Kevin Jesuino is a Portuguese-Canadian multi-disciplinary performer, performing arts educator, movement coach, arts facilitator, LGBTQ+ activist and community organizer. His work is oftentimes collaborative, site-specific, participatory,
Katrine Claassens is a South-African artist based in Montreal. She is an artist, writer, and environmental communications specialist. She has an Honour’s degree in Visual
sirenscrossing is an international, collaborative umbrella for a transdisciplinary site-specific practice. We think of humans as only one node of liveliness in the interweave of the living Earth. Through creating audience experiences in everyday spaces, we deepen into the lived reality of humans (even those in cities) and their sympoietic mesh with nonhumans, landscapes, and Earth systems. sirenscrossing seeks to enliven individual human’s awareness of their spiritual, biological, ecological, social, and technological entanglement in multispecies and hybrid bio/geo/techno processes. All of this has become increasingly urgent, on a planet in crisis. We hope to contribute to a tidal surge of momentum for change. Commissioned artist for Coventry UK City of Culture (2021-2022).
Awarded as “Artist of the year” by the Quebec-based artist collective “Les artistes pour la paix,” Aquil Virani’s collaborative art projects combine painting, drawing, filmmaking, writing, graphic design, installation, and participatory art processes and ask important questions about social and environmental justice. In 2021, he was named the first ever national artist-in-residence at the Canadian Museum of Immigration.
Virginia is a public and installation artist, currently working in Petawawa, Omàmìwininìwag -Algonquin territory. She is interested in forging a language rooted in her connection with family and the earth. Exploring the marrying of food into art with growing biological forms enveloping foraged local plant life, creating with the context of walking gently. Conversations mingle with the honouring of culture, family and connection to the land in a collaborative public walking tour of sculptures, stories and songs with traditional knowledge keepers Trish Nadjiwon-Meekins, Susan Staves (Schank) in Owen Sound of the Saukiing Anishnaabekiing (SON). She also may use a climate language of cardboard and plastic to initiate dialogue on what is next for us and the earth. Her ancestors reside in England and the Ukraine.
Tina M Pearson is a composer, media artist, performer and facilitator. Her projects invite stretched modes of time, perception and attention, in composition, field recording, performance, and facilitating, and often occur in community-based settings, outdoors, and within/through online platforms. Her work is increasingly focused on linking biospheres, ancestral memory, and technologies, uncovering connections that have been minimized, forgotten, or unimagined. Current projects include “Root Blood Fractal Breath” with Toronto’s ContaQt ensemble; “Displacement and Drift”, a mixed reality machinima and virtual installation; and “Tree Sing”, a long term approach for woman-identified vocalists and dancers to embody languages, sounds and movements directly from trees. Pearson’s work has been commissioned for presentation in concerts, installations, choreography, broadcasts, and video in centres through North America and Europe. She was editor of Canada’s Musicworks magazine, and taught Sound Studies at OCAD University in Toronto. She is director of LASAM Music, a member of the global Avatar Orchestra Metaverse collective, and a certified Deep Listening® practitioner through Pauline Oliveros. Pearson is a first generation Canadian of Nordic / Slavic descent, and lives on the unceded lands of the Lkwungen peoples on Vancouver Island.
Hemispheric Encounters: Developing Transborder Research-Creation Practices brings together scholars, artists, activists, and community organizations from across the Americas to explore hemispheric performance as an artistic practice for addressing social and environmental justice. The Ecologies cluster considers site-based performance strategies that address politics of land (and agencies of its more-than human inhabitants), as well as spatial politics of occupying public spaces. We delve into legacies of transnational resource extraction and land politics.
My focus as an artist is to create environmental art that roots nature into our everyday urban experience. I work across diverse mediums, blending textile arts, natural materials, performance, photography, and most recently film, to create ephemeral installations and social interventions.
TRAction is a dynamic collective of interdisciplinary artists who actively and publicly address issues of climate justice.
Although the projects are primarily facilitated and organized by Melanie Kloetzel and Kevin Jesuino, TRAction expands and contracts to include other interested allies, professionals, scientists, volunteers and artists who work at the intersection of art-making and climate change. Using diverse methods of artistic creation, TRAction addresses complex environmental issues and advocates for climate justice for all humans and species.
The Climate Art Web (CAW-WAC) is a grassroots network that brings together climate artists living in northern Turtle Island (Canada).
