SESSION 7: Land-led Possibilities
DAY TWO: SATURDAY, JANUARY 28
10:30-11:30 UTC -7 | 19:30-20:30 UTC +2
Moderator: Timo Jokela
ZOOM LINK
Material Matters, With Trees: The New? Material! Relations. Project
Hélène Day Fraser
This project addresses the ecological imperative to change current unsustainable behaviours through forums containing dialogue, activity, co-creative design, and knowledge mobilization. It acknowledges the climate crisis and seeks new strategies for working with biocellulose materials as alternatives to petroleum in particular biomass from trees.
Three reciprocal interdisciplinary forums and a public discussion panel will bring together stakeholders who work and engage, from different perspectives, with biocellulose from trees: Scientists with deep knowledge at the molecular level; Artists and Designers who create and make products for reflection and discussion and use in everyday life; Indigenous Knowledge Keepers with important relational and local perspectives on the local ecospheres and biomass in the BC Lower Mainland and near Dawson City, Yukon. The forums:
Comprised of making/thinking/discussion activities, these forums will convene a broad range of expertise and lived experiences of individuals with connection to tree biomass. The aim is to stimulate and capture expansive, iterative local collective sharing and envisaging related to our relationship with and use of biomass. Reciprocal, generative interactions between local Scientists, Designers, Artists, Makers and Indigenous Knowledge Keepers will act as catalysts for new approaches towards this local “resource”.
The Willow Basket Project
Aubyn O'Grady & Jackie Olson
Organizing a course around a plant's lifecycle disrupts the progression of a typical semester-long offering. Finding a creative space within this disruption, we began to envision a larger project: an experimental summer institute for the testing of sustainable local art and building materials. This led to the establishment of the Willow Basket Project. A summer institute has a physical space to take root at the Yukon School of Visual Arts, and the summer is a bountiful time for foraging natural art materials on the land. The first phase of the Willow Basket Project involves developing a framework to hold onto knowledge about the use and value of locally sourced and foraged art materials.
Jackie Olson’s heritage is one of Gwich’in and Danish descent. She was born and raised in Dawson City. She had lived there all her life but for the 3 years spent in Whitehorse working for the Yukon Indian Arts and Craft society (1995-1988), and her four years studying art at Camosun College (Victoria, BC) and the Alberta College of Art and Design (Calgary, Alberta). Her time at the Indian Arts and Crafts Society sparked her interest in Arts Administration, which she felt would improve her capabilities in her job. By the time she began her arts administration training at Camosun, Jackie realized that she had a passion for making the art itself.
She went on to the Alberta College of Art to complete her Bachelor of Fine Arts. Since her return to Dawson in 1992, Jackie has been busy in the arts scene. She has participated in many art exhibitions in cities such as Zurich (Switzerland), Munchen (Germany), Calgary, Banff, Red Deer, Yellowknife, Edmonton, Whitehorse and Dawson City. Jackie’s work is in many collections around the world as in Bavaria State Anthropology Museum in Munchen, National Indian Art Centre, the Yukon Permanent Art Collection and the Yukon Arts Centre Permanent Collection to name a few.
Aubyn O’Grady has been the Program Director of the Yukon School of Visual Arts since 2018. Aubyn’s interdisciplinary academic and art works exist in the space between performance and pedagogy. Community engagement is the focus of her arts practice, often taking up the very place she lives in as her material. She is a frequent and enthusiastic collaborator, and so, can rarely take sole credit for any project she organizes. However, she can be credited with conceptualizing the Dawson City League of Lady Wrestlers (2013-2017), the Swimming Lessons Aquatic Lecture series (2017-2018), Local Field School (2020+), and Drawlidays (2019, 2020), a Dawson City-wide portrait exchange.
Aubyn is a PhD candidate in the Curriculum, Teaching, and Learning program at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto. The title of her dissertation is “Storying the Yukon School of Visual Arts with a Mediate-Ore”.
Forest Ecosystem Services as Potential for Creative Industries
Timo Jokela
In northern cultures, like in Finland, Lapland, the relationship between human needs and forest ecosystems is strong and relevant. The concept of ecosystem services has been created to describe, identify and assess the benefits of nature. In particular, the concepts of cultural ecosystem services offer a theoretical framework and an opportunity to think differently about ways that business, communities and creative entrepreneurs might collaborate in the rapidly changing North and the Arctic. The aim of Forest Ecosystem Services as Potential for Creative Industries was to combine art-based research activities and ecosystem service thinking to open up a new discursive space in relation to the forest and sustainability. Potentials of forest ecosystem services were approached in seven independent arts-based experimental case study led by artists-researchers. In this presentation I will open how
forest and trees was approached from the perspective traditional northern knowledge combining with experimental methods in contemporary art.
Timo Jokela is a Professor of Art Education in the University of Lapland in Finland. Currently he is a lead of University of Arctic’s thematic network on Arctic Sustainable Arts and Design (ASAD). Year 2022 he was nominated as Uarctic Chair of Art, Design and Culture. Jokela has been responsible for several international and regional development and research projects in the field of art and design. His theoretical studies, artistic activities and art-based action research development project focus on relationship between northern cultures, art and nature.
“My Place” – Young people's opinions about climate change
Aki Lintumäki
This article introduces arts-based action research project with young people in the Arctic. The research project is seeking creative ways for young people to express their opinions about climate change and build faith for the future.
The research include a videoart work ”My Place”, which explores young people's hopes and concerns about climate change. More than 30 young people from across the Arctic participated in the production. The video artwork was composed of photos, videos and texts sent in by young people.
The videoart work was published at the Aurora future event in Levi, Finland on 18.11.2022. It’s part of the “In the front line of Climate Crisis” which studies young people's climate change anxiety through art-based methods. It’ s coordinated by Youth Research and Development Center Juvenia (South-Eastern Finland University of Applied Sciences) and University of Lapland’s Faculty of Art Design.
Aki Lintumäki (MA, audiovisual media) is an artist who has worked in media art, photography and performing arts. He has also facilitated several socially engaged art processes. Lintumäki works as a project researcher at Juvenia - Youth Research and Development Centre of the South-Eastern Finland University of Applied Sciences (Xamk). He is currently working on his PhD thesis on young people’s participation and climate citizenship at the Department of Art Education, University of Lapland. In his work, Lintumäki wants to promote equality and sustainable development.