Interdisciplinarity Workshop

1. Paperfolding and Mining Temporalities: An Invitation to Respond and Make

Leanna Butters will be facilitating a cumulative paper folding project which responds to the spatial, temporal and visual aspects of her research around mining and fences. Drop-in Thursday May 26 5:30-7:00 p.m. and Friday May 27 12:30-4:30 p.m. in the Arts and Science Atrium. You can also participate in this activity remotely by visiting the following link:  https://us06web.zoom.us/j/89283568421

Mining activities take place in physical spaces, modifying environments to extract materials that are seen as useful within the global economy. Mining has been presented as a linear progression of activities whose impacts end with mine closure – the mining imaginary; however, an awareness of the complexity of mining impacts is growing. For example, the concept of mining temporalities argues that mining activities include overlapping temporal processes like market cycles, production cycles, and employment rotations that can synchronize and de-synchronize in response to market demands and social contexts.

This work explores the junction of spatial and temporal aspects of mining. Images of mining spaces have been collected through virtual searches of library and archive materials and grouped around themes such as the (in)visibility of mining processes, the accessibility of mining spaces, and comparisons of home and work spaces. These two-dimensional images are remade into three-dimensional 'gems' using origami – a repetitive task that establishes rhythms through processes of testing, creation, and production. Viewers are invited to create their own gems and connect them with others in an effort to de-synchronize established understandings of mining and allow for non-linear, pluralistic interpretations to emerge. Assembly of these cumulative works follows an experimental hybrid process, happening both in-person and online. The resulting works consider, and perhaps question, the mining imaginary while exploring the potential for technology to facilitate hybrid creative collaboration.

Leanna is a PhD candidate at Grenfell Campus, Memorial University in the Transdisciplinary Sustainability program. Her PhD research will investigate fences as mechanisms of socio-spatial production in Canadian mining communities using a combination of methods from geography and the visual arts. Leanna has an MA in Environmental Policy (Grenfell Campus, Memorial University) and a BA in Architectural Studies (Design) and History (University of Toronto). Leanna's PhD work is supervised by Cameron Forbes and Dr. Kelly Vodden.

MACROMAREAL (a rising tide lifts all boats) is a collaborative body of work developed by visual artist Sydney Lancaster and sound artist/composer Scott Smallwood. This project approached the tidal range of the Bay of Fundy and its documentation in tide tables and real data through a series of interrelated works that explored ways of understanding natural processes, and our relationship to those processes as perceived from different vantage points and through different scales of time. The history of human interaction with the Bay, including tide-related industries and oceanographic research in the area of Parrsboro NS offered unique opportunities to create a body of work that explored the relationships between human actions, the coastal landscape, and tidal patterns and processes. Parrsboro's proximity to the Fundy Geological Museum, the FORCE tidal power research station, the Ottawa House Museum, and Maritime Museum of the Atlantic presented further opportunities to investigate & incorporate both historical documents and current scientific research into our creative process.  

Initially, MACROMAREAL developed over the course of two residencies (2016 & 2017) at Main & Station in Parrsboro, NS. The project evolved from there, through additional research and subsequent presentations at the IAST (Interactive Art, Science, and Technology) Crossing Boundaries Symposium at University of Lethbridge (2018) and at Emily Carr University of Art & Design (2019), and SNAP Gallery in 2020. The video presented at Grenfell Campus – TIDAL/TIME - combines footage shot at First Beach, Partridge Island, West Bay, and East Bay with archival photos of the area and its shipbuilding history, and presents those images alongside timelapse footage of the tidal cycles in the Bay. These time lapse segments were part of a dataset created by Fundy Force that documented tidal, environmental, and meteorological data in the Minas Basin at Black Rock – the site of a series of experiments in tidal power generation. Through the lens of the Fundy tides and their impact on a specific place (Parrsboro, NS), TIDAL/TIME offers an opportunity to consider the different scales of time and memory we each experience (geological, tidal/celestial, transgenerational, diurnal, the brevity of a human lifespan), and the processes of change, loss, and transformation inherent in each of them.

By extension, MACROMAREAL as a whole draws attention to the intersection of human activities, time and the tidal environment, particularly the cyclic, durational aspects of living systems, human life, and work on or near tidal waters. Humans have sought to understand and harness the power of the world's tides historically, and in the present; now more than ever, it is vital to understand our relationship to (and impact on) this immensely powerful natural phenomenon.

Syd Lancaster is a queer prairie-born settler artist and writer, Lancaster's lineage is bound to migration and the legacy of the Dominion Land Survey. She considers place, and notions of history and identity through installation, print, and video. They have exhibited work across Canada and held residencies in NS, NL and AB, and are currently a 2nd year MFA Student in Grenfell's Visual Arts Program.