An immersive series of performances and visual art exhibits reflecting on our environmental crisis.
Springboard's Fluid Fest and Contemporary Calgary collaborate on a special First Thursday free event featuring Barbara England & Ashley Bodiguel, Isabelle Kirouac, kloetzel&co, Eric & Mia's exhibit launch and other current Contemporary Calgary exhibits.
One night only! Open to the public and free. The entire event will have installations and projects all night long.
In a Strange Place | Mia + Eric
In a Strange Place is a meditative 9-channel video installation and social engagement project that delves into the future of our forests and those who care for them. Born out of a multi-year, international research and engagement process with communities in England, Germany, and Norway, In a Strange Place features 150 foresters, ecologists, activists, conservationists and land keepers performing abstract, slow-motion “dances” in the woods. These improvised choreographies are reflections of the participant’s care work, their connection to their local forest, and their role in an uncertain multi-species future.
Meta/fauna | Isabelle Kirouac (Vancouver)
6:00PM & 8:00PM
Meta/fauna presents two shape-shifting creatures evolving in their ephemeral habitat. It portrays ever-changing landscapes, large animals hybridizing with fossilized plants, metallic structures, bleached bones, and the ghosts of those who have disappeared. Meta/fauna invites the audience to witness cycles of evolution, transformation and extinction through movement, design, light and sound.
Inspired by the writings of feminist cyborg Donna Haraway and extinction biologist Ben Kessler, we question the dichotomies between humans and other species, nature and culture. How can we move sensitively on damaged land? How do we orient through constant transmutations? With bodies composed of a multitude of “other” organisms (fungi, viruses, microbes), how do we blur the boundaries of the self? How can we embody the hugeness of geologic time?
Credits:
- Concept/Co-director: Isabelle Kirouac
- Co-director/Choreographer: Delia Brett
- Performers: Isabelle Kirouac, Renn Lev Bankowski
- Costumes & Object Designer: Tamara Unroe
- Composer: Christopher Kelly/ Stefan Smulovitz
- Lighting Designer: Jamie Sweeney
- Special thanks to Michael Hathaway and Willoughby Arévalo.
Passion of the Crises | Barbara England & Ashley Bodiguel (Calgary)
Welcome, sinners! This is your chance to repent. Take a seat and expunge your guilt.
Passion of the Crisis is a durational performance installation that invites us to question our personal relationship with the climate crisis. Who is to blame? We are human, after all, and we all make mistakes. But what happens as we grapple with our own remorse?
Durational Performance - 5:30PM to 9:00PM
Concept and performance: Barbara England & Ashley Bodiguel
Host/performer: Mark Hopkins
Music: List of credits here.
VINES | kloetzel&co (Calgary)
Durational Performance - 6:00PM to 9:00PM
VINES is a site-adaptive performance work by Melanie Kloetzel (kloetzel&co.) with dramaturgical support by Brandy Leary (Anandam Dancetheatre). An extended performance installation that takes place in a site chosen by the presenter in dialogue with the choreographer, VINES reimagines our cityscapes via a dystopian fantasy of vegetal reclamation. As masses of leafily-clad bodies take over the urban landscape with a rigorous physical rendering of vining plants, viewers witness what it might mean for the contemporary city to be repossessed by our plant brethren.
Inspired by time-lapse depictions of plant growth, more-than-human time scales, and concepts of ‘making kin’ (explored via dialogues with Indigenous knowledge keepers supporting the work), VINES offers a beautifully unsettling portrait as well as meditative engagement for viewers. Audience members can come and go, making decisions about how to watch the development of the work.
VINES developed via a Research Creation grant from Canada Council and grew from workshops held in both Toronto and Calgary. The piece is recrafted for and performed by local performers in each place it is presented. This is to ensure that the performers are more closely connected to the local cityscapes that will be impacted, as well as to create a more sustainable work. One choreographer and one dancer familiar with the work travel to engage with local dance/performance artists in a three-day workshop during which the piece gets recreated for the local setting.
- “Utterly captivating from the first evocative moments to the last scene, Meta/fauna evokes our deep history as creatures of fantastic evolutionary pasts, and re-orients us towards our wild kinship with mysterious forms of life that include ourselves.”
– Michael Hathaway, Cultural Anthropologist & Author of What a Mushroom Lives For
“This will haunt me for a long time” – audience member