Podcast appearances and mentions of tanya kalmanovitch

In Canada and many other parts of the world, we've relied on policymakers and scientists to be the ones communicating around climate, and they failed because they've only appealed to people's heads and haven't appealed to their hearts and souls. I think the big conversation coming out of COP 28 - and that you but I'm sure people at SCALE and others, we've known this for a long time, but it's kind of being recognized now - is that we need culture at the table. We need art and artists. We need to be connecting to all parts of people and not just showing numbers because that hasn't worked, and it's not working. And so I actually feel hopeful that art and culture being at the table will help with that whole overhaul and systems level transformation.Note: I'm using Whisper Transcribe, an artificial intelligence podcasting tool, for the first time with this episode. It helped me generate quotes, create chapters (see below), generate transcriptions (see Transcripts section), produce social media postings (notice the new tone and hashtags) and write up the episode notes (notice more fluid language), however I'm a little skeptical about AI's ability to get it all right (verification required) but it's pretty good and saves me time and delivers a better product. However I will continue to write and record my very human introduction at the top of each episode like this… Sometimes you just have to be in the right place at the right time. I had just completed my conversation with Tanya Kalmanovitch (see e189 tanya kalmanovitch - mobilizing the power of the arts) at No. 9 gardens near Kingston, Ontario (see e68  for more on no. 9 gardens) when I sat down at a picnic table with a group of arts and climate activists at a meeting of the Centre for Sustainable Practices the Art (CSPA) and right in front of me was Kim Fry. The same Kim Fry who co-founded and runs Music Declares Emergency Canada and is a hero of mine. I know Kim by reputation, but we had not yet met in person, so, on the spot, I asked Kim to record a conscient conversation with me about her life's work in music and environmental awareness. Kim now lives by the Atlantic ocean which is in Kjipuktuk, Mi'kma'ki territory, also known as Halifax, Nova Scotia. Before her recent move Eastward, she lived in Tkaronto for 27 years where she was an elementary school teacher, union activist, climate justice activist, environmental campaigner, storyteller and music manager. With the family move to K'jipuktuk, Kim decided to return to the world of environmental activism and music where she organized, among other things, the first ever Canadian Music Climate Summit. You'll hear that Kim talk about the power of music in the climate emergency :We need systems change, and so we need the whole way that the music industry operates to really rethink itself and sometimes some people might say that's greenwashing, because we're still talking about these big, huge multinational corporations when it comes to the music industry but I think there are folks who navigate that space and do it incredibly well. You'll also hear about Kim's efforts to highlight the importance of creating safe spaces for emotional engagement through music and community such as the sustainability committee at the Juno Awards, which is dedicated to reducing the industry's environmental footprint by promoting eco-friendly practices like public transit and plant-based catering.A particularly inspiring anecdote for me was about Kim's daughter Brighid Fry known under her artist name Housewife former Moscow Apartment) Bridghid ensured that a climate clause was included in her record deal. This type of action exemplifies the shift from incremental changes to systemic reform, advocating for the integration of culture and art into climate conversations and the shift from appealing from one's heads to one's hearts and souls.Oh, and when she has free time, Kim is working on a novel about the climate emergency. I look forward to that and I think you'll enjoy our unscheduled but long overdue conversation. Kim recommended the following publications and events:Birchbark House series by Louise ErdrichHadestown by Anais Mitchell : a musical about climate changeNeil Young's Love Earth tourNote: I have inserted 5 seconds of silence here and there during our conversation as interludes.*Episode Chapters (AI generated)IntroductionIn this section, Kim Fry introduces herself and shares her background as a climate activist, highlighting her journey from organizing student walkouts in the early '90s to her current work in music and climate activism.The Role of Music in Climate ActivismKim discusses the significant role that music and the arts play in climate activism, emphasizing how they can unite people and inspire political change through emotional connection.Launching Music Declares EmergencyThe conversation shifts to the founding of the Canadian chapter of Music Declares Emergency, detailing the collaborative efforts that led to its creation and the impact of the climate strikes in 2019.Challenges for Musicians in the Climate CrisisKim addresses the reluctance of musicians to engage in climate discussions due to the carbon-intensive nature of touring, and the need for systemic change within the music industry.Navigating Grief and Hope Through MusicThis chapter explores how music can help individuals process grief and despair related to the climate crisis, while also fostering a sense of hope and community.The Power of Collective SingingKim shares her personal experiences with singing and its transformative power, highlighting how collective music-making can ground individuals and strengthen community bonds.Engaging the Next GenerationThe discussion turns to the political engagement of Gen Z and the need for hopeful narratives that inspire action rather than despair, emphasizing the importance of storytelling in climate discourse.Creating Space for Connection and GratitudeKim emphasizes the importance of cultivating gratitude and deep connections to nature as foundational elements for addressing climate challenges and fostering resilience.Innovative Initiatives at the JunosThe conversation highlights the successful sustainability initiatives implemented at the Junos, showcasing how the music industry can take concrete steps towards climate action.The Need for Systemic ChangeKim discusses the necessity of systemic change in addressing the climate crisis, advocating for a collaborative approach that integrates art and culture into climate solutions.Youth Empowerment and Climate ActionThe chapter concludes with a reflection on the empowerment of youth in climate activism, showcasing how the next generation is driving important conversations around sustainability and systemic change. *END NOTES FOR ALL EPISODESI've been producing the conscient podcast as a learning and unlearning journey since May 2020 on un-ceded Anishinaabe Algonquin territory (Ottawa). It's my way to give back and be present.In parallel with the production of the conscient podcast and it's francophone counterpart, balado conscient, I publish a Substack newsletter called ‘a calm presence' which are 'short, practical essays about collapse acceptance, adaptation, response and art'. To subscribe (free of charge) see https://acalmpresence.substack.com. You'll also find a podcast version of each a calm presence posting on Substack or one your favorite podcast player.Also, please note that a complete transcript of conscient podcast and balado conscient episodes from season 1 to 4 is available on the web version of this site (not available on podcast apps) here: https://conscient-podcast.simplecast.com/episodes.Your feedback is always welcome at claude@conscient.ca and/or on conscient podcast social media: Facebook, X, Instagram or Linkedin. I am grateful and accountable to the earth and the human labour that provided me with the privilege of producing this podcast, including the toxic materials and extractive processes behind the computers, recorders, transportation systems and infrastructure that made this production possible. Claude SchryerLatest update on July 20, 2024

What happens is that you have arts and environment initiatives popping up all over the place, but everyone's pitted against one another in competing for the same grants, right? So it makes it extraordinarily difficult to organize, to strategize, and to act with a collective insight about where it is that we need to go and how we can really mobilize the power of the arts.This episode is a lot of fun. When I arrived at No 9 Gardens near Kingston, Tanya Kalmanovitch and her dog Finn were ready to go for a soundwalk on a sunny June 26th 2024 at 7.15am. My previous conscient conversation with Tanya was recorded remotely in June of 2011 (see e53 kalmanovitch – nurturing imagination) where we talked about music, ethnomusicology, arts education, the climate emergency, arts policy and how artistic practice can nurture imagination.Our second conversation, equally as engaged and dynamic (but this time in person, and outdoors), picked up on some of these themes with a focus on the impact of Tar Sands Songbook, a documentary theatre play that tells the stories of people whose lives have been shaped by living in close proximity to oil development and its effects. I had the pleasure of seeing Tanya perform the Tar Sands Songbook at Carleton University (with thanks to Ellen Waterman) in Ottawa and wanted to ask Tanya how it went, and in particular, what it's like to tour a show about climate change through art, in Alberta. Tanya wears many hats: she is a violist, an ethnomusicologist, and author known for her breadth of inquiry and restless sense of adventure, including an interest in improvisation, social entrepreneurship, and social action, such as being the mission circle lead of the Sectoral Climate Arts Leadership for the Emergency organization or SCALE which by now, regular listener will know : a network of artists, cultural practitioners, and arts organisations committed to addressing the climate emergency and environmental injustice.As we walked in the wet fields of No9 gardens I love how Tanya doesn't hold her punches: ‘The end of the world as we know it' is also a biased perspective, when you say that phrase, right? I'm pretty sure that the earth will keep going and it'll just sort of shake us off like some fleas; the dog scratches the fleas off and it will regenerate.The field where we walked was mushy so you'll hear of that rich dampness in the recording and our boots and running around of Finn the dog. You'll also hear, near the end of our conversations children's entertainer Mr. Rogers, where Tanya sings : It's you I like, not the things you wear, not the way you wear your hair. It's you I like. The way you are right now. The things down deep inside you. It's not the ear inside you. It's not your toys, they're just beside you…I like you just the way you are, Tanya. Thanks for the full circle walk. We had a lot of fun and so did Finnigan.Note: I inserted 5 second silences throughout the recording to give some space to the soundwalk.  *END NOTES FOR ALL EPISODESI've been producing the conscient podcast as a learning and unlearning journey since May 2020 on un-ceded Anishinaabe Algonquin territory (Ottawa). It's my way to give back and be present.In parallel with the production of the conscient podcast and it's francophone counterpart, balado conscient, I publish a Substack newsletter called ‘a calm presence' which are 'short, practical essays about collapse acceptance, adaptation, response and art'. To subscribe (free of charge) see https://acalmpresence.substack.com. You'll also find a podcast version of each a calm presence posting on Substack or one your favorite podcast player.Also, please note that a complete transcript of conscient podcast and balado conscient episodes from season 1 to 4 is available on the web version of this site (not available on podcast apps) here: https://conscient-podcast.simplecast.com/episodes.Your feedback is always welcome at claude@conscient.ca and/or on conscient podcast social media: Facebook, X, Instagram or Linkedin. I am grateful and accountable to the earth and the human labour that provided me with the privilege of producing this podcast, including the toxic materials and extractive processes behind the computers, recorders, transportation systems and infrastructure that made this production possible. Claude SchryerLatest update on July 20, 2024

'Art is a practice of expanding consciousness, which gives us a tremendous opportunity to explore and to embody possibility and to engage with the earth as it continues to change and with each other.Rebecca Mwase, excerpt from e10 mwase – expanding consciousness (from an interview at Creative Climate Leadership USA, March, 2020)*e81 inspiration are excerpts from all my conversations up to today, November 10th, 2021. I chose short excerpts where the tone and emotion in the voice of each person inspires and uplifts me every time I listen to it and I hope they will inspire and uplift you too (because we need it). Thanks to all those recorded for this fragmented reading of our conversations.In order of appearance (bolded episodes are in French and have an ‘é')Note: I am aware that the time indication numbers below do not align up well but chose not to correct it as I enjoy the uneven flow...e10 mwase, Rebecca Mwase                                            00:00e29 loy, David Loy                                                               00:21e03 tickell, Alison Tickell                                                   00:35é37 lebeau, Anne-Catherine Lebeau                          00:5612 liverman, Diana Liverman                                            01:1617 piro, Em Piro                                                                   01:37e50 newton, Teika Newton                                               02:00é32 tsou, Shuni Tsou                                                        02:2613 freiband, Andrew Freiband                                         02:46e58 huddart, Stephen Huddart                                        03:03é27 prévost, Hélène Prévost                                         03:30e47 keeptwo, Suzanne Keeptwo                                      04:0008 johnston,  Sholeh Johnston                                         04:25e33 toscano, Peterson Toscano                                       04:51é60 boutet, Dr. Danielle Boutet                                   05 :20e51 hiser, Dr. Krista Hiser                                                  05:42e53 kalmanovitch, Dr. Tanya Kalmanovitch                   06:01e21 dufresne, Dr. Todd Dufresne                                    06:22é55 trépanier, France Trépanier                                  06:42e24 weaving, jil p. weaving                                               07:00e25 shaw, Michael Shaw                                                    07:38e39 engle  Dr. Jayne Engle                                               08:01é56 garoufalis-auger, Anthony Garoufalis-Auger 08 :19e54 garrett, Ian Garrett                                                      08:4606 lim, Milton Lim                                                                09:48e22 westerkamp, Hildegard Westerkamp                     09:25é57 roy, Annie Roy                                                           09:50e73 marcuse,,Judith Marcuse                                           10:19e26 klein, Seth Klein                                                           10:58e36 fanconi,  Kendra Fanconi                                           11 :26é28 ung, Jimmy Ung                                                        11:47e40 frasz  Alexis Frasz                                                         12:10e41 rae, Jen Rae                                                                  12:27e42 rosen, Mark Rosen                                                      12:52é48 danis, Daniel Danis                                                  13:17e43 haley, David Haley                                                      13:57e44 bilodeau, Chantal Bilodeau                                      14:32e45 abbott, Jennifer Abbott                                             15:13é60 boutet, Dr. Danielle Boutet                                   16 :03e49 windatt, Clayton Windatt                                           16:33e50 newton, Teika Newton                                               16:53e51 hiser, Dr. Krista Hiser                                                  17:3007 kasisi, Robert Kasisi                                                   17:52e52 mahtani, Dr. Annie Mahtani                                      18 :23e53 kalmanovitch, Dr. Tanya Kalmanovitch                   18:49e68 davies, Andrew Davies                                               19:20é34 ramade, Bénédicte Ramade                                  19:47 e61sokoloski, Robin Sokoloski                                        20:12e46 badham, Dr Marnie Badham                                    20:39e43 haley, David Haley                                                      21:01é55 trépanier, France Trépanier                                  21:16e38 zenith, Shante' Sojourn Zenith                                  21:37e30 maggs, David Maggs                                                 22:22e23 appadurai, Anjali Appadurai                                     22:56é48 danis, Daniel Danis                                                  22:14e21 dufresne, Dr. Todd Dufresne                                    24 :57e35 salas, Carmen Salas                                                    25:46e31 morrow, Charlie Morrow                                           26:27é57 roy, Annie Roy                                                           26:53e59 pearl,  Judi Pearl                                                          27:29e71 green sessions debrief, Emma Stenning                27:49e78 droumeva, Milena Droumeva                                   29:1104 fel, Loic Fel                                                                    29:5405 carruthers, Beth Carruthers                                         30:15e77 klein, Seth Klein                                                           30:45e15 chasansky, Matthew Chassansky                              31:15é55 trépanier, France Trépanier                                  32:00e71 green sessions debrief, Sandy Crawley                  32:22e11 dunlap, Eliana Dunlap                                                33;11e71 green sessions debrief, Liisa Repo-Martell            33:34e63 a case study (part 1), Clara Schryer                       34:1109 macmahon, Ellen MacMahon                                     34:24e76 richards, Kim Richards                                                34:50e16 delaparra, Lauren De la Parra                                   35:28é37 lebeau, Anne-Catherine Lebeau                          36:0714 kirn, Marda Kirn                                                             36:30e63 a case study (part 1), Clara Schryer, Riel Schryer 37:38e71 green sessions debrief, Robyn Stevan                    38:18e64 a case study (2), Clara Schyrer, Sabrina Mathews 38:50 *END NOTES FOR ALL EPISODESHere is a link for more information on season 5. Please note that, in parallel with the production of the conscient podcast and it's francophone counterpart, balado conscient, I publish a Substack newsletter called ‘a calm presence' which are 'short, practical essays for those frightened by the ecological crisis'. To subscribe (free of charge) see https://acalmpresence.substack.com. You'll also find a podcast version of each a calm presence posting on Substack or one your favorite podcast player.Also. please note that a complete transcript of conscient podcast and balado conscient episodes from season 1 to 4 is available on the web version of this site (not available on podcast apps) here: https://conscient-podcast.simplecast.com/episodes.Your feedback is always welcome at claude@conscient.ca and/or on conscient podcast social media: Facebook, X, Instagram or Linkedin. I am grateful and accountable to the earth and the human labour that provided me with the privilege of producing this podcast, including the toxic materials and extractive processes behind the computers, recorders, transportation systems and infrastructure that made this production possible. Claude SchryerLatest update on April 2, 2024

"Why do I continue to devote myself to music?" was a starting point for violist, ethnomusicologist, author and educator Tanya Kalmanovitch to launch her newsletter The Rest. Hear her talk with Douglas Detrick about how capitalism and music interact, how she talks about money with her conservatory students, and how we can stop setting ourselves up for failure in our personal musical practice.

'Welcome back to the History of 2021 in Canada seminar. We're going to conclude our case study today of the 2nd season of the conscient podcast.'Claude Schryerou can listen to part one here. This is the conclusion!The setting is an undergraduate university history seminar course called ‘History of 2021 in Canada'. I want to thank my son Riel for the idea. It is set in the distant future, where a professor is presenting a ‘case study' based on the second season of the conscient podcast as part of a class on art in 2021. There are four people in the class: the teacher played by myself, a young male student is played by my son Riel Schryer, a young female student, who is online, is played by my daughter Clara Schryer and a female adult student is played by my wife Sabrina Mathews. I want to thank the cast. A reminder that most of the narration is in English, but there are elements and excerpts of the interviews that are in French and some of the narrations as well. Episode 64 features excerpt from the following episodes in season 2 (in order of appearance):e19 reality (1m05s) (Claude Schryer reading Catherine Ingram)e43 haley (2m29s)e58 huddart (3m55s)e19 reality (5m27s) (Claude Schryer reading Britt Wray)e33 toscano (8m13s)e19 reality (9m53s) (Claude Schryer reading Richard Wagamese)e30m maggs (11m09s)e36 fanconi (13m07s)é37 lebeau (15m08s)e43 haley (16m36s) (second excerpt)e59 pearl (20m00s)e19 reality (21m51s) (Claude Schryer reading Todd Dufresne)e52 mahtani (23m05s)e22 westerkamp (23m58s)e54 garrett (25m19s)e41 rae (27m03s)e67 wanna be an ally (29m47)Screen grab of Reaper software edit of e64Recording cast : Sabrina Mathews (adult student), Claude Schryer (professor) and Riel Schryer (male student): September 2021, OttawaRecording cast : Clara Schryer (female student): September 2021, OttawaScriptNote: Some of the script has been slightly modified during the recording through improvisation and is not captured in this text.(Sounds of students chatting, arriving in class and sitting down)Teacher: Hello students. Let's start the class. Welcome back to the History of 2021 in Canada seminar. Last time we had to disrupt the class because of the air pollution alarm but now the air quality is acceptable, and we can breathe again so hopefully the alarm won't go off again. Let's pick it up where we left off last week. I see we have the same group as last week. a few students in class and one online. Je vous rappelle que c'est une classe bilingue. A quick reminder that we're going to conclude our case study today of the second season of the conscient podcast, which produced by an Ottawa based sound artist, Claude Schryer and at the end the last class he was reading a quote from a dharma teacher Catherine Ingram.  I think we'll start by playing that again so that you remember what that was about. Despite our having caused so much destruction, it is important to also consider the wide spectrum of possibilities that make up a human life.  Yes, on one end of that spectrum is greed, cruelty, and ignorance; on the other end is kindness, compassion, and wisdom. We are imbued with great creativity, brilliant communication, and extraordinary appreciation of and talent for music and other forms of art. … There is no other known creature whose spectrum of consciousness is as wide and varied as our own.Teacher: Alright. Let's talk about art. One of the key moments in the 2020s was when society started to understand that climate change was a cultural issue and that the role of art was not so much to provide solutions, even though they are important, but to ask hard questions and to help people overcome barriers to action. Here is excerpt that I really like a lot from British ecological artist David Haley. It's fromepisode 43:Climate change is actually a cultural issue, not a scientific issue. Science has been extremely good at identifying the symptoms and looking at the way in which it has manifest itself, but it hasn't really addressed any of the issues in terms of the causes. It has tried to use what you might call techno fix solution focused problem-based approaches to the situation, rather than actually asking deep questions and listening.Adult student: The 2020s sure were a strange time. I heard that some said it was the most exciting time to be alive, but I think it would have been terrifying to live back then and … Teacher (interrupting): You're right and that they were tough times, but they were also a time of possibilities, and some people saw how the arts could step up to the plate and play a much larger role. One of these was Stephen Huddart who was the CEO of a foundation called the JW McConnell Family Foundation based in Montreal. Let's listen to him in episode 58 talk about the crisis and the role of the arts. This is now an existential crisis, and we have in a way, a conceptual crisis, but just understanding we are and what this is, this moment, all of history is behind us: every book you've ever read, every battle, every empire, all of that is just there, right, just right behind us. And now we, we are in this position of emerging awareness that in order to have this civilization, in some form, continue we have to move quickly, and the arts can help us do that by giving us a shared sense of this moment and its gravity, but also what's possible and how quickly that tipping point could be reached.Male student: They keep talking about tipping points. What's a tipping point?Teacher: Ah. Right, sorry about that. I should have filled you in about that. Let me find a quote from episode 19 where Schryer actually refers to an expert on this (sound of typing). Here it is. It's from Canadian writer Britt Wray in an article called Climate tipping points: the ones we actually want. Again, this is Schryer reading that quote. Oh, and you'll notice in this one the sound of a coocoo clock in this one. Schryer liked to insert soundscape compositions in between his interviews in season 2. Here is Britt Wray: When a small change in a complex system produces an enormous shift, that new pathway gets reinforced by positive feedback loops, which lock in all that change. That's why tipping points are irreversible. You can't go back to where you were before. A tipping point that flips non-linearly could be the thing that does us in, but it could also be the thing that allows us to heal our broken systems and better sustain ourselves. Adult student: So, they knew back in the 2020's that they were on the verge of irreversible collapse due to climate change and yet they did nothing to heal their broken systems?  Teacher: It's not that they did nothing but rather that they did not do enough, quickly enough. it's easy to look back and be critical but that's why we're looking at this history and trying to understand what happened back then and what it means to us now. You are students of history, and you know how significant it can be. There were so many theories and great writing about the need for radical change back then by authors such as Richard Heinberg, Jeremy Lent, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Naomi Klein,Michael E. Mann, and so many more, and there were also great podcasts like Green Dreamer and For the Wild that provided words of warning, interviewed brilliant people and alternatives paths forward, it was all there – but at first it did little to mobilise the population. People were pretty comfortable in their lifestyle and mostly lived in a kind of denial about the climate emergency. People only really started changing their behaviour when climate change affected them directly, like a fire or flood in their backyard, and this is when it became clear that the arts had a role to play in shaping the narrative of change and changing the culture. I'll give you an example, performance artist and podcaster Peterson Toscanotalksabout the power of storytelling and the idea of touching people hearts and minds. This is from episode 33:It's artists who not only can craft a good story, but also, we can tell the story that's the hardest to tell and that is the story about the impacts of climate solutions. So, it's really not too hard to talk about the impacts of climate change, and I see people when they speak, they go through the laundry list of all the horrors that are upon us and they don't realize it, but they're actually closing people's minds, closing people down because they're getting overwhelmed. And not that we shouldn't talk about the impacts, but it's so helpful to talk about a single impact, maybe how it affects people locally, but then talk about how the world will be different when we enact these changes. And how do you tell a story that gets to that? Because that gets people engaged and excited because you're then telling this story about what we're fighting for, not what we're fighting against. And that is where the energy is in a story.Female student: Right, so something as simple as a story could change a person's behaviour? Teacher: Yes, it could, because humans are much more likely to understand an issue through a narrative, image or allegory than through raw scientific data. In fact, we need all of it, we need scientists working with artists and other sectors to effect change. People have to work together. As I was listening to episode 19 this next quote struck me as a really good way to talk about the power of words to affect change. It's by Indigenous writer Richard Wagamese in episode 19 :To use the act of breathing to shape air into sounds that take on the context of language that lifts and transports those who hear it, takes them beyond what they think and know and feel and empowers them to think and feel and know even more.  We're storytellers, really. That's what we do. That is our power as human beings.Teacher: How is everyone doing? Need a break? No, ok, well, let's take a look at arts policy in 2021 now. Cultural theorist and musician Dr. David Maggs, wrote a paper in 2021 called Art and the World After This that was commissioned by the Metcalf Foundation. In this excerpt from episode 30, Dr. Maggs explains the unique value proposition of the arts and how the arts sector basically needed to, at the time, reinvent itself:  Complexity is the world built of relationships and it's a very different thing to engage what is true or real in a complexity framework than it is to engage in it, in what is a modernist Western enlightenment ambition, to identify the absolute objective properties that are intrinsic in any given thing. Everyone is grappling with the fact that the world is exhibiting itself so much in these entanglements of relationships. The arts are completely at home in that world. And so, we've been sort of under the thumb of the old world. We've always been a kind of second-class citizen in an enlightenment rationalist society. But once we move out of that world and we move into a complexity framework, suddenly the arts are entirely at home, and we have capacity in that world that a lot of other sectors don't have. What I've been trying to do with this report is articulate the way in which these different disruptions are putting us in a very different reality and it's a reality in which we go from being a kind of secondary entertaining class to, maybe, having a capacity to sit at the heart of a lot of really critical problem-solving challenges.Adult student: We studied this report in an art history class. It's a good piece of writing. I think it had 3 modes of engagement: greening the sector, raising the profile :Teacher: … and I think it was reauthoring the world if I remember correctly. It's interesting to note how the arts community were thinking about how to create ecological artworks as well as theoretical frameworks and how does that happen. I'll give you a couple of examples. First, an environmental theatre company in Vancouver called The Only Animal. Let's listen to their artistic director Kendra Fanconi inepisode 36:Ben Twist at Creative Carbon Scotland talks about the transformation from a culture of consumerism to a culture of stewardship and we are the culture makers so isn't that our job right now to make a new culture and it will take all of us as artists together to do that? …  It's not enough to do carbon neutral work. We want to do carbon positive work. We want our artwork to be involved with ecological restoration. What does that mean? I've been thinking a lot about that. What is theatre practice that actually gives back, that makes something more sustainable? That is carbon positive. I guess that's a conversation that I'm hoping to have in the future with other theatre makers who have that vision.Teacher: This actually happened. The arts community did develop carbon positive arts works. To be realistic the amount of carbon removed from the atmosphere was probably minimal but the impact on audiences and the public at large was large.  At the time and still today, it gets people motivated and open the door to change. People started creating their own carbon positive projects Female student: (interrupting) Amazing! I just found a video of their work on You Tube…Teacher: Please share the link in the chat. It's always good to see what the work looked like. The other example I would give is in Montreal with a group called Écoscéno, which was a circular economy project that recycled theatre sets. Now this one is in French, so let me explain that what Anne-Catherine Lebeau, the ED of that organization is saying. She suggests that the arts community should look at everything it has as a common good, praises the Ellen MacArthur Foundation in England for their work on circular economies and she underlines the need to create art that is regenerative…Let's listen to Anne-Catherine Lebeau in episode 37:. Pour moi, c'est sûr que ça passe par plus de collaboration. C'est ça qui est intéressant aussi. Vraiment passer du modèle ‘Take Make Waste' à ‘Care Dare Share'. Pour moi, ça dit tellement de choses. Je pense qu'on doit considérer tout ce qu'on a dans le domaine artistique comme un bien commun dont on doit collectivement prendre soin. Souvent, au début, on parlait en termes de faire le moins de tort possible à l'environnement, ne pas nuire, c'est souvent comme ça que l'on présente le développement durable, puis en faisant des recherches, et en m'inspirant, entre autres, de ce qui se fait à la Fondation Ellen MacArthur  en Angleterre, en économie circulaire, je me suis rendu compte qu'eux demandent comment faire en sorte de nourrir une nouvelle réalité. Comment créer de l'art qui soit régénératif? Qui nourrisse quelque chose.Male student (interrupting) Sorry, wait, regenerative art was a new thing back then? Teacher: Actually, regenerative art had been around for a while, since the 1960 through the ecological art, or eco art movement that David Haley, who we heard from earlier in this class. he and other eco artists did work with the environment and ecosystems. Let's listen to another excerpt from David Haley from episode 43:What I have learned to do, and this is my practice, is to focus on making space. This became clear to me when I read, Lila : An inquiry into morals by Robert Pirsig. Towards the end of the book, he suggests that the most moral act of all, is to create the space for life to move onwards and it was one of those sentences that just rang true with me, and I've held onto that ever since and pursued the making of space, not the filling of it. When I say I work with ecology, I try to work with whole systems, ecosystems. The things within an ecosystem are the elements with which I try to work. I try not to introduce anything other than what is already there. In other words, making the space as habitat for new ways of thinking, habitat for biodiversity to enrich itself, habitat for other ways of approaching things. I mean, there's an old scientific adage about nature abhors a vacuum, and that vacuum is the space as I see it.Teacher : So eco art was an important movement but it did not become mainstream until the 2020s when natural resources on earth were drying up and people started looking at art forms that were about ecological balance and a harmonious relationship with nature. . Now, fortunately, many artists had tested these models over the years so there was a body of work that already existed about this... Btw there's a great book about eco art that came out in 2022 called Ecoart in Action: Activities, Case Studies, and Provocations for Classrooms and Communities. I'll  put it on the reading list for you so that you can get it form the library. All of this to say that in retrospect, we can see that 2021 was the beginning of the end of capitalism that Dr. Todd Dufresne predicted, and the arts were at the heart of this transformation because they had the ability to us metaphor, imagery, illusion, fantasy, and storytelling to move people's hearts and presented a new vision of the world. So, I think you're starting to see how things were unfolding in the arts community in 2021. What was missing was coordination and some kind of strategic structure to move things along in an organized way now this was happening in the Uk with Julie's Bicycle and Creative Carbon Scotland and similar organizations, but we did not have that in Canada. I want you to listen to an excerpt of Schryer's conversation with Judi Pearl, who ended up being a very important figure in the arts in the 2020's because she was a co- founder with Anjali Appadurai, Anthony Garoufalis-Auger, Kendra Fanconi, Mhiran Faraday, Howard Jang, Tanya Kalmanovitch, David Maggs, Robin Sokoloski and Schryer himself of an organization called SCALE, which I mentioned earlier. Here is Judi Pearl who explains what SCALE was about in episode 59:It's a national round table for the arts and culture sector to mobilize around the climate emergency. A few months ago, you and I, and a few others were all having the same realization that while there was a lot of important work and projects happening at the intersection of arts and sustainability in Canada, there lacked some kind of structure to bring this work together, to align activities, to develop a national strategy, and to deeply, deeply question the role of arts and culture in the climate emergency and activate the leadership of the sector in terms of the mobilization that needs to happen in wider society. SCALE is really trying to become that gathering place that will engender that high level collaboration, which hopefully will create those positive tipping points.Teacher: OK, time is passing quickly here. there are many other examples in season 2 of the role of the arts, about community-engaged arts, immersive systems, activist art, ritual based art, etc. but in the interests of time, I suggest we move to the notion of hope now. There were so many amazing books and podcasts about hope during this time. Schryer mentions that he enjoyed the book by Thomas Homer-Dixon's Commanding Hope, Eslin Kelsey's Hope Matters, Joanna Macy's and Chris Johnstone's classic from 2010, Active Hope but there were many others. The thing about hope back then is that it was aspirational. Indeed, andthere were many different forms of hope. Let's start with Schryer reading a quote from Dr. Todd Dufresne in episode 19:We're all being “radicalized by reality.” It's just that for some people it takes a personal experience of fire, landslide, or hurricane to get their attention. I'm afraid it takes mass death and extinction. … Whoever survives these experiences will have a renewed appreciation for nature, for the external world, and for the necessity of collectivism in the face of mass extinction. There's hope in this — although I admit it's wrapped in ugliness.Teacher: And it is very ugly, isn't it...? Here's another take on hope from composer Dr. Annie Mahtani in episode 52. Annie was director of a electroacoustic music festival in the UK where the focus of the 2021 was on listening and how listening could us better understand our environment. If we can find ways to encourage people to listen, that can help them to build a connection, even if it's to a small plot of land near them. By helping them to have a new relationship with that, which will then expand and help hopefully savour a deeper and more meaningful relationship with our natural world, and small steps like that, even if it's only a couple of people at a time, that could spread. I think that nobody, no one person, is going to be able to change the world, but that doesn't mean we should give up.Female student: I love the focus on listening. I think Schryer was a specialist in acoustic ecology, if I remember correctly.Teacher: Yes. On a similar wavelength, here's excerpt from soundscape composer Hildegard Westerkamp from episode 22:We need toallow for time to pass without any action, without any solutions and to just experience it. I think that a slowdown is an absolute… If there is any chance to survive, that kind of slowing down through listening and meditation and through not doing so much. I think there's some hope in that.Teacher: Thankfully, we did survive, and we did develop the capacity to listen and slow down as Westerkamp suggests. She was quite prescient in this way. But the notion of hope was elusive, because science keep telling us that they were headed for catastrophe, and there was good reason to be concerned about this and this created massive tension. Male Student: How did they manage that? Teacher: They just kept going in spite of the uncertainty and the grim prospect... As I mentioned earlier, no-one knew if was possible to stop the destruction of the planet, but they kept going on and they   use art not only to change systems abut also to keep up morale.  Let's listen to this excerpt from episode 54 with theatre artistIan Garrett: I don't want to confuse the end of an ecologically unsustainable, untenable way of civilization working in this moment with a complete guarantee of extinction. There is a future. It may look very different and sometimes I think the inability to see exactly what that future is – and our plan for it - can be confused for there not being one. I'm sort of okay with that uncertainty, and in the meantime, all one can really do is the work to try and make whatever it ends up being more positive. There's a sense of biophilia about it.Male student: OK, they knew that there would be trouble ahead but what about adaptation and preparedness in the arts community. How did they prepare and adapt to the changing environment? Did they not see it coming?Adult Student: It's one thing to raise awareness through art but how did art actually help people deal with the reality of fires, floods, climate refugees and all of that?Teacher:  Remember that art had the ability to touch people emotions and motivate them to change their attitudes and lifestyles, but it was also a way to teach people how to adapt while continuing to enjoy the things around them. Artist-researcher and educator Jen Rae is a good example. Rae and her colleagues in Australia did a lot of work in the 2020's to develop tools and resources that call upon art to reduce harm during emergencies.  The notion of preparedness. This is from episode 41:The thing about a preparedness mindset is that you are thinking into the future and so if one of those scenarios happens, you've already mentally prepared in some sort of way for it, so you're not dealing with the shock. That's a place as an artist that I feel has a lot of potential for engagement and for communication and bringing audiences along. When you're talking about realities, accepting that reality, has the potential to push us to do other things. It's great to hear about Canada Council changing different ways around enabling the arts and building capacity in the arts in the context of the climate emergency. It'll be interesting to see how artists step up.Teacher: Online student, you have a question. Please go ahead. Female student: Did artists step up? Teacher: Yes, they did. For example, in 2021, there were the Green Sessions organized by SoulPepper Theatrecompany and the Artists for Real Climate Action (ARCA), a really great collective of artists who did all kinds of activist art projects that set the tone for years to come. Some of the most impactful art works were the ones that directly addressed the culture of exploitation and the disconnection from nature that caused the ecological crisis in the first place, so it was not observations but also critique of the root of the issues that humanity was facing at the time. There was also a body work by Indigenous artists, writers, curators and educators that was extremely important and transformative. A good example is Towards Braiding, a collaborative process developed by Elwood Jimmy and Vanessa Andreotti, developed in collaboration with Sharon Stein, in 2020 that opened the door to new ways of working with indigenous communities in cultural institutions and all kinds of settings. It was very impactful. I found an episode from conscient podcast episode 67 from season 3 called ‘wanna be an ally' where Schryer talks about this book and reads the poem called ‘wanna be an ally' from Towards Braiding and I think it's worth listening to the whole thing. It's really important to understand these perspectives. conscient podcast, episode 67, ‘wanna be an ally'? I've been thinking about decolonization and reconciliation and other issues in our relations with indigenous communities. I was reading a text the other day that really affected me positively but also emotionally and I wanted to read it to you. If you remember last episode, I talked about the idea of radical listening. Well, this is a type of radical listening in the sense that each of these words are, I think very meaningful and important for us all to consider. It's from a document called Towards Braiding by Elwood Jimmy and Vanessa. Andreotti written in collaboration with Sharon Stein and it's published by the Musagetes Foundation. I'd like to start by thanking them all for this a very important document that essentially talks about how to, or proposes how to engage indigenous and non-indigenous relations in an institutional setting and, principles and methods, to consider. It's very well-written and I recommend a strongly as something to read and something to do, but for now, I'll just read this poem, on page 39 of the document and, and leave it at that for today because, it's already a lot to consider and as we listen more radically, that means just sitting back and listening with our full attention and openness of mind. So here it is.don't do it for charity, for feeling good, for looking good, or for showing others that you are doing good don't do it in exchange for redemption from guilt, for increasing your virtue, for appeasing your shame, for a vanity award don't put it on your CV, or on Facebook, or in your thesis, don't make it part of your brand, don't use it for self-promotion don't do it as an excuse to keep your privileges, to justify your position, to do everything except what would be actually needed to change the terms of our relationship do it only if you feel that our pasts, presents and futures are intertwined, and our bodies and spirits entangled do it only if you sense that we are one metabolism that is sick, and what happens to me also happens to you do it recognizing that you have the luxury of choice to participate or not, to stand or not, to give up your weekend or not, whereas others don't get to decide don't try to “mould” me, or to “help” me, or to make me say and do what is convenient for you don't weaponize me (“I couldn't possibly be racist”) don't instrumentalize me (“my marginalized friend says”) don't speak for me (“I know what you really mean”)don't infantilize me (“I am doing this for you”) don't make your actions contingent on me confiding in you, telling you my traumas, recounting my traditions, practicing your idea of “right” politics, or performing the role of a victim to be saved by you or a revolutionary that can save you and expect it to be, at times, incoherent, messy, uncomfortable, difficult, deceptive, paradoxical, repetitive, frustrating, incomprehensible, infuriating, boring and painful — and prepare for your heart to break and be stretched do you still want to do it? then share the burdens placed on my back, the unique medicines you bring, and the benefits you have earned from this violent and lethal disease co-create the space where I am able to do the work that only I can and need to do for all of us take a step back from the centre, the frontline from visibility relinquish the authority of your interpretations, your choice, your entitlements, surrender that which you are most praised and rewarded for don't try to teach, to lead, to organize, to mentor, to control, to theorize, or to determine where we should go, how to get there and why offer your energy to peel potatoes, to wash the dishes, to scrub the toilets, to drive the truck, to care for the babies, to separate the trash, to do the laundry, to feed the elders, to clean the mess, to buy the food, to fill the tank, to write the grant proposal, to pay the tab and the bail to do and support things you can't and won't understand,and do what is needed, instead of what you want to do, without judgment, or sense of martyrdom or expectation for gratitude, or for any kind of recognitionthen you will be ready to sit with me through the storm with the anger, the pain, the frustration, the losses, the fears, and the longing for better times with each other and you will be able to cry with me, to mourn with me, to laugh with me, to “heart” with me, as we face our shadows, and find other joys, in earthing, breathing, braiding, growing, cooking and eating, sharing, healing, and thriving side by side so that we might learn to be ourselves, but also something else, something that is also you and me, and you in me, and neither you nor me Teacher: We need to wrap this class up soon, but I think you've noticed that Schryer was deeply influenced by indigenous writers and knowledge keepers of his time. He published a blog in September 2021 that quotes Australian academic and researcher Dr. Tyson Yunkaporta from episode 321 of the Green Dreamer podcast. I'll read a short excerpt now but encourage you to listen to the entire interview if you get a chance. Teacher:The most damaged people on the planet are going to have to set aside their IOUs, set aside any kind of justice, or hope for justice or karma, or anything else, and carry the load for another thousand years to keep everything alive. And it's going to be hard just to forgive and then hand over all this wealth of knowledge and relationship and everything else to the people who are still holding the capital from the last great heist and are not going to give it up or share it anyway. The only way that's going to save the entire planet is to bring everybody back under the law of the land, and be very generous with our social systems, open them up and bring everybody back in. And that's going to be really hard, because at the same time, people are going to be trying to extract from that, corrupt that and everything else. Adult student: That's interesting. It kind of brings us back to the notion of reality and grief, but Yunkaporta doesn't even mention art in that quote so how do we connect the dots with the arts here?Teacher (interrupting): It's a good point but the presence of arts and culture is implied through the notion of the transfer of knowledge and through relationships with humans and the natural world. I think art is there he just did not use the word. Most indigenous cultures at that time did not consider art as separate activity from day-to-day life. It's interesting to observe Yunkaporta's prophesy is essentially what is happening in our world today, isn't it? We're slowly returning to the natural laws of the land, at least in the habitable parts of the planet, and our social systems are being transformed by the knowledge and expertise of Indigenous peoples, right? It's true that we had to go through a tremendous amount of suffering to get there – and we still are - but we seem to be on the other side of that elusive just transition that Anjali Appadurai spoke about in episode 23. So that's why 2021 in the arts in Canada is such an interesting topic and that's why we spent two classes on it as part of this course on Canada in the year 2021. The arts essentially planted seeds for massive transformation that came later. Artists and cultural workers at the time guided the way for that transformation. Unfortunately, we're almost out of time for today's class and my voice is getting tired... I suggest we end the class with another quote from that same blog by Schryer. I've just put it in the chat. I suggest we read it out loud as a group, OK? I'll start and then point to the next person to read out loud. I'll begin.  Now that season 2 is complete, I've been thinking about I can be most useful to the ecological crisis. Is it by sharing more knowledge about art and climate through podcasts like this one? Is it by engaging in more activist and protest art? Or is it by developing more green policies for the arts sector? All of these will likely help, but I think the most useful thing for me to do is to listen radically. Let me explain what I mean by listening radically. Male Student: Listening radically is about listening deeply without passing judgment. Listening radically is about knowing the truth and filtering out the noise. Listening radically is about opening attention to reality and responding to what needs to be done.Female Student: I conclude this blog with a quote that I used at the end of episode 1 of this podcast by Indigenous writer Richard Wagamese, from his novel, For Joshua. ‘We may not relight the fires that used to burn in our villages, but we carry the embers from those fires in our hearts and learn to light new fires in a new world.'Adult Student: ‘We can recreate the spirit of community we had, of kinship, of relationship to all things, of union with the land, harmony with the universe, balance in living, humility, honesty, truth, and wisdom in all of our dealings with each other.'Teacher: OK. We'll continue with more about Canada in 2021 next week. Thanks so much for being such an engaged and fun group today. Merci. Miigwech.(speaking softly under the professor, improvised)Male Student: Thanks Prof. I'm really exhausted but I learned a lot. Female Student: Moi aussi. Merci pour cette classe. Aurevoir 2021. Adult Student: Yup, I learned a lot, but I'm bushed. Does anyone want to go for coffee? *END NOTES FOR ALL EPISODESHere is a link for more information on season 5. Please note that, in parallel with the production of the conscient podcast and it's francophone counterpart, balado conscient, I publish a Substack newsletter called ‘a calm presence' which are 'short, practical essays for those frightened by the ecological crisis'. To subscribe (free of charge) see https://acalmpresence.substack.com. You'll also find a podcast version of each a calm presence posting on Substack or one your favorite podcast player.Also. please note that a complete transcript of conscient podcast and balado conscient episodes from season 1 to 4 is available on the web version of this site (not available on podcast apps) here: https://conscient-podcast.simplecast.com/episodes.Your feedback is always welcome at claude@conscient.ca and/or on conscient podcast social media: Facebook, X, Instagram or Linkedin. I am grateful and accountable to the earth and the human labour that provided me with the privilege of producing this podcast, including the toxic materials and extractive processes behind the computers, recorders, transportation systems and infrastructure that made this production possible. Claude SchryerLatest update on April 2, 2024

'Welcome to the History of 2021 in Canada seminar. We're going to do a case study today of the second season of the conscient podcast.'Claude SchryerThe setting is an undergraduate university history seminar course called ‘History of 2021 in Canada'. I want to thank my son Riel, student of history, for the idea. It is set in the distant future, where a professor is presenting a ‘case study' based on the second season of the conscient podcast as part of a class on art in 2021. The episode is in two parts, episode 63 is part 1 and episode 64 is part 2. You'll see that they are separated by an event, that you'll hear.There are four people in the classroom: the teacher played by myself, Claude Schryer, a young male student is played by my son Riel Schryer, a young female student, who is online, is played by my daughter Clara Schryer and a female adult student is played by my wife Sabrina Mathews. I want to thank the cast.A reminder that most of the narration is in English, but there are elements and excerpts of the interviews that are in French and some of the narrations as well.Thanks for listening. Here are the excerpts from season 2 in this episode (in order of appearance):e54 garrett (2m50s) (with Claude Schryer speaking)é55 trépanier (4m57)e47 keeptwo (7m27s)e21 dufresne (8m38s)e23 appadurai (11m 26s)e26 klein (11h42s)é60 boutet (17m24s)e40 frasz (19m17s)e42 rosen (20m35s)e45 abbott (22m51s)e53 kalmanovitch (25m42s)e51 hiser (27m08s)e25 shaw (28m45s)e63 in Reaper editing softwareThe cast : Sabrina Mathews as 'adult student', Claude Schryer as 'professor' and Riel Schryer as 'male student', September 2021, Ottawa*The cast: Clara Schryer as 'female student', September 2021, OttawaScript (note: the recording has additional elements that were improvised during the recording)(Sounds of students chatting, arriving in class and sitting down)Teacher: Hello students. Let's start OK. Welcome to the History of 2021 in Canada seminar. How is everyone doing? OK? I see that we have 2 students in class and one online. So, today's topic is the arts and the ecological crisis in 2021… comme vous le savez, le cours Histoire de 2021 au Canada est une classe bilingue, alors sentez-vous à l'aise de parler dans la langue de votre choix. Please feel free to speak in the language of your choice in this class or in writing of any of your assignments. Alright, where shall we begin here? We're going to do a case study today of the second season of the conscient podcast, which ran from March to August 2021. It was produced by an Ottawa based sound artist, Claude Schryer, who is passed away now, but I was very fortunate that his children, Riel and Clara, kindly helped me do some of the research for this class. I want to check if you have all had a chance to listen to the course materials, which were… conscient podcast episodes…  19 reality and 62 compilation. Were you…Male student (interrupting): Excuse me, but can you tell us why did you choose this podcast? Historically speaking, you know, there were other podcasts in Canada in 2021 that also explored issues of art and environment. Why this one?Teacher: That's a very good question. I chose the second season of this podcast because Schryer was exploring the themes of reality and ecological grief, which were timely in 2021 and still are today. Also because it gives us a snapshot of what artists and cultural workers were thinking about in relation to the ecological crisis at that time. It was an interesting year, 2021.  This is when the Sixth IPCC report was released, it's when much of western Canada was on fire, which unfortunately become the norm across Canada, it's also when SCALE, the Sectoral Climate Arts Leadership for the Emergency, which an arts and climate emergency organization, was created and so many other things, It was a pivotal year. I'll start by playing a recording of Schryer himself explaining what season 2 is about in conversation with Ian Garrett in episode 54. Let's give that a listen.Why did I ask that question? The reason is because I was living it myself. I was feeling that accepting reality was necessary for me to move on into a more active, engaged... I had to kind of deal with that. The fact that it's so bad, that if I don't actually accept it - especially the baked in things that we can't change - I can't function and just today, May 25th, I had a really bad dark day. I was crying inside my head about how bad things are and just losing hope and then I read this beautiful piece by Rebecca Solnit, who was saying, that there's some hope out there because the combination of all these efforts. You have been made doing a lot, but when you combine that with so many like millions and millions of people around the world who are making a difference, it will come together and there will be a tipping point towards some kind of... not just an awakening, but action... collective action. That's where we need to go and that's where we are going.Female student (interrupting)OK, mais ce balado a été produit par un homme blanc avec tous les préjugés de l'époque…  Teacher: That's a good point. Schryer had good intentions did carry some unconscious biases in his discourse that were typical of his generation and his times but we're focusing on his guests, who were very interesting, and they come from a wide range of cultural backgrounds, ages, and points of view. Why don't we start with one my favorite quotes from episode 55, because I was able to listen to them all as part of my work for this class. It's by indigenous artist France Trepanier, who was a visual artist, curator and researcher of Kanien'kéha:ka and French ancestry. Trepanier was known in the arts community in particular for a project called Primary Colours which placed Indigenous arts at the centre of the Canadian arts system. This excerpt is in French, so I'll let you listen to the original recording then I'll explain what France was talking about for those who don't understand French, and of course, you can use the simultaneous translation function on your computers as well. Je pense que ce cycle du colonialisme, et de ce que ça a apporté, on est en train d'arriver à la fin de ce cycle là aussi, et avec le recul, on va s'apercevoir que cela a été un tout petit instant dans un espace beaucoup plus vaste, et qu'on est en train de retourner à des connaissances très profondes. Qu'est-ce que ça veut dire de vivre ici sur cette planète? Ce que ça implique comme possibilité, mais comme responsabilité aussi de maintenir les relations harmonieuses? Moi, je dis que la solution à la crise climatique c'est cardiaque. Ça va passer par le cœur. On parle d'amour avec la planète. C'est ça, le travail.Teacher: What Trépanier is saying here is that she thinks that the 500 plus year cycle of colonialism on Turtle Island was coming to an end and we now know that she was right, with the Indigenization of Canadian Culture movement that started around then. People began to understand the true meaning of reconciliation during this era. In this quote Trépanier talks about how it's everyone's responsibility to maintain harmonious relationships in their communities and our need to love the planet. Does anyone have any questions so far? No, then I'll move on to…  Female student (interrupting): Wait, professor, are you saying that indigenous arts and culture were not at the heart of Canadian culture in 2021?  Female adult student: Can I answer that one? Teacher: Sure, please go ahead.  Female adult student: Throughout the early history of Canada the arts and culture scene was  dominated by European art forms and left little space for Indigenous voices. This was part of the colonial structure, but it changed when people started listening to indigenous voices and learning about indigenous culture and languages at school, like I did. This re-education led to massive change in cultural institutions and shift in people's worldview…Teacher: That's exactly right. Thank you for that. Let me give you another example of an indigenous artist from season 2. Suzanne Keeptwo was a Métis writer and teacher who wrote a book in 2021 called We All Go Back to the Land : The Who, Why, and How of Land Acknowledgements. This excerpt is from episode 47:In the work that I do and the book that I've just had published called, We All Go Back to the Land, it's really an exploration of that Original Agreement and what it means today. So I want to remind Indigenous readers of our Original Agreement to nurture and protect and honor and respect the Earth Mother and all of the gifts that she has for us and then to introduce that Original Agreement to non-indigenous Canadians or others of the world that so that we can together, as a human species, work toward what I call the ultimate act of   reconciliation: to help heal the earth.Teacher: We'll come back to more indigenous perspectives at the end of today's class. The next recording I want you to listen to isfromepisode 21 with philosopher Dr Todd Dufresne,who wrote a book in 2020 called The Democracy of Suffering:I think capitalism is over, but the problem is we have nothing to replace it with. Here's when we need artists, and others, to tell us what kind of vision they have for a future that is different than that: a future of play and meaningful work would be one future that I think is not just utopic, but very possible. So, there's a possible future moving forward that could be much better than it is right now, but we're not going to get there without democracy of suffering as we're experiencing it now and will at least over the next 20, 30, 40 years until we figure this out, but we need to figure it out quickly.Teacher: Well, overall, Dr. Dufresne was right. We did go through a lot of physical and mental anguish, didn't we, and we still are, in fact, with the resettlements, the food rations and all of that, but we survived and it's interesting to see that Dufresne was right in predicting that artists would help articulate a vision for the future. Artists have always done this, but it was particularly important at this time when the window of time before irreparable damage… was narrowing. There was a sense at the time that there were only a few years left and they were right. So we'll come to see how this happened a bit later but let's move on now to look at some of the causes of the ecological crisis. Why did this happen and what were some of the underlying conditions? Episode 23 features environmental activist Anjali Appadurai and provides insights on range of social and ecological justice issues. BTW does anyone know why Appadurai is famous in the history of climate activism?Male Student: Wasn't she the one that give that speech in 2011 in South Africa. I saw it on You Tube the other day in my History of Social Equity class. I think I can play it for you from my laptop. Here it is:I speak for more than half the world's population. We are the silent majority. You've given us a seat in this hall, but our interests are not on the table.  What does it take to get a stake in this game? Lobbyists? Corporate influence? Money? You've been negotiating all my life. In that time, you've failed to meet pledges, you've missed targets, and you've broken promises.Teacher: Thanks.That's right. Check out the entire speech when you get a chance. Now let's listen to Anjali in her conversation with Schryer. This except is quite fun because they are doing a soundwalk in a park in Vancouver and you hear some of the soundscapes from that time, like crows and those loud gas-powered vehicles during the conversation that were typical of that noisy era. Of course, it all sounds much different today. Here is an excerpt of their conversation. The climate crisis and the broader ecological crisis is a symptom of the deeper disease, which is that rift from nature, that seed of domination, of accumulation, of greed and of the urge to dominate others through colonialism, through slavery, through othering – the root is actually othering – and that is something that artists can touch. That is what has to be healed, and when we heal that, what does the world on the other side of a just transition look like? I really don't want to believe that it looks like exactly this, but with solar. The first language that colonisation sought to suppress, which was that of indigenous people, is where a lot of answers are held.Teacher: So Appadurai worked closely with fellow activist Seth Klein on a project called Climate Emergency Unit which made a parallel between Canada's effort during World War 2 and the efforts required to achieve the just transition and avoid the worse outcomes of climate change based on Seth's book A Good War : Mobilizing Canada for the Climate Emergency.Female student: Can you tell us more about the…  Climate Emergency Unit? What happened to them? Teacher: Well, I know that they were funded by the David Suzuki Institute and that they had four goals. Let's see if I can remember them, oh, I have them right here: to spendwhat it takes to win, to create new economic institutions to get the job done, to shift from voluntary and incentive-based policies to mandatory measures and to tell the truth about the severity of the crisis and communicates a sense of urgency about the measures necessary to combat it.The unit was dissolved once they achieved those goals or at least were sufficiently advanced to be able to move on to other things.  Female student: (interrupting): That's amazing. Teacher: Yes, it was, but it was an uphill battle, but we are thankful that they persisted, along with thousands of other similar environmental initiatives around the world at that time, and most importantly once they were combined and people worked together as a community and they were able to push us away, and all living beings, from the precipice of catastrophe and towards the recovery that we are experiencing today. Of course, we're still in crisis now but back in 2021, they had no idea whether they would succeed. It was a time of great uncertainty, like the beginning of World War 2 in 1940 when Canada and its allies did not know whether their efforts to fight fascism in Europe would succeed. Let's listen to Seth Klein, leader of the Climate Emergency Unit from episode 26 and his interest in the arts to help rally people to this cause: Here would be my challenge to artists today. We're beginning to see artists across many artistic domains producing climate and climate emergency art, which is important and good to see. What's striking to me is that most of it, in the main, is dystopian, about how horrific the world will be if we fail to rise to this moment. To a certain extent, that makes sense because it is scary and horrific, but here's what intrigued me about what artists were producing in the war is that in the main, it was not dystopian, even though the war was horrific. It was rallying us: the tone was rallying us. I found myself listening to this music as I was doing the research and thinking, World War II had a popular soundtrack, the anti-Vietnam war had a popular soundtrack. When I was a kid in the peace and disarmament movement, there was a popular soundtrack. This doesn't have a popular soundtrack, yet.Female student: Yah, but we have a popular soundtrack now for the climate emergency. I sometimes listen to them on my oldie's playlist on Spotify. Do you know that tune from 2025, how did it go (mumbling words and a song, improvised)?Male student (interrupting): But professor, I have trouble understanding what was their problem? The issues seemed so obvious. All the scientific data was there from the COP reports and much more. Why did they have their heads in the sand?Teacher: That's another good question. Let's look at the social structure at the time. The oil and gas industry were extremely wealthy, and powerful and they were desperate to maintain their grip on power, despite the cost to the environment and life on earth it might be, but to be fair, people were also complicit in this dynamic because they were users of this oil and gas, but also because western society had built a massive infrastructure with essentially nonrenewable resources that was destroying the planet and continued to behave in destructive ways. How can we understand this? Schryer talked to a lot of researchers and thought leaders who provides context and insights. Let's listen to arts researcher Dr. Danielle Boutet. This one is in French. She explains the lack of collective awareness inepisode 60. This one is in French, so I'll give you a summary afterwards. Collectivement, on est inconscient. On cherche à parler de la conscience écologique. On cherche à parler de ça, mais en réalité… S'il y a une psyché collective, ce que je crois, je pense qu'il y a une espèce d'esprit collectif, mais c'est un esprit qui est inconscient, qui n'est pas capable de se voir aller, de se réfléchir et donc pas capable de méditer, pas capable de se transformer, donc soumis à ses peurs et ses pulsions. Je suis assez pessimiste par rapport à ça, mais c'est que le deuil écologique, tout le chagrin et toute la peur est refoulée présentement. Il y a des activistes qui crient dans le désert, qui hurlent, et les gens entendent, mais comme dans un brouillard. Ce n'est pas suffisant pour amener à une action collective. Donc, le deuil il est loin d'être fait, collectivement.Teacher: What Boutet is saying here, is that people in 2021 were collectively unconscious or unaware of the severity of environmental issues. Boutet, who was a leading expert on contemporary art, but also on social issues, explains that people were not capable of changing their ways and that their grief and fears were being repressed. She admits that some activists were screaming out loud, and that some people were listening, but was all in a fog, which she calls un brouillard as she says in French, and that there was simply not enough momentum to bring about collective action. Of course, thankfully, this would change once people finally woke up to reality a few years later. At the time it seemed quite grim.One of the issues at the time was also a lack of agency. Let's listen to researcher and arts strategist Alexis Frasz in episode 40 was very articulate about this:There is a lot of awareness and interest in making change and yet change still isn't really happening, at least not at the pace or scale that we need. It feels to me increasingly like there's not a lack of awareness, nor a lack of concern, or even a lack of willingness, but actually a lack of agency. I've been thinking a lot about the role of arts, and culture and creative practice in helping people not just wake up to the need for change, but actually undergo the entire transformational process from that moment of waking up (which you and I share a language around Buddhist practice). There's that idea that you can wake up in an instant but integrating the awakeness into your daily life is actually a process. It's an ongoing thing.Female student (interrupting): Ok, so I get that it's an ongoing thing but what made the difference then?  Do you really think that something as ephemeral and marginal as art had an impact?  Teacher: Well, yes, actually, it did, and we'll get to that soon but first, I'd like to give you another example of the social dynamic at the time. Speaking of time, how are we doing for time, ok?  Here's an excerpt from episode 42 architect Mark Rosen: The idea of enough is very interesting to me. The idea that the planet doesn't have enough for us on our current trajectory is at the heart of that. The question of whether the planet has enough for everyone on the planet, if we change the way we do things is an interesting way. Can we sustain seven, eight, nine billion people on the planet if everyone's idea of enough was balanced with that equation? I don't know, but I think it's possible. I think that if we've shown nothing else as a species, as humans, it's adaptability and resiliency and when forced to, we can do surprisingly monumental things and changes when the threat becomes real to us.Male student: Ok. I get it. When the threat became real, they changed their ways, out of self interest, I suppose… but I have a question. Schryer talks about reality and grief as the two main topics in season 2, right. Why did he do that? I know that he was a zen buddhist and that are interested in reality, but why did he explore those specific issues?Teacher : Schryer asked each of his 41 guests in season 2 how they viewed reality and ecological grief and he got, well, 41 different answers. I've listened to some of them all as part of my research for this class. One of my favorite responses to Schryer's questions about ecological grief is by filmmaker Jennifer Abbott, who was an activist film maker at this time…Male student (interrupting): I found some info her, let me see, I think she co-director and editor of, um (sound of typing) The Corporation (2003), wow, that became most awarded documentary in Canadian history at that time. She was also Co-Director of a sequel called…  The New Corporation: The Unfortunately Necessary Sequel(2020)Adult student: I've seen both of those films in film studies class. Amazing documentaries. I bet they scared the living… Female student (interrupting) And she was also… director of The Magnitude of all Things (2020) which is kind of a classic of the ecological grief film. Teacher: Yes, that's right. Let's listen to an excerpt from episode 45 where Abbott talks about delusion and brainwashing:The notion of reality and the way we grasp reality as humans is so deeply subjective, but it's also socially constructed, and so, as a filmmaker - and this is relevant because I'm also a Zen Buddhist - from both those perspectives, I try to explore what we perceive as reality to untangle and figure out in what ways are we being deluded? And in what ways do we have clear vision? And obviously the clearer vision we can have, the better actions we take to ensure a more compassionate, just and sustainable livable world. I'm all for untangling the delusion while admitting wholeheartedly that to untangle it fully is impossible.Teacher: Let's move on now to the other main issue in season 2, ecological grief, which, at the time, was defined as psychological response to loss caused by environmental destruction. The term Solastalgia, coined by Australian Glenn Albrecht, was also used at the time. What it basically means is how to deal the emotional charge of environmental loss. Of course, we're still dealing with ecological grief today, but at least now we know that one of the best ways to address loss is through regeneration and rebuilding. But back in 2021, ecological grief was something people were becoming aware of and not able to turn it into a positive force, not at first anyway. I would like to start with musician Dr. Tanya Kalmanovitch.Kalmanovitch is an interesting case because she was both an accomplished musician and a leading climate activist. She was raised in the heart of the oil sands in Alberta in Fort McMurray…Female adult student (interrupting): I've heard some of her recordings. She was a great violist and improvisor. Pretty cool lady. Teacher: Great she was also a performer in a project called the Tar Sand Songbook, that actually became now a classic of the climate art canon. Let's listen to her talk about grief and art in episode 53:Normal life in North America does not leave us room for grief. We do not know how to handle grief. We don't know what to do with it. We push it away. We channel it, we contain it, we compartmentalize it. We ignore it. We believe that it's something that has an end, that it's linear or there are stages. We believe it's something we can get through. Whereas I've come to think a lot about the idea of living with loss, living with indeterminacy, living with uncertainty, as a way of awakening to the radical sort of care and love for ourselves, for our fellow living creatures for the life on the planet. I think about how to transform a performance space or a classroom or any other environment into a community of care. How can I create the conditions by which people can bear to be present to what they have lost, to name and to know what we have lost and from there to grieve, to heal and to act in the fullest awareness of loss? Seeing love and loss as intimately intertwined.Teacher: So you can see that people were struggling with grief, including educators, who were trying to figure out how to support their students, many whom were demoralised and had given up hope… but it's around this time that tools starting being created such as the Creative Green Tools and the Existential ToolKit for Climate Justice Educators. One of Schryer's interviews was with climate educator Dr. Krista Hiser, Let's listen to Hiser from episode 51:There's a whole range of emotions around climate emergency, and not getting stuck in the grief. Not getting stuck in anger. A lot of what we see of youth activists and in youth activism is that they get kind of burned out in anger and it's not a sustainable emotion. But none of them are emotions that you want to get stuck in. When you get stuck in climate grief, it is hard to get unstuck, so moving through all the different emotions — including anger and including hope — and that idea of an anthem and working together, those are all part of the emotion wheel that exists around climate change.Female Student: OK. I understand about not getting stuck in climate grief, but now we're paying the price of their neglect. It makes me very angry to think that they could easily have prevented most of the current climate damage during that critical decade in the 2020s, I don't know, by shifting from fossil fuels to renewable energy, and professor, you say that artists played a key role but how did this… Teacher (interrupting): Thank you.  I hear your anger and I understand and I promise we'll get to the role of artists in just a minute, but before that I would you hear Australian Michael Shaw, who produced a film 2019 called Living in the Time of Dying. He talks about fear and grief but also support structures in episode 25: It's a real blessing to feel a sense of purpose that in these times. It's a real blessing to be able to take the feelings of fear and grief and actually channel them somewhere into running a group or to making a film or doing your podcasts. I think it'simportant that people really tune in to find out what they're given to do at this time, to really listen to what the call is in you and follow it. I think there's something that's very generative and supportive about feeling a sense of purpose in a time of collapse.Teacher: Both Shaw and Schryer were influenced by dharma teacher Catherine Ingram, who wrote an essay in 2019 called Facing Extinction. Here's Schryer reading an excerpt from Facing Extinction in episode 19: Despite our having caused so much destruction, it is important to also consider the wide spectrum of possibilities that make up a human life.  Yes, on one end of that spectrum is greed, cruelty, and ignorance; on the other end is kindness, compassion, and wisdom. We are imbued with great creativity, brilliant communication, and extraordinary appreciation of and talent for music and other forms of art. … There is no other known creature whose spectrum of consciousness is as wide and varied as our own.Teacher: (alarm sounding) Darn. It's an air pollution alarm. You know the drill. We have to go to safe area until the air is breathable again. I'm sorry about this. An unfortunate disruption to our class. Why don't we call it a day and pick this up next week? Male Student: These damned things always go off when things are getting good. I really hope one does not go off next week. Teacher : Now let's get out of this smog. (coughing).Note: this episode continues in e64 a case study (part 2) *END NOTES FOR ALL EPISODESHere is a link for more information on season 5. Please note that, in parallel with the production of the conscient podcast and it's francophone counterpart, balado conscient, I publish a Substack newsletter called ‘a calm presence' which are 'short, practical essays for those frightened by the ecological crisis'. To subscribe (free of charge) see https://acalmpresence.substack.com. You'll also find a podcast version of each a calm presence posting on Substack or one your favorite podcast player.Also. please note that a complete transcript of conscient podcast and balado conscient episodes from season 1 to 4 is available on the web version of this site (not available on podcast apps) here: https://conscient-podcast.simplecast.com/episodes.Your feedback is always welcome at claude@conscient.ca and/or on conscient podcast social media: Facebook, X, Instagram or Linkedin. I am grateful and accountable to the earth and the human labour that provided me with the privilege of producing this podcast, including the toxic materials and extractive processes behind the computers, recorders, transportation systems and infrastructure that made this production possible. Claude SchryerLatest update on April 2, 2024

'I think capitalism is over, but the problem is we have nothing to replace it with. Here's when we need artists, and others, to tell us what kind of vision they have for a future that is different than that: a future of play and meaningful work would be one future that I think is not just utopic, but very possible. 'dr. todd dufresne, e21 conscient podcastVideo version:Transcriptione21 dufresne : capitalism is over, my conversation with philosopher Dr. Todd Dufresne about reality, grief, art and the climate crisis.Democracy of SufferingI think capitalism is over, but the problem is we have nothing to replace it with. Here's when we need artists, and others, to tell us what kind of vision they have for a future that is different than that: a future of play and meaningful work would be one future that I think is not just utopic, but very possible. So there's a possible future moving forward that could be much better than it is right now, but we're not going to get there without democracy of suffering as we're experiencing it now and will at least over the next 20, 30, 40 years until we figure this out, but we need to figure it out quickly.e22 westerkamp : slowing down through listening, my conversation with composer and listener Hildegard Westerkamp about acoustic ecology and the climate crisis.Some HopeWe need toallow for time to pass without any action, without any solutions and to just experience it. I think that a slowdown is an absolute - if there is any chance to survive - that kind of slowing down through listening and meditation and through not doing so much. I think there's some hope in that.e23 appadurai: what does a just transition look like?,my ‘soundwalk' conversation with climate activist Anjali Appadurai about the just transition and the role of the arts in the climate emergency.The deeper diseaseThe climate crisis and the broader ecological crisis is a symptom of the deeper disease, which is that rift from nature, that seed of domination, of accumulation, of greed and of the urge to dominate others through colonialism, through slavery, through othering – the root is actually othering – and that is something that artists can touch. That is what has to be healed, and when we heal that, what does the world on the other side of a just transition look like? I really don't want to believe that it looks like exactly this, but with solar. The first language that colonisation sought to suppress, which was that of indigenous people, is where a lot of answers are held.e24 weaving : the good, possible and beautiful, my conversation with artist jil p. weaving about community-engaged arts, public art, the importance of the local, etc.The roles that artists can playThe recognition, and finding ways to assist people, in an awareness of all the good, the possible and the beautiful and where those things can lead, is one of the roles that artists can specifically play. e25 shaw : a sense of purpose, my conversation with Australian climate activist Michael Shaw about support structures for ecogrief and the role of art.Listen to what the call is in youIt's a real blessing to feel a sense of purpose that in these times. It's a real blessing to be able to take the feelings of fear and grief and actually channel them somewhere into running a group or to making a film or doing your podcasts. I think it's important that people really tune in to find out what they're given to do at this time, to really listen to what the call is in you and follow it. I think there's something that's very generative and supportive about feeling a sense of purpose in a time of collapse.e26 klein : rallying through art, my conversation with climate emergency activist Seth Klein about his book A Good War : Mobilizing Canada for the Climate Emergency, the newly formed Climate Emergency Unit and his challenge to artists to help rally us to this causeMy challenge to artists todayHere would be my challenge to artists today. We're beginning to see artists across many artistic domains producing climate and climate emergency art, which is important and good to see. What's striking to me is that most of it, in the main, is dystopian, about how horrific the world will be if we fail to rise to this moment. To a certain extent, that makes sense because it is scary and horrific, but here's what intrigued me about what artists were producing in the war is that in the main, it was not dystopian, even though the war was horrific. It was rallying us: the tone was rallying us. I found myself listening to this music as I was doing the research and thinking, World War II had a popular soundtrack, the anti-Vietnam war had a popular soundtrack. When I was a kid in the peace and disarmament movement, there was a popular soundtrack. This doesn't have a popular soundtrack, yet.é27 prévost : l'énergie créatrice consciente (in French), my conversation with sound artist, musician and radio producer Hélène Prévost about the state of the world and the role of artists in the ecological crisis.The less free art is, the less it disturbsIt is in times of crisis that solutions emerge and that would be my argument. It is in this solution to the crisis that, yes, there is a discourse that will emerge and actions that will emerge, but we can't see them yet. Maybe we can commission them, as you suggest: Can you make me a documentary on this? or Can you make me a performance that will illustrate this aspect? But for the rest, I think we must leave creative energy be free, but not unconscious. That's where education, social movements and education, or maybe through action. You see, and I'm going to contradict myself here, and through art, but not art that is servile, but art that is free. I feel like quoting Josée Blanchette in Le Devoirwho, a week ago, said 'the less free art is, the less it disturbs'.é28 ung : résilience et vulnérabilité (in French), my conversation with educator and philosopher Jimmy Ung about the notion of privilege, resilience, the role of the arts in facilitating intercultural dialogue and learning, education, social justice, etc. Practicing resilienceResilience, at its core, is having the ability to be vulnerable and I think often resilience is seen as the ability to not be vulnerable, and for me, the opposite, more like resilience is the ability to be vulnerable and to believe with hope. Maybe we have the ability to bounce back, to come back, to rise again, to be reborn? I think that's a way of practicing resilience, which is more and more necessary. Because if we want to move forward, if we want to learn and learn to unlearn, we will have to be vulnerable and therefore see resilience as the ability to be vulnerable.e29 loy, : the bodhisattva path my conversation with professor, writer and Zen teacher David Loy about the bodhisattva path, the role of storytelling, interdependence, nonduality and the notion of ‘hope' through a Buddhist lens.The ecological crisis as a kind of the karmaSome people would say, OK, we have a climate crisis, so we've got to shift as quickly as possible as we can from fossil fuels to renewable sources of energy, which is right. But somehow the idea that by doing that we can just sort of carry on in the way that we have been otherwise is a misunderstanding. We have a much greater crisis here and what it fundamentally goes back to is this sense of separation from the earth, that we feel our wellbeing, therefore, is separate from the wellbeing of the earth and that therefore we can kind of exploit it and use it in any way we want. I think we can understand the ecological crisis as a kind of the karma built into that way of relating and exploiting the earth. The other really important thing, which I end up talking about more often, is I think Buddhism has this idea of the bodhisattva path, the idea that it's not simply that we want to become awakened simply for our own benefit, but much more so that we want to awaken in order to be a service to everyone. e30 maggs : art and the world after this, my conversation with cultural theorist David Maggs about artistic capacity, sustainability, value propositions, disruption, recovery, etc.Entanglements of relationshipsComplexity is the world built of relationships and it's a very different thing to engage what is true or real in a complexity framework than it is to engage in it, in what is a modernist Western enlightenment ambition, to identify the absolute objective properties that are intrinsic in any given thing. Everyone is grappling with the fact that the world is exhibiting itself so much in these entanglements of relationships. The arts are completely at home in that world. And so, we've been sort of under the thumb of the old world. We've always been a kind of second-class citizen in an enlightenment rationalist society. But once we move out of that world and we move into a complexity framework, suddenly the arts are entirely at home, and we have capacity in that world that a lot of other sectors don't have. What I've been trying to do with this report (Art and the World After This) is articulate the way in which these different disruptions are putting us in a very different reality and it's a reality in which we go from being a kind of secondary entertaining class to, maybe, having a capacity to sit at the heart of a lot of really critical problem-solving challenges.e31 morrow : artists as reporters, my conversation with composer, sound artist, performer, and innovator Charlie Morrow about the origins of the conscient podcast, music, acoustic ecology, art and climate, health, hope and artists as journalists. In tune with what's going on in the worldI think that artists are for the most part in tune with what's going on in the world. We're all reporters, somehow journalists, who translate our message into our art, as art is in my mind, a readout, a digested or raw readout of what it is that we're experiencing. Our wish to be an artist is in fact, in order to be able to spend our lives doing that process.é32 tsou : changer notre culture (in French), my conversation (in French) with musician and cultural diplomacy advisor Shuni Tsou about citizen engagement, cultural action, the ecological crisis, arts education, social justice, systemic change, equity, etc,Cultural change around climate actionCitizen engagement is what is needed for cultural change around climate action. It's really a cultural shift in any setting. When you want to make big systemic changes, you have to change the culture and arts and culture are good tools to change the culture.e33 toscano : what we're fighting for, my conversation podcaster and artist Peterson Toscano about the role of the arts in the climate crisis, LGBTQ+ issues, religion, the wonders of podcasting, impacts, storytelling, performance art, etc. Where the energy is in a storyIt's artists who not only can craft a good story, but also we can tell the story that's the hardest to tell and that is the story about the impacts of climate solutions. So it's really not too hard to talk about the impacts of climate change, and I see people when they speak, they go through the laundry list of all the horrors that are upon us and they don't realize it, but they're actually closing people's minds, closing people down because they're getting overwhelmed. And not that we shouldn't talk about the impacts, but it's so helpful to talk about a single impact, maybe how it affects people locally, but then talk about how the world will be different when we enact these changes. And how do you tell a story that gets to that? Because that gets people engaged and excited because you're then telling this story about what we're fighting for, not what we're fighting against. And that is where the energy is in a story.é34 ramade : l'art qui nous emmène ailleurs (in French), my conversation (in French) with art historian, critic, curator and art and environment expert Bénédicte Ramade on the climate emergency, nature, music, visual arts, ecological art, etc.With music, you can convey so many thingsI am thinking of artist-composers who write pieces based on temperature readings that are converted into musical notes. This is also how the issue of global warming can be transmitted, from a piece played musically translating a stable climate that is transformed and that comes to embody in music a climatic disturbance. It is extraordinary. Is felt by the music, a fact of composition, something very abstract, with a lot of figures, statistical curves. We are daily fed with figures and statistical curves about the climate. ‘They literally do nothing to us anymore'. But on a more sensitive level, with the transposition into music, if it is played, if it is interpreted, ah, suddenly, it takes us elsewhere. And when I talk about these works, sometimes people who are more scientific or museum directors are immediately hooked, saying ‘it's extraordinary with music, you can convey so many things.e35 salas : adapting to reality, my conversation with Spanish curator + producer Carmen Salas on reality, ecogrief, artists & the climate crisis, arts strategies, curating and her article Shifting ParadigmsArtists need help in this processI find that more and more artists are interested in understanding how to change their practice and to adapt it to the current circumstances. I really believe artists need help in this process. Like we all do. I'm not an environmental expert. I'm not a climate expert. I'm just a very sensitive human being who is worried about what we are leaving behind for future generations. So, I'm doing what I can to really be more ethical with my work, but I'm finding more and more artists who are also struggling to understand what they can do. I think when in a conversation between curators or producers like myself and people like you - thinkers and funders - to come together and to understand the current situation, to accept reality, then we can strategize about how we can put things into place and how we can provide more funding for different types of projects.e36 fanconi : towards carbon positive work, my conversation with theatre artist and art-climate activist Kendra Fanconi, artistic director of The Only Animal about the role of the arts in the climate emergency, carbon positive work, collaboration and artists mobilization.Ecological restorationBen Twist at Creative Carbon Scotland talks about the transformation from a culture of consumerism to a culture of stewardship and we are the culture makers so isn't that our job right now to make a new culture and it will take all of us as artists together to do that? …  It's not enough to do carbon neutral work. We want to do carbon positive work. We want our artwork to be involved with ecological restoration. What does that mean? I've been thinking a lot about that. What is theatre practice that actually gives back, that makes something more sustainable? That is carbon positive. I guess that's a conversation that I'm hoping to have in the future with other theatre makers who have that vision.é37 lebeau : l'art régénératif (in French), my conversation with Écoscéno co-founder and executive director Anne-Catherine Lebeau on collaboration, circular economies, the role of art in the climate crisis, moving from ‘Take Make Waste' to ‘Care Dare Share' and creating regenerative art.From 'Take Make Waste' to 'Care Dare Share'For me, it is certain that we need more collaboration. That's what's interesting. Moving from a 'Take Make Waste' model to 'Care Dare Share'. To me, that says a lot. I think we need to look at everything we have in the arts as a common good that we need to collectively take care of. Often, at the beginning, we talked in terms of doing as little harm as possible to the environment, not harming it, that's often how sustainable development was presented, then by doing research, and by being inspired, among other things, by what is done at the Ellen MacArthur Foundation in England, around circular economies, I realized that they talk about how to nourish a new reality. How do you create art that is regenerative? Art that feeds something.e38 zenith : arts as medicine to metabolize charge, my conversation with animist somatic practitioner, poet, philosopher, ecologist and clown Shante' Sojourn Zenith about reality, somatics, ecological grief, rituals, nature, performance and ecological imaginations.The intensity that's left in the systemArt is the medicine that actually allows us to metabolize charge. It allows us to metabolize trauma. It takes the intensity that's left in the system, and this goes all the way back to ritual. Art, for me, is a sort of a tributary coming off from ritual that is still sort of consensually allowed in this reality when the direct communication with nature through ritual was silenced, so it comes back to that wider river…e39 engle : the integral role of the arts in societal change, my conversation with urbanist Dr. Jayne Engle about participatory city planning, design, ecological crisis, sacred civics, artists and culture in societal and civilizational change.How change occursThe role of artists and culture is fundamental and so necessary, and we need so much more of it and not only on the side. The role of arts and culture in societal and civilizational change right now needs to be much more integral into, yes, artworks and imagination - helping us to culturally co-produce how we live and work together into the future and that means art works - but it also means artists perspectives into much more mainstream institutions, ideas, and thoughts about how change occurs.e40 frasz : integrated awakeness in daily life, my conversation with researcher and strategic thinker Alexis Frasz about ecological crisis, creative climate action, community arts, Buddhism, leadership and cross-sectoral arts practices. A lack of agencyThere is a lot of awareness and interest in making change and yet change still isn't really happening, at least not at the pace or scale that we need. It feels to me increasingly like there's not a lack of awareness, nor a lack of concern, or even a lack of willingness, but actually a lack of agency. I've been thinking a lot about the role of arts, and culture and creative practice in helping people not just wake up to the need for change, but actually undergo the entire transformational process from that moment of waking up (which you and I share a language around Buddhist practice). There's that idea that you can wake up in an instant but integrating the awakeness into your daily life is actually a process. It's an ongoing thing.e41 rae : a preparedness mindsetmy conversation with artist-researcher, facilitator and educator Jen Rae about art and emergency preparedness, community arts, reality, ecological grief, arts and climate emergency in Australia How artists step upThe thing about a preparedness mindset is that you are thinking into the future and so if one of those scenarios happens, you've already mentally prepared in some sort of way for it, so you're not dealing with the shock. That's a place as an artist that I feel has a lot of potential for engagement and for communication and bringing audiences along. When you're talking about realities, accepting that reality, has the potential to push us to do other things. It's great to hear about Canada Council changing different ways around enabling the arts and building capacity in the arts in the context of the climate emergency. It'll be interesting to see how artists step up.e42 rosen : when he climate threat becomes real, my conversation with architect Mark Rosen about what is enough, green buildings, how to change the construction industry, barriers and constraints in finding solutions to the climate crisis and deferred ecological debt.The idea of enoughThe idea of enough is very interesting to me. The idea that the planet doesn't have enough for us on our current trajectory is at the heart of that. The question of whether the planet has enough for everyone on the planet, if we change the way we do things is an interesting way. Can we sustain seven, eight, nine billion people on the planet if everyone's idea of enough was balanced with that equation? I don't know, but I think it's possible. I think that if we've shown nothing else as a species, as humans, it's adaptability and resiliency and when forced to, we can do surprisingly monumental things and changes when the threat becomes real to us.ConstraintsOne of the things that I find very interesting in my design process as an architect is that if you were to show me two possible building sites, one that is a green field wide open, with nothing really influencing the site flat, easy to build, and then you show me a second site that is a steep rock face with an easement that you can't build across. Inevitably, it seems to be that the site with more constraints results in a more interesting solution and the idea that constraints can be of benefit to the creative process is one that I think you can apply things that, on the surface, appear to be barriers instead of constraints. Capitalism, arguably, is one of those, if we say we can't do it because it costs too much, we're treating it as a barrier, as opposed to us saying the solution needs to be affordable, then it becomes a constraint and we can push against constraints and in doing so we can come up with creative solutions and so, one way forward, is to try and identify these things that we feel are preventing us from doing what we know we need to do and bringing them into our process as constraints, that influence where we go rather than prevent us from going where we need to go.e43 haley: climate as a cultural issue my conversation with British ecoartist David Haley about ecoart, climate change as a cultural issue, speaking truth to power, democracy, regeneration, morality, creating space and listening.Deep questions and listeningClimate change is actually a cultural issue, not a scientific issue. Science has been extremely good at identifying the symptoms and looking at the way in which it has manifest itself, but it hasn't really addressed any of the issues in terms of the causes. It has tried to use what you might call techno fix solution focused problem-based approaches to the situation, rather than actually asking deep questions and listening.A regenerative way of doing and thinkingGoing back to reality, one of the issues that we are not tackling is that we're taking a dystopian view upon individual activities that creates guilt, syndromes, and neuroses which of course means that the systems of power are working and in terms of actually addressing the power - of speaking truth to power - we need to name the names, we need to name Standard Oil, IG Farben who now call themselves ESSO, Chevron, Mobil, DuPont, BP, Bayer, Monsanto BASF, Pfizer and so on. These are the people that control the governments that we think we're voting for and the pretense of democracy that follows them. Until those organizations actually rescind their power to a regenerative way of doing and thinking, we're stuffed, to put pretty bluntly.Create the space for life to move onwardsWhat I have learned to do, and this is my practice, is to focus on making space. This became clear to me when I read, Lila : An inquiry into morals by Robert Pirsig. Towards the end of the book, he suggests that the most moral act of all, is to create the space for life to move onwards and it was one of those sentences that just rang true with me, and I've held onto that ever since and pursued the making of space, not the filling of it. When I say I work with ecology, I try to work with whole systems, ecosystems. The things within an ecosystem are the elements with which I try to work. I try not to introduce anything other than what is already there. In other words, making the space as habitat for new ways of thinking, habitat for biodiversity to enrich itself, habitat for other ways of approaching things. I mean, there's an old scientific adage about nature abhors a vacuum, and that vacuum is the space as I see it.e44 bilodeau : the arts are good at changing culture, my conversation with playwright and climate activist Chantal Bilodeau about theatre, cultural climate action, the role of art in the climate emergency and how to build audiences and networksLet's think about it togetherI think of the arts as planting a seed and activism as being the quickest way you can get from A to B. So activism is like, this is what we're going to do. We have to do it now. This is a solution. This is what we're working towards and there's all kinds of different solutions, but it's about action. The arts are not about pushing any one solution or telling people, this is what you need to do. It is about saying here's a problem. Let's think about it together. Let's explore avenues we could take. Let's think about what it means and what it means, not just, should I drive a car or not, but what it means, as in, who are we on this earth and what is our role? How do we fit in the bigger ecosystem of the entire planet? I think the arts are something very good to do that and they are good at changing a culture.e45 abbott : a compassionate, just and sustainable world, my conversation with filmmaker Jennifer Abbott about her film The Magnitude of all Things, reality, zen, compassion, grief, art and how to ensure a more compassionate, just and sustainable livable world.Untangling the delusionThe notion of reality and the way we grasp reality as humans is so deeply subjective, but it's also socially constructed, and so, as a filmmaker - and this is relevant because I'm also a Zen Buddhist - from both those perspectives, I try to explore what we perceive as reality to untangle and figure out in what ways are we being diluted? And in what ways do we have clear vision? And obviously the clearer vision we can have, the better actions we take to ensure a more compassionate, just and sustainable livable world. I'm all for untangling the delusion while admitting wholeheartedly that to untangle it fully is impossible.We're headed for some catastropheIn terms of why people are so often unable to accept the reality of climate change, I think it's very understandable, because the scale and the violence of it is just so vast, it's difficult to comprehend. It's also so depressing and enraging if one knows the politics behind it and overwhelming. I don't think we, as a species, deal with things that have those qualities very well and we tend to look away. I have a lot of compassion, including for myself, in terms of how difficult it is to come to terms with the climate catastrophe. It is the end of the world as we know it. We don't know what exactly the new world is going to look like, but we do know we're headed for some catastrophe. e46 badham : creating artistic space to think, my conversation with Dr Marnie Badham about art and social justice practice Australia and Canada, research on community-engaged arts, cultural measurement, education and how the arts create space for people to think through issues such as the climate emergency.There's a lot that the arts can doI think going forward, there's a lot that the arts can do. Philosophically art is one of the only places that we can still ask these questions, play out politics and negotiate ideas. Further, art isn't about communicating climate disaster, art is about creating space for people to think through some of these issues.e47 keeptwo : reconciliation to heal the earth, my conversation with Indigenous writer, editor, teacher and journalist Suzanne Keeptwo about Indigenous rights and land acknowledgements, arts education, cultural awareness and the role of art in the climate emergency.Original AgreementIn the work that I do and the book that I've just had published called, We All Go Back to the Land, it's really an exploration of that Original Agreement and what it means today. So I want to remind Indigenous readers of our Original Agreement to nurture and protect and honor and respect the Earth Mother and all of the gifts that she has for us and then to introduce that Original Agreement to non-indigenous Canadians or others of the world that so that we can together, as a human species, work toward what I call the ultimate act of reconciliation to help heal the earth.é48 danis : l'art durable (in French), my conversation with author and multidisciplinary artist Daniel Danis on sustainable art, consciousness, dreams, storytelling, territory, nature, disaster and the role of art in the ecological transitionImages of our shared ecology are bornIt's like saying that we make art, but it's an art that, all of a sudden, just like that, is offered. We don't try to show it, rather, we try to experience something and to make people experience things and therefore, without being in the zone of cultural mediation, but to be in a zone of experiences, of exchanges and therefore that I don't control. For example, in the theatre, a bubble in which I force the spectator to look and to focus only on what I am telling them, how can we tell ourselves about the planet? How can we tell ourselves about our terrestrial experiences, where we share a place between branches, clay, repair bandages and traces of the earth on a canvas or ourselves lying on the earth? No matter, all the elements that one could bring as possible traces of a shareable experience are present, and from there, all of a sudden, images of our shared ecology are born.Art must emit wavesFor me, a manifestation of art must emit waves and it is not seen, it is felt and therefore it requires the being - those who participate with me in my projects or myself on the space that I will manifest these objects there - to be in a porosity of my body that allows that there are waves that occur and necessarily, these waves the, mixed with the earth and that a whole set, we are in cooperation. It is sure that it has an invisible effect which is the wave, and which is the wave of sharing, of sharing, not even of knowledge, it is just the sharing of our existence on earth and how to be co-operators?e49 windatt : holistic messages, my conversation with Indigenous artist Clayton Windatt of about visual arts, Indigenous sovereignty, decolonization, the arts and social change, communications, artists rights, the climate emergency and hope.Make a changeWhat if you tasked the arts sector with how to make messages, not about the crisis, but on the shifts in behavior that are necessary on a more meaningful basis. When the pandemic began and certain products weren't on the shelves at grocery stores, but there was still lots of stuff. There were shortages, but there wasn't that much shortage. How much would my life really change if half the products in the store were just not here, right and half of them didn't come from all over in the world? Like they were just: whatever made sense to have it available here and just having less choice. How terrible would that be: kind of not. How can we change behavior on a more holistic level, and have it stick, because that's what we need to do right now, and I think the arts would be a great vehicle to see those messages hit everybody and make a change.e50 newton : imagining the future we want, my conversation with climate activist Teika Newton about climate justice, hope, science, nature, resilience, inter-connections and the role of the arts in the climate emergency.There are no limitsThere are so many amazing people across this country who are helping to make change and are holding such a powerful vision for what the future can be. We get trapped in thinking about the paradigm limit in which we currently live, we put bounds on what feels like reality and what feels possible. There are no limits, and the arts helps us to push against that limited set of beliefs and helps us to remember that the way that we know things to be right now is not fixed. We can imagine anything. We can imagine the future we want.We need to love the things around usI see that there are a lot of ways in which people in my community use the landscape in a disrespectful way. Not considering that that's someone's home and that a wild place is not just a recreational playground for humans. It's not necessarily a source of wealth generation. It's actually a living, breathing entity and a home to other things and a home to us as well. I find that all really troubling that there is that disconnection and it sometimes does make me despair about the future course that we're on. You know, if we can't take care of the place that sustains us, if we can't live with respect for not just our human neighbours, but our wilderness neighbors, I don't know how well we're going to fare in the future. We need to love the things around us in order to care for them.Feel connected to othersHaving the ability to come together as a community and participate in the collective act of creating and expressing through various media, whether that's song, the written word, poetry, painting, mosaic or mural making, so many different ways of expressing, I think are really, really valuable for keeping people whole grounded, mentally healthy and to feel connected to others. It's the interconnection among people that will help us to survive in a time of crisis. The deeper and more complex the web of connections, the better your chances of resilience.e51 hiser : the emotional wheel of climate, my conversation with educator Dr. Krista Hiser on research about climate education, post-apocalyptic and cli-fi literature, musical anthems, ungrading, art as an open space and the emotional wheel of the climate emergency.Help them see that realityWhat motivates me is talking to students in a way that they're not going to come back to me in 10 years with this look on their face, you know, Dr. Hiser, why didn't you tell me this? Why didn't you tell me? I want to be sure that they're going to leave the interaction that we get to have that they're going to leave with at least an idea that someone tried to help them see that reality.The last open spaceThe art space is maybe the last open space where that boxiness and that rigidity isn't as present.Knowledge intermediariesThe shift is that faculty are really no longer just experts. They are knowledge brokers or knowledge intermediaries. There's so much information out there. It's so overwhelming. There are so many different realities that faculty need to interact with this information and create experiences that translate information for students so that students can manage their own information.Not getting stuck in the griefThere's a whole range of emotions around climate emergency, and not getting stuck in the grief. Not getting stuck in anger. A lot of what we see of youth activists and in youth activism is that they get kind of burned out in anger and it's not a sustainable emotion. But none of them are emotions that you want to get stuck in. When you get stuck in climate grief, it is hard to get unstuck, so moving through all the different emotions — including anger and including hope — and that idea of an anthem and working together, those are all part of the emotion wheel that exists around climate change.e52 mahtani : listening and connecting, my conversation with composer Dr. Annie Mahtani about music, sound art, the climate emergency, listening, nature, uncertainty, festivals, gender parity and World Listening DayThat doesn't mean we should give upIf we can find ways to encourage people to listen, that can help them to build a connection, even if it's to a small plot of land near them. By helping them to have a new relationship with that, which will then expand and help hopefully savour a deeper and more meaningful relationship with our natural world, and small steps like that, even if it's only a couple of people at a time, that could spread. I think that nobody, no one person, is going to be able to change the world, but that doesn't mean we should give up. Exploration of our soundscapesFor the (BEAST) festival we wanted to look at what COVID has done to alter and adjust people's practice, the way that composers and practitioners have responded to the pandemic musically or through listening and also addressing the wider issues: what does it mean going forwards after this year, the year of uncertainty, the year of opportunity for many? What does it mean going forward to our soundscape, to our environmental practice and listening? We presented that goal for words, as a series of questions, you know, not expecting necessarily any answers, but a way in a way to address it and a way to explore and that's what the, the weekend of concerts and talks and workshops was this kind of exploration of our soundscapes, thinking about change and thinking about our future.e53 kalmanovitch : nurturing imagination, my conversation with musician Dr. Tanya Kalmanovitch about music, ethnomusicology, alberta tar sands, arts education, climate emergency, arts policy and how artistic practice can nurture imaginationThe content inside a silenceOne of the larger crises we face right now is actually a crisis of failure of imagination and one of the biggest things we can do in artistic practice is to nurture imagination. It is what we do. It's our job. We know how to do that. We know how to trade in uncertainty and complexity. We understand the content inside a silence, it's unlocking and speaking to ways of knowing and being and doing that when you start to try to talk about them in words, it is really challenging because it ends up sounding like bumper stickers, like ‘Music Builds Bridges'. I have a big problem with universalizing discourses in the arts, as concealing structures of imperialism and colonialism.GriefNormal life in North America does not leave us room for grief. We do not know how to handle grief. We don't know what to do with it. We push it away. We channel it, we contain it, we compartmentalize it. We ignore it. We believe that it's something that has an end, that it's linear or there are stages. We believe it's something we can get through. Whereas I've come to think a lot about the idea of living with loss, living with indeterminacy, living with uncertainty, as a way of awakening to the radical sort of care and love for ourselves, for our fellow living creatures for the life on the planet. I think about how to transform a performance space or a classroom or any other environment into a community ofcare. How can I create the conditions by which people can bear to be present to what they have lost, to name and to know what we have lost and from there to grieve, to heal and to act inthe fullest awareness of loss? Seeing love and loss as intimately intertwined.StorytellingMy idea is that there's a performance, which is sort of my offering, but then there's also a series of participatory workshops where community members can sound their own stories about where we've come from, how they're living today and the future in which they wish to live, what their needs are, what their griefs are. So here, I'm thinking about using oral history and storytelling as a practice that promotes ways of knowing, doing and healing … with storytelling as a sort of a participatory and circulatory mechanism that promotes healing. I have so much to learn from indigenous storytelling practices. Nature as musicWe are all every one of us musicians. When youchoose what song you wake up to on your alarm or use music to set a mood. You sing a catchy phrase to yourself or you sing a child asleep: you're making musical acts. Then extend that a little bit beyond that anthropocentric lens and hear a bird as a musician, a creek as a musician and that puts us into that intimate relationship with the environment again.AlbertaI guess this is plea for people to not think aboutoil sands issues as being Alberta issues, but as those being everyone everywhere issues, and not just because of the ecological ethical consequences ofthe contamination of the aquifer, what might happen if 1.4 trillion liters of toxic process water, if the ponds holding those rupture, what might happen next…That story will still be there, that land and the people, the animals and the plants, all those relationships will still be imperiled, right? So to remember, first of all, that it's not just an Alberta thing and that the story doesn't end just because Teck pulled it's Frontier mining proposal in February, 2020. The story always goes on. I want to honor the particular and the power of place and at the same time I want touplift the idea that we all belong to that place.e54 garrett : empowering artists, my conversation with theatre artist Ian Garrett about ethics, theatre, education, role of art in Climate Emergency, Sustainability in Digital Transformation & carbon footprint of Cultural Heritage sector. Complete guarantee of extinctionI don't want to confuse the end of an ecologically unsustainable, untenable way of civilization working in this moment with a complete guarantee of extinction. There is a future. It may look very different and sometimes I think the inability to see exactly what that future is – and our plan for it - can be confused for there not being one. I'm sort of okay with that uncertainty, and in the meantime, all one can really do is the work to try and make whatever it ends up being more positive. There's a sense of biophilia about it.A pile of burning tiresThe extreme thought experiment that I like to use in a performance context is: if you had a play in which the audience left with their minds changed about all of their activities, you could say that that is positive. But, if the set that it took place on was a pile of burning tires – which is an objectively bad thing to do for the environment – there is a conversation by framing it as an arts practice as to is there value in having that impact, because of the greater impact. And those sorts of complexities have sort of defined the fusion and different approaches in which to take; it's not just around metrics.Individual values towards sustainabilityThe intent of it [the Julie's Bicycle Creative Green Tools] is not like LEED in which you are getting certified because you have come up with a precise carbon footprint. It's a tool for, essentially, decision-making in that artistic context, that if you know this information, then you have a better way to consider critically the way that you are making and what you're making and how you are representing your values and those aspects, regardless of whether or not it is explicitly part of the work. And so there's lots of tools in which I've had the opportunity to have a relationship with which that are really about empowering artists, arts makers, arts collectives to be able to make those decisions so that their individual values towards sustainability – regardless of what they're actually making – can also be represented and that they can make choices that best represent those regardless of whether or not they're explicitly creating something for ‘earth day'.The separation of the artist from the personThe separation of the artist from the person and articulating as a profession is a unique thing, whereas an alternative to that could just be that we are expressive and artistic beings that seeks to create and have different talents but turning that into a profession is something that we've done to ourselves and so while we do that, we exist within systems, our cultural organizations exist within systems, that have impacts much farther outside of it so that a systems analysis approach is really important.é55 trépanier : un petit instant dans un espace beaucoup plus vaste (in French), my  conversation with indigenous artist France Trépanier about colonialism, indigenous cultures, ecological transition, time, art, listening, dreams, imagination and this brief moment…The responsibility to maintain harmonious relationshipsI think that with this cycle of colonialism, and what it has brought, that we are coming to the end of this century, and with hindsight, we will realize that it was a very small moment in a much larger space, and that we are returning to very deep knowledge. What does it mean to live here on this planet? What does it mean to have the possibility, but also the responsibility to maintain harmonious relationships? I say that the solution to the climate crisis is ‘cardiac'. It will go through the heart. We are talking about love of the planet. That's the work.Terra nulliusFor me, the challenge of the ecological issue or the ecological crisis in which we find ourselves is to understand the source of the problem and not just to put a band-aid on it, not just to try to make small adjustments to our ways of living, but to really look at the very nature of the problem. For me, I think that something happened at the moment of contact, at the moment when the Europeans arrived. They arrived with this notion of property. They talked about Terra Nullius, the idea that they could appropriate territories that were 'uninhabited' (I put quotation marks on uninhabited) and I think that was our first collision of worldviews.Eurocentric vision of artistic practicesIf we take a longer-term view of how the eurocentric view of artistic practices have imposed itself on the material practices of world cultures, this is going to be a very small moment in history. The idea of disciplines, the way in which the Eurocentric vision imposed categories and imposed a certain elitism of practices. The way it also declassified the material culture of the First Nations, or it was not possible, it was not art. Art objects became either artifacts or crafts. It was completely declassified, we didn't understand. I think the first people who came here didn't understand what was in front of them.The real tragedyThe artist Mike MacDonald was telling a story, Mike, who is a Mi'kmaq artist, who is with us now, but who has done remarkable work, a new media artist, he was telling a story once about one of the elders in his community, he was saying that the real tragedy of Canada, it's not that people have been prevented from speaking their language. The real tragedy is that the newcomers have not adopted the cultures here. So 'there have been great misunderstandings. Rewriting the worldI don't think we need to rewrite anything at all. I think we just need to pay attention and listen. We just need to shut up a little bit for a while. Because it's in the notion of authoring there is the word 'author' which presupposes the word authority and I'm not sure that's what we need right now. I think it's the opposite. I think we need to change our relationship to authority. We need to deconstruct that idea when we're being the decision makers or the masters of anything. I don't think that's the right approach. I think you have to listen. I'm not saying that we shouldn't imagine - I think that imagination is important in this attentive listening - but to think that we are going to rewrite is perhaps a little pretentious.é56 garoufalis-auger : surmonter les injustices (in French), my conversation with activist Anthony Garoufalis-Auger about sacrifice, injustices, strategies, activism, youth, art, culture, climate emergency and disaster SacrificeIt's going to take sacrifice and it's going to take a huge commitment to change things, so maybe getting out of our comfort zone will be necessary at this point in history. What's interesting is looking at the past and the history of humanity. It has taken a lot of effort to change things, but at least we have examples in history where we have come together to overcome injustices. We need to be inspired by this.We are really heading for disasterThe people around me, the vast majority, understand where we are with climate change. There is a complete disconnect with the reality that we see in our mass culture and in the news which is not a constructed reality. What science tells us is reality. We are really heading for disaster. é57 roy : ouvrir des consciences (in French), my conversation with artist Annie Roy on socially engaged art, grief, cultural politics, nature, how to open our consciousness, the digital and the place of art in our livesThe contribution of artIs being creative also about getting away from the world, pure to the source as it is, rather than just accepting that we're small and we should go back to the basics? I don't know if art brings us back to the essential versus brings us back to drifting completely. Maybe creativity or creation takes us so far away that we imagine ourselves living on Mars in a kind of platform that doesn't look like anything, or we won't need the birds, then the storms, then the this and that. We will have recreated a universe from scratch where it is good to live. That could be the contribution of art. I don't like this art too much.Opening consciousness If we are in reality and then we say to ourselves in the current world, it is necessary that it insufflate desire and power towards a better future. But it is not the artist who is going to decide and then that disturbs me. It bothers me to have a weight on my shoulders, to change the world while not having the power to do it, real. The power I have is to open consciousness, to see dreams in the minds of others and to instill seeds of possibility for a future.On the back of artThe artist is a being who lives in his contemporaneity, who absorbs the 'poop' in everything that happens and tries to transform it into something beautiful, then powerful for a springboard to go towards better. But we could leave it at that, in the sense that people, how do they use art in their lives? The artist may have all his wills, but what is the place of the art that we make in our lives? Because they are between four walls, in a museum or in very specific places. It's not always integrated into the flow of the day as something supernatural. It's a framed moment that we give away like we consume anything else. Then, if you consume art like anything else, like you go to the spa or you go shopping and then you buy a new pair of pants and then it feels good to have gone to a play. Wasn't that good? Yeah, it's cool but it's not going to go any further than anything other than a nice thrill that's going to last two or three hours and then you're going to get in your Hummer and go home all the same. I think that's putting a lot on the back of art.e58 huddart : the arts show us what is possible, my conversation with Stephen Huddart about dematerialization, nature, culture, capital, supporting grassroots activity, innovation and how the arts can show us what is possible.Existential crisisThis is now an existential crisis, and we have in a way, a conceptual crisis, but just understanding we are and what this is, this moment, all of history is behind us: every book you've ever read, every battle, every empire, all of that is just there, right, just right behind us. And now we, we are in this position of emerging awareness that in order to have this civilization, in some form, continue we have to move quickly, and the arts can help us do that by giving us a shared sense of this moment and its gravity, but also what's possible and how quickly that tipping point could be reached.DematerializationI think we have to more broadly, dematerialize and move from a more material culture to some more spiritual culture, a culture that is able to enjoy being here, that experiences an evolutionary shift towards connection with nature, with all of that it entails with the human beings and the enjoyment and celebration of culture and so I think those two perspectives that the arts have an essential and so important and yet difficult challenge before them.Gabrielle RoyLet's just say that on the previous $20 bill, there's a quote from Gabrielle Roy. It's in micro-type, but it basically says : 'how could we have the slightest chance of knowing each other without the arts'. That struck me when I read that and thought about the distances, that have grown up between us, the polarization, the prejudices, all of those things, and how the arts create this bridge between peoples, between lonely people, between dreamers and all people and that the arts have that ability to link us together in a very personal and profound and important ways. Capital A lot of my time is really now on how do we influence capital flows? How do we integrate the granting economy with all that it has and all of its limits with the rest of the economy: pension funds, institutional investors of various kinds, family offices and so on, because we need all of these resources to be lining up and integrated in a way that can enable grassroots activity to be seen, supported, nurtured, linked to the broader systems change that we urgently need, and that takes the big capital moving so that's a space that I'm currently exploring and I'm looking for ways to have that conversation.e59 pearl : positive tipping points, my conversation with arts organiser Judi Pearl about theatre, climate emergency, collaboration, arts leadership, intersection of arts and sustainability and the newly formed Sectoral Climate Arts Leadership for the Emergency (SCALE)That gathering placeIt's (SCALE, the Sectoral Climate Arts Leadership for the Emergency) a national round table for the arts and culture sector to mobilize around the climate emergency. A few months ago, you and I, and a few others were all having the same realization that while there was a lot of important work and projects happening at the intersection of arts and sustainability in Canada, there lacked some kind of structure to bring this work together, to align activities, to develop a national strategy, and to deeply, deeply question the role of arts and culture in the climate emergency and activate the leadership of the sector in terms of the mobilization that needs to happen in wider society. SCALE is really trying to become that gathering place that will engender that high level collaboration, which hopefully will create those positive tipping points.é60 boutet : a la recherche d'un esprit collectif (in French), my conversation with arts practice researcher Dr. Danielle Boutet on ecological consciousness, reality, activism, grief, art as a way of life, innovation and spiritualityUnconsciousCollectively, we are unconscious. We try to talk about ecological consciousness. If there is a collective psyche, which I believe there is, I do think there is a kind of collective mind, but it is a mind that is unconscious, that is not capable of seeing itself, of reflecting and therefore not capable of meditating, not capable of transforming itself, and therefore subject to its fears and its impulses. I am quite pessimistic about this, in the sense that ecological grief, all grief and all fear is repressed at the moment. There are activists shouting in the wilderness, screaming, and people are listening, but in a fog. It is not enough to bring about collective action. Therefore, our grieving is far from being done, collectively.Changing our relationship to nature We need to change our relationship to nature, our way of relating to others, and it's not the generalizing science that's going to tell us, it's this kind of science of the singular and the experience of each person. For me, it is really a great field of innovation, of research and I see that the artists go in this direction. You know, you and I have been watching the changes in the art world since the 1990s. I see it through the artists who talk about it more and more and integrate their reflection in their approach. How art can help humans evolveI hear a lot of people calling for artists to intervene and of artists also saying that something must be done, etc. I think that art is not a good vehicle for activism. I'm really sorry for all the people who are interested in this. I don't want to shock anyone, but sometimes it can risk falling into propaganda or ideology or a kind of facility that I am sorry about, in the sense that I think art can do so much more than that and go so much deeper than that. Art can help humans to evolve. It is at this level that I think that we can really have an action, but I think that we have always had this action, and it is a question of doing it again and again and again.e61sokoloski: from research to action, my conversation with arts leader Robin Sokoloski about cultural research, arts policy, climate emergency, community-engaged arts, creative solution making and how to create equitable and inclusive organizational structuresConnections to truly impact policyI think that there needs to be greater capacity within the art sector for research to action. When I say that the art sector itself needs to be driving policy. We need to have the tools, the understanding, the training, the connections to truly impact policy and one thing that Mass Cultureis really focused on at the moment is how do we first engage the sector in what are the research priorities and what needs to be investigated together and what that process looks like, but then how do you then take that research create it so that it drives change.Creative Solution MakingI'm very curious to see what the arts can do to convene us as a society around particular areas of challenges and interests that we're all feeling and needing to face. I think it's about bringing the art into a frame where we could potentially provide a greater sense of creative solution making instead of how we are sometimes viewed, which is art on walls or on stages. I think there's much more potential than that to engage the arts in society.Organizational StructuresWe do have the power as human beings to change human systems and so I think I'm very curious of working with people who are like-minded and who want to operate differently. I often use the organizational structure as an example of that because it is, as we all know is not a perfect model. We complain about it often and yet we always default to it. How can we come together, organize and, and bring ideas to life in different ways by changing that current system, make it more equitable, make it more inclusive, find ways of bringing people in and not necessarily having them commit, but have them come touch and go when they need to and I feel as though there'll be a more range of ideas brought to the table and just a more enriching experience and being able to bring solutions into reality by thinking of how our structures are set up and how we could do those things differently.  *END NOTES FOR ALL EPISODESHere is a link for more information on season 5. Please note that, in parallel with the production of the conscient podcast and it's francophone counterpart, balado conscient, I publish a Substack newsletter called ‘a calm presence' which are 'short, practical essays for those frightened by the ecological crisis'. To subscribe (free of charge) see https://acalmpresence.substack.com. You'll also find a podcast version of each a calm presence posting on Substack or one your favorite podcast player.Also. please note that a complete transcript of conscient podcast and balado conscient episodes from season 1 to 4 is available on the web version of this site (not available on podcast apps) here: https://conscient-podcast.simplecast.com/episodes.Your feedback is always welcome at claude@conscient.ca and/or on conscient podcast social media: Facebook, X, Instagram or Linkedin. I am grateful and accountable to the earth and the human labour that provided me with the privilege of producing this podcast, including the toxic materials and extractive processes behind the computers, recorders, transportation systems and infrastructure that made this production possible. Claude SchryerLatest update on April 2, 2024

One of the larger crises we face right now is actually a crisis of failure of imagination and one of the biggest things we can do in artistic practice is to nurture imagination. It is what we do. It's our job. We know how to do that. We know how to trade in uncertainty and complexity. We understand the content inside a silence, it's unlocking and speaking to ways of knowing and being and doing that when you start to try to talk about them in words, it is really challenging because it ends up sounding like bumper stickers, like ‘Music Builds Bridges'. I have a big problem with universalizing discourses in the arts, as concealing structures of imperialism and colonialism.dr. tanya kalmanovitch, conscient podcast, june 3, 2021, new york cityDr. Tanya Kalmanovitch is a Canadian violist, ethnomusicologist, and author known for her breadth of inquiry and restless sense of adventure (our conversation confirms this!) who lives in Brooklyn, NY. Tanya's uncommonly diverse interests converge, among others, in the fields of improvisation, social entrepreneurship, and social action with projects that explore the provocative cultural geography of locations around the world. Tanya's career has become a broad platform for artistry and many forms of advocacy. For example, she was drawn to ethnomusicology as a way to explore the ways in which music can speak to the world's biggest problems and earned her doctorate at the University of Alberta. She is currently developing and touring the Tar Sands Songbook, a documentary theatre play that tells the stories of people whose lives been shaped by living near oil development and its effects.I first heard about Tanya's work through Teika Newton (see https://www.conscient.ca/podcast/e50-newton/) and heard her speak at Experience the Power of Art to Inspire Climate Action. I was impressed by her convictions about the Tar Sands project but also by her insights as a performer, educator and ethnomusicologist on the role of music in the climate emergency, Here are some quotes from our conversation that caught my attention:  On griefNormal life in North America does not leave us room for grief. We do not know how to handle grief. We don't know what to do with it. We push it away. We channel it, we contain it, we compartmentalize it. We ignore it. We believe that it's something that has an end, that it's linear or there are stages. We believe it's something we can get through. Whereas I've come to think a lot about the idea of living with loss, living with indeterminacy, living with uncertainty, as a way of awakening to the radical sort of care and love for ourselves, for our fellow living creatures for the life on the planet. I think about how to transform a performance space or a classroom or any other environment into a community of care. How can I create the conditions by which people can bear to be present to what they have lost, to name and to know what we have lost and from there to grieve, to heal and to act in the fullest awareness of loss? Seeing love and loss as intimately intertwined.On storytellingMy idea is that there's a performance, which is sort of my offering, but then there's also a series of participatory workshops where community members can sound their own stories about where we've come from, how they're living today and the future in which they wish to live, what their needs are, what their griefs are. So here, I'm thinking about using oral history and storytelling as a practice that promotes ways of knowing, doing and healing … with storytelling as a sort of a participatory and circulatory mechanism that promotes healing. I have so much to learn from indigenous storytelling practices. On nature as musicWe are all every one of us musicians. When you choose what song you wake up to on your alarm or use music to set a mood. You sing a catchy phrase to yourself or you sing a child asleep: you're making musical acts. Then extend that a little bit beyond that anthropocentric lens and hear a bird as a musician, a creek as a musician and that puts us into that intimate relationship with the environment again.On AlbertaI guess this is plea for people to not think about oil sands issues as being Alberta issues, but as those being everyone everywhere issues, and not just because of the ecological ethical consequences of the contamination of the aquifer, what might happen if 1.4 trillion liters of toxic process water, if the ponds holding those rupture, what might happen next…That the story will still be there, that land and the people, the animals and the plants, all those relationships will still be imperilled, right? So to remember, first of all, that it's not just an Alberta thing and that the story doesn't end just because Teck pulled it's Frontier mining proposal in February, 2020. The story always goes on. I want to honour the particular and the power of place and at the same time I want to uplift the idea that we all belong to that place.As I have done in all episodes in season 2 so far, I have integrated excerpts from soundscape compositions and quotations drawn from e19 reality, as well as moments of silence and new field recordings, in this episode.I would like to thank Tanya for taking the time to speak with me and for sharing her deep knowledge of music and arts education, her passion for music, her love of her home province of Alberta and her sharp, lucid and strategic mind. For more information on Tanya's work, see http://www.tanyakalmanovitch.com/ and http://www.tarsandssongbook.com/. *END NOTES FOR ALL EPISODESHere is a link for more information on season 5. Please note that, in parallel with the production of the conscient podcast and it's francophone counterpart, balado conscient, I publish a Substack newsletter called ‘a calm presence' which are 'short, practical essays for those frightened by the ecological crisis'. To subscribe (free of charge) see https://acalmpresence.substack.com. You'll also find a podcast version of each a calm presence posting on Substack or one your favorite podcast player.Also. please note that a complete transcript of conscient podcast and balado conscient episodes from season 1 to 4 is available on the web version of this site (not available on podcast apps) here: https://conscient-podcast.simplecast.com/episodes.Your feedback is always welcome at claude@conscient.ca and/or on conscient podcast social media: Facebook, X, Instagram or Linkedin. I am grateful and accountable to the earth and the human labour that provided me with the privilege of producing this podcast, including the toxic materials and extractive processes behind the computers, recorders, transportation systems and infrastructure that made this production possible. Claude SchryerLatest update on April 2, 2024

Pundit was written during the 2016 election as a reflection of political pundits who change their opinions and narratives on a dime. Gabe Terracciano - violin Davie Pietro - alto saxophone Adam Rogers - guitar Matt Pavolka - bass Mark Ferber - drums Originally from Portland, Maine, Gabriel Terracciano is an award winning violinist, composer, and educator.  Classically trained from a young age, Gabe has spent his career focusing on playing the violin in a variety of non-classical genres. He has been a member of the two-time Grammy award winning Turtle Island String Quartet since 2018, and is a member of numerous New York-based groups in addition to leading his own trios and quartets. He has played throughout the United States as well as Internationally, including concerts throughout Ghana as a member of the Ghanaian National Symphony Orchestra, and was the recipient of both third prize at the 2018 Zbigniew Seifert Jazz Violin Competition and first prize at the 2018 Freshgrass Festval Fiddle Contest. He has played, recorded, and/or studied with the likes of John Scofield, Cecil McBee, Tanya Kalmanovitch, Dave Holland, Billy Hart, George Cables, Victor Lewis, Ron McClure, Ari Hoenig, Noah Preminger, Jason Moran, Jerry Bergonzi, and Frank Carlberg. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

In this episode, we have a conversation with Dr. Tanya Kalmanovitch about forging an artistic path that is socially and politically aware. In response to the paralyzing realization that we are complicit in an industry that perpetuates racism and classism, Dr. Kalmanovitch challenges us to imagine a better way by asking a simple question: “What If?” Tanya’s Website: http://www.tanyakalmanovitch.com/ “How Quitting Music Made Me An Artist” http://21cm.org/magazine/sounding-board/2018/07/05/how-quitting-music-made-me-an-artist/?fbclid=IwAR2gLLWrEBX6BPWfZHeVHhOmW1aB5pRTCh3cUSYbuJnyVzf6KDLSzxUaNpc --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/creative-baggage/support

About This Episode A podcast about the role of arts and philanthropy in moments of crisis. Together with community artists, scholars, and funders we consider key questions: what value does society place on the arts during crises, and how does this shape philanthropic responses? What lessons about resilience, funding, and survival does the arts community teach the philanthropic sector, and us all, as we imagine and create “new normals” post COVID-19? HostsYohana BeyeneMPP '20 Eva HeinsteinMC/MPA '20 Brooke WagesMPA/MBA '21, HKS/MIT Sloan Kamille Washington(MC/MPA '21) Learn More Credits https://www.hks.harvard.edu/faculty/timothy-patrick-mccarthy (Timothy Patrick McCarthy), scholar, activist and Harvard faculty member http://cambridgecf.org/about/our-staff/ (Michal Rubin), Vice President of Development at the Cambridge Community Foundation http://www.violashe.com/ (Ashleigh Gordon), violist and co-founder of Castle of our Skins http://www.tanyakalmanovitch.com/ (Tanya Kalmanovitch), violist and Associate Professor at The New School and faculty at New England Conservatory Music: “Done Wit It (Gunna x Young Thug x Travis Scott Type Beat)” “Stay True (Future x Young Thug x Lil Baby Type Beat)” By NtheLAB Productions: https://nthelabproductions.beatstars.com/ (nthelabproductions.beatstars.com)  A special thanks to https://www.hks.harvard.edu/faculty/megan-francis (Dr. Megan Ming Francis) and our fellow students in DPI 367: Philanthropy and Social Movements: Will the Revolution be Funded?

This week, I talk to violist, writer, and ethnomusicologist Tanya Kalmanovitch (faculty, New England Conservatory and Mannes School of Music). This one is a heavy one, and it was awesome. We talk about the Kalmanovitch-Maneri Duo and their upcoming album Magic Mountain, free improvisation, performing, connecting with audiences, and musical philosophies. This episode features two tracks from the upcoming Kalmanovitch-Maneri album Magic Mountain: "Foreward" and "The Dance of Death." For all things Tanya: tanyakalmanovitch.com facebook.com/tkalmanovitch twitter.com/kalmanovitch For more on the Kalmanovitch-Maneri duo: http://www.kalmanovitchmaneri.com/