Elyse Longair is a writer, artist and cultural theorist, currently pursuing her Ph.D. in Screen Cultures and Curatorial Studies at Queen’s University. In 2021, Longair received her MFA in the Interdisciplinary Art Media and Design program at OCAD University. From 2020-2021, she was an RBC Emerging Artist at The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery. Longair’s practice re-imagines the role of images and sound away from the overt-complexity that dominates our world, opening up new possibilities for imagined futures.

Suspended Animation was recently played for the tropical plants at the Phytotron Sonic Garden Party, Spring 2022. This curatorial encounter was offered by Sunny Kerr, Curator of Contemporary Art at the Agnes Etherington Centre as a way to experience Pauline Oliveros ‘deep listening’ and also care for the plants through music. This track is part of a collection of works that I composed which aim to explore how alternate futures from the past, or distant future might sound. I attempt to draw the viewer into a different world, one defined through questions of imagination. In these imaginary worlds, the audience is invited to listen closely, to imagine multiple possibilities and meanings and by doing so to actively experience alternate futures that may forward our consideration for the future. As Stuart Candy states in The Futures of Everyday Life, “[w]hat is central… to the present future studies is not an effort to ‘predict’ the future…but the effort to sketch ‘alternative futures’” (26). World-building music encourages us to rethink and reflect on the important role of imagination, opening up new possibilities for imagined futures – at the Phytotron, this was the future of the tropical plants.

Suspended Animation was composed by Elyse Longair with thanks for the technical and musical expertise of Professor/musician/digital instrument designer Dr. Adam Tindale and composer/producer/musician Liam Clarke (Love Thy Brother).

Biography

Elyse Longair is a writer, artist and cultural theorist, currently pursuing her Ph.D. in Screen Cultures and Curatorial Studies at Queen’s University. In 2021, Longair received her MFA in the Interdisciplinary Art Media and Design program at OCAD University. From 2020-2021, she was an RBC Emerging Artist at The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery. Longair’s practice re-imagines the role of images and sound away from the overt-complexity that dominates our world, opening up new possibilities for imagined futures.

Artist Statement

Suspended Animation was recently played for the tropical plants at the Phytotron Sonic Garden Party, Spring 2022. This curatorial encounter was offered by Sunny Kerr, Curator of Contemporary Art at the Agnes Etherington Centre as a way to experience Pauline Oliveros ‘deep listening’ and also care for the plants through music. This track is part of a collection of works that I composed which aim to explore how alternate futures from the past, or distant future might sound. I attempt to draw the viewer into a different world, one defined through questions of imagination. In these imaginary worlds, the audience is invited to listen closely, to imagine multiple possibilities and meanings and by doing so to actively experience alternate futures that may forward our consideration for the future. As Stuart Candy states in The Futures of Everyday Life, “[w]hat is central… to the present future studies is not an effort to ‘predict’ the future…but the effort to sketch ‘alternative futures’” (26). World-building music encourages us to rethink and reflect on the important role of imagination, opening up new possibilities for imagined futures – at the Phytotron, this was the future of the tropical plants.

Suspended Animation was composed by Elyse Longair with thanks for the technical and musical expertise of Professor/musician/digital instrument designer Dr. Adam Tindale and composer/producer/musician Liam Clarke (Love Thy Brother).

Biography

Kamari Carter (b. 1992) is a producer, performer, sound designer, and installation artist primarily working with sound and found objects. Carter’s practice circumvents materiality and familiarity through a variety of recording and amplification techniques to investigate notions such as space, systems of identity, oppression, control, and surveillance. Driven by the probative nature of perception and the concept of conversation and social science, he seeks to expand narrative structures through sonic stillness. Carter’s work has been exhibited at such venues as Automata Arts, MoMA, Mana Contemporary, Flux Factory, Fridman Gallery, Lenfest Center for the Arts, WaveHill and has been featured in a range of major publications including ArtNet, Precog Magazine, LevelGround and WhiteWall. Carter holds a BFA in Music Technology from California Institute of the Arts and an MFA in Sound Art from Columbia University.

Marcus Grant is a professional drummer, percussionist, musicologist, educator, and band leader originally from West Chester, Pennsylvania currently living in Miami, Florida. After receiving his Bachelor of Music degree from the Temple University Boyer College of Music and Dance, he went on to receive a Master of Music degree at the University of Miami Frost School of Music in 2017 and a second Master’s degree in musicology in 2021. Marcus is currently a PhD student and Chancellor Tisch Fellow at Brown University studying ethnomusicology.

Will Johnson is an audio artist from the Bronx, New York. His work centers on blackness – the material and immaterial conditions of space that shape sound into movement and historical record. He holds a B.A. in Interdisciplinary Studies from NYU-Gallatin. He is the recipient of the Jerome Foundation Fellowship for Sound Art/Composition (2018) and the McKnight Foundation Fellowship for Musicians (2019). His commercial work includes licensed sound for Acura, Beats Electronics, HBO and collaborative contributions to 2016 grammy-winning best electronic album Skin. His live performances have been commissioned by Lincoln Center, the Kitchen and MASS MoCA.

Artist Statement

This project seeks to disrupt the definition of “the criminal” and redefine the term through sonic manipulation. This clip is a portion of the first movement (#Revolution) of a three-part suite entitled #InsertNameHere which grapples with notions of criminality, sound, race, police brutality, and Black trauma. “#Me” takes musical inspiration from Max Roach’s “Triptych: Prayer/Protest/Peace” from the 1960 recording of We Insist: The Freedom Now Suite featuring vocalist Abbey Lincoln and more modern medium of audio samples from cell phone videos of police violence against Black people to create a space of somber remembrance of those who had been viewed as criminal.

Steff(ania) Juniper is a third-generation, southern Italian-Canadian, white settler, residing in Tkaronto. They are a neurodivergent, sober queer, non-binary trans witch, a mad/disability justice worker, writer and sound artist. They have completed an arts-based MA in Critical Disability Studies at York University, titled “Trans-Feminist Witchcraft: A Psychiatric Survivor Narrative”. For years they have worked on Psychiatric Survivor advocacy, mostly out of the office of The Empowerment Council: A Voice for the Clients of CAMH. They create drone and sound art to bring voice to their experience of anger toward systems, especially carceral colonial institutions, under the title “Quivering”. Recently, they have participated in ReDefine Art’s “Inkling Incubator”, and The Cyborg Circus Project’s disability-led dance programming to deepen their passion for Disability Art and Performance in its connection to self-advocacy and surviving psychiatry and the medical system. Their piece “A Creature Untamed”, performed at The Rhubarb Festival in 2019, at Buddie’s in Bad Times Theatre has been conceived over years of imagining their embodiment as something other than its human form, and a world with alternatives to institutional violence. Steff is currently working on a PhD in Gender, Feminist and Women’s Studies at York University.

An audio recording of Steff Juniper’s drone workshop at the ReDefine Art’s “Inkling Symposium” on Saturday, April 27, 2019, which was a day of panels and performances on disability, equity and collaborative art making. Inkling was a series of workshops and events that explore intersectionality in the arts. The goal of the symposium was to find ways of centring disability and equity within collaborative art making. ReDefine Art’s statement on the symposium was that, “as an organization led by artists who embodied disabled and enabled experience, we often grapple with the pedagogy of inclusion: “Who is including who?” While methods of ‘access’ and ‘inclusion’ are often tacked on after an artwork has been created, Deaf and disabled artists and audiences are often positioned on the periphery. These concerns go to the root of how we create, which is to dismantle systemic barriers that limit the participation of many.” The impetus for Steff Juniper’s drone workshop was to include as many Deaf and disabled artists and audiences in a space together to create sound art to increase feelings of connectedness and belonging. How does the act of making and feeling sound together leave an impact? The hope was for building conversations and kinships in artistic practice and disability futures.

Biography

Steff(ania) Juniper is a third-generation, southern Italian-Canadian, white settler, residing in Tkaronto. They are a neurodivergent, sober queer, non-binary trans witch, a mad/disability justice worker, writer and sound artist. They have completed an arts-based MA in Critical Disability Studies at York University, titled “Trans-Feminist Witchcraft: A Psychiatric Survivor Narrative”. For years they have worked on Psychiatric Survivor advocacy, mostly out of the office of The Empowerment Council: A Voice for the Clients of CAMH. They create drone and sound art to bring voice to their experience of anger toward systems, especially carceral colonial institutions, under the title “Quivering”. Recently, they have participated in ReDefine Art’s “Inkling Incubator”, and The Cyborg Circus Project’s disability-led dance programming to deepen their passion for Disability Art and Performance in its connection to self-advocacy and surviving psychiatry and the medical system. Their piece “A Creature Untamed”, performed at The Rhubarb Festival in 2019, at Buddie’s in Bad Times Theatre has been conceived over years of imagining their embodiment as something other than its human form, and a world with alternatives to institutional violence. Steff is currently working on a PhD in Gender, Feminist and Women’s Studies at York University.

Artist Statement

An audio recording of Steff Juniper’s drone workshop at the ReDefine Art’s “Inkling Symposium” on Saturday, April 27, 2019, which was a day of panels and performances on disability, equity and collaborative art making. Inkling was a series of workshops and events that explore intersectionality in the arts. The goal of the symposium was to find ways of centring disability and equity within collaborative art making. ReDefine Art’s statement on the symposium was that, “as an organization led by artists who embodied disabled and enabled experience, we often grapple with the pedagogy of inclusion: “Who is including who?” While methods of ‘access’ and ‘inclusion’ are often tacked on after an artwork has been created, Deaf and disabled artists and audiences are often positioned on the periphery. These concerns go to the root of how we create, which is to dismantle systemic barriers that limit the participation of many”. The impetus for Steff Juniper’s drone workshop was to include as many Deaf and disabled artists and audiences in a space together to create sound art to increase feelings of connectedness and belonging. How does the act of making and feeling sound together leave an impact? The hope was for building conversations and kinships in artistic practice and disability futures.