Conversation with Artist Laakkuluk Williamson Bathory

Broken Boxes Podcast is proud to present this episode as the third installation in a series of interviews featuring participants and their respondents from the socially engaged project #callresponse.  

In this episode we get into conversation with performance artist Laakkuluk Williamson-Bathory. She speaks on work as a uaajeerneq performer of Greenlandic mask dancing and her use of poetry as art form. She speaks on her upcoming performance project with #callresponse and we also hear about her experience as a founder and Executive Director of Qaggiavuut, Iqaluit’s first performing arts center. Laakkuluk gives insight on the balance of being a mother and an artist, remembering our connection to land, and ways to create creative space within our communities. 

Laakkuluk Williamson-Bathory and Tanya Tagaq performance, 2015. photo credit: Front of House Photography.

“I am an advocate for the deep human need for all people, but especially post­-colonial Indigenous people to express themselves at a level of creative excellence. I am a mother, wife, writer and performer based in Iqaluit, Nunavut" - Laakkuluk Williamson-Bathory

Here is the conversation with Laakkuluk Williamson-Bathory:

Subscribe to Broken Boxes Podcast on iTunes HERE to stream and download this episode

All music featured on this episode by artist Tanya Tagaq from the album Animism

More about the Artist:

Laakkuluk Williamson-Bathory is a uaajeerneq performer of Greenlandic mask dancing, music, drum­-dancing, storytelling and acting. Her career has allowed her to travel all across Canada and to many wondrous parts of the world. Laakkuluk’s poetry was recently commissioned for the exhibit Fifth World (2105), Wanda Nanibus Curator, Mendel Gallery, Saskatoon. Her collaboration From the Belly to the Moon(2012), a six part postcard exchange project connecting performance art in Iqaluit to New York was a Fuse Magazine artist project. In addition to her poetry, theatre and uaajeerneq, Laakkuluk is founder and Executive Director of Qaggiavuut, Iqaluit’s first performing arts center. She also curated projects that challenged outdated museum exhibition practices for Inuit culture at the Art Gallery of Ontario including: Inuit Art in Motion(2003) and litarivingaa? Do You Recognize me?(2004), which additionally brought youth together across urban and rural environments through Tauqsiijiit an onsite residence youth media lab located at the heart of the exhibition with participants from: Igloolik Isuma Productions, Qaggiq Theatre, Siqiniq Productions, Daybi, Tungasuvvingat Inuit Youth Drop In Centre (Ottawa), 7th Generation Image Makers (Native Child and Family Services of Toronto), Debajehmujig Theatre Group (Wikwemikong) and Qaggiq Theatre (Iqaluit). “I am an advocate for the deep human need for all people, but especially post­-colonial Indigenous people to express themselves at a level of creative excellence. I am a mother, wife, writer and performer based in Iqaluit, Nunavut. My three children speak Greenlandic, Inuktitut and English – all languages part of their heritages. I am passionate about spending time on the land – hiking, snowmobiling, boating, hunting, camping, eating wild foods, building cabins and cultivating raccoon tans are all activities that figure largely in my family.” 

Qaggiavuut Performing Arts Society Website

Laakkuluk Williamson Bathory and family in Greenland 2015

Artist Project Details:

Laakkuluk Williamson Bathory: ujimajaaqtuqanngiguuq "they call it traditional knowledge" is a 30 minute performance piece to take place at the Nunavut Legislature, based on Greenlandic mask dancing and incorporating storytelling and electronic music. Uaajeerneq is a clownish dance that is highly sexualized, frightening and hilarious. It is a type of entertainment that teaches children about panic, adults about boundaries, or the lack thereof and examines the limits of human experience in the unknowable immensity of the universe. Every Uaajeerneq dancer sees the performance as a self­realization in the face of decolonization. “As I develop my practice, I'm looking for ways of people, both Inuit and non­Inuit to see art as an individual exploration of identity, culture, politics, ugliness and beauty and not as a pageantry of "Inuit art." This project is taking a meaningful part of my practice right to the centre of Nunavut politics ­ the legislature, addressing this idea full on.” Laakkuluk works with a group of seven politically minded Inuit on community actions and political discussions, who will collectively act as the respondent for this project, creating an audio recording of the group’s dialogue for the project’s exhibition at grunt gallery. This group comes together to challenge themselves and support each other to make political change at a community and a territorial level, acting as a safe zone for political discussion and often collaborating with each other for other projects. Professionally, the group is comprised of artists, bureaucrats and in various positions of emerging leadership.

#callresponse Project Details:

Strategically centering Indigenous women as vital presences across multiple platforms, #callresponse is a multifaceted project which includes a website, social media platform, touring exhibition and catalogue. The project brings together five local art commissions by Indigenous women artists from across Canada, including Christi Belcourt, Maria Hupfield, Ursula Johnson, Tania Willard and Laakkuluk Williamson-Bathory. Each artist has invited a guest to respond to their work, including Isaac Murdoch, IV Castellanos and Esther Neff, Cheryl L’Hirondelle, Marcia Crosby and Tanya Tagaq.

#callresponse is co-organized by Tarah Hogue, Maria Hupfield and Tania Willard, and produced in partnership with grunt gallery and generously supported by the {Re}conciliation initiative of the Canada Council for the Arts, the J.W. McConnell Family Foundation and The Circle on Philanthropy and Aboriginal Peoples in Canada. Additional presentation partners include BUSH Gallery, Emily Carr University of Art + Design, FADO Performance Art Centre, Kamloops Art Gallery, OFFTA live art festival, the National Arts Centre, and the Native Education College.

Conversation with Artist Cheryl L'Hirondelle

Broken Boxes Podcast is proud to present this episode as the second installation in a series of interviews featuring participants and their respondents from the socially engaged project #callresponse.  

In this episode we get into conversation with Cheryl L'Hirondelle, a community-engaged Alberta-born, Cree/Metis, interdisciplinary artist, singer/songwriter and curator. L'Hiriondelle speaks about two major projects that continue to evolve through her practice and we hear how music and voice act as the primary tools for expressing her work. She shares reflection on her experience as Ursula Johnsons respondent artist for #callresponse and gives insight regarding the evolving life of the artist and the importance of connectivity.

Since the early 1980s, L’Hirondelle has created, performed and presented work in a variety of artistic disciplines, including music, performance art, theatre, performance poetry, storytelling, installation, and new media. Her creative practice investigates a Cree worldview (nêhiyawin) in contemporary time-space. L’Hirondelle has developed endurance-based performances, interventions, site-specific installations, interactive net.art and new media projects and keeps singing, making rhythm, writing songs and telling stories/giving voice whenever and wherever she can. Currently based in Toronto, she has performed and exhibited her work widely both in Canada and abroad, and her previous musical efforts and new media work have garnered her critical acclaim and numerous awards.
 

Here is the conversation with Cheryl L'Hirondelle:

Subscribe to Broken Boxes Podcast on iTunes HERE to stream and download this episode

All music featured on this podcast episode provided by the artist Cheryl L'Hirondelle

Catch up on the #callresponse series and listen to Broken Boxes Podcast interview with Ursula Johnson and the projects introduction interview featuring Maria Hupfield, Tarah Hogue and Tanya Willard.

More About The Artist:

According to many dictionaries the swallow (aka l'hirondelle) is a “migratory swift-flying songbird.” This describes Cheryl L'Hirondelle accurately - though for this award-winning singer/songwriter and multi-disciplinary artist the definition should end with "and so much more." An Alberta born mixed-blood, multi and interdisciplinary artist, singer/songwriter and curator, her creative practice is an investigation of the junction of a cree worldview (nêhiyawin) in contemporary time space.

Caged Bird Sings project. Cheryl L'Hirondelle 

Since the early 80's, L'Hirondelle has created, performed and presented work in a variety of artistic disciplines, including: music, performance art, theatre, performance poetry, storytelling, installation and new media. In the early 90's, she began a parallel career as an arts consultant/advisor and programmer, cultural strategist/activist, and director/producer of both independent works and projects within national artist-run networks. L’Hirondelle’s various activities have also found her working in the Canadian independent music industry, as well as various educational institutions, the prison system, First Nations bands, tribal councils and governmental funding agencies, at both the provincial and federal levels.L’Hirondelle’s performance work is featured in Caught in the Act: An Anthology of Performance Art by Canadian Women (2001), written by the late Âhâsiw Maskêgon Iskwêw, and edited by Tanya Mars and Johanna Householder. L’Hirondelle’s 2001 performative activity and corresponding website cistêmaw îyîniw ohci (for the tobacco being) are also discussed in Candice Hopkin’s book, Making a Noise: Aboriginal Perspectives on Art, Art History, Critical Writing and Community (2006). In 2004, L’Hirondelle and Hopkins were the first Aboriginal artists from Canada to be invited to present work at DAK’ART Lab, as part of the 6th Edition of the Dakar Biennale for Contemporary African Art, Dakar, Senegal. In both 2005 and 2006, L’Hirondelle was the recipient of the imagineNATIVE New Media Award for her online net.art projects: treatycard, 17:TELL and wêpinâsowina. L’Hirondelle’s previous musical efforts have also garnered her critical acclaim with two Canadian Aboriginal Music Awards 2006 and 2007 for her contributions to Vancouver based Aboriginal Women’s Ensemble M’Girl. Her own first attempt in producing (and as one half of) the singing/songwriting duo Nikamok was recognized with a nomination from the Prairie Music Awards (now the Western Canadian Music Awards) and many of her songs have been licensed for television, documentary and feature films. In 2011, Cheryl was also nominated for a KM Hunter Award in Music.

Ever the visionary, she continues to come up with new ways music and her other artistic ideas can converge and in 2009 was recognized as an Honoree in the Net.Art category from the Webby Awards for nikamon ohci askiy (songs because of the land), an ongoing and now international sonic mapping and songwriting project now called Sing Land X Song Mark. She was also nominated for a K.M. Hunter Music award in 2011 and since 2008 has been working on co-composing a series of songs with incarcerated women, men and detained youth in federal prisons, provincial correctional institutions and civic detention centres titled Why the Caged Bird Sings. She is also collaborating with various Indigenous language speakers and emerging songwriters on an international songwriting project and operates Miyoh Music, an Indigenous niche music publishing company.

From 2009 to 2011, imagineNATIVE Film + Media Festival invited L'Hirondelle to curate their first three new media exhibitions: Codetalkers of the Digital Divide (or why we didn't become "roadkill on the information superhighway"), RE:counting coup and S-O-S3 (signals of survival). She has also been involved in a variety of media arts initiatives including:  Smartlab Associate Researcher, 2005–07; Banff New Media Institute Advisory Committee, 2006; Canada Council Media Arts Advisory Committee, 1997–2001; KIDS FROM KANATA On-line Aboriginal Liaison (with Buffy Sainte Marie), 1995-96; and Drum Beats to Drum Bytes Thinktank, 1994. 

Cheryl is currently a member of the OCAD University Indigenous Education Council and has recently begun post-graduate research-creation at UCD, Dublin, Ireland.

Cheryl L'Hirondelle Website

Cheryl L'Hirondelle Bandcamp

Song Lines Project

Medicine Path Project

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#callresponse project details:

Strategically centering Indigenous women as vital presences across multiple platforms, #callresponse is a multifaceted project which includes a website, social media platform, touring exhibition and catalogue. The project brings together five local art commissions by Indigenous women artists from across Canada, including Christi Belcourt, Maria Hupfield, Ursula Johnson, Tania Willard and Laakkuluk Williamson-Bathory. Each artist has invited a guest to respond to their work, including Isaac Murdoch, IV Castellanos and Esther Neff, Cheryl L’Hirondelle, Marcia Crosby and Tanya Tagaq.

#callresponse is co-organized by Tarah Hogue, Maria Hupfield and Tania Willard, and produced in partnership with grunt gallery and generously supported by the {Re}conciliation initiative of the Canada Council for the Arts, the J.W. McConnell Family Foundation and The Circle on Philanthropy and Aboriginal Peoples in Canada. Additional presentation partners include BUSH Gallery, Emily Carr University of Art + Design, FADO Performance Art Centre, Kamloops Art Gallery, OFFTA live art festival, the National Arts Centre, and the Native Education College.

Conversation with Artist Ursula A. Johnson

Broken Boxes Podcast is proud to share the first artist conversation in a series of interviews featuring participants from the socially engaged project #callresponse.  

In this episode we get into conversation with Ursula A. Johnson, a performance and installation artist of Mi’kmaw descent. Ursula breaks down what her practice consists of, her inspirations for becoming an artist, the concepts her work explores and description of recent works. Ursula also speaks on her endurance performance work for The Land Sings and her reflections on the #callresponse project. 

Ursula A. Johnson

"In the topics and themes I examine through performance, sculpture and or installation and sometimes all of the above; I aim at creating a space where the viewer is confronted with thought provoking visuals, sounds and scents. Often challenging the viewer to investigate their own Identity, as well as examining the relationship that their ancestry and cultural practices relates to that of mine." -Ursula A. Johnson

Here is the conversation with Ursula A. Johnson:

Subscribe to Broken Boxes Podcast on iTunes HERE to stream and download this episode

Music in this episode from the album Power in the Blood by Buffy Sainte-Marie

More about the artist:

Ursula A. Johnson is a performance and installation artist of Mi’kmaw descent. People who attend her performances are often surprised to find themselves no longer spectators, but actors in a social situation. Instead of the private, contemplative response we usually expect from the encounter with a work of art, we become participants in collective interpretations and collaborative actions. 

Ursula Johnson holds a BFA (2006) from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, where she studied photography, drawing and textiles. She also studied Theatre at Cape Breton University.  Johnson descends from a long line of Mi’kmaw Artists, including her late Great-Grandmother, Caroline Gould, from whom she learned basket making.  In 2010 she curated Klokowej: A 30-Year Retrospective commemorating Gould’s contribution to the evolution of Mi’kmaw basketry.

Ursula Johnson’s approach to basketry is typical of her transformational practice.  Rather than simply imitating traditional Mi’kmaw basket forms she uses traditional techniques to build subtly non-functional forms—objects that are clearly traditionally based yet raised to a metaphorical level of signification, as works of art. Several of her performances, including Elmiet (2010) and Basket Weaving (2011) incorporate basketry as a key element.

Her background in theatre is evident in her public performances. People who attend Johnson’s performances are often surprised to find themselves no longer spectators, but actors in a social situation.  Instead of the private, contemplative response we usually expect from the encounter with a work of art, we become participants in collective interpretations and collaborative actions.

Artist Project Details:

Ursula A. Johnson Ketapekiaq Maqamikew – The Land Sings follows from an audio­based endurance performance wherein Johnson collaborated with a Mi’kmaw singer/songwriter in Antigonish, NS to create a song for the land. The land is recognized as a feminine body and a matriarch by several Indigenous nations. Urban development and the disregard to the natural environment resonated with the artist in the development of this series. Children who attended residential schools were distanced from their homes, territory and the land. The traditional songs and voices of many First Nations were also displaced because of this process. Johnson’s project posits song as a positive force that brings people together in the act of singing. The premise of the piece is to create a song that is an apology to the land for the ways in which our human impact has shifted and shaped the landscape.

Photo credit: Henry Chan, Nikamon Ochi Askiy (Ke’tapekiaq Ma’qimikew): The Land Sings, Ursula Johnson created in collaboration with Cheryl L’Hirondelle, presented by FADO Performance Art Centre 2016. 

The original work was created by mapping a line on a topographical map from the customary land territory of the local Indigenous peoples to the closest, largest urban centre, from which a score was developed. Building on this, Johnson performed the fourth visitation of the project in Toronto ON in collaboration with interdisciplinary artist Cheryl L’Hirondelle (Metis/Cree) as part of MONOMYTHS, programmed by FADO Performance Art Centre. The fifth visitation of the work will take place in Vancouver BC sited in the traditional territory of one of the local First Nations (Musqueam, Squamish, Tsleil­Waututh) as a way of addressing the history of division caused by the residential school system and colonialism more broadly.
The points of connection created through song span the country from its eastern to western shores, coming full circle to encompass both the diversity and specificity of the Indigenous nations within its boundaries. Johnson will collaborate with a local singer/songwriter to create a song of recognition and apology to the land, focusing on four themes related to this: a survey, an intervention, a celebration and a mourning. The performance will occur shortly before the exhibition opening (October 2016), presented as a continuous live vocal performance that will run for the duration of 4­6 hours. The water and land of the surrounding territory will witness the song along with being open to the public. An audio recording and visual representations of the topographical score will be included on the project website and exhibition.

Ursula Johnson, Ke'tapekiaq Ma'qimikew: The Land Sings, Cape Breton Visitation 2015. Photo: Dr. Marcia Ostashkewski. Courtesy of the Artist.

#callresponse Project Details:

Strategically centering Indigenous women as vital presences across multiple platforms, #callresponse is a multifaceted project which includes a website, social media platform, touring exhibition and catalogue. The project brings together five local art commissions by Indigenous women artists from across Canada, including Christi Belcourt, Maria Hupfield, Ursula Johnson, Tania Willard and Laakkuluk Williamson-Bathory. Each artist has invited a guest to respond to their work, including Isaac Murdoch, IV Castellanos and Esther Neff, Cheryl L’Hirondelle, Marcia Crosby and Tanya Tagaq.

#callresponse is co-organized by Tarah Hogue, Maria Hupfield and Tania Willard, and produced in partnership with grunt gallery and generously supported by the {Re}conciliation initiative of the Canada Council for the Arts, the J.W. McConnell Family Foundation and The Circle on Philanthropy and Aboriginal Peoples in Canada. Additional presentation partners include BUSH Gallery, Emily Carr University of Art + Design, FADO Performance Art Centre, Kamloops Art Gallery, OFFTA live art festival, the National Arts Centre, and the Native Education College.

Listen to Broken Boxes Podcast #callresponse introduction interview here

Conversation with Curators/ Artists Tania Willard, Maria Hupfield and Tarah Hogue - Introduction to the #callresponse project

“#callresponse places the work of First Nations, Inuit and Métis women and artists in a central location, giving proper respect and support to their roles as knowledge keepers, mothers, grandmothers, sisters, aunts, friends, teachers and creators.” -Tarah Hogue from #callresponse: Situating Indigenous women in re/conciliation

Photo credit: Henry Chan, Nikamon Ochi Askiy (Ke’tapekiaq Ma’qimikew): The Land Sings, Ursula Johnson created in collaboration with Cheryl L’Hirondelle, presented by FADO Performance Art Centre 2016. 

For our Two Year Anniversary, Broken Boxes Podcast is honored to begin a series of interviews with the Artists involved in #callresponse. This multifaceted project brings together five site­specific art commissions that invite collaboration with individuals, communities, lands and institutions. This socially engaged project focuses on the "act of doing" through performative actions, highlighting the responsibility of voice and necessity of communal dialogue practiced by Indigenous Peoples.

#callresponse is led by artist/curators Tarah Hogue, Maria Hupfield and Tania Willard, and in this episode they introduce us to the project and lead us into a series of conversations with the artists involved, which will run through August 2016.  

Here is the conversation with Tarah Hogue, Tania Willard and Maria Hupfield:

Subscribe to Broken Boxes Podcast on iTunes HERE to stream and download this episode

Image: Laakkuluk Williamson Bathory and Tanya Tagaq performance, 2015. photo credit: Front of House Photography.

Music featured throughout this episode by Laura Ortman and final track featured by Kinnie Starr

#callresponse Project Details:

#callresponse presents the work of First Nations, Inuit and Métis women and artists as central to the strength and healing of their communities. This multifaceted project brings together five site­specific art commissions that invite collaboration with individuals, communities, lands and institutions. This socially engaged project focuses on the "act of doing" through performative actions, highlighting the responsibility of voice and necessity of communal dialogue practiced by Indigenous Peoples.

An online platform will utilize the hashtag #callresponse on social media and a dedicated project website will serve to connect the geographically diverse sites and to generate discussion. An exhibition will be held at grunt gallery in October 2016 with guest respondents, accompanying programming, and a catalogue.

Maria Hupfield, Artist Tour Guide: McCord (2014), performance, McCord Museum, Montreal. Photo: Aimée Rochard.

The project is led by Tarah Hogue (French/Dutch/Métis), Maria Hupfield (Anishinaabe) and Tania Willard (Secwepemc) and features five lead artists working in the following locations: Maria Hupfield in Toronto ON, Montreal PQ, New York NY, Tania Willard in Secwepemc Territory BC and invited artists Christi Belcourt (Michif) on the North Shore of Lake Huron ON, Ursula Johnson (Mi'kmaw) in Toronto ON, Vancouver BC, and Laakkuluk Williamson­Bathory (Inuk) in Iqaluit NU.

Stay connected with the #callresponse project:

• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/callresponse/

• Twitter: @callresponseus

• Instagram: @callresponse

• Website: www.callresponseart.ca

More about the Artists/Curators in this conversation: 

Tarah Hogue (Project Curator) is a writer and curator of mixed Dutch, French and Métis ancestry. She holds a BA(H) in Art History from Queen’s University and an MA in Critical and Curatorial Studies from the University of British Columbia. Hogue is the Aboriginal Curatorial Resident at grunt gallery since 2014, where she is working on exhibitions, programming and developing a cross­Canada project, #callresponse, with Maria Hupfield and Tania Willard that builds upon her research on Indigenous feminisms. She has curated exhibitions at the Satellite Gallery (2011) and Or Gallery (2012) and was co­curator on two exhibitions about the India Residential School system: Witnesses: Art and Canada's Indian Residential Schools at the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, and NET­ETH: Going Out of the Darkness, organized by Malaspina Printmakers (both 2013). In 2009, she co­founded the Gam Gallery, an exhibition space, studio and boutique located in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. She has recently been awarded the Audain Aboriginal Fellowship with the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria and is curatin an upcoming exhibition for SFU Gallery in 2016. She has written texts for e­fagia, Capilano University and Presentation House Gallery, Artspeak, Decoy Magazine and the 2015 MFA Graduate Exhibition at UBC.

Maria Hupfield is a member of Wasauksing First Nation, Ontario, currently based in Brooklyn NY. A featured international artist with SITE Santa Fe 2016, she received national recognition in the USA from the prestigious Joan Mitchell Foundation for her hand-sewn industrial felt sculptures. Hupfield was awarded a long term Canada Council for The Arts Grant to make work in New York with her nine-foot birchbark canoe made of industrial felt assembled and performed in Venice, Italy for the premiere of Jiimaan, coinciding with the Venice Biennale 2015. Upcoming projects include Free Play Trestle Gallery Brooklyn with Jason Lujan, and #callresponse, a multifaceted performance art based Canada Council for the Arts {Re}Conciliation Initiative Project, Grunt Gallery that presents the work of First Nations, Inuit and Métis women as artists central to the strength and healing of their communities. She is a guest speaker for the Distinguished Visiting Artist Program, University of British Columbia, Indigenous Feminist Activism & Performance event at Yale, Native American Cultural Center and Women's Gender and Sexuality Studies, and Indigenous Rights/Indigenous Oppression, Symposium with Tanya Tagaq at the School of Public Policy, University of Maryland, MD. Hupfield is an advocate of native community arts and activism; Founder of 7th Generation Image Makers, Native Child and Family Services of Toronto, a native youth arts and mural outreach program in downtown Toronto, Co-owner Native Art Department International and Assistant Professor in Visual Art and Material Practice appointed to the Faculty of Culture and Community, Emily Carr University of Arts and Design (2007-11). Hupfield is represented by Galerie Hugues Charbonneau in Montreal.

Tania Willard, Secwepemc Nation, works within the shifting ideas around contemporary and traditional, often working with bodies of knowledge and skills that are conceptually linked to her interest in intersections between Aboriginal and other cultures. Willard was Aboriginal Curator in Residence with Kamloops Art Gallery from 2013­2015 and previously with grunt gallery 2008­2010. Recent curatorial work includes CUSTOM MADE/Tsitlem te stem te ckultens'kuc; this is Willard's culminating exhibition for her curatorial residency with Kamloops Art Gallery and features 20 contemporary artists working with ideas of that bisect the binary of contemporary and traditional. Willard's curatorial work also includes, Beat Nation: Art, Hip Hop and Aboriginal Culture, co­curated with Kathleen Ritter, Vancouver Art Gallery, featuring 27 contemporary Aboriginal artists which toured Nationally. She is currently working on co­curating a solo exhibition (May 2016), Unceded Territories, Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun with Karen Duffek at Museum of Anthropology, UBC.

Tania Willard, Silence and Tongues, digital still from The Shuswap Indians of British Columbia by Harlan Smith (1928) and text (Text-excepted from Memories of the Kamloops Indian Residential School - as experienced by Irene Billy, Secwepemculecw, Land of the Shuswap www.landoftheshuswap.com)

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#callresponse project details:

Strategically centering Indigenous women as vital presences across multiple platforms, #callresponse is a multifaceted project which includes a website, social media platform, touring exhibition and catalogue. The project brings together five local art commissions by Indigenous women artists from across Canada, including Christi Belcourt, Maria Hupfield, Ursula Johnson, Tania Willard and Laakkuluk Williamson-Bathory. Each artist has invited a guest to respond to their work, including Isaac Murdoch, IV Castellanos and Esther Neff, Cheryl L’Hirondelle, Marcia Crosby and Tanya Tagaq.

#callresponse is co-organized by Tarah Hogue, Maria Hupfield and Tania Willard, and produced in partnership with grunt gallery and generously supported by the {Re}conciliation initiative of the Canada Council for the Arts, the J.W. McConnell Family Foundation and The Circle on Philanthropy and Aboriginal Peoples in Canada. Additional presentation partners include BUSH Gallery, Emily Carr University of Art + Design, FADO Performance Art Centre, Kamloops Art Gallery, OFFTA live art festival, the National Arts Centre, and the Native Education College.

More resource on reconciliation HERE

Conversation with Artist Micah BlackLight

"I am here to create the most brilliant, evocative, challenging, innovative, impactful art I am capable of, to have THE most fun while doing it, and to leave a trail of empowering, inspiring interactions in my wake like a spirit boat traveling the lake of existence." -Micah BlackLight

In this Episode we get into conversation with Artist Micah BlackLight who is a ' light-working, illustrating, dancing, singing, rhyming, designing, writing, performing, fashion designing, motivational speaking, empowerment coaching Inspiration Engine'. The most recent project Micah BlackLight has created and which we talk thoroughly about in this podcast is his illustrated Erotic Novel CULT OF THE SERPENTARI. This novel embodies the genre BlackLight created called Fantasensua; which BlackLight describes as an explicit, graphically illustrated character and plot-driven Erotic Fantasy. We also touch on the balance of being an artist and a father, and he shares inspirations and resource for others navigating the path of Artist.

Here is the conversation with Micah Blacklight:

Subscribe to Broken Boxes Podcast on iTunes HERE to stream and download this episode

Image: Kali Evocation. Illustration by Micah BlackLight

Music featured in this podcast: Sub Swara, Jon Hobotech Margulies, and Micah BlackLight

More from the Artist:

Illustration from Cult of the Serpentari. Micah BlackLight

"I am a light-working, illustrating, dancing, singing, rhyming, designing, writing, performing, fashion designing, motivational speaking, empowerment coaching Inspiration Engine. I’m a song masquerading as a poem wearing my skin like a temporary coat. 

I am a full-time papa, a loving partner and an intuitive listener. 

I am bent on positively impacting the world through beautiful interactions and the bringing of my unique art. Part of what I get to do [by being a cultural innovator] is give the world a different perspective on what it can look like to be a black man, what it can look like to be a man period, and what it can look like to be a self-employed, powerfully positive creator who doesn’t necessarily fit within anybody’s box and doesn’t feel the need to.

I am here to create the most brilliant, evocative, challenging, innovative, impactful art I am capable of, to have THE most fun while doing it, and to leave a trail of empowering, inspiring interactions in my wake like a spirit boat traveling the lake of existence." - Micah Blacklight

Illustration from Cult of the Serpentari. Micah BlackLight

CULT OF THE SERPENTARI:

"Long have I been a fan, an avid reader of sci-fi/fantasy. Just as long, I have harbored a bit of a grudge, a chip on my shoulder if you will. I wondered why, if this was fantasy, if these were new worlds and alternate realities, why I continued to see the exact same gender dynamics, power dynamics and sexual dynamics playing out over and over again. 
I wondered where the heroes of alternative gender and ethnic heritage were hiding, and above and beyond all of that, where was all the sex?! No one seems to blink at giving multiple pages of violent, line-by-line descriptions of bloody warfare and enchanted blades wreaking havoc against the flesh of their enemies, but in almost every case, I’d be fortunate to get a fraction of a paragraph about someone’s flesh being pleasured. What is that all about? 
Somewhere along the line, I decided that if the kind of erotica I’d always craved was nowhere to be found, I’d have to create it myself. I wish to fundamentally transform the entire genre of erotic literature with a brand new genre—my own—Fantasensua: explicit, graphically illustrated character and plot-driven erotic fantasy that takes readers beyond mere entertainment and into the realm of the spirit, leaving them empowered, inspired, AND aroused." -Micah BlackLight

Purchase a signed copy of CULT OF THE SERPENTARI here

Other purchase options for CULT OF THE SERPENTARI:

Amazon

Ellora's Cave

Barnes&Noble

To get the eBooks via Amazon: 

chap 1 lone: http://amzn.to/1Uae4jI

part III: http://amzn.to/1EgA4Yr

part II: http://amzn.to/1U3AlVy

part I: http://amzn.to/1IbdQlr

The whole novel: http://amzn.to/1S5knFL

To get a print copy through Amazon if you're in the UK, France, Germany and/or Canada: http://www.ffadultsonly.com/b/micah-blacklight/cult-of-the-serpentari.htm
 

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