Lake had been restored two years earlier. Urban development and garbage dumping had blocked water flowing into the lake, turning it into a polluted bed of water and trash. In 2008, a group of residents, architects, environmentalists, and ornithologists urged the local municipal body (known as BBMP) to revive the lake. The citizens’ group transformed into a trust that has signed a memorandum of understanding with BBMP to help maintain the lake.
\n\n\n\n“It was inspiring to know that it was a marshy, empty land and, by the time I came, it had been turned into a lake park,” said Vyas. “We assume these things are done by the government because it is their duty. But here, the authorities were pushed by the citizens.”
\n\n\n\nWe assume these things are done by the government because it is their duty. But here, the authorities were pushed by the citizens.
The story stuck with Vyas, who later realised many locals thought reviving lakes was too complex for them to get involved. Once There Was a Lake is his response.
\n\n\n\n“Every choice they make on the board has a consequence. For instance, if we build too many industries next to the waterbody, definitely the waterbody will get polluted,” said Vyas. “It makes players aware of ecological issues.”
\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/lake-game-poster-changes.jpg\")
Had it not been for the pandemic, Vyas would have mounted full-fledged performances by now. He is contemplating an online version of the game and the team is conducting trial sessions when it can. Surbhi Rao, a corporate lawyer and theatre enthusiast, attended an abridged game at a Bangalore theatre space, which prompted him to think about the lakes in his neighbourhood. “More than anything else, it encourages a conversation,” Rao said.
\n\n\n\nHarini Nagendra is a professor of sustainability at Azim Premji University and a local ecologist. She wrote a book on human-nature interactions in Bangalore from 6th century CE to the present. “The role of communities in reviving, restoring, and maintaining lakes in Bengaluru is absolutely critical,” she said in an email. “Innovative and immersive activities like what Chanakya has designed are essential — they draw people in and engage them in a way that talks and discussions cannot.”
\n\n\n\nV. Ramprasad, the founder of Friends of Lakes, an environmental group that has breathed life back into many of Bangalore’s lakes, hopes efforts like Once There Was a Lake shift the public narrative on lake conservation. He worries the public is more concerned about using lakes for leisure than conservation.
\n\n\n\nInnovative and immersive activities draw people in and engage them in a way that talks and discussions cannot.
Ramprasad points to Sankey Tank, a reservoir built in 1882 by the British. Today, it is part of a popular park. Responding to complaints about congested walking paths, BBMP is considering adding another path. This has upset activists like Ramprasad who worry that would shrink the lake.
\n\n\n\nIt is in this context that Once There Was a Lake aims to lead citizens on a path of inquiry about their surroundings. Like the players in the game, a city that was once replete with man-made lakes wrestles with decisions that could preserve and revive them or destroy them for good.
\n","protected":false},"featured_media":1658,"template":"","meta":[],"categories":[13,45,10,6,39,7,23],"tags":[459,32,444,352,85,396,329,140],"class_list":["post-1528","articles","type-articles","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-art-design","category-cities","category-magazine","category-planet","category-plastic-pollution","category-society","category-start-small","tag-art-for-social-change","tag-conservation","tag-eco-art","tag-games","tag-india","tag-shailaja-tripathi","tag-theatre","tag-water"],"yoast_head":"\nSarakki Lake in Bangalore, India
\n"},"alt_text":"A calm lake in Bangalore with a large apartment complex along its shore. Another apartment complex lies in the distance.","media_type":"image","mime_type":"image/jpeg","media_details":{"width":1500,"height":1000,"file":"2022/11/Bangalore-lake.jpg","filesize":"207428","sizes":{"medium":{"file":"Bangalore-lake-300x200.jpg","width":300,"height":200,"filesize":"10341","mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Bangalore-lake-300x200.jpg"},"large":{"file":"Bangalore-lake-1024x683.jpg","width":1024,"height":683,"filesize":"82453","mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Bangalore-lake-1024x683.jpg"},"thumbnail":{"file":"Bangalore-lake-150x150.jpg","width":150,"height":150,"filesize":"4365","mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Bangalore-lake-150x150.jpg"},"medium_large":{"file":"Bangalore-lake-768x512.jpg","width":768,"height":512,"filesize":"50221","mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Bangalore-lake-768x512.jpg"},"full":{"file":"Bangalore-lake.jpg","width":1500,"height":1000,"mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Bangalore-lake.jpg"}},"image_meta":{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"Copyright@nitinv29","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}},"source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Bangalore-lake.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/media/1658","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/media"}],"about":[{"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/types/attachment"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/users/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/comments?post=1658"}]}}],"wp:term":[[{"id":13,"link":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/category/society/art-design/","name":"Art & Design","slug":"art-design","taxonomy":"category","yoast_head":"\nIn her book, War Talk, Arundhati Roy wrote: “Another world is not only possible, she is on her way… [On] a quiet day, if I listen very carefully, I can hear her breathing.” Well, from where I stand, we can now hear her roaring. Because of the inequality unmasked by the Covid-19 pandemic, the gap between what we dream is possible and what we expect from our government is shrinking.
\n\n\n\nWhat do I hear in this new world’s roar? A national child care program to support parents, especially women, who do the lion’s share of care work. A universal basic income, so that nobody struggles to put food on the table. A transition to clean energy and an economy that works within nature’s limits. To help pay for it, taxes on the wealthiest among us, some of whom have profited from the pandemic while society’s most marginalized suffered. There are no guarantees, but so much of what activists have been asking for to build greener and more equitable societies has begun to win popular support.
\n\n\n\nArtists and dreamers have the capacity to broaden people’s sense of political possibility.
This other world needs no fanfare of trumpeters; she is heralded with choruses of “No Justice, No Peace.” She needs no conquering army; she is led by legions of youth demanding the climate justice adults have failed to deliver. But the biggest barrier to the arrival of a better future? Too many people still can’t imagine that things could be different. Changing this could change everything.
\n\n\n\nAs governments in Canada, the US, and around the world ponder what it means to “build back better” from Covid-19, artists and dreamers have the capacity to broaden people’s sense of political possibility.
\n\n\n\nWith Greenpeace Canada, I’ve been lucky enough to work on projects harnessing the power of art, including working with Indigenous artists who designed powerful imagery for banners used in an aerial blockade of an oil tanker in Vancouver in 2018. The symbolism of the banners became a gateway for talking about the issues at stake in the fight against tar sands expansion. Such gateways are crucial for understanding, and overcoming, the current crisis of political imagination.
\n\n\n\nThe fossil fuel lobby has spent decades convincing people that climate science is uncertain (it isn’t), and that even if climate change were happening, we couldn’t do anything to stop it (we can). Evidence has been laid out at length by experts like Harvard researchers Geoffrey Supran and Naomi Oreskes, who found that oil companies have known for decades their products would lead to climate change, but ran PR campaigns to mislead us about it.
\n\n\n\nWhen you feel helpless on climate change, that narrative was likely seeded by the fossil fuel industry.
“When you feel helpless on climate change,” says Grace Nosek, a doctoral student at the University of British Columbia studying how the law can be harnessed to address the doubt seeded by the oil industry. “Think that that narrative was likely seeded by the fossil fuel industry,” she says. “Remember it, and then try to push back against it.”
\n\n\n\nWhen you break the power of old narratives, you create space for new ones — and for new real-world possibilities. One game-changer has been the emergence of persuasive protagonists in the climate justice story: from youth climate strikers like Greta Thunberg and Vanessa Nakate, to New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, to Black Lives Matter co-founder Opal Tometi.
\n\n\n\nOcasio-Cortez and Tometi were recently part of a beautifully rendered video series inking out a vision of a better world. They collaborated with artist Molly Crabapple, journalists at The Intercept, and thought-leaders from The Leap (a climate justice organization co-founded by author Naomi Klein and documentary filmmaker Avi Lewis). The Leap’s stated mission is to “make system change irresistible.”
\n\n\n\nThe 2019 Emmy-nominated short Message from the Future is an animated “look back” at a successfully implemented Green New Deal, told from the perspective of Ocasio-Cortez. The 2020 sequel, The Years of Repair, imagines a post-pandemic world where care, a green transition, decolonization, and reparations are at the centre of the economy. It was co-written by Tometi and Lewis.
\n\n\n\n“It was a huge breakthrough,” said Lewis of the first film. “It struck a political moment when people just were hungry for it.” Still, skeptics continued to dismiss the Green New Deal as undoable.
\n\n\n\n“Those big ideas — what is it that prevents us from tasting them in our mouths?” Lewis remembers he and Klein asking themselves. “What is it that prevents us from believing that change on that scale could and should happen?” The answer? “It’s just that block of imagination.”
\n\n\n\nFor Prashant Miranda — a visual artist based in the seaside village of Lund, BC — art is a powerful tool for dismantling this block. “[Art is] a release of ideas, of hope, a language which cannot be communicated,” Miranda told me. “It’s an intangible form that allows you to connect universally. In that regard it really unlocks the unimaginable.”
\n\n\n\nMessage from the Future was meant to do just that. Years of Repair seeks to dig deeper into how a just society can be achieved on a global scale. The films have been viewed millions of times, and are used as public education tools by The Leap’s partner groups, including the Movement for Black Lives, Global Nurses United, NDN Collective, and more.
\n\n\n\nLewis, who co-wrote both films, calls them “documentary futurism”: using the language of documentary journalism to describe the world as if looking back from the future. Documentary futurism can unleash our political imagination, he says. “It helps us see how we get to a better place from where we are now.”
\n\n\n\nThose big ideas — what is it that prevents us from tasting them in our mouths? It’s just that block of imagination.
Miranda sees similar possibilities. Leaving behind the commercial children’s animation industry where he got his start, Miranda now pursues art independently, inspired by how nature connects with culture.
\n\n\n\n“I’m not a frontline activist at all,” he insists, though his art is infused with activism, from documenting the story of a felled oak tree in Toronto, to creating nature-based designs for traditional quilts made from upcycled saris as part of a livelihood-generation project for women in Varanasi. Recently, when political violence erupted in his native India, Miranda poured his feelings into his sketchbook. “I was feeling terrible. I thought: I’m not in India, what am I going to do?”
\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Prashant-1.jpg\")
That’s when images of solidarity came to him. “Everyone, coming from all different kinds of backgrounds, was hand-in-hand,” he says of the water-colours he created and posted on Instagram. “That next day, I saw that image being used in frontline protests [in India]. Right from my headquarters here in Lund, it was actually reaching the frontlines. Then I saw it being used with [a news] headline.” Seeing his art shared widely on Facebook and Instagram, Miranda reflected, “It was really powerful that I needn’t be helpless.”
\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Prashant-2.jpg\")
Literature can likewise turn helplessness to hopefulness. I spoke to Marcelle Kosman, co-host of the podcast Witch, Please. On the show, Kosman and her co-host Hannah McGregor explain complex social issues, like white nationalism and classism, through the lens of the Harry Potter novel series. For Kosman, sharing tools people can use to understand, analyze, and describe cultural narratives and systems is important. Fiction, she says, is a “low-stakes alternative kind of reality” that can nudge people to question the world they live in by imagining it differently.
\n\n\n\n“One of the things that has been really motivating for both me and Hannah has been people writing in and people telling us that the podcast has allowed them to see things differently,” she says. “The other thing that’s been really cool has been hearing from people who have felt … like they had the language to challenge either friends or family members who had hateful opinions.”
\n\n\n\nReconceiving struggles as movements, rather than as heroic individual projects, is the only way to overturn the order that threatens our species.
Something Kosman would like to see more of is fiction that engages with the environmental anxiety experienced by millennials and Gen Z. Author Cory Doctorow is doing just that, currently at work on a novel set in a post-Green New Deal future. He told me via email that the most urgent narrative to overcome is the neoliberal story that individual consumer action is the only solution to the climate crisis. “Reconceiving struggles as movements, rather than as heroic individual projects, is the only way that we will be able to successfully overturn the order that threatens to render our species extinct,” he concluded.
\n\n\n\nFrom sketchbooks to social media to novels, activist art can transform a passive hope for Roy’s other world into a collective movement that will paint, write, and march her into being. In Avi Lewis’ words, “to actually collectively create the world we’re fighting for is much less a political muscle and much more an artistic one.”
\n","protected":false},"featured_media":883,"template":"","meta":[],"categories":[13,49,10,7,25,22],"tags":[86,79,69,81,67,85,252,60,70,65,53,68],"class_list":["post-490","articles","type-articles","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-art-design","category-human-rights","category-magazine","category-society","category-views-from-inside","category-voices","tag-asia","tag-bc","tag-books","tag-canada","tag-film-tv","tag-india","tag-jesse-firempong","tag-opinion","tag-podcasts","tag-politics","tag-us","tag-visual-art"],"yoast_head":"\nFilm still from The Years of Repair by Molly Crabapple
\n"},"alt_text":"A painting of protesters holding signs surrounded by paint bottles on a paint-splattered floor.","media_type":"image","mime_type":"image/jpeg","media_details":{"width":1500,"height":844,"file":"2022/09/artist-activism.jpg","filesize":"301086","sizes":{"medium":{"file":"artist-activism-300x169.jpg","width":300,"height":169,"filesize":"18464","mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/artist-activism-300x169.jpg"},"large":{"file":"artist-activism-1024x576.jpg","width":1024,"height":576,"filesize":"154636","mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/artist-activism-1024x576.jpg"},"thumbnail":{"file":"artist-activism-150x150.jpg","width":150,"height":150,"filesize":"9478","mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/artist-activism-150x150.jpg"},"medium_large":{"file":"artist-activism-768x432.jpg","width":768,"height":432,"filesize":"94753","mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/artist-activism-768x432.jpg"},"full":{"file":"artist-activism.jpg","width":1500,"height":844,"mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/artist-activism.jpg"}},"image_meta":{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}},"source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/artist-activism.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/media/883","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/media"}],"about":[{"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/types/attachment"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/users/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/comments?post=883"}]}}],"wp:term":[[{"id":13,"link":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/category/society/art-design/","name":"Art & Design","slug":"art-design","taxonomy":"category","yoast_head":"\n“It’s ‘octopuses,’ not ‘octopi’!” A small, but firm, voice rang out in the Washington, DC, auditorium. The other panelists and I had to lean over the table to see the speaker: a girl who looked no older than nine and was dressed like a princess.
\n\n\n\n“‘Octopus’ was derived from ancient Greek, and Greek words are pluralized with an ‘-es,’” she explained. Plurals ending in “-i” typically come from Latin.
\n\n\n\nI was amazed by her confidence; she appeared to have no qualms about correcting a marine scientist in front of the crowd at our panel at Awesome Con, about the Dugongs & Seadragons podcast on which I was a guest player. She continued with a comment about octopi (sorry, octopuses) and jellyfish that used words and facts I didn’t learn until university. As an avid listener of the podcast — which mixes fantasy quests with marine science — she was serious about getting her facts on ocean life right.
\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/How-a-Gaming-Podcast-Promotes-Marine-Conservation_WebBody.jpeg\")
Dugongs & Seadragons is a spin on Dungeons & Dragons (D&D), a fantasy role-playing game where players create imaginary characters who go on quests to save the world, find treasure, and perform heroic acts. In Dugongs & Seadragons, the quests relate to marine ecology and biology, with players going on sea voyages, or striving to save marine wildlife and preserve precious habitats.
\n\n\n\nA group of marine scientists from around the world play and narrate the game for the top-rated podcast, incorporating information on marine science and conservation. They’re on a mission to carry out “stealth science education” while having a “nerdy good time,” explains Chris Parsons, a dolphin and whale researcher who produces and edits the podcast.
\n\n\n\nDugongs & Seadragons came into being at the 2018 International Marine Conservation Congress in Kuching, Malaysia, which I helped plan along with my partner Travis Nielsen, a biologist who studies invertebrates and is a regular player on the podcast. He was on the teleconference where it all began: The congress’ events committee was planning networking events, when one of the committee members mentioned they had to get off the call to head to a D&D game. They realized they all played, and decided to have a game at the conference.
\n\n\n\n“The rest is infamy,” recalls Joshua Drew, one of the conference organizers, and a specialist in vertebrate conservation biology at the State University of New York, Syracuse.
\n\n\n\nAt the inaugural Dugongs & Seadragons game in Kuching, the players recast traditional D&D characters — including dwarves, elves, gnomes, and half-humans — as grad students tasked with building “habitats for huge manatees” (a play on the housing non-profit Habitat for Humanity) in a barren ecological environment as an extra credit project. To succeed, they had to find a magic staff to help them grow seagrass for the manatees to eat. This involved setting sail in pursuit of a thief who’d stolen the staff, and fighting off various beasts and thugs along the way.
\n\n\n\nThe players cast dwarves, gnomes, and half-humans as grad students building “habitats for huge manatees.”
Just like in D&D, the players chose actions — like lying, attacking, and casting spells — and then rolled dice to determine how successful those actions would be. The higher the roll, the more successful the action. But a run of bad rolls could kill a character. As the game progressed, the “Dungeon Master” and the players worked together to narrate the quest, throwing in marine biology facts and questions for the audience along the way.
\n\n\n\nThe event was a huge success, with members of the audience asking to be involved in future adventures. The Marine Conservation Happy Hour podcast, which recorded the game for an episode, also helped spread the word. There was so much interest from the marine science community, that the participants decided to turn Dugongs & Seadragons into a regular event, and started recording their own podcast.
\n\n\n\nThe regular players — whose characters include a half-demon professor, a comical dwarf cleric, and an ocean druid — call themselves the “Cephalo-squad.” (The name is derived from “cephalopod,” the group of invertebrate marine animals including squids, octopuses, cuttlefish, and nautiluses.) They bring science into the game through events in their quests. In one episode, the Cephalo-squad is tracking a pod of blue whales when they run into Livyatan Melvillei, an extinct species of sperm whale. They tell the audience about how it was at the top of the food chain, and died out 9–12 million years ago.
\n\n\n\nListeners also learn about marine biology through interviews with the cast. In one episode, PhD student Matthew Tietbohl — who plays a half-dragon, half-human character — talks about his research into how coral reefs function within the unique biodiversity of the Red Sea, and how a tropical bear species in Borneo inspired part of the game’s storyline. In another episode, shark biologist Melissa Marquez talks about her research into how folklore in Australia shaped perceptions of chondrichthyans, the class of fish that includes sharks, skates, rays, and chimaeras. She also touches on her Druid character (who can change shape into animals) and surviving a crocodile attack while filming an episode for the Discovery Channel’s Shark Week.
\n\n\n\nOur oceans are wild and wonderful — full of the beautiful and the bizarre.
The podcast’s makers aim to teach listeners about marine conservation and natural history in an informal creative way, outside the rigid formats of documentaries, classrooms, lecture halls, and labs.
\n\n\n\nThey don’t have to look far for inspiration, explains Frances Farabaugh, a behavioural ecologist who plays Dugongs & Seadragons, and studies the relationship between sharks and reefs at Florida International University. “Our oceans are wild and wonderful — full of the beautiful and the bizarre,” she says. “They provide us with so much, and we have a lot of work to do to make sure they continue to do so.”
\n\n\n\nTo listen to the podcast, visit dugongsandseadragons.weebly.com/ or search for it on your favorite podcasting platform.
\n","protected":false},"featured_media":1434,"template":"","meta":[],"categories":[13,10,6,38,7,23],"tags":[32,429,103,70,398],"class_list":["post-1525","articles","type-articles","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-art-design","category-magazine","category-planet","category-plants-animals","category-society","category-start-small","tag-conservation","tag-marine-life","tag-oceans","tag-podcasts","tag-tanya-nielsen"],"yoast_head":"\nAs water flows into an aquarium, a hand reaches down from above, trying to force a balloon into the rising tide. The balloon bursts, and water sputters over the glass walls — evoking heavy rain on a window. Over the course of 52 minutes, the hand drops more objects into the ever-filling aquarium: ping-pong balls, glass jars, pantyhose with rocks in the toes. Clad in a safari vest and hat, fluorescent-framed sunglasses, and impeccable red nail polish, the owner of the hand watches intently as the water reacts.
\n\n\n\nHigh Water, created and performed by multidisciplinary artist Robert Leveroos, is a playful and genre-bending performance that uses everyday items, rising water, and Leveroos himself to create miniature scenes and images — all within an aquarium intended for goldfish. Objects take on new meanings in the aquarium-turned-set, as Leveroos tinkers with them in the water. These new meanings are left for the audience to discover; Leveroos hopes they bring their curiosity to the theatre.
\n\n\n\nThe show runs February 1–5, as part of Vancouver’s PuSh International Performing Arts Festival. Now in its 16th year, the festival is known for presenting innovative works of contemporary performance. Its 2020 program includes 55 performances, talkbacks, and workshops, including two that highlight the environmental and climate crisis in unconventional ways: High Water and What You Won’t Do for Love.
\n\n\n\nIn the pursuit of solutions that can be quick fixes, we don’t necessarily see the ripple effects.
Part physics experiment and part puppetry, High Water uses the confines of the aquarium and the attributes of the objects to create imagery not possible with human actors. “I was just thinking about an aquarium being a really great space to work in, because it’s like a natural stage, in that it can be lit very well from all sides. And it makes for a nice controlled environment that is good for puppetry,” Leveroos explains. Within these parameters, High Water aims to create beauty and humour, while commenting on the climate crisis and our society’s culture of disposability.
\n\n\n\nLeveroos also wants to draw audiences’ attention to broader aspects of human behaviour. “At the heart of our investigation is… how humans are wonderfully inventive, and how that can also be shortsighted. In the pursuit of solutions that can be quick fixes, we don’t necessarily see the ripple effects through other things,” he comments. “There are a lot of… tongue-in-cheek moments where we’re poking fun at humans and creating images that allude to certain things — like nationalism, and land ownership, and maybe things like human invention — that have led us to where we are.”
\n\n\n\nLeveroos and his team — which includes co-creator and director Elysse Cheadle, and sound designer Nancy Tam (who performs the score live) — have worked on High Water for two years. During that time, “the conversation has really shifted globally,” Leveroos says. “Some of our images which have been set for a couple years have picked up new connotations [from] current events, like [the wildfires] in Australia right now.”
\n\n\n\nArt doesn’t have to be specific to any age range.
High Water is co-presented with the Vancouver International Children’s Festival, and Leveroos says his favourite kind of audience contains all ages. “Young people see things in a very different way than older folks,” he says. “I love adults being in a room with children, and I think they will find that kids will really give a clue into the kind of humour we’re playing with. And I think the adults can help the children potentially appreciate the gravity of it.”
\n\n\n\nAbove all, Leveroos wants High Water to be for everyone. “It’s nice to include everybody in the experience, and to realize that art doesn’t have to be specific to any age range.” He hopes audiences will participate in the curiosity and experimentation the performance brings to its subject matter.
\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/What-You-Wont-Do-for-Love_1.jpg\")
Like High Water, What You Won’t Do For Love looks at climate issues in a creative and non- didactic way. Created by Toronto’s Why Not Theatre, the piece consists of environmental advocates David Suzuki and Tara Cullis sharing stories about their activism and life together (they’ve been married 47 years). It’s still in development, but a one-night-only workshop presentation for PuSh pass-holders will take place at New Westminster’s Anvil Centre on February 4. The finished performance will have a run at next year’s festival.
\n\n\n\nWhy Not Theatre’s artistic director Ravi Jain has created theatre with non-actors before. His 2012 work A Brimful of Asha featured himself and his mother, Asha, telling a family story as if the audience were a roomful of friends. Like What You Won’t Do, Asha centred true stories of real people. “I grew up listening to my parents’ and uncles’ and aunties’ stories,” says Jain. “To me, that experience is at the heart of what theatre is. And there’s so much to learn from everyday people.”
\n\n\n\nJain’s storytellers this time around, Suzuki and Cullis, are best known for their activism in Canada and abroad. In opening up a conversation with the two about their love for the environment, their family, and each other, the piece aims to connect the dots between the personal and the environmental.
\n\n\n\nWe tell stories and we laugh really hard, and at times we get really sad.
“I first wanted to do a play with David Suzuki because I felt like I was concerned about the planet and wondering what I was doing to contribute to this crisis,” Jain explained in an email. He initially approached Suzuki about another project, and when they met they ended up speaking a lot about Cullis. “He also joked, ‘you know you better hurry up with this play because I’m gonna die soon,’” Jain recalls. “I said why don’t we do this with your wife because she’s so important to you and you want to spend time with her.”
\n\n\n\nJain describes the creation process as emotional and collaborative. “Ultimately, we sit around a table and we tell stories and we laugh really hard, and at times we get really sad,” he says.
\n\n\n\nThrough Suzuki and Cullis’ stories, Jain hopes to draw attention to the importance of storytelling in the time of the climate crisis. “We’re overwhelmed by the magnitude of this massive problem we’ve created for ourselves, and we don’t know what to do,” he says. “I think we need guidance and stories from an elder or elders. That has been the root of theatre and our lives as humans; that’s how we grow and learn. And coming back to that tradition and ever-important form can hopefully give us a path to navigate this very scary terrain.”
\n\n\n\nComing back to tradition can hopefully give us a path to navigate this very scary terrain.
What You Won’t Do holds up Suzuki and Cullis as extraordinary humans and environmental activists, while highlighting that environmentalism is for anyone and everyone. Jain thinks it’s important that audiences see Cullis and Suzuki as ordinary people, not environmental saviors. “They never set out to be climate activists. Neither of them wanted to do this job. They just fell in love with each other and — in connection with each other — …the planet and the nature they wanted to preserve for their family and their grandkids.”
\n\n\n\n“If we all just change our thinking,” says Jain, “we can see that we have the potential to also become superheroes.”
\n\n\n\nThe PuSh International Performing Arts Festival runs from January 21 to February 9, 2020. High Water runs February 1–5 at The Nest, on Vancouver’s Granville Island. What You Won’t Do For Love is on February 4 at The Anvil Centre in New Westminster.
\n","protected":false},"featured_media":1568,"template":"","meta":[],"categories":[13,7,51,9],"tags":[57,121,127,281,329,107],"class_list":["post-709","articles","type-articles","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-art-design","category-society","category-vancouver-area","category-west-coast","tag-activism","tag-children","tag-education","tag-rebecca-gao","tag-theatre","tag-vancouver"],"yoast_head":"\nHigh Water (pictured) and What You Won’t Do for Love tackle environmental subject matter in creative and non-didactic ways.
\n"},"alt_text":"A white man wearing a wide-brimmed hat and green vest reaches his fingers into a glass box. He is lit with pink and green light.","media_type":"image","mime_type":"image/jpeg","media_details":{"width":1500,"height":1000,"file":"2022/10/push-header.jpg","filesize":"289869","sizes":{"medium":{"file":"push-header-300x200.jpg","width":300,"height":200,"filesize":"14392","mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/push-header-300x200.jpg"},"large":{"file":"push-header-1024x683.jpg","width":1024,"height":683,"filesize":"103346","mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/push-header-1024x683.jpg"},"thumbnail":{"file":"push-header-150x150.jpg","width":150,"height":150,"filesize":"7289","mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/push-header-150x150.jpg"},"medium_large":{"file":"push-header-768x512.jpg","width":768,"height":512,"filesize":"63919","mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/push-header-768x512.jpg"},"full":{"file":"push-header.jpg","width":1500,"height":1000,"mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/push-header.jpg"}},"image_meta":{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"© Ash Tanasiychuk","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}},"source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/push-header.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/media/1568","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/media"}],"about":[{"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/types/attachment"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/users/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/comments?post=1568"}]}}],"wp:term":[[{"id":13,"link":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/category/society/art-design/","name":"Art & Design","slug":"art-design","taxonomy":"category","yoast_head":"\nWhat would it look like if ordinary citizens helped design their cities? For Istanbul-based architect Alexis Şanal, it looks like people sitting around playing cards.
\n\n\n\nŞanal’s brainchild, Hey! Imaginable Guidelines, is a sophisticated city-design tool masquerading as a role-playing card game. Şanal, who was born in Los Angeles and studied architecture at MIT, conceived the game five years ago after Istanbul’s Gezi Park protests: Demonstrations against turning a public green space into a mall were violently quashed by the government. Şanal then set out to address citizen disempowerment and improve Istanbul’s design culture in a whimsical way.
\n\n\n\nThe game was released in November 2018. Since then, residents of Turkish seaside town Ayvalık have used the cards to create a design brief for a park. In Istanbul’s Beşiktaş district, locals are using Hey! to plan a public youth space. Internationally, groups in Beirut, Lisbon, and Sydney are testing the game for community projects this year, while a group in Jeddah is translating them into Arabic. Şanal hopes to eventually publish the game online in a format anyone can download and customize.
\n\n\n\nŞanal conceived the game after Istanbul’s Gezi Park protests were violently quashed by the government.
Games typically take place during two-hour workshops — so far, these have included design practitioners, NGOs, and student groups — and focus on predetermined urban design challenges. Successful play results in guidelines for urban planning based on the consensus of the players.
\n\n\n\nCan’t quite picture it? Neither could I. “People really can’t understand how it works,” says Şanal. “Everybody who plays it has the exact opposite experience.”
\n\n\n\nI meet Şanal for a game at her offices in Arnavutköy, an eclectic neighborhood facing the Bosphorus strait. Ottoman mansions, a trendy brunch spot, and the spire of a Greek Orthodox church are visible from the window.
\n\n\n\nTypically, games are played with four to eight players, ideally at events with up to 12 tables going at once. But, today, it’s just the two of us. Our design challenge is to figure out how to improve the corner outside the window. We adopt roles. I’m the middle-aged male owner of the next-door nalbur, a tiny, cave-like hardware store. Şanal is both an octogenarian resident in a second-floor walk-up and a design expert.
\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Imaginable-guidelines-body.jpeg\")
She passes out cards from the original deck, which is Istanbul-specific — decks for other cities are in the works — and includes 101 cards in six color-coded categories. Each card defines one topic, with a “design guideline” describing its best-practice application on one side and an image by a local artist on the other. Topics range from physical objects like “Curbs” or “Street Furniture” to complex concepts like “Urban Porosity,” which, according to the card, has to do with how permeable boundaries are between public, semi-public, and private spaces. Porous environments give people opportunities to interact.
\n\n\n\nWe sort our cards into “not important,” “important,” and “wishful” piles based on our roles. Then, we explain “not important” choices to one another. We discard a topic if all players agree it’s irrelevant. If someone disagrees, they can take the card and lobby for it later. When I contend “Light Pollution” is unimportant because my shop closes before streetlights go on, Şanal — as the octogenarian — takes the card, saying bright lights “will blind me at night.” Next, I discard “Urban Porosity” because I don’t understand it. Şanal, now role-playing the expert, agrees it’s irrelevant to improving our corner. “We already have it with the church… and all the shops,” she explains.
\n\n\n\nCards and role-play create emotional distance between players and hot-button topics, challenging participants to consider the issue from someone else’s perspective.
“Important” and “wishful” cards are handled similarly to “not important” ones, but players debate their importance to the game’s design problem. Eventually, the group divides the cards into “important” and “wishful” stacks, which are used to create two sets of guidelines: a “design brief” and “what everyone wishes could happen,” explains Şanal. “If you have a really good design team, you can achieve both.”
\n\n\n\nAs we play, I see how Hey! could improve urban planning. Physical cards and role-play create emotional distance between players and hot-button topics, while challenging participants to consider the issue from someone else’s perspective. The game aims to ensure everyone feels heard by giving each player a chance to speak and listen before debate.
\n\n\n\nThe cards’ content — most of which was crowdsourced from experts, artists, and citizens — gives players a vocabulary for discussing urban design, as well as a way to show city planners and decision-makers what issues matter to the public. Şanal’s partner, Murat Şanal, joins us after our game and notes that, after one or two sessions, players could “talk to the mayor” about city design. That hasn’t happened in Istanbul yet, but, at the time of writing, Alexis Şanal said residents who participated in the Ayvalık game planned to approach their mayor when they were further along in the design process.
\n\n\n\nThe game’s fun role-playing and pretty packaging mask its serious goal of empowering ordinary citizens to reimagine and help shape public space. This contrasts with the hierarchical decision-making and polarized politics that often frustrate urban planning efforts.
\n\n\n\nBut Hey! is also Şanal’s love letter to Istanbul, where residents resourcefully adapt streets to solve local challenges. “Some amazing innovation and urban solutions have arisen,” says Şanal in an email. She highlights pazar — weekly street markets with affordable, high-quality food — and dolmuş, shared taxis that operate like mini-buses and help many residents get around.
\n\n\n\nHey! is Şanal’s love letter to Istanbul, where residents resourcefully adapt streets to solve local challenges.
Şanal also mentions gecekondu, buildings constructed overnight by rural migrants in Istanbul from the mid-‘40s to the mid-‘80s. Thanks to a legal loophole, the homes couldn’t be demolished if authorities didn’t notice them before dawn.
\n\n\n\n“Istanbul adapts itself to its period,” Şanal says fondly. “That’s how it’s lasted. I never would have made [Hey!] if I weren’t in Istanbul.”
\n","protected":false},"featured_media":1584,"template":"","meta":[],"categories":[13,45,7],"tags":[418,352,293],"class_list":["post-765","articles","type-articles","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-art-design","category-cities","category-society","tag-city-planning","tag-games","tag-ruth-terry"],"yoast_head":"\nCan a role-playing card game engage citizens in local planning? Istanbul architect Alexis Şanal thinks so.
\n"},"alt_text":"Playing cards from the game \"Hey!\" are arranged in piles on a table. A person is lifting one of the cards up.","media_type":"image","mime_type":"image/jpeg","media_details":{"width":1500,"height":1000,"file":"2022/10/IR-header.jpg","filesize":"299966","sizes":{"medium":{"file":"IR-header-300x200.jpg","width":300,"height":200,"filesize":"20630","mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/IR-header-300x200.jpg"},"large":{"file":"IR-header-1024x683.jpg","width":1024,"height":683,"filesize":"151747","mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/IR-header-1024x683.jpg"},"thumbnail":{"file":"IR-header-150x150.jpg","width":150,"height":150,"filesize":"9239","mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/IR-header-150x150.jpg"},"medium_large":{"file":"IR-header-768x512.jpg","width":768,"height":512,"filesize":"94272","mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/IR-header-768x512.jpg"},"full":{"file":"IR-header.jpg","width":1500,"height":1000,"mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/IR-header.jpg"}},"image_meta":{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"Ali Taptik","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}},"source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/IR-header.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/media/1584","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/media"}],"about":[{"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/types/attachment"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/users/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/comments?post=1584"}]}}],"wp:term":[[{"id":13,"link":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/category/society/art-design/","name":"Art & Design","slug":"art-design","taxonomy":"category","yoast_head":"\nMy daughter, 2-year-old Mini Ewe, is as comfortable squatting in a stream studying pebbles as she is perching at the table eating cereal — perhaps more so. She seems to speak to the water as it rushes through her tiny fingers, like she and the stream share a secret language that maybe I knew but lost somewhere along the way.
\n\n\n\nI’ve been feeling like my anxiety over the future of these wild places has damaged my ability to speak with streams and catch whispers on the wind. At the very time I need nature’s healing power the most, watching my daughter play with pebbles only reminds me of how much we have to lose.
\n\n\n\nI wish I could bottle the magic that Mini Ewe feels, and breathe it in every time I feel despair. Until magic-bottling tech goes mainstream, though, I’ll keep finding ways to bring nature’s enchantments into every aspect of our lives.
\n\n\n\nAs an outdoor educator, I’ve lived in the wilderness for weeks at a time — one group of students was even convinced I was raised by wolves. But since having my own kids, I find myself within four walls more than I’d like, so I’m always seeking ways the leaves, birds, and breeze can follow my family inside.
\n\n\n\nAt the very time I need nature’s healing power the most, watching my daughter play with pebbles only reminds me of how much we have to lose.
Here are five books to help raise the youngest earth-lovers — and maybe help us grownups stay enchanted by the Earth we’re fighting for.
\n\n\n\nWritten and illustrated by Debra Frasier (suitable for ages 0 to 3)
\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/On-the-day-you-were-born-1-300x232.jpeg\")
This book is a classic baby gift. While infants love the bright, contrasting colours, the message makes many parents (like me) a bit misty-eyed, even after our kids are old enough to read it to us. The dedication brings some big feels right away — to Mother Earth, Frasier’s own daughter, “and you” — and the heartstrings keep thrumming throughout. Frasier’s lines become song lyrics, welcoming the newborn “out of the dark quiet” and into nature’s orchestra of order. “On the day you were born, the moon pulled on the ocean below,” it reads. “A rising tide washed the beaches clean for your footprints.”
\n\n\n\nAnd for a moment, we remember that feeling: each footstep on the sand was new at some point, and animals were kindred spirits. This book grounds me in love both for my tiny people, and the world that welcomed them into its rhythms.
\n\n\n\nBy Linda Glaser and Elisa Klevin (suitable for ages 2 to 5)
\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Our-Big-Home-1-292x300.jpeg\")
Emphasizing play and the feeling of being part of something bigger, this little book is a balm in a world of bad news. The illustrations capture tiny minds through detailing all the diverse cultures and creatures finding ways to share our home, our planet. There’s something about reading the poetry on these pages out loud to my kids that even placates my climate anxiety. It’s just for a few moments, but it’s enough.
\n\n\n\nOur Big Home exudes empathy and shared experience, which is essential if we are to overcome what Florence Williams, author of The Nature Fix: Why Nature Makes us Happier, Healthier and More Creative calls an “epidemic dislocation from the outdoors.” This isn’t restricted to adults; children, too, are forgetting how to connect with nature’s elements and creatures. If we could bottle some of the playfulness of this book, it would go a long way to reconnecting us to all the things that matter.
\n\n\n\nWritten and illustrated by Leo Yerxa (suitable for ages 3 to 7)
\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Last-Leaf-1-223x300.jpeg\")
Before finding this book, my 4-year old, Little Grey Lamb, asked, “When did the first winter happen?” Kids love looking for beginnings, and by bringing readers to the moment when the very first fall became winter, this story brought Little Grey’s imagination to life. Ojibway author and artist Leo Yerxa makes readers feel as though we’re sitting on the edge of the world as we watch an adult and child wend their way through the wilderness by canoe.
\n\n\n\n“Playing, rolling on the ground, I was a leaf, ” the young narrator declares from a multicoloured pile of autumn’s cast-offs. Young readers might also feel this way — they, too, are nature, inseparable from its colours, sounds, and textures. Research has found that just as children’s language and aptitudes develop in phases, so too does their relationship with nature. The first phase involves feeling at one with the environment, and as caregivers, we can create positive, immersive experiences that allow this to emerge. While nothing can replace adventuring into the wild itself, it’s also important to share literature that mirrors those adventures.
\n\n\n\nIn Yerxa’s creation, nature is both powerful and playful — and, most importantly, a magical process that we can watch unfold.
\n\n\n\nBy Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas, with an afterword by Wangari Maathai (suitable for ages 5 to 8) Note: This book does contain discussion of forest fires.
\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Hummingbird-1.jpeg\")
While this book is more explicitly environmentalist than others I’ve included, this list would be incomplete without it. My own little hummingbirds love this story of a tiny being just like them trying to accomplish big things against all odds.
\n\n\n\nHaida author Nicoll Yahgulanaas reinterprets a Quechuan tale with Ecuadoran and Peruvian roots, explaining that the tiny protagonist, the hummingbird, has cultural significance for not only the Quechua, but also the Pueblo, the Haida, and the Tsimshian.
\n\n\n\nThe tale follows the plight of a hummingbird whose home and neighbours are threatened by a forest fire. Although she could fly away, she chooses to “do what [she] can” and tirelessly flies one drop of water from a stream to the fire.
\n\n\n\nMy own little hummingbirds love this story of a tiny being just like them trying to accomplish big things against all odds.
Kenyan activist Wangari Maathai’s afterword reminds us that this isn’t just a metaphor; Maathai’s Green Belt movement has had an enormous impact on watershed health and local livelihoods in Kenya, simply by planting one tree at a time.
\n\n\n\nIt’s taken time for my 4-year-old to process the wildfires that turn our air thick with smoke with increasing regularity, so be aware this story could be unnerving to some kids. Nonetheless, it can also help tiny people feel empowered to make big change.
\n\n\n\nBy Rosie Hall (for ages 6 and up)
\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Nature-Journal-1.jpeg\")
And now for something a little different: A book for your family to write together. This little journal provides just enough structure to inspire kids to doodle, journal, or transcribe some of their own thoughts on each themed page. Your mini-Thoreau might want to start a moon diary on the page next to the moon-gazing chart, or try their hand at drawing local petals next to the diagram of flower parts.
\n\n\n\nMartin Shaw, mythic storyteller and author of Scatterlings: Getting Claimed in an Age of Amnesia, encourages us in this time of calamity “to be of a place,” not simply in it. “To be of is to hunker down as a servant to the ruminations of the specific valley, little gritty vegetable patch, or swampy acre of abandoned field that has laid its breath on the back of your neck.” Kids live in the details — 4-year-old Little Grey is very excited to document everything from the birds on our lake to the blades of dead grass in this DIY discovery journal.
\n\n\n\nI love that this little book lets our family hunker down in the world at our doorstep, and beyond.
\n\n\n\nBy creating experiences in nature for our kids, we’re also teaching them to be in relationship with it. At the same time, intensifying weather and reports of the climate crisis are changing my own relationship with the planet. Neil Gaiman, author of my favourite graphic novel series, The Sandman, wrote “Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.”
\n\n\n\nI believe these books also tell us a more-than-truth — while I won’t pretend to feel cheery about our planet’s future, these stories remind me that my family, and our relationship with the Earth, are stronger than fear.
\n","protected":false},"featured_media":313,"template":"","meta":[],"categories":[13,43,20,8,10,7,22],"tags":[69,249,121,141,120],"class_list":["post-348","articles","type-articles","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-art-design","category-black-sheep-parent","category-kids-parenting","category-living","category-magazine","category-society","category-voices","tag-books","tag-brianna-sharpe","tag-children","tag-nature","tag-parenting"],"yoast_head":"\nIn the mood for a good, sustainable movie? Gus has you covered, with a list of six of our favourite eco-documentaries. Curl up with one of these and you’ll walk away a little wiser about the challenges facing humanity and the planet, as well as (we hope) a spark of inspiration to help you respond.
\n\n\n\nWe’ve chosen these six films because they offer a window into the irreversible mark humans have made on the Earth, while highlighting individuals and communities working to pave a sustainable path forward. By focusing on community-based solutions, these documentaries lead us into the worlds of people whose lives are intimately entangled (intentionally or not) with some of the world’s biggest problems.
\n\n\n\nDirectors: Jennifer Baichwal, Edward Burtynsky, Nicholas de Pencier
\n\n\n\nAnthropocene offers us a window into the massive geological effects that humans have had on the planet. The film draws on the work of the Anthropocene Working Group, a collection of geologists at the University of Leicester who argue that human actions have caused large-scale, permanent planetary changes so significant that the Earth has entered a new, unprecedented geologic time period: the Anthropocene. Through myriad long landscape shots from six continents and 20 countries, this Canadian doc paints an uncomfortably beautiful portrait of human destruction — documenting, in the truest sense of the word, Earth at its turning point.
\n\n\n\nHow to watch: In Canada, rent it from the Cineplex Store or stream it on Crave. Elsewhere, buy it on Apple TV.
\n\n\n\nDirector: Alethea Arnaquq-Baril
\n\n\n\nIt’s no secret that majority-white, mainstream animal activism often overlooks the social, economic, and cultural complexities surrounding its cause. Angry Inuk brings us to the Canadian Arctic, into Inuit communities affected by animal rights activism demonizing a practice vital to their survival: the seal hunt. The film profiles hunters, craftspeople, activists, and families that view the seal hunt as a vital source of food and work. They live in a harsh environment with limited economic opportunities, but their voices are often ignored in global conversations surrounding their livelihood. By giving them a platform, director Alethea Arnaquq-Baril highlights the importance of culturally aware, intersectional activism.
\n\n\n\nHow to watch: In Canada, stream an hour-long version on CBC.ca. Elsewhere, stream the full-length film on Kanopy or Prime Video, or buy it from the National Film Board or on iTunes.
\n\n\n\nDirector: Mark MacInnis
\n\n\n\nUrban Roots tells the tale of vibrant, emerging urban farming communities in downtown Detroit. Once the automotive capital of the world, Detroit is home to over 40,000 vacant lots that grassroots farmers and activists are repurposing to provide food, community connection, and meaningful work for themselves and their neighbours. When the documentary was made, unlicensed farming on abandoned lots was illegal, but the communities, which were largely African American, didn’t wait for bureaucratic permission. Urban Roots showcases their innovative work, while examining questions of race, politics, and equity related to the urban farming movement. In 2013, an ordinance protecting urban farmers was passed, and the movement remains vibrant today.
\n\n\n\nHow to watch: Stream it on Kanopy, rent it on Vimeo, or purchase a DVD through Tree Media’s website.
\n\n\n\nDirector: Jeff Orlowski
\n\n\n\nThis Netflix documentary follows a team of photographers, scientists, divers, and “coral nerds” on a race to document the rapid disappearance of the world’s coral reefs. The film becomes surprisingly emotional: Viewers watch the team grapple with the death of something they love deeply as they struggle to capture time-lapses of the Great Barrier Reef during a mass bleaching event caused by rising water temperatures in 2016. Educational but despondent, Chasing Coral is a moving and visually arresting record of climate change’s impact on the oceans, and a call to action to protect them.
\n\n\n\nHow to watch: Stream it on Netflix.
\n\n\n\nDirectors: Nupur Basu, Mary Kiio, Iphigénie Marcoux-Fortier, Liz Miller, Karen Winther
\n\n\n\nEven as climate change can feel like an abstract problem (too large to solve, too imminent to reverse), Hands On shows how solutions can move forward on a local scale by profiling five women from across the globe tackling climate-related issues in their communities. From Maheshvari, a woman keeping fishers safe from severe storms in her village of Veerampattinam, India, to Jasmine Thomas, the leader of a coalition against oil pipeline expansion through First Nations land in British Columbia, this doc shines a light on community activists putting the mantra “think global, act local” into action.
\n\n\n\nHow to watch: Stream it on Vimeo.
\n\n\n\nDirectors: Tamo Campos, Brian Hockenstein
\n\n\n\nThis documentary follows a group of professional surfers and snowboarders on a journey during which they examine their relationship with the environment and Indigenous peoples in British Columbia. As the group travels throughout BC, they meet with the Haida, Musgamagw, Namgis, Tahltan, and Xwisten communities, and discuss environmental concerns facing these communities, whose land is home to the same coasts and mountains the athletes use. By telling different stories about spaces that the athletes seemingly know so well, the film makes a compelling call for outdoor athletes to move towards a relationship with the land that isn’t purely based in their own enjoyment, but rooted in environmental advocacy.
\n\n\n\nHow to watch: Stream it on Prime Video or buy it on Apple TV.
\n\n\n\nEdited January 31, 2022: Updated purchase and streaming links.
\n","protected":false},"featured_media":1560,"template":"","meta":[],"categories":[13,11,6,7],"tags":[416,110,98,67,288,103,101],"class_list":["post-756","articles","type-articles","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-art-design","category-climate-change","category-planet","category-society","tag-coral","tag-documentary","tag-ecology","tag-film-tv","tag-marianna-ciccia","tag-oceans","tag-women"],"yoast_head":"\nEver since my parents taught me to say, “ta-da!” and take a bow after achievements as small as tying my shoes, I knew I was performer. The life of an actor is interesting, and lately I’ve been aware of how it conflicts with my life as an eco-warrior.
\n\n\n\nI booked a commercial recently and before going to set, I packed my bag full of things I knew I’d need for a long day: book, cell phone charger, metal water bottle, travel coffee mug, and the hot-water bottle I use instead of disposable heat packs to keep myself warm when filming outside in October.
\n\n\n\nI got to set early for breakfast, and was miffed that everything was being served on paper plates, with plastic cutlery. The recycling and compost bins hadn’t been put out yet. My inner Environmentalist From Hell was starting to fume as I looked around at all the disposable products. Why was I the only one who thought ahead and brought her own coffee cup and water bottle? (Then I kicked myself for not bringing reusable cutlery.)
\n\n\n\nWhy was I the only one who thought ahead and brought her own coffee cup and water bottle?
The film industry is notoriously wasteful, and it’s not just the catering department. After a 12-hour day playing a real estate agent (that’s all I can tell you about this top-secret gig), I went home and decided to look into what’s being done to make the industry more sustainable, because that’s my jam!
\n\n\n\nOf course, I’m not the only one who’s noticed the wastefulness. People have been studying the environmental impact of film and TV production for over a decade, and as climate change is becoming more noticeable and impactful, the industry is finally starting to take action.
\n\n\n\nMelanie Dicks is the co-founder of Greenshoot, a UK-based organization created in 2009. In a recent interview, she pointed out:
\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nThe average person going about their daily lives, eating, sleeping, getting about and so on generates about 7 [metric] tonnes of carbon a year. A single film technician typically generates up to 2.5 tonnes of carbon on an eight-week shoot, or 32 tonnes per year. Typically, there will be up to 250 cast and crew working on a large production, plus the whole supply chain supporting it.
\n
Yikes! That’s a big carbon footprint!
\n\n\n\nThe average person generates about 7 tonnes of carbon a year. A single film technician typically generates 32 tonnes per year.
From my investigations, I discovered that some big names in the industry, like 21st Century Fox, have been tracking carbon emissions, and analyzing opportunities for reduction for over a decade, but other producers have just started to address the problems. Really?! Hasn’t Leonardo DiCaprio been advocating for the environment since I had his Bop magazine Romeo + Juliet centerfold poster up on my wall?!
\n\n\n\nNBC Universal launched their “Green is Universal” initiative in 2007 along with a Sustainable Production Program and Green Production Guide. Vancouver is the third-largest film production centre in North America, but the metro area didn’t have a way to store and re-use set materials until Keep it Green Recycling and Green Spark Group created the Sustainable Lock Up in May 2017. Since they started, they say they’ve taken in and redistributed “well over 100 tons of set materials” — including windows, doors, and flats. The Sustainable Lock Up also has a program to get leftover food from on-set catering to people who need a meal.
\n\n\n\nThe job of coordinating a sustainability plan often lands on the already full plate of a production manager. Some sets are avoiding this overload by creating a new position for this purpose. In 2013, The Amazing Spider-Man 2 hired an “eco manager” who met with all departments (costumes, set, special effects, etc.) and came up with a plan to reduce the production’s impact. To motivate everyone on set, the eco manager gave a Green Crew of the Week award for efforts like reusing supplies and managing waste.
\n\n\n\nThis sounds like a job I could get into; instead of being P.O.’ed about people abandoning water bottles everywhere, I could reward people for bringing their own bottles to work. I’d high-five anyone who sorted their waste into the correct bins. I’d do a song and dance for whoever booked an eco-conscious hotel for the stars to say in.
\n\n\n\nEco manager sounds like a job I could get into; instead of being P.O.’ed about people abandoning water bottles everywhere, I could reward people for bringing their own.
Lighting is going green with increased use of LEDS. Productions are using 100%-recycled paper, and encouraging less printing with the help of technology. For the camera crew and director, there are apps like ShotLister, Shot Designer, and Cut Notes that eliminate the need for paper. Productions are switching on-set heaters from propane to biodiesel made from reused cooking oil. Some caterers are switching to 100% compostable materials or reusable plates and cutlery, instead of plastic, which reduces landfill waste. Of course, compostable materials are only good if the compost bins are put out, otherwise people just throw their stuff into the nearest garbage can.
\n\n\n\nEco managers not only keep productions green, they also contribute to the bottom line. For example, on The Amazing Spider-Man 2, the eco manager helped reduce bottled-water use. This, according to the Producers Guild of America, has the potential to save $6,000 over a 60-day period, not to mention lessening the environmental damage caused by bottled water. Man in the High Castle’s third season reportedly saved over $50,000 by implementing sustainable production practices.
\n\n\n\nSome impacts are harder to curb. Filming on location disturbs wildlife and the environment with sound and light pollution, and trampled vegetation. Blowing stuff up inevitably creates noise, waste, and air pollution. While productions can plan transport more efficiently, there are always a lot of trucks and cars traveling to and from set which, at least in Vancouver, is often an hour outside the downtown core.
\n\n\n\nStill, it seems the entertainment industry is embracing greener practices every day. Sustainable production forums are now a regular part of film festivals. Locally, Creative BC created Reel Green to promote sustainable practices in the film industry. They run a free six-hour “carbon literacy” workshop, where film-industry workers can learn about climate change, and gain tools and techniques to lessen their environmental impact. I’m hoping to take it as soon as it fits into my wacky schedule.
\n\n\n\nNext time I’m on set, I’m going to bring my own cutlery from home, and nag every actor I know to do the same.
It’s only a matter of time before I start to see greener sets on my little commercial shoots. Of course, I think it should have happened years ago. In the meantime, I’ll keep doing my part. I’m looking forward to when more of these practices are implemented in every industry. I can’t wait for the day when everyone knows how to sort their waste into different bins, or, better yet, we convert to a zero-waste society.
\n\n\n\nNext time I’m on set, I’m going to bring my own cutlery and napkin from home, and nag every actor I know to do the same. But only after they agree to include me in their carpool to set. That way I’ll have a captive audience for my eco-rants…
\n","protected":false},"featured_media":690,"template":"","meta":[],"categories":[13,11,27,10,6,7,22],"tags":[32,67,94,251,107],"class_list":["post-462","articles","type-articles","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-art-design","category-climate-change","category-environmentalist-from-hell","category-magazine","category-planet","category-society","category-voices","tag-conservation","tag-film-tv","tag-recycling","tag-sara-bynoe","tag-vancouver"],"yoast_head":"\nAmid the green hills of Vancouver’s Vanier Park — with False Creek and English Bay in the background — stands an industrial steel structure. The 10 by 6.5 metre building resembles a cage, or the skeleton of a little mosque. Through its chain-link walls you can see prayer rugs, and a chandelier hanging down from the central dome. A nearby sign reads “RESPECT THE ARTWORK. CLIMBING PROHIBITED. Video surveillance.” Someone has scratched out the word “ART” with a black marker, and written “Religious” in its place.
\n\n\n\nSaudi multidisciplinary artist Ajlan Gharem’s “Paradise Has Many Gates” was installed in the park in June as part of the Vancouver Biennale’s current exhibition, re-IMAGE-n, which aims to raise awareness of critical global issues. It’s not the first time the Biennale has included a Muslim artist’s work, but, according to curator Zarina Laalo, it’s “the first time a work has specifically addressed Muslim topics using Muslim iconography and symbols.”
\n\n\n\n“The piece,” said Laalo, “which represents the epitome of gathering space and community, allows local groups of all faiths and beliefs to come forth and celebrate this idea of inclusivity, acceptance, and freedom in creative and engaging ways. It is our wish — in addition to the artist’s — for this space to serve as a conduit for a healthy dialogue between multiple groups and generations.”
\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Mosque-body-1.jpg\")
Gharem first created the installation in 2016, and has exhibited it around the world, including in his home country of Saudi Arabia; Houston, TX; and London, UK. When the artist was in Vancouver in June, he participated in an event hosted by Simon Fraser University’s Centre for Comparative Muslim Studies (CCMS). At Being a Muslim Artist, Gharem screened a short film about the installation, consisting of timelapse footage of the mosque as it stood in the Arabian desert. It shows people of different ages and ethnic/social backgrounds entering the structure and praying.
\n\n\n\nThe meaning and the feeling of the work changes depending on location and context.
“One thing we have discovered was that the meaning and the feeling of the work changes depending on location and context,” Laalo said. “Having it at Vanier Park completely changed the way it was perceived than when it was in [Houston’s] Station Museum or in the desert.”
\n\n\n\nAt one point during the 4-minute film, the subjects look out of the structure with fingers gripping the steel fencing. According to a Biennale press release,
\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nAjlan’s mosque is built from the same cage-like material that Western countries use to erect fences along their borders, preventing refugees and illegal immigrants from entering. While it can evoke feelings of imprisonment and anxiousness by way of its caged structure, this work has also been often interpreted with a positive sense of openness and transparency; this work functions as a communal centre of prayer, and invites all visitors, Muslim and non-Muslim alike, to question how we designate and behave within sacred spaces, and how their meaning will differ between generations and cultures.
\n
![\"\"](\"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Mosque-body-2.jpg\")
In conjunction with the installation, the Biennale launched other events, including Weaving Cultural Identities, at which Indigenous and Muslim textile artists were invited to weave prayer rugs to cover the mosque floor. “We are most humbled to have started reaching out and connecting with the Muslim Community, as well as the First Nations community,” said Laalo. “Many local Muslim groups and First Nations groups that we have encountered are already interested in developing intercultural relations, acceptance, and inclusivity, and I think this really comes across in the programming.”
\n\n\n\nThis series — including calligraphy workshops, a multimedia event on “gender and Muslim perspectives,” as well as a mural in the Vancouver Mural Festival sponsored by the CCMS — was created to highlight the cultural and artistic expressions of Vancouver’s Muslim community, and to start a dialogue in which its members can represent their own identity, speak for themselves, and build relationships with other local communities.
\n\n\n\nOur aim is to create space where local Muslim artists feel included and represented in Canadian society.
“We think that these events will bring change to the way Muslim communities are usually perceived,” said Amal Ghazal, director of the CCMS. “Our aim is to create space where local Muslim artists feel included and represented in Canadian society, and where they can express themselves and their diverse identities and background.”
\n\n\n\nWhether this piece and accompanying programming succeed in creating change is yet to be seen. Judging by the graffiti on the “Respect the artwork” sign, what’s clear is how necessary that change is.
\n","protected":false},"featured_media":1750,"template":"","meta":[],"categories":[13,45,7,51,9],"tags":[483,485,486],"class_list":["post-1793","articles","type-articles","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-art-design","category-cities","category-society","category-vancouver-area","category-west-coast","tag-dima-yassine","tag-islam","tag-sculpture"],"yoast_head":"\nAjlan Gharem’s public art installation Paradise Has Many Gates will spend two years in Vanier Park as part of the Vancouver Biennale.
\n"},"alt_text":"An art installation named Paradise Has Many Gates by Ajlan Gharem at Vanier Park, Vancouver.","media_type":"image","mime_type":"image/jpeg","media_details":{"width":1500,"height":1125,"file":"2022/12/Mosque.jpg","filesize":"276196","sizes":{"medium":{"file":"Mosque-300x225.jpg","width":300,"height":225,"filesize":"13192","mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Mosque-300x225.jpg"},"large":{"file":"Mosque-1024x768.jpg","width":1024,"height":768,"filesize":"130201","mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Mosque-1024x768.jpg"},"thumbnail":{"file":"Mosque-150x150.jpg","width":150,"height":150,"filesize":"5068","mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Mosque-150x150.jpg"},"medium_large":{"file":"Mosque-768x576.jpg","width":768,"height":576,"filesize":"75986","mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Mosque-768x576.jpg"},"full":{"file":"Mosque.jpg","width":1500,"height":1125,"mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Mosque.jpg"}},"image_meta":{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}},"source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Mosque.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/media/1750","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/media"}],"about":[{"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/types/attachment"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/users/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/comments?post=1750"}]}}],"wp:term":[[{"id":13,"link":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/category/society/art-design/","name":"Art & Design","slug":"art-design","taxonomy":"category","yoast_head":"\nJuno-award winning composer and cellist Rebecca Foon is a collaborator — a member of numerous ensembles playing styles from post-punk to minimalist chamber music, she has also shared stage and studio with the likes of Nick Cave, Tanya Tagaq, and members of Arcade Fire. In recent years, this collaborative impulse led her down an unexpected path. Alongside fellow musician Jesse Paris Smith, Foon founded the environmental organization Pathway to Paris. Initially conceived as a one-off performance featuring REM’s Michael Stipe, environmentalist Bill McKibben, and punk legend Patti Smith (who shares daughter Jesse’s activism), Pathway has gone on to organize climate-action-focused concerts in Paris, Montreal, and Carnegie Hall.
\n\n\n\nThe catalog of A-list collaborators has grown to include activists like Vandana Shiva and Naomi Klein, as well as musicians from rapper Talib Kweli, to the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Flea, to folk icon Joan Baez. The project also has backing from the United Nations Development Programme. Co-founders Smith and Foon have expanded the organization’s activities to include the 1000 Cities Initiative for Carbon Freedom, a campaign supporting cities around the world to take climate action into their own hands.
\n\n\n\nBut they also continue to put on star-studded concerts. This week brings Foon back to her West Coast roots — she grew up in Vancouver, where, full disclosure, our families are long-time friends — for a pair of concerts in San Francisco (September 14) and Los Angeles (September 16). After at least a decade out of touch, we recently reconnected to talk about music’s role in social change, people power, and being starstruck. (This interview has been edited for length and clarity.)
\n\n\n\nJessie Johnston: What is Pathway to Paris?
Rebecca Foon: Jesse Paris Smith and I decided to organize a concert for the big climate march that happened in 2014 in New York City. That was in the lead up to the Paris [climate] talks in December 2015, so we called [it] Pathway to Paris. We organized it in five days, and it was a celebration of the momentous march that happened: over 300,000 people picketing in the streets of New York City alone, not to mention other cities of the world.
All these amazing people performed: Patti Smith, Michael Stipe, [Sonic Youth’s] Thurston Moore. Bill McKibben came out. We got it together so quickly, and we thought “Wow, this is incredible, all these artists want to be part of this.” Climate change is the most important issue of our time in terms of plain old survival on Planet Earth; it just seems like everyone’s terrified. Music is a powerful tool to wake people’s hearts up.
\n\n\n\nThen we decided to organize concerts in the lead-up to Paris. And we organized two in a beautiful theatre, Le Trianon, the first weekend of COP21 [the 2015 Paris Climate Conference]. Everything got shut down because of the Bataclan attacks [in November], so it was really a miracle it happened. It was a chance to bring a cultural movement to COP21, to open it with a bang of positivity, and show leaders and the world that a lot of people care about this and are watching. [Radiohead frontman] Thom Yorke played, and Flea, and Patti.
\n\n\n\nClimate change is the most important issue of our time in terms of plain old survival on Planet Earth.
The UN really was moved by it and became an official partner after that. Time went by, and then Trump did his thing, threatening to pull out of the [Paris] agreement, so we were like, “OK, we’ve got to keep going.” So we started a 501(c)3 [non-profit organization] and have been doing concerts ever since. We did one at Carnegie Hall last year, and launched the 1000 Cities Initiative at the UN.
\n\n\n\nThese two concerts [in California] are trying to showcase the Global Climate Action Summit that’s happening in San Francisco, [with] the same intention of inspiring solutions to turn the Paris agreement into action and reality. Because it’s one thing to have it, and it’s another to actually make it happen.
\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/foonbody.jpg\")
What is the 1000 Cities Initiative?
It’s a solution we came up with — a global, theoretical solution — that if 1,000 cities can come together and hit very ambitious targets that we’ve outlined (to go 100% renewable and zero-emissions by 2040), then we can turn the Paris agreement into action. It’s not dependent on federal politics, it’s more focused on the cities that we live [in], our daily reality, community-building, and citizen engagement.
As part of 1000 Cities, we have an amazing technical team: we collaborate with Sustainability Solutions Group. They’ve come up with a great tool for cities that’s become prominently used in Canada, and now in America too. It helps cities model different scenarios to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. So we help [cities] by offering support with this tool and helping them with their climate-action planning.
\n\n\n\nWhat we’re launching after the concert is the 1000 Cities research project, which will be looking at major cities of the world, where they’re at with their climate-planning efforts, and what it would take to ramp them up. And then setting targets for major cities of the world. Then [the research will] serve as a roadmap for everyone who’s out there trying to help cities. We’ll start it in October, and it will probably be a year-long project.
\n\n\n\nMusic is a universal language, and climate change is a common truth and a global concern.
How can a concert bring about social and environmental change?
Obviously a concert doesn’t do a whole lot in terms of practical realities. But what it does do is open people’s hearts, and build inspiration and knowledge. I always say that music is a universal language, and climate change is a common truth and a global concern. And so we believe it’s a chance to build a revolution of sorts, to really raise awareness around climate-action planning and solutions. Show the world that people are concerned and care, and inject positivity. It’s such a scary time, but also an inspirational time.
And then we have — as part of 1000 Cities — a petition, so we mention that too. Every time somebody signs, the letter goes to the mayor’s office of that city. It’s global, citizens petitioning their cities to meet the 1000 Cities targets.
\n\n\n\nFor those of us who haven’t attended a Pathway to Paris concert, can you describe what one of those evenings is like?
The San Francisco concert will be live-streamed [on the Facebook page of sponsor Ben and Jerry’s]. It’s a really beautiful experience: a combination of incredible thinkers, musicians, and artists that all come together in a collective effort. It feels very joyful and supportive — a diversity of voices that are all united.
I’ve seen images of the audience with their arms over their heads. What’s that about?
Tenzin Choegyal is a beautiful musician originally from Tibet that lives in Australia. During his portion of the evening, he gets everyone to put their hands over their head. I don’t know exactly how to articulate it, but [it symbolizes] “the roof of the world.”
Over the ten events you’ve organized so far, you’ve involved many impressive people. Were there any dreams come true, or people you found yourself starstruck to work with?
We’ve worked with so many people beyond my wildest dreams, that I never even imagined. What I like about it is breaking down the barriers.
I think the problem behind climate change — and inequity, injustice, war, and resource extraction — is a lack of love. Every human being has a right to our commons, and every human being is an equal part of our planet, even though society is constructed to make it clear that’s not the case. And so we work with all the souls that have joined Pathway to Paris. There’s a real diversity of voices, and it’s beautiful to see how much everybody equally cares for our future and the sustainability of our planet.
\n\n\n\nWhat I’m trying to say is I don’t get starstruck too much because I just try to see the light in everybody. But of course it’s been incredible to collaborate with so many people. [Grateful Dead co-founder] Bob Weir is performing at San Francisco; I never thought I’d ever meet Bob Weir. I’ve worked with Thom Yorke. It’s all been incredible, I just try to keep a level head about it all.
\n\n\n\nThe problem behind climate change — and inequity, injustice, war, and resource extraction — is a lack of love.
Is there anyone you hope will get involved in the future?
We were going to ask Prince before he died, because he was doing a solo piano tour. So that was my big dream. Stevie Wonder, maybe. Aretha was on [the list]. Neil Young would be a big dream.
Your co-founder Jesse’s middle name is “Paris”…
It’s just a divine intervention of life! Hilarious, right? It’s a coincidence.
What has been the biggest surprise for you over the course of this project?
That Trump was elected and threatened to pull out of the Paris agreement. I have to say that shocked me. To be honest, I was surprised the Paris agreement happened. We were really worried that it wouldn’t come to fruition because of everything that happened with Copenhagen and the Kyoto accord.
It’s moving for us to see how many people have devoted themselves to the initiative and how much people care about the state of the world and climate change. They feel they don’t have a way to express it, and Pathway to Paris offers a platform for that. And I think that’s why we’re successful, really. We’re just finding a gap, and providing a platform for people to unite in a cause that’s so true to people’s hearts.
\n\n\n\nPeople do have power, and if everybody that cared put time and energy into doing something, we could make monumental shifts.
What’s the biggest thing you’ve learned through this project?
I think when you do things with love, it infuses into whatever you’re doing, and people feel it. I’ve really felt that with Pathway, and I try to take that in with everything that I do.
Jesse and I are just two people, and we’ve created a big thing out of nothing, really. At Carnegie Hall, everyone had paper and pen at their seat, and Bill McKibben asked the audience to write letters to [New York City] Comptroller Scott Stringer and Mayor Bill DeBlasio, asking them to divest New York City’s pension funds of fossil fuels and reinvest in renewables. We sent the letters, and a few weeks later they announced they were divesting.
\n\n\n\nIt makes us realize that people do have power, and if everybody that cared about the state of the world put time and energy into doing something, we could make monumental shifts. The cool thing about climate change and the end of an era with fossil fuels, is that a renewable world is really fucking cool. How cool is it to live in a city without fossil fuels? A renewable city! That gets me excited to live on Planet Earth, you know?
\n","protected":false},"featured_media":1728,"template":"","meta":[],"categories":[13,45,11,6,7],"tags":[57,459,444,383,88,219],"class_list":["post-1778","articles","type-articles","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-art-design","category-cities","category-climate-change","category-planet","category-society","tag-activism","tag-art-for-social-change","tag-eco-art","tag-jessie-johnston","tag-music","tag-paris-agreement"],"yoast_head":"\nVisual artist Olafur Eliasson leads a packed Carnegie Hall audience in creating a “sunrise” with solar-powered Little Sun lamps, at the December 2017 Pathway to Paris concert.
\n"},"alt_text":"A packed, multi-storey auditorium of people hold small lamps, lighting up the entire space.","media_type":"image","mime_type":"image/jpeg","media_details":{"width":1500,"height":1001,"file":"2022/12/foon-header.jpg","filesize":"306527","sizes":{"medium":{"file":"foon-header-300x200.jpg","width":300,"height":200,"filesize":"17754","mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/foon-header-300x200.jpg"},"large":{"file":"foon-header-1024x683.jpg","width":1024,"height":683,"filesize":"140536","mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/foon-header-1024x683.jpg"},"thumbnail":{"file":"foon-header-150x150.jpg","width":150,"height":150,"filesize":"7804","mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/foon-header-150x150.jpg"},"medium_large":{"file":"foon-header-768x513.jpg","width":768,"height":513,"filesize":"87375","mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/foon-header-768x513.jpg"},"full":{"file":"foon-header.jpg","width":1500,"height":1001,"mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/foon-header.jpg"}},"image_meta":{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}},"source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/foon-header.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/media/1728","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/media"}],"about":[{"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/types/attachment"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/users/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/comments?post=1728"}]}}],"wp:term":[[{"id":13,"link":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/category/society/art-design/","name":"Art & Design","slug":"art-design","taxonomy":"category","yoast_head":"\nThe fourth edition of Vancouver’s Vines Art Festival opens today, setting up in parks and public spaces around the city through August 19th. Over the course of the next 12 days, festival-goers can experience outdoor music, dance, poetry, sound and fibre-art installations, the first-ever Unsettling Ceremony, and so much more besides, in venues from Kits Beach and Granville Island, to North Vancouver’s Harmony Garden and the festival’s home park, Trout Lake. All for free! Asparagus sat down with founder and artistic director Heather Lamoureux to learn about the festival’s origins, growth, and future. (This interview has been edited for length and clarity.)
\n\n\n\nJessie Johnston: What is the Vines Art Festival?
Heather Lamoureux: The Vines Festival brings together artists and activists to create work on the land, in public space. It’s a 100% free festival throughout Vancouver’s parks: Trout Lake, CRAB Park, Kitsilano Beach, Trillium Park, the Roundhouse Community Centre, and even Granville Island this year. We program work that’s at the intersection of activism and the arts, and typically speaks to environmentalism and social justice. It’s multi-disciplinary: dance, music, theatre, spoken word, and visual art installations, and things that mix up all those things.
This is the festival’s fourth year. Tell me about putting on the first one.
The first festival was quite small, it was just an afternoon in Trout Lake Park. It was self-fundraised, and with a group of artists I had a relationship with. It was a small afternoon of sharing public performance in public space, and grew from there. It didn’t reach the same level of social and environmental justice that we are now. And now we’re reaching into many different communities, instead of a small community where I knew everybody. It’s grown in that I don’t know everyone there, which is nice.
What has the journey been like since that first festival? How did you get where you are today?
After that afternoon we had a base — some pictures and video — which was helpful to put across our idea. From there we got one grant from the City, so we expanded to four days. We partnered with the Vancouver Park Board artists in residence, artists that work out of a park and connect with that community.
The Resilient Roots program commissions Indigenous emerging artists to create new works, and is the centrepiece of the festival.
The next year we started the Resilient Roots program, which commissions Indigenous emerging artists to create new works for the festival. That became the centrepiece of the festival. Some of these commissioned projects will have a life after the festival, so a big intention past presenting the art is supporting artists to create connections with each other and start new works that they can take past the festival.
\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/vines-heather-1024x683.jpg\")
Tell me more about Resilient Roots.
This is the second year. Last year it was about bringing artists and activists together. There were some Indigenous folks and some non-Indigenous folks, and they worked together. But this year we decided to focus just on working with Indigenous artists. So myself and Senaqwila Wyss are co-coordinators, and then we have a group mentor, Sara Cadeau, who’s also running an Unsettling Ceremony on the 19th.
We found six young artists that have a practice already, but could use more support: Alex McCallum, Jaye Simpson, Jaz Whitford, Mitchelos Touchie, Valeen Jules, and Crystal Smith. They all have mentors that are supporting their projects, and they’ll be presenting these new commissions on August 17 and 18 at Trout Lake. A lot of them work on front lines, and they’re creating all the time as it is, so it’s really about giving them more resources so they’re more supported in the work they’re doing.
\n\n\n\nThe idea is to create a ceremonial space, and to then question how we as settlers can unsettle ourselves.
What’s an Unsettling Ceremony?
This is the first one, so I’m not 100% sure yet, but we will find out! Last year we had a conversation about art’s role in decolonization. It’s similar to that, but we’re changing the format. The idea is to create a ceremonial space, led by Sara, and to then question how we as settlers can unsettle ourselves, [find] different ways to be allies. There will be really practical steps and tools shared, and we will have witnesses from the Coast Salish nations. A witness is someone who hears what happens and then takes that back to their community. And we’re hoping everybody who is part of the circle takes that knowledge back. [Squamish artist and ethnobotanist] Cease Wyss will be one of the featured speakers.
![\"\"](\"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/VinesAll-Bodies-Dance-Vines-2017Sheng-Ho.jpg\")
Describe some experiences people can have at the festival this year.
One event that’s new to the festival is we’re doing a three-day stay at CRAB Park. On Monday the 13th, there’s going to be a free dance class, and then a circle discussion. On the 14th and 16th, we’re doing Songs on the Ocean. An̓usáyum̓, which means “two berries” in Squamish, will be singing in their language. They have such beautiful voices. It’s very heartwarming, it makes me cry.
And then we’ll have Eddy van Wyck leading a program called Stem Mother Tongue around the theme of relating mental health to environmental justice. How the land can be healing, but at the same time the work can be really draining, and can cause anxiety and depression. We’re talking about how you can use your voice for healing, and there will be a concert around that.
\n\n\n\nThe land can be healing, but at the same time the work can be really draining, and can cause anxiety and depression.
Then, to finish it all off, Kimmortal, Missy D, and Immigrant Lessons are coming together. Kimmortal and Missy D are two female MCs, and Immigrant Lessons is an all-people-of-colour hiphop [dance and art] group. They’re going to create this scene in CRAB Park, and sing from all these different places. It sounds like it’s going to be really, really exciting.
\n\n\n\nThe other day that’s not to miss is Saturday [August 18] at Trout Lake, which just has a lot of everything. Good for kids, good for any age, really. We’ll have ASL interpretation for that day as well. It features Resilient Roots, but also has many different artists: a taiko group; part of our youth program is presenting that day; other dancers; Old Soul Rebel singing. There’s lots of interactive stuff for kids to do. You can entertain your children and be entertained yourself, all at once in one spot.
\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/vines-kid.jpeg\")
What’s the youth program?
We started it this year. We brought in some amazing Vines artists to teach workshops to nine youth, and then they’re all creating their own projects in pairs or trios. We’re coaching them through finding what issue they want to speak to, and then helping them find a way to do that. One of them is called Accessibird, by Tom. So Tom is pointing out things that are un-accessible — that most people who are able-bodied wouldn’t notice — via these bird signs. So you have to find them. I’m excited.
Why is the festival free?
My intention was to bring thoughtful art that carries messages and stories to a public that wouldn’t go to a theatre. Bringing that work outside. In order to get that audience, it’s important that it’s free and accessible. I believe that it’s crucial we share the messages these artists are giving. Of course there are always barriers to getting anywhere, but to take away as many of those as possible, that’s what I’m passionate about.
How do we change the overpowering narrative of so-called-Canada’s art scene, and move around resources to support other folks?
What life experiences made you passionate about these ideas?
Vines’ growth and my growth as a human have been on track with one another. I went to school for dance; I value the strength of the body and the importance of putting certain bodies in certain places.
I just finished an expressive arts therapy/movement therapy program with Anna Halprin, who’s one of my big mentors. She’s 98. That’s really informed a lot of what I do: the importance of giving space for people to explore what’s going on inside them in relationship to their environment, and then bring that forward for other people to witness. In the United States, she was the leader of community-based dance. She’s worked with people with AIDS, and all sorts of awesome projects. That thought-process and practice is inspirational to me, and I value finding people in all these different communities and bringing them together.
\n\n\n\nThere’s a lot of status around who gets grants and who gets a platform, just because they’re privileged and they’re in the right place. So I’m interested in seeing how can we shift that, and give other folks support to navigate that system, if they want to. That’s something I’m passionate about: how do we change the overpowering narrative of so-called-Canada’s art scene, and move around resources to support other folks?
\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/vines-new-to-town.jpeg\")
Why doesn’t the festival stay in one place? Moving around must be hard.
If we go different places, we reach different communities. A lot of the festival’s intention — though of course we want audience to come to it — is to plop down somewhere people are already, and share with them. Those found audiences are really exciting.
Although it seems hard to move from place to place — it is hard to set up all the permitting, all that stuff takes time — it’s not that difficult because we don’t have much. There’s no stage, it’s just bringing the sound equipment. And you have to take it out anyway because it’s a public space and you’re not going to leave expensive speakers. So it’s not as difficult as for an event where they bring a lot of stuff. But that’s a good question, I think about it.
\n\n\n\nThis festival couldn’t hold its values and grow into this huge thing that thousands and thousands and thousands of people come to.
What do you imagine for the future of the festival?
I would love to have a few folks [working with me] year-round, so it’s not so much of my voice. I’ve said from the beginning, this festival couldn’t hold its values and grow into this huge thing that thousands and thousands and thousands of people come to. That’s not the intention. The intention is to build deep relationships with the people that do show up and make everyone feel like they’re part of the family. I don’t want it to get any bigger.
I think building relationships around commissioning works, and supporting those artists past the festival, that’s something I’m interested in. Going to different places in BC and bringing highlights from Vines, and connecting with other communities. That would be a whole other set of challenges, but that’s something I’m interested in.
\n\n\n\nAnd developing these youth programs, maybe even an elders program. There’s a lot of support for youth coming up, through the government. And sometimes I feel like, “What about everybody else?” They need help too.
\n","protected":false},"featured_media":1744,"template":"","meta":[],"categories":[13,45,50,7,51,9],"tags":[459,463,444,442,383,88,329],"class_list":["post-1746","articles","type-articles","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-art-design","category-cities","category-indigenous","category-society","category-vancouver-area","category-west-coast","tag-art-for-social-change","tag-dance","tag-eco-art","tag-festival","tag-jessie-johnston","tag-music","tag-theatre"],"yoast_head":"\nTsimshian and Haisla artist Crystal Smith (pictured, left, with Kat Zucomulwut Norris) created Saving Mother for the 2017 Vines Art Festival. On August 17 and 18 she’ll present a new commission as part of this year’s Resilient Roots program.
\n"},"alt_text":"Crystal Smith and Kat Zucomulwut Norris stand in a park talking to each other, as Kat gestures with her left hand.","media_type":"image","mime_type":"image/jpeg","media_details":{"width":700,"height":467,"file":"2022/12/Vines5.jpg","filesize":"114687","sizes":{"medium":{"file":"Vines5-300x200.jpg","width":300,"height":200,"filesize":"22044","mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Vines5-300x200.jpg"},"thumbnail":{"file":"Vines5-150x150.jpg","width":150,"height":150,"filesize":"9068","mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Vines5-150x150.jpg"},"full":{"file":"Vines5.jpg","width":700,"height":467,"mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Vines5.jpg"}},"image_meta":{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"@ SHENG HO","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}},"source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Vines5.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/media/1744","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/media"}],"about":[{"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/types/attachment"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/users/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/comments?post=1744"}]}}],"wp:term":[[{"id":13,"link":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/category/society/art-design/","name":"Art & Design","slug":"art-design","taxonomy":"category","yoast_head":"\nTodd Barsanti isn’t your stereotypical eco-warrior — he teaches graphic design at an Ontario community college. But he is also one of nearly 14,000 individuals trained to give Al Gore’s climate change presentation (the one featured in the Oscar-winning 2007 documentary, An Inconvenient Truth). A latecomer to the environmental movement, Barsanti constantly seeks links between his distant-seeming passions for design and sustainability. The most striking example of this connection-making is a series of posters he created in 2016, using attention-grabbing materials — charcoal, Christmas lights, raw meat — to convey environmental messages. He recently spoke with Asparagus about his eco-awakening, where design meets sustainability, and a late-in-life lesson about the tide. (This interview has been edited for length and clarity.)
\n\n\n\nOn his late-blooming environmentalism
Todd Barsanti: I didn’t start out as an environmentalist. A lot of people in the movement have this awakening moment in their childhood, or as they were growing up, and that never really happened for me.
I was a professional graphic designer for about 16 years. And while I was doing that I started teaching design part-time. I knew that if I wanted to transition into full-time academia, I needed to get a master’s degree. My initial thought was that a master’s in design was the obvious direction. But a mentor of mine at Sheridan College suggested I look into environmental studies. And I thought that was odd. But he said there were a couple faculty in the arts at Sheridan [with environmental studies degrees]. He really liked the way they thought, and their problem-solving abilities. He thought I’d be a good fit. And it was, it was just a great fit. The Faculty of Environmental Studies at York University, they welcomed me.
\n\n\n\nOnce I started doing my master’s, I learned about sustainability. A lot of people just associate sustainability with “green.” But I learned that for a solution to be sustainable, you have to look at it from social, economic, and environmental perspectives. As a designer, we always look at the big picture when we’re trying to solve problems. So this concept of sustainability had a lot of ties for me with what I already knew. That’s when I realized there was a place for me in all of this.
\n\n\n\nA mentor of mine suggested I look into environmental studies. And I thought that was odd.
On giving Al Gore’s climate change presentation
In 2013, I was invited to a training session in Chicago with the Climate Reality Project, which is Al Gore’s not-for-profit organization. I was trained on giving his presentation, and now I volunteer my time and give talks on climate change. I always try to get in with teens, high-school age, and college age.
The presentation itself is very much based on the documentary, An Inconvenient Truth. But it’s constantly changing. The science of why the earth is warming and how that’s happened hasn’t changed, but how it’s affecting us is a moving target.
\n\n\n\nWhat’s really beautiful about it is — because we all have diverse backgrounds — they encourage everybody to customize the presentation to our own needs. So I focus on things that I know, that I can get people energized about. And I’ve been able to write the presentation into curriculum. So I give my presentation to 500 [design students] every year. I get to help them understand how their role as a visual communicator can help the cause.
\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/barsanti-posters-1024x561.jpg\")
On the origin of his This is Not Sustainable poster series
When I was doing my master’s, I struggled to figure out, “How do I, as a graphic designer, fit into this thing?” I came to realize it’s about the design process and problem-solving. Six years ago I was hired as full-time faculty in the Art Fundamentals program at Sheridan College. I started experimenting with this idea of getting students to work with non-traditional materials. Looking at the communications that they’re trying to put out there, and see if they can use materials that help to get the messages across.
The first project I did with them was one where you communicate the meaning of a word typographically. So, it couldn’t be a noun, it couldn’t be something as easy as putting the letters D-O-G in the shape of a dog. I said, “It has to be a verb or a descriptive.” One student would do “spill” and actually spill milk on the table and put it in the shape of the word “spill.” Or “broken,” and break some glass and arrange it on the ground.
\n\n\n\nI thought, “Here’s an opportunity to bring the two worlds together of design and environmentalism.”
Even though I’d been designing for so many years, I didn’t have a lot of experience doing this. An opportunity came up to go on a one-week residency in Maine. I decided I wanted to create something using non-traditional materials so I could use it as an example in class. And then I thought, “Here’s an opportunity to start putting out some messaging that can bring the two worlds together, of design and environmentalism.”
\n\n\n\nThen it was a matter of seeing if there was a way the materials might be able to engage the audience a little bit better. If they’re just black words on a white background, everyone will read it and then move on.
\n\n\n\nSo I went away for the week. It was on an island off the coast of Maine on a farm, and we were completely secluded. There wasn’t even any internet access. So I brought my rubber boots, and lots of clothes I could get dirty in, and mucked around in the mud for a bunch of days.
\n\n\n\nOn the design process for the posters, from choosing subjects through creation
I think it’s actually a work in progress, there’s more in the series that I could create. From a problem-solving perspective, [the topics] had a lot to do with the materials I had access to and how that might shape the messaging. But also, [I chose] messaging that I felt was most important to get out there.
Coal-fired power plants are something we continue to struggle with because it’s such a cheap way of creating electricity, but it’s so dirty. In Ontario, the government closed the last coal-fired power plant in 2014. In 2012, Toronto had 16 smog-alert days. And since closing that plant, we’ve had almost none. It’s mind-boggling what an impact it made. And yet you hear about coal-fired power plants around the world where they’re trying to ramp up production, like in the United States.
\n\n\n\nWith the lightbulbs, I thought, “I’m not an electrician, but what can I do?” The first idea was regular household lightbulbs, but I didn’t have the wherewithal to wire that properly. So I ended up using Christmas lights.
\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Barsanti.jpeg\")
The meat-production one was probably the easiest to put together, and probably the one that gets the most attention. But it was really the third idea. My next idea was the oil one. I had ideas about how to do oil on the beach. But in the middle of the week it rained for a couple of days, so I couldn’t get out and do that properly. I ended up going to the supermarket, just walking around and seeing what they had. The letters are cut out of beef roast and sitting on a bed of corn feed — the most popular feed they use in industrial farming practices. [The beef was subsequently cooked into a stew.]
\n\n\n\nThe last one took a few days to figure out. I didn’t want to literally put oil on the beach, that would defeat what I was trying to do. And when I got to Maine, I realized there weren’t any beaches. It was on the ocean, but it was all rock. My original concept was to do it in the sand, and I did all kinds of research into what oil spills look like on sand. And I got there, and there was no sand.
\n\n\n\nAs an Ontarian who grew up on freshwater lakes, I didn’t know anything about tides. It just blew me away how much the water came in and went out every day. I was sitting on the deck with one of my colleagues, and I said, “So, the water, how often does it go out and come in?” And he looked at me like “Is that a serious question, or are you being silly?”
\n\n\n\nI didn’t want to literally put oil on the beach, that would defeat what I was trying to do.
When the tide was out, I would go out and explore, and I figured out there were rocks that would be completely submerged when the tide came in. So [I could take pictures of] the water rising, but it would also clean the surface after I stained it. I came up with a concoction of water-based India ink, flour, and water, to make it look like oil. And tried a whole bunch of different techniques: pouring it, splashing it, or doing stencils. I found the easiest was just to paint it right onto the rocks. And then I sat there for three hours and waited for the tide to come in, and took hundreds of pictures as the tide slowly came in and engulfed that rock.
\n\n\n\nThe funny thing was that I completely cut off my way back once the tide was in, so I had to take all my materials, climb up a ridge, and hike about a kilometre to get back to the farm.
\n\n\n\nWhat he learned from the project (beyond how tides work)
What I learned, and what my students learn when they’re working with non-traditional materials, is that you can’t predict the outcomes. You might have a vision in your head, but until you start getting your hands dirty and working with things, there’s no way of predicting the way the materials are going to react. For a foundations level design course, I find it’s key because it gets the students comfortable with that unpredictability. And to tie it back to sustainability, I think that really helps them, moving forward, when it comes to tackling really difficult problems.
On how graphic designers can help build a more sustainable society
What we do well is communicate through visuals. So I think the obvious answer is through the messaging we choose to put out there, and the types of jobs that we choose to take on. But what I’m trying to instill in my students is that — beyond the messaging, beyond the final product — the process they take to get there is equally important. I don’t have any ego to believe that graphic designers are the only people that are going to solve all the world’s problems. But I do think designers have a way of approaching problem-solving activities that would help a lot of people.
Beyond the art we’re creating, the skills we have as artists are things we can use to help other people.
If you’ve got someone who is trained in communications but also has the imagination to look beyond the immediate needs of any problem, I think that’s where we start to get into solutions that have potential to grow. A lot of what I talked about when I did my master’s was this idea that, “No, designers aren’t going to save the world, but we can be sitting at the table. We can be part of that discussion.”
\n\n\n\nWhen I go into the classroom with 17-, 18-, 19-year-olds, that empowers them. That makes them see that there’s a place for them. Helping them to understand their role as an artistic person who has imagination and can tap into that imagination. Beyond the art we’re creating, the skills we have as artists are things we can use to help other people.
\n","protected":false},"featured_media":1722,"template":"","meta":[],"categories":[13,11,6,7],"tags":[459,71,118,383],"class_list":["post-1779","articles","type-articles","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-art-design","category-climate-change","category-planet","category-society","tag-art-for-social-change","tag-climate-crisis","tag-design","tag-jessie-johnston"],"yoast_head":"\nPieces of beef spell out “This is Not Sustainable” against a backdrop of animal feed made of corn, in graphic designer Todd Barsanti’s set-up for one of three environment-themed posters.
\n"},"alt_text":"Key text: \"This Is Not Sustainable\" spelled out in pieces of beef on a background of animal feed.","media_type":"image","mime_type":"image/jpeg","media_details":{"width":1561,"height":1047,"file":"2022/12/Barsanti-header.jpg","filesize":"304348","sizes":{"medium":{"file":"Barsanti-header-300x201.jpg","width":300,"height":201,"filesize":"25655","mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Barsanti-header-300x201.jpg"},"large":{"file":"Barsanti-header-1024x687.jpg","width":1024,"height":687,"filesize":"222348","mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Barsanti-header-1024x687.jpg"},"thumbnail":{"file":"Barsanti-header-150x150.jpg","width":150,"height":150,"filesize":"9946","mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Barsanti-header-150x150.jpg"},"medium_large":{"file":"Barsanti-header-768x515.jpg","width":768,"height":515,"filesize":"140888","mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Barsanti-header-768x515.jpg"},"1536x1536":{"file":"Barsanti-header-1536x1030.jpg","width":1536,"height":1030,"filesize":"411806","mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Barsanti-header-1536x1030.jpg"},"full":{"file":"Barsanti-header.jpg","width":1561,"height":1047,"mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Barsanti-header.jpg"}},"image_meta":{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}},"source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Barsanti-header.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/media/1722","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/media"}],"about":[{"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/types/attachment"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/users/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/comments?post=1722"}]}}],"wp:term":[[{"id":13,"link":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/category/society/art-design/","name":"Art & Design","slug":"art-design","taxonomy":"category","yoast_head":"\nOcean Hyland — an artist and activist from the Tsleil-Waututh Nation — gained international attention last month when Teen Vogue published her op-ed about participating in Protect the Inlet, the Indigenous-led movement against the proposed Trans Mountain pipeline expansion. On Earth Day (April 22), Hyland begins a weeklong artist residency at the Noons Creek salmon hatchery in Port Moody, as part of the Welcome Post Project.
\n\n\n\nDeveloped by Coast Salish artist Tasha Faye Evans, the project began on National Indigenous Peoples Day in 2017, offering a wealth of Indigenous cultural experiences in the Vancouver suburb. It will culminate after a year with the raising and blessing of a house post designed by Squamish carver James Harry, on June 21. Between now and then, community members can connect with Hyland while she works, participate in weaving workshops and ceremonies with other artists and leaders, and learn about the area’s Indigenous heritage.
\n\n\n\nThe house post will be placed at the front of the hatchery’s gazebo, where Hyland’s artwork will be displayed during all 2018 Welcome Post events. I chatted with Hyland, 22, while she and Evans were priming the wooden panels she will paint during her residency. Our conversation ranged from her deepening knowledge of her history and culture, through to the future that anti-pipeline activists hope to protect with the watch house they have built on Burnaby Mountain. Hyland began by describing the design she is contributing to the Welcome Post Project. (This interview has been edited for length and clarity.)
\n\n\n\nOcean Hyland: On each side is the salmon cycle: the egg and the alevin and the fry and the fully grown salmon. And then two human figures. They both have a fish inside. I’ve been told the name for this shared territory, Kwikwetlem, translates to “the red salmon people that go up the river.” That refers to the sockeye salmon. So we really wanted to incorporate the salmon into the design.
\n\n\n\nThe male and female aspects of life will be represented [in the human figures]. And they have their hands raised in welcome and in gratitude. The male and female aspects of life coming together in harmony, the harmony of the salmon cycle too; it’s all about harmony and relationships and growth. The growth of the salmon, and the growth of this project, and how it’s grown connections in the community.
\n\n\n\nThe idea of “shared territory” is about the natural resources of the area, and the relationship the people had with that. How they would all respect each other, and harvest in an ethical way. They would share it in a way that they knew who’s allowed to come and take what, and how much they could take. They knew they had to take care of the land.
\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Hyland-body-1.jpeg\")
Jessie Johnston: Can you talk about how you got involved with the Welcome Post project?
I had been studying as an artist at Native Education College, focusing on painting and drawing in Coast Salish style, and hand-engraving on copper and silver. I had made a drum in that program out of elk hide, and I’d painted a design on it. At my younger cousin’s birthday party, I gifted her the drum. It’s customary: the first [example] you make of something, you give away as a gift to someone that has taught you something. A gift back to them for the knowledge that you gained, to thank them.
And so I gifted it to my cousin Kayah, and Tasha was at Kayah’s birthday party. We were making smoothies and talking about the work both of us have been doing. How I’m interested in my language and my culture and my art. And she was talking about this project. So we had come together through family and community, and from there, she was like “I’d like you to come be a part of this project as a youth that is interested in their language and their art and their culture.” So that’s how I came to meet Tasha, through family. Smoothies and family.
\n\n\n\nBefore we began, you and Tasha were checking in on what’s going on up Burnaby Mountain today. What has the experience of being involved with Protect the Inlet activism been like for you?
We’ve been talking about that as we were priming the first panels. We come at it from a very passionate place, because we love the land and we understand what it means to take care of the land. We’re learning what that means. That’s what makes us stand in those positions, to stand in that opposition.
Learning the technical jargon of the “economy world” has been a big learning curve for myself. I’ve been learning a lot about how my passionate point of view can play into those economists’ views, and how that can go alongside these big corporations. What’s really strengthening is finding these people who are doing the same work, and finding ways to work together where we all contribute our gifts to make Indigenous people’s stories be heard.
\n\n\n\nI have to drive 40 minutes to get here. But if I jumped in a canoe, it would take 15 minutes.
What’s the connection between your artwork and your activism?
I find that a lot of the time, my activism comes out in my artwork. I’m trying to tell my story as an Indigenous youth, my connection to the land, and why that’s important to me. And why I want that to be accessible for future generations, that connection to the land.
Of course, everyone interprets art in different ways, but that’s my hope and my goal. For it to create dialogue and thoughtful conversation around Indigenous stories, and connections to the land and what that can mean for communities. How people can start to understand and have their eyes open to what it means for an Indigenous youth to live on this land, and have that connection. How it can be threatened from these corporations, but how we can move forward and fight these big corporations and protest.
\n\n\n\nYou’ve spoken a lot about your connection to the land writ large. Did you have a connection to this particular piece of land before the invitation from Tasha?
It is growing. I was laughing so hard about that when I was first coming out here, because I have to drive like 40 minutes to get here. But when I sit in my home [on the other side of Burrard Inlet], if I jumped in a canoe, it would take like 15–20 minutes. So I understand, back in the day, how close my ancestors would have been to their family over here, because they just had such easy access.
I’ve been learning so much. We had a nature walk with [Indigenous ethnobotanist] Cease Wyss, and that was really amazing. I got to see the shell midden of my ancestors, where they would harvest their clams, and eat their clams, and live their life around here.
\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Hyland-Body-2.jpeg\")
Your residency is starting on Earth Day. Does Earth Day have significance to you?
I find that funny because it’s only one day. I think it is a good day for people to come together and share stories about how they do celebrate Earth Day every day. I’ll be out here in the open on a public trail, so I’ll have those conversations. That’s the most important part, I’d say, talking to people. Earth Day should be every day.
One explicit goal of the work Tasha has been doing is around reconciliation. When you think of reconciliation, what do you envision?
When I think of true reconciliation, I think more so of Indigenous communities and their relationships to each other. Indigenous communities reconciling, and acknowledging: this is where our ancestors all came together. And when I see the work that Indigenous communities do to strengthen their relationships, acknowledging their shared territory, and doing work in ceremony together. But, other than that, I don’t know where I’ve seen true reconciliation, really.
What would it look like if you actually were seeing it? What is it that you haven’t seen?
I’d say, corporations and government acknowledging the damage that they’ve done truthfully, and actually taking action. After that step of acknowledging it, actually taking action to reconcile. Rather than not listening to Indigenous voices.
And making the changes that need to be changed. You see these Indigenous-led uprisings that have been happening — against the pipeline, the actions against missing and murdered Indigenous women — all being led by Indigenous people, asking for reconciliation and for action to be taken. And there’s not much coming back.
\n\n\n\nI find that funny because it’s only one day… Earth Day should be every day.
What’s next for you?
This summer I’m mainly focusing on my work here with the hatchery: my artist residency and the community engagement program. But also my work around the Watch House project [on Burnaby Mountain], going up and participating in ceremony and prayer. Because rather than calling it protest and fighting and rallying, I’d say it’s prayer and gatherings and ceremony. We sing songs, we walk for the Earth, and the land, and the animals, and the water, and the air. And do it in a peaceful way.
And then, just yesterday I had my exam for the Squamish language immersion program [at Simon Fraser University]. So I’ve been studying the Squamish language, and volunteering my time as part of a team that has been doing language lesson-building. I’ve just started canoe-pulling, as well, as if I wasn’t busy enough.
\n\n\n\nIn the fall I hope to go back to school at SFU for the second year of the language program. The language has been really close to my heart this past year, because I’ve been so immersed in it. I’ve really carried it into the other work that I’ve been doing, like my activism.
\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Hyland-body-3.jpeg\")
Whenever I go up to the mountain or do interviews up there, I always try to say a little bit of language, and introduce myself in that language. And then when I’m doing my artwork, titling my work in the language. When I paint and I draw, I talk to myself in the language to practice. So it’s really been drenched into my life, because I’ve been immersed in the Squamish language for 8 months straight.
\n\n\n\nThose are my three main focuses this summer: art, activism, language. And canoe-pulling.
\n\n\n\nI’ve also joined a youth committee within my nation. We’re joining together so we can talk about the work the people in our elected positions are doing, and what that means for youth. How to become educated to fill those positions when they get to that age. And what ways we can educate youth coming up, and get to a place where we can start having our voice heard on a voting level in our community. Getting youth together to share our gifts.
\n\n\n\nAnd acknowledging that the work our parents are doing, and our grandparents have done, was for us. So we’re talking about the work they’ve done, and — when it’s our time to start making those decisions and those plans — what we want to see for future generations. Acknowledging that, seven generations behind, they did stuff for us. So those seven generations to come, we want to be able to do good work so that benefits them.
\n","protected":false},"featured_media":1733,"template":"","meta":[],"categories":[13,50,7],"tags":[57,383,464,68],"class_list":["post-1780","articles","type-articles","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-art-design","category-indigenous","category-society","tag-activism","tag-jessie-johnston","tag-tsleil-waututh","tag-visual-art"],"yoast_head":"\nOcean Hyland primes the panels she will paint as part of her Earth Week artist residency, at Noons Creek hatchery in Port Moody.
\n"},"alt_text":"Ocean Hyland rolls primer onto large sheets of plywood under a wooden gazebo in a forest.","media_type":"image","mime_type":"image/jpeg","media_details":{"width":1500,"height":844,"file":"2022/12/Hyland-header-1.jpg","filesize":"304197","sizes":{"medium":{"file":"Hyland-header-1-300x169.jpg","width":300,"height":169,"filesize":"17238","mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Hyland-header-1-300x169.jpg"},"large":{"file":"Hyland-header-1-1024x576.jpg","width":1024,"height":576,"filesize":"168480","mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Hyland-header-1-1024x576.jpg"},"thumbnail":{"file":"Hyland-header-1-150x150.jpg","width":150,"height":150,"filesize":"8146","mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Hyland-header-1-150x150.jpg"},"medium_large":{"file":"Hyland-header-1-768x432.jpg","width":768,"height":432,"filesize":"99417","mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Hyland-header-1-768x432.jpg"},"full":{"file":"Hyland-header-1.jpg","width":1500,"height":844,"mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Hyland-header-1.jpg"}},"image_meta":{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}},"source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Hyland-header-1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/media/1733","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/media"}],"about":[{"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/types/attachment"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/users/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/comments?post=1733"}]}}],"wp:term":[[{"id":13,"link":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/category/society/art-design/","name":"Art & Design","slug":"art-design","taxonomy":"category","yoast_head":"\nIn 2010, the United Nations issued a report advocating worldwide veganism as a solution to climate change. A succinct way of putting it might go something like: “Everyone should go vegan because consuming animals is KILLING OUR PLANET.” Instead, they put out this wordy statement:
\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nImpacts from agriculture are expected to increase substantially due to population growth increasing consumption of animal products. Unlike fossil fuels, it is difficult to look for alternatives: people have to eat. A substantial reduction of impacts would only be possible with a substantial worldwide diet change, away from animal products.
\n
When I first read this in the news, I was like, “DUH! I’ve known this forever.” I’d learned the environmental impacts of meat-eating from a mixtape my best friend made me in 1995, of songs she recorded off the University of Calgary radio station. My vegetarian awakening came in the form of a punk rock rap song by a band called MDC, alias “Millions of Dead Cops.”
\n\n\n\nOn weekends in the mid-90s, I’d take the C-train downtown to the Carpenters Union Hall and listen to local punk, indie, and screamo bands taking on “the man” in song. It’s where I saw a band who played a video of a cow being slaughtered, which got me thinking more seriously about vegetarianism.
\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/How-a-Punk-Rap-Turned-me-Veg_WebBody.jpg\")
I was already an animal rights activist. I bought all my clear mascara, fuzzy peach perfume, and silver eyeliner from The Body Shop. I was so obsessed with recycling that my classmates nicknamed me “The Environmentalist from Hell.” My best friend and boyfriend were dabbling with veganism, so it felt like time for me to get on board the vegetarian train.
\n\n\n\nThen I heard MDC’s “Real Food, Real People, Real Bullets,” and the truth about meat got real for me. Finally the arguments were delivered in a way my teenage mind could consume: in catchy rhymes with a heavy bassline.
\n\n\n\nWhile walking the halls of my suburban high school, walkman clipped on my thrifted camouflage cargo pants, I heard:
\n\n\n\nYou’re ruining the world with your addiction
To dead animals,
I will bust non-fiction:
For example, 25 gallons of H20
Makes a pound of wheat. But did you know,
It takes a hundred times that much to make a pound of beef?
So from our water shortage, we get no relief.
When over half of our water goes to produce meat…
A light bulb appeared above my head — DING! Meat production is hella wasteful. If I cared about the environment enough to hoard paper in my desk for a week because my classroom didn’t have a recycling bin, then I should step up and live a lifestyle aligned with my ethics.
\n\n\n\nThe simple language of MDC’s rap perfectly summarizes the water conservation argument for eating veg. I’ve read countless articles since then explaining ecosystems and meat production, and when I do, MDC’s line “over half of our water goes to produce meat,” always rings in my head. The stats might have shifted over time, but the message is the same: factory farming meat is a waste of one of our most precious resources. Want to skool yourself with science? This New Republic article is a good place to start.
\n\n\n\nIf I cared about the environment enough to hoard paper in my desk because my classroom didn’t have a recycling bin, I should step up and live a lifestyle aligned with my ethics.
Back in my teenage bedroom — which I wanted to paint black but couldn’t because my parents cared about the house’s resale value — I put the mixtape on and heard:
\n\n\n\nAnd cattle eat up all the grain that we could eat.
But we don’t, cuz we won’t understand the demand
To make better use of our food and our land.
90% of our corn and oats feed livestock…
My Manic-Panic-orange hair nearly stood on end from shock — 90%?!!!! Aren’t people starving on this planet? If human beings could get over their selfishness and learn how to share, everyone could eat. I know what you’re thinking and yes, I was and am a socialist.
\n\n\n\nPolitics aside, I understand that people still want to eat meat. Being a vegan is hard. I know, I could only do it for a year. And that was a year in the 90s, in redneck-ish, rodeo-lovin’, beef-eatin’ Calgary. (That’s as hard as five years in this vegan-friendly decade.) Since then, I’ve cut back on my dairy consumption and you can too. Another step in the right direction is to give up eating cow flesh. According to Smithsonian Magazine, “Beef requires 28 times more land, six times more fertilizer and 11 times more water compared to those other food sources. That adds up to about five times more greenhouse gas emissions.”
\n\n\n\nWhen I was listening to that mixtape, I was a teenager. I was personally young and healthy. But my aunt was diagnosed with breast cancer around that time, and my grandfather had a heart attack before I was born. Cases of cancer and heart disease were rising in North America. To a teenager concerned about her future health, MDC — whose aliases also included Millions of Dead Children and Mega Death Corporation — threw down some ill communication about meat consumption:
\n\n\n\nCancer’s not the only choice if you please,
You can have liver, kidney, and heart disease.
Ulcers, constipation, salmonellosis,
Hypoglycemia, multiple sclerosis.
Yes, these diseases are funky and fresh,
And all can be yours when you eat dead flesh.
Rollin’, rollin’, rollin’,
Tumours in your colon.
Blood pressure is growin’, RAW HIDE!
And just think of all the homies who’ve died.
WORD! All these diseases can be painful AF, but you can reduce your risk of them by eating more plant proteins. A study by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control’s National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey concluded that:
\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nPeople under 65 who eat a lot of meat, eggs and dairy are four times as likely to die from cancer or diabetes… The overall harmful effects seen in the study were almost completely wiped out when the protein came from plant sources, such as beans and legumes.
\n
One of the easiest arguments for teenage me to get behind was around animal rights. Of course, MDC, covered that angle too.
\n\n\n\nAnd I didn’t even mention yet about the pain
That the animals live in,
Before they are given
The bullet or the mallet
To satisfy your palate.
They didn’t have to get into the nitty gritty details of animal cruelty. The facts have been known for a while. Part of the problem of factory farming is that our connection to the slaughter of animals for meat is so far removed. It’s gory, and people don’t like talking about debeaking chickens so they won’t peck each other to death in their tiny cages, but it’s all I can think of when I see someone by cramming chicken nuggets into their mouth.
\n\n\n\nThere’s one argument I think MDC left out of their rap: the horrible conditions for human beings working in slaughterhouses. If you’ll indulge me, here’s my attempt to update “Real Food, Real People…”:
\n\n\n\nInside the slaughterhouses where they prep your meat
It ain’t no treat.
Workers stand on their feet
For 12 hours a day, making minimum pay,
Breathing harmful gases, risking their asses,
Slicing the meat, for you to eat.
Migrant workers in dangerous conditions,
And F-no they can’t afford to go and see physicians.
After listening to this song ad nauseam, I jumped on the vegetarian chuckwagon and have never looked back. MDC’s message was simple, clear, political and comedic, with a catchy tune that has been stuck in my head forever.
\n\n\n\nIt’s been more than 30 years since “Real Food, Real People, Real Bullets” was released. The message got to me 20 years ago. What took the UN so long to catch up?
\n","protected":false},"featured_media":849,"template":"","meta":[],"categories":[13,27,14,8,10,7,22],"tags":[91,90,88,60,251,89],"class_list":["post-476","articles","type-articles","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-art-design","category-environmentalist-from-hell","category-food","category-living","category-magazine","category-society","category-voices","tag-humour","tag-memoir","tag-music","tag-opinion","tag-sara-bynoe","tag-vegetarian"],"yoast_head":"\nThe punk band MDC, two decades after converting the author to vegetarianism via mixtape.
\n"},"alt_text":"A 4-member punk band wearing dark clothes perform on a stage lit by three orange spotlights. A big speaker hangs from above.","media_type":"image","mime_type":"image/jpeg","media_details":{"width":1500,"height":1000,"file":"2022/09/How-a-Punk-Rap-Turned-me-Veg_WebHeader.jpg","filesize":"273132","sizes":{"medium":{"file":"How-a-Punk-Rap-Turned-me-Veg_WebHeader-300x200.jpg","width":300,"height":200,"filesize":"13789","mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/How-a-Punk-Rap-Turned-me-Veg_WebHeader-300x200.jpg"},"large":{"file":"How-a-Punk-Rap-Turned-me-Veg_WebHeader-1024x683.jpg","width":1024,"height":683,"filesize":"106217","mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/How-a-Punk-Rap-Turned-me-Veg_WebHeader-1024x683.jpg"},"thumbnail":{"file":"How-a-Punk-Rap-Turned-me-Veg_WebHeader-150x150.jpg","width":150,"height":150,"filesize":"6911","mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/How-a-Punk-Rap-Turned-me-Veg_WebHeader-150x150.jpg"},"medium_large":{"file":"How-a-Punk-Rap-Turned-me-Veg_WebHeader-768x512.jpg","width":768,"height":512,"filesize":"63810","mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/How-a-Punk-Rap-Turned-me-Veg_WebHeader-768x512.jpg"},"full":{"file":"How-a-Punk-Rap-Turned-me-Veg_WebHeader.jpg","width":1500,"height":1000,"mime_type":"image/jpeg","source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/How-a-Punk-Rap-Turned-me-Veg_WebHeader.jpg"}},"image_meta":{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}},"source_url":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/How-a-Punk-Rap-Turned-me-Veg_WebHeader.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/media/849","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/media"}],"about":[{"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/types/attachment"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/users/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-json/wp/v2/comments?post=849"}]}}],"wp:term":[[{"id":13,"link":"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/category/society/art-design/","name":"Art & Design","slug":"art-design","taxonomy":"category","yoast_head":"\nBack in the fall, as I was working toward launching Asparagus, I had a great idea for an article. It would be called something like “The World According to Kap,” and would paint a picture of the better world Colin Kaepernick was working to build using the 1 million dollars’ worth of charitable donations he made over the course of 2017. I tucked the thought away in my Awesome Story Ideas file, and went back to writing my business plan. Y’know, first things first.
\n\n\n\nA few weeks later, a more well-established publication (Asparagus being a not-yet-established publication at that point) ran essentially the exact article I’d imagined. And it was a good article. It really didn’t need a do-over. So, I moved the thought to my much larger Stories I Wish I’d Published file, and turned my attention back to getting this site off the ground. You win some, you lose some. Never really expected to lose some to Sports Illustrated, but there you go.
\n\n\n\nOne part of that idea just wasn’t ready to be filed away for good, though. In January, I was watching TV when I was struck by a desire to write a similar (if goofier) article: a guide to making the world a better place as inspired by a different pop-culture phenomenon. Not our era’s quintessential activist athlete, but a Crazy Ex-Girlfriend song. Specifically, “Without Love You Can Save the World.”
\n\n\n\nIf you’re resisting the temptation to watch that video (and really, you should just succumb), the song depicts the show’s protagonist Rebecca Bunch and her friends crooning about all the world-improving things she could have done with the time she invested obsessing over romantic love. The song is silly, but the causes she name-checks aren’t.
\n\n\n\nSo, in the spirit of International Singles Awareness Day (or whatever Catholic saint’s day the rest of y’all are celebrating today), I give you:
\n\n\n\nI could have used that time to cure leukemia.
\n\n\n\nOk, some of the things she proposes are probably best left to the professionals, and this is definitely one of them. Don’t break up with your boo to cure leukemia unless you’re an actual scientist (in which case, Boo, bye). But even if most of us aren’t going to cure leukemia, it wouldn’t hurt to read up on what the professionals are doing. In the time I recently saved not making romantic Spotify playlists, I read about two large grants awarded to UC San Diego scientists in December to fund treatments based on their pioneering stem cell research.
\n\n\n\nI could have used that time to clean the seas.
\n\n\n\nOk, this is one that we definitely all can (and must) actually take action on. Just this week, scientists have reported that micro-plastic pollution is present in even the most remote areas of the ocean. As a refresher, micro-plastics are “small plastic particulates below 5 mm in size.” They can be created through the erosion of larger plastic objects exposed to the environment (say, car tires), but are also intentionally created as synthetic fibres used to make clothing. (If your love-free lifestyle has freed up time to seriously geek out about micro-plastics, this report from the International Union for Conservation of Nature [IUCN] is pretty exhaustive.)
\n\n\n\nTo do our part to reduce the plastic going into the ocean, we can all:
\n\n\n\nAnd, while stopping the flow of plastic into the ocean is an important step, we also still have our work cut out to remove the plastic that’s already in there. The Ocean Cleanup is an innovative project aiming to use new technology to reduce the Great Pacific Garbage Patch by 50% by 2020. They plan to deploy their first cleanup system later this year, and can accept tax-deductible donations from the Netherlands and the US. Since you’re saving money on roses that just wilt anyway, why not give some of it to them?
\n\n\n\nI could have taught some teens awareness of bulimia.
\n\n\n\nAnother one probably best left to the pros. Or at least people with personal experience of eating disorders. For the rest of us, there are interesting research developments to read about in the time we’re not using to stalk that hottie from the gym on Instagram. The National Eating Disorders Association in the US announced some worthy grant recipients in December, including two tech-focused approaches: one developing a mobile app to track treatment outcomes, the other using virtual reality. Sure beats online dating.
\n\n\n\nI could have saved the pandas, whales, and bees!
\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Skip-the-romance-save-the-world_WebBody1.jpg\")
First, pandas. Good news: giant pandas are faring slightly less badly than they had been in recent decades, and are now rated only vulnerable by the IUCN, instead of endangered. They’re hardly out of the woods, though, so if you want to use the money you’re saving on chocolate to save the pandas, the World Wildlife Fund will gladly help you do that.
\n\n\n\nNext, whales. It’s possible you’ve read this far and are thinking: “Jessie, can’t I have love and save the world?” The answer is probably not, but if whales are your thing, there is one way you can attempt to do both. British Columbia’s southern resident orca population is under serious, imminent threat due to inaction on the part of the Canadian government, and its approval of Kinder Morgan’s proposed Trans Mountain Expansion pipeline to transport bitumen from Alberta’s tar sands to the BC coast.
\n\n\n\nIn the ongoing battle between the two western provinces, the BC government recently announced a plan to reduce bitumen transport until further research can be done into spill mitigation, and Alberta retaliated by announcing a ban on BC wine. So, if you’re determined to celebrate couplehood today, but also want to save the whales, you can reduce the pressure Alberta is putting on BC by toasting your love with a glass of Okanagan pinot. (This should be straightforward for Canadian readers, but Americans might need a hand. You can order BC vintages online, but if you need to pick up a bottle for tonight, you might be able to find one with the help of this list from Wine BC.)
\n\n\n\nFinally, bees. In case you needed reminding, scientists at UC San Diego released a report last month about just how important bees are to our ecosystems. If you decide to opt for bees over baes (and you should), Popular Science has some suggestions at various levels of difficulty. To go the planting-native-wildflowers route, the Xerces Society can help you figure out what to plant in your area.
\n\n\n\n…then suddenly the lakes have all gone dry, and it’s all your fault
\n\n\n\nKinda true. The reasons lakes disappear or see water levels drop dramatically vary: climate change is a big one, so are irrigation and urban water consumption. So, skip the champagne in the hot tub, use less water around the house, cut down your carbon footprint, and reduce your consumption of high-irrigation crops grown in drought-prone areas (like California almonds, pistachios, rice, and dairy).
\n\n\n\nConserve your mental energy, to research conserving energy.
\n\n\n\nActually, you can pretty much just go straight to the “conserving energy” part of that lyric. The internet is awash in lists of ways to conserve energy, and if you’re reading this article odds are good you already practice a bunch of them. However, once you have a number of energy-saving habits comfortably incorporated into your lifestyle, it’s usually possible to add more.
\n\n\n\nI recently went through a list created by UK energy supplier OVO, and found a number of new strategies I’m going to adopt around the house. Letting love into your icy heart won’t help the planet, but it turns out defrosting your freezer regularly will.
\n\n\n\nDon’t raise hell, raise money for local schools, now that you’ve got time.
\n\n\n\nTo be honest, I have mixed feelings about this one. Public schools are definitely underfunded in lots of jurisdictions, and fundraising for them is a not-unreasonable short-term solution to that problem (to that end, here are some ideas from Education World). Big picture though, our time is probably better spent on advocating for public investment in education and electing candidates running on strong school-funding platforms than racing goldfish, delightful though that sounds. (If you’re thinking a goldfish race sounds like an adorable meet-cute, you’re reading this article wrong.)
\n\n\n\nUse that leash to walk rescue dogs.
\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https://files.asparagusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Skip-the-romance-save-the-world_WebBody2.jpg\")
Rescue dogs need walking! And as long as you pick the weird-looking ones, you’re probably safe from having attractive strangers come up to talk to you while you’re doing it. Petfinder can help you find local shelters you can approach about volunteer opportunities.
\n\n\n\nLove is blind, but without love, you can actually help the blind!
\n\n\n\nThe Canadian National Institute for the Blind has a database of opportunities to for volunteering with the blind in local communities. I couldn’t find an equivalent resource on the American Foundation for the Blind site, but they do have plenty of other suggestions for taking action. If you’re one of those people who believes in love at first sight, this might be a particularly valuable way of spending your time: save the world and shatter your own naive delusions!
\n\n\n\nSo, there you go. Dozens of planet-saving things you could do with your time and money that aren’t contributing to the greeting-card industrial complex. I don’t think I could put it better than “forget who you did, think about what you can do,” so I’m not even going to try. Now, for a glass of BC wine.
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