Or Not Or Now

Best listened to on headphones:

Or Not Or Now took shape through a series of conversations near and along different bodies of water in Nanaimo, Delta and Vancouver on Snuneymuxw, Tsawwassen, Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh territories. 

The idea “to listen to the water” is from Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s film Mekong Hotel (2012).

“to sing to the water” comes from Lee Maracle’s video interview presented at the event thirstDays No. 9 dying of thirst curated by Tannis Nielsen and Jenny Fraser on Oct. 27, 2016 at VIVO Media Arts Centre. “Goodbye Snauq” is the title of an essay by Lee Maracle, from Read, Listen, Tell: Indigenous Stories from Turtle Island edited by Sophie McCall, Deanna Reder, David Gaertner, Gabrielle L’Hirondelle Hill (2017); the sentence “Get a grip.” comes from the same text.

“verbing the noun” is from Daphne Marlatt’s poem “Generation, Generations at the Mouth” from her poetry collection Intertidal: The Collected Earlier Poems, 1968-2008 (2017).

“stream mint” and “Is this the history of rivers? Is an origin a confluence?” are phrases and sentences borrowed from “Pinky Agarwalia: biography of a child saint in ten parts” by Bhanu Kapil from Unknown Language by Hildegard of Bingen and Huw Lemmey (2020).

“Centre to edge. Edge to centre.” is a movement principle used in Bartenieff Fundamentals, an extension of Laban Movement Analysis.

Or Not Or Now was produced as part of the Nanaimo Art Gallery project, huli u’tu staluẃ / Riverbed. Support for this project was provided by the Canada Council for the Arts and BC Arts Council.