in Space Grey | WhiteFeather Hunter

In the third episode of ‘in Space Grey’, we talk with WhiteFeather Hunter, a multiple award-winning Canadian artist and scholar, about her project, 'Prospective Futures: The Aurelia Project'. 

in Space Grey is a durational mostly a-synchronous online exhibition meditating on themes of connection, environmental extraction and accelerated capitalism. Presenting works by Ashley Bowa & Lesley Marshall, WhiteFeather Hunter, Maize Longboat, Tina Pearson, Manuel Piña-Baldoquín, Emilio Portal and Tosca Teran.

Join us every week this fall to interact with works in audio, video, performance, video games. Subscribe to Knot Project Space’s in Space Grey podcast series to meet all the artists!

digitalartsresourcecentre.ca/inspacegrey/

Knot Project Space is powered by the Digital Arts Resource Centre.

Produced by Anyse Ducharme with the help of Associate Producer Gary Franks.
Original Music by Adam Saikaley.
Recorded by Anyse Ducharme and Mél Gosselin.
Edited and mixed by Adam Saikaley.

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Truth and Reconciliation Commission's 94 Calls to Action:
https://ehprnh2mwo3.exactdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Calls_to_Action_English2.pdf

Transcript

Anyse Ducharme: 0:08

Welcome to Knot project space. Knot project space is powered by the Digital Arts Resource Center, located in Ottawa on the unseeded and unser render territory of the Algonquin nation. The space is uniquely configured to present installations, screenings and performances by contemporary artists working within the field of media art.

Ml Gosselin: 0:35

If you want to be the first to know about everything new in Canada's media arts scene, then we've got you covered. Sign up for DARC's Media Arts newsletter and get the scoop on artistic grants, employment opportunities, exclusive resources, and more. Visit digitalartsresourcecenter.ca to sign up today.

Anyse Ducharme: 0:58

Hi, everyone, and welcome to Knot project space's podcast series. My name is Anyse Ducharme and today I'll be talking with artists WhiteFeather Hunter about her work in our online exhibition 'in Space Grey'. Before we start, I'd like to acknowledge that we're connecting with you today from the unseeded and unser under territory of the Algonquin nation. We honor the Algonquin people who have occupied this territory since time immemorial, and whose culture has nurtured and continues to nurture this land and its people. We are grateful to be guests on this land, where we have the opportunity to work, live and create. In an effort to make this acknowledgement more active, we ask that you learn about the land that you're joining us from today, and that you read the truth and reconciliation commissions 94 calls to action, please follow the link in the episode description.'in Space Grey' is a durational, mostly asynchronous online exhibition meditating on themes of connection, environmental extraction and accelerated capitalism. WhiteFeather Hunter is a multiple award winning Canadian artist and scholar. She is a PhD candidate in biological art at SymbioticA/ The University of Western Australia. Her studies are supported by a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council doctoral fellowship, an Australian Government international RTP scholarship and a UWA international Postgraduate Scholarship. Before commencing her PhD, Hunter was a founding member and principal investigator of the speculative life BioLab at Milieux Institute for Arts, culture and technology Concordia University. Hunters practice intersects techno feminist witchcraft and biotechnologies with performance new media and textiles. WhiteFeather Hunter works with the many intersections and problematics of bio remediation. During her residency in the Faculty of Science at St. Mary's University, it was WhiteFeathers intention to make an offering of gold producing microbes to a poisoned site where settler industry had rendered the landscape useless and dangerous.

WhiteFeather Hunter: 3:04

I was invited to come to Halifax to be hosted at St. Mary's University. I know the director of Mireille Bourgeois. And so she invited me to come and do their very first art science residency. So this was, you know, in a way, sort of an inaugural project. And it was kind of like a test project. So I happily agreed and went to Halifax for six weeks, I believe. I hopped on a plane and went to Halifax and met with my host and collaborator, and graduate student and I was given some office space and I was given laboratory access in a microbiology lab. I went to collaborate, I guess or be hosted by a an environmental scientist at St. Mary's University. This is Dr. Linda Campbell. She's an environmental scientist working you know, around phytoremediation, which is kind of remediating the environment with plants. So I was looking at, you know, the intersection of my area of expertise in microbiology, with her area of expertise in phytoremediation, and we were interested in exploring possibilities for how a very contaminated gold mine tailing site might possibly be bio remediated.

Anyse Ducharme: 'Prospective Futures: 4:46

The Aurelia Project' starts with bioremediation.

WhiteFeather Hunter: 4:49

I guess I should back up a bit and start with the the foundations of the project. Bio remediation is looking at a way of you using living organisms and it can be plants when it's plants, it's you know more specifically phytoremediation, or it can be microbes, which is what I was attempting to do in my case. So there are lots of different approaches that people can take for looking at ways that, you know, other species might be able to be used to clean up a polluted site. And, you know, the specific polluted sites that we were investigating, were these legacy gold mine tailings sites. For people who might not know what that means. Basically, when a company goes in, and mines an area for gold, lots of, you know, toxic chemicals are used to extract the gold from the ore. What happens is that, you know, they're left with a bunch of waste material, which is usually in the form of very, very toxic sand at the end. So that sand is taken and dumped somewhere. And that becomes the toxic tailings site. So there were two sites that we visited around Halifax, one was at Montague, the other one was at a place just simply called Muddy Pond. And I was sort of really interested in the Montague site, because it was so visually captivating, I guess, in its starkness. You know, in its sterile looking landscape aesthetic. It was this vast landscape of gold, literally gold, sand. And you know that sand was kind of really dazzling. And this is due to the fact that they're still up to 40% of the of the gold from the original or is left in these tailings. And this was a legacy site, meaning that this process had happened back in the 1800s. So you know, when when you're walking around in these sites, this gold is kind of coloring the sand and it makes for this unbelievable, beautiful, incredibly toxic wasteland. It's important that I mentioned that there's still 40% up to 40% of the gold still remaining in these tailings because the Nova Scotia government was interested in bio remediating these tailings specifically, so that they could go back in and remine them, you know. Once the toxic chemicals were removed, they could then go back into these sites, and hopefully extract some of the gold. And this was a bit of an ethical conundrum, for me, my motivations towards bio remediation, were, you know, as an artist, they were poetic. I was interested in poetic engagement with the landscape, with the culture of the original First Peoples of that environment. As well as with looking at human relationships with micro organisms, and how I might, you know, use that to possibly bio remediate this landscape. I was not interested in supporting industry going forward and and putting more chemicals back into the landscape. Once it had been cleaned up. My collaborator, Dr. Campbell, was interested in this potential for bio remediating the site, simply because she would rather see industry, you know, and the government and these companies go in and remine a site that was already toxic, rather than going to a new pristine site to try to mine for gold there. You know, it's it was a very good point that she was making in her support for, you know, bio remediating for this purpose. My perspective is that they will probably just continue to mine wherever they can, whether it's, you know, a former site, or a new site. So, you know, there was sort of a difference of ethics around that, I guess, which, which was really interesting. It was a pretty valuable learning experience for me. Because I think that, you know, there's a lot of greenwashing that happens when people think about things like bio remediation. But the point I like to make now having had this experience and having sort of learned these things through this experience is that it's important to look at why this site is going to be bio remediated. And for whom? Is it for the community, you know, to make the site less toxic for the community that lives around it? Or is it for industry? Or maybe sometimes it works out to be for both, you know, these things are so complicated. And so this, this project became a really, really politically complex project. And at times very frustrating for me. Sometimes, distressing, as I you know, grappled with the complexity of the issues. Very, very valuable learning experience.

Anyse Ducharme: 10:59

The complexities of the project led WhiteFeather into the creation of a video work.

WhiteFeather Hunter: 11:04

My original intentions for this project, I guess the end result was a performance. I was interested in how I might put some gold back into that environment while also reducing the toxicity. So I worked in the microbiology lab at St. Mary's University for six weeks. Testing soil samples from the two sites, culturing a specific species of bacteria, called 'cupriavidus metallidurans'. And this is an extremely file species, okay, so it needs very particular conditions in order to thrive. One of those being very high temperatures, it's usually found around, you know, volcano openings, effluent sites where you know, hot effluent is kind of seeping into the environment. So I had to learn the characteristics of this species, culture it in the lab at specific temperatures. It has this wonderful metabolic characteristic where it can produce enzymes that will reduce mercury to inert particles, so they're no longer toxic. It can also metabolize other harsh chemicals that are used in gold mining processes like gold chloride, and actually, from those chemicals produce micro particles of 24 karat gold. So I worked closely with this bacterium. And I was very cognizant of the fact that my performative gesture might fail in that regard, because A, the site was not a site that had high temperatures. So the probability of this bacteria being able to, you know, multiply itself and amplify its activity were slim to none. I'm also cognizant of the fact that, you know, putting a small amount of microbes into an environment where they might be able to be active and metabolize the chemicals, etc, was something that was going to take a profoundly long period of time. You know, these microbes are responsible for producing some of the gold that we find naturally in the environment, but it would have taken millennia for them to do that in any significant quantity. I was really aware of all of these facts. So, you know, when I say that, my activity, my gesture was meant to be poetic. This is what I mean, it was meant to symbolize decolonizing this space, by recolonizing it with the microbes that may be able to repair the environment in some small way. Now, ultimately, one of the other researchers who was on the research on Dr. Campbell's research team, won a million dollar bid from the Nova Scotia government to use another chemical and possibly plants to bio remediate the site. And so as soon as that bid came through, I was informed that the university could no longer support the end goals of my project. So essentially, you know, there was a concern that me sort of inoculating the site with these microbes in some small poetic way, could potentially interfere with this other, you know, million dollar project

Anyse Ducharme: 15:11

Whitefeather instead introduced deactivated prayer bundles into the site.

WhiteFeather Hunter: 15:16

In the end, I was not able to put the microbes in the soil, and instead, I had replica prayer bundles, you know, full of the contaminated soil, which did not contain the microbes as they were originally meant to. And instead, I performed the gesture of inoculating the soil. Like it was a mock gesture, basically, in order to be able to still produce the video. And still enact, you know, this poetic gesture in a way that could be communicated to an audience and still get my point across for what the project was meant to do. So that was a compromise that, you know, I had to make in the end. And I guess, you know, ultimately, the project had to take a backseat, to this other research that was being conducted, for the sake of industry. So very politically charged. It was still an incredibly valuable experience. And, you know, I'm still extremely grateful to Iota Institute for bringing me there, and, you know, to Dr. Campbell, for hosting me at the university and allowing me to do my experiments, it takes a lot to get an artist laboratory access, you know. And she is still holding my samples of the microbes in her minus 80 freezer at St. Mary's University. So, you know, she, she's been supportive in the ways that she can be supportive without compromising the larger goals, I guess, of her other researchers on her permanent, more permanent research team. The other interesting learning experience for me was working with an indigenous curator on the project, who Iota Institute, had brought on to, you know, helped facilitate this negotiation of traditional territory, and the ways that it's been impacted by colonial industry. And looking at how to move forward. You know, in that way. Roger Lewis is the name of the indigenous curator who I worked with. He is at the Nova Scotia museum. And he did come out to the sites and we sort of walked around, but I met with Roger in his office, you know, one on one a couple of times, and he relayed some really valuable information to me through some storytelling and through sharing, you know, some Mikmaw indigenous history, because it is on traditional Mikmaw territory. And he helped me to gain a much deeper understanding of, you know, Mikmaw relationship to that landscape, the way that it, you know, impacts cultural identity, cultural memory, and this goes back 1000s and 1000s and 1000s of years, you know, and he impressed upon me that whenever anyone does something to the landscape and to the land, no matter how small that action might be, they do something to the bodies of the indigenous peoples of that territory. And, you know, with the understanding that of course, there is no separation between mind, body, spirit. So, you know, thinking about it, in that way, and from his perspective, as a Mikmaq person. The best possible course of action in a situation like this, is to leave the space alone and allow it to remediate itself, because ultimately, another human intervention is another human intervention. Interventionism is kind of what colonialism is built on. So that was also a really interesting perspective that I gained from working with Roger. And, you know, I'm so grateful for him, taking the time to sort of explain to me in his own way through storytelling and through pointing me to archival material at the Nova Scotia archives. An audio clip of which is in the video. That audio clip was something that Roger directly referred me to as a way of understanding indigenous relationship to the land and to these gold mining processes. So, you know, Roger is in that video as well, sort of indirectly through that audio clip from the archives. This story that's being told of Glooscap. And the way that Glooscap is telling the Mikmaw people that white people are coming and they're here to take your land and take the gold. And I should also mention that another part of the audio is an interview that I did with Robin Metcalf. And Robin is the director of the gallery there at St. Mary's University. And he has an incredibly deep relationship as well with the gold mining industry through his own familial history. You know, and that is colonial and early colonial history, through his ancestry and through his, you know, father's profession. So he is telling his personal story about his relationship, you know, to gold mining, to Nova Scotia, and the political history around all of that, from the perspective of a colonial person. When I say it was a complex project, I mean, it was incredibly complex for for all of these reasons, but the video, ultimately is the gem, not the gold itself.

Anyse Ducharme: Thanks to WhiteFeather Hunter for talking with me about the complexities of Prospective Futures: 21:56

The Aurelia Project. This work was created during the course of her residency at the Iota Institute at St. Mary's University, and was funded by Conseil des Arts et Lettres du Qubec and the Canada Council for the Arts. For more about white feathers work in 'in Space Grey', visit digitalartsresourcecenter.ca.

Ml Gosselin: 22:24

Every year, the Digital Arts Resource Center hosts 'Resolution' a public screening showcasing new work created by our members in the previous year. Any genre of work may be submitted including experimental drama, documentary and animation. Visit digitalartsresourcecenter.ca to submit your work for 'Resolution 2022'.

Anyse Ducharme: 22:49

You've been listening to Knot project space powered by the Digital Arts Resource Center. This podcast was produced by an Anyse Ducharme, with the help of associate producer Gary Franks. Original music by Adam Saikaley. This episode was recorded by an Anyse Ducharme and Mel Gosselin with special guests Maize Longboat, Ashley Bowa and Lesley Marshall. It was edited and mixed by Adam Saikaley. And of course, they wouldn't have happened without the rest of the team at DARC. Annette Hegel, Jenna Spencer, Koliah Bourne, Tanise Marchesan Cabral, Feza Lugoma, Christopher Payne, and Daniel Kaunisviita. Special thanks to the City of Ottawa, the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council. Join us once a week this fall on digitalartsresourcecenter.ca/inspacegrey to interact with the works of Ashley Bowa & Lesley Marshall, WhiteFeather Hunter, Maize Longboat, Tina Pearson, Emilio Portal, Manuel Pia-Baldoqun, and Tosca Teran over the course of online exhibition "in Space Grey". Thank you for listening!