My body only knows what it knows.

I remember words I would repeat to my niece when she was younger: “Don’t ask the fish about the water.” It was my attempt to have her question her thoughts—to be endlessly curious about what she didn’t know, to pursue knowledge.

Baggini asks us to question everything, saying the function of questioning isn’t to establish certainty, but instead to test the grounds of what we believe so that we can be certain (29).

“I doubt. Therefore, I think. Therefore, I am.” Descartes reminds me that even though there are imposed systems of gender, race, economics, norms, rituals, and customs placed on me, the only liberation I truly have is in my thinking. And thus, I come to my first trouble. The brain is part of the body. Therefore, does my ability to move and express itself also form part of my liberation? If I can liberate myself through movement, then no one can confine me.

I recall seeing a man with his headphones standing at the streetlight. He breaks into dance. And although his movement is structured much like high-quality expressive pop dance (by this, I mean he isn’t rolling on the floor or doing anything that would be considered lyrical or contemporary dance), I’m struck by his ability to not care what people think. In that caring, we become captured by society. Our bodies become enslaved to the modalities of the body that are sanctioned or considered “normal,” legible, or proper for the circumstances. And yet, my body knows it wants to be free like that man. To not care. To have the freedom to express itself. I move my arm in a wave-like manner. My head is still stuck. My feet are still planted. All I can do is move my arms. I notice a small move up and down. As if my body knows what upward mobility feels like. What skyscrapers feel like. What colonization feels like. What capitalism feels like. And it can’t do anything else but that. I want to move like that man at the streetlight. In fact, I want to roll all over the road. I want to throw myself atop the hoods of cars. Dance like I’ll live forever—a reference to Fame: The Musical. I want to allow the dramatics to set me free, to unshackle me from the constraints that others have placed on me.

And so I return to Descartes and the liberation of the mind. Perhaps instead of “I doubt. Therefore, I think. Therefore I am,” it could be written: “I move. Therefore, I can be free. Therefore, I can change.”

The Portuguese have a word—mudança. I’ve been obsessed with this word ever since I was in my twenties. It simultaneously means to move and to change, as if suggesting that when you move, you inevitably bring change.

When I teach all-abilities dance, I begin with a lesson on the breath. The breath is what moves us. I ask everyone to stand still, to not move a muscle. And although stillness is what everyone is striving for, ultimately there are two underlying things happening. First, we are, in fact, moving at 30 km/s through the universe as we rotate, feet firmly planted on the Earth. Thanks to gravity and the atmosphere, we don’t perceive this. How beautiful to be part of this queer existence on the earth—that we can be still and be moving so fast at the same time. Secondly, thanks to the medulla oblongata, we don’t have to think about breathing. Breath is constantly there. Even when you try to hold your breath, your life force (or your brain) will inevitably force you to take in a breath to keep on living. And so, as this breath fills your lungs, your chest expands, blood moves, and then breath is released back into the world, only to be taken up by the trees that feed on our carbon dioxide. That breath causes so much movement inside us, itself moving around the earth through our exhale. We don’t need to do much to bring about movement. We don’t need to do much to bring about change. Movement and change are interlinked. They are inevitable.

Artist, writer, researcher, and Indigenous matriarch of the Umbanda spiritual belief system, Leda Martins, writes about spiral time. In a keynote address at the Performance Studies International Conference in Fortaleza, Brazil, 2025, Leda stated that the only true thing in the universe is energy. And we know that energy cannot be created or destroyed; it can only be transformed (Newton). Martins points to this understanding of energy as a basis for Umbanda cosmology and, furthermore, into ideas around performance. There is no beginning. There is no end. There is only energy that changes. Long before you get into the theatre, something is happening. You then enter the theatre and take your seats. The curtain goes up. The actors have been rehearsing this for a month. They just entered the stage from their dressing room offstage right. You breathe in. They say their first lines. The story unfolds. The characters are transformed. You are taken on a journey. You feel things. The actors bow. The curtains go down. You exhale. You get up and exit the theatre. You reflect and ponder on what you have just witnessed. You have discussions with other people who may or may not have watched the same production. And years later, you reflect on that story and how you see it in everyday life. You breathe in. You breathe out. Artwork, through this lens, has no beginning and no end. It is just a series of culminating journeys and transformations that continue on and on.

My feet are two ancient rocks—my ancestors—atop of which old oak trees have grown. Two of them, meeting at the pelvis. That pelvis holds what was once a quiet bowl of tranquil turquoise blue water. But over time, the tectonic growth of fascia and the fracking of trauma have dislodged the mountains it is held in. A crack has slowly ruptured up the granite cliff, leaving it all feeling quite precarious. At any point, it could all collapse, crushing the oak trees and the ancestors. Atop the granite cliff lies an unbalanced weight: the right pulling down, the left projecting forward. They are imbalanced and moving, each in their own time, like a grandfather clock—swaying idiosyncratically. The pendulum of one makes the other sway faster. This causes the crack in the granite to rupture even more.

Quietly, at the top of all of this, is a quiet rainforest, where the fog is so thick you can’t see anything ahead of you. On a sunny day, everything clears up, and the bowl of water can be seen with the naked eye. The oak trees feel strong and rooted.

And the ancestors dance in circles.

Yes and, two

Ancient

Rocks.

Yes,and turquoise blue water.

Yes,and te ct on ic gr ow th of fa sc ia

Yes,and F r Ac King oF TrA uMa

Yes,and rupture up granite cliffs.

Yes,and crushing the oak tree and the ancestors

Yes,and the pendulum of one

Makes the other

Sway faster

Yes,and

The fog

So thick

You can’t

See

Any

Thing

In

Front

Of

You.

Yes,and

The ancestors dance in circles

Queerness is wild. It does not travel in a straight line. Because of this, i want to engage with the meaning of queerness in a discursive way. I want to dig into the Earth and see it’s layers. I want to travel, instead, around something, in some sort of Fibinaci pattern, to spiral myself into a subject-matter through engagement with multiples. I want to exist in a pluralistic state where there are many of one thing and mulptple many more. I want to exist inside a constellation blending the personal with the academic, the felt sense with the sciences, the mysterious with the rational . In basic terms, I want to engage with queerness in a discursive way. Queerness as a constant moving site, a process of overlapping sites, temporarily in situ and at the same time moving; a chain of meaning devoid of any finality. Miwon Kwon states that the operative definition of site in art for the past 30 years has been the physical location. (29) This is a grounded, fixed and actual space. And that as we began to explore the expanded field of the art object, we examined art work on a phenomenological, socio-instiutaional and ultimately a discursive level. I want to examine this subject-matter from these lens. What is most important is this discursive level where the subject-matter is ungrounded, fluid and virtual. Queerness is ungrounded, fluid and virtual. It touches on everything that exists. Come with me as we travel this spiral that orbits our DNA, the Earth and the perhaps the Universe itself. May we journey. May we wonder. May we be wild.

Works Cited

Baggini, Julian. How to Think Like a Philosopher: Essential Principles for Clearer Thinking. Granta, 202Descartes, René. Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting one's Reason and Seeking Truth in the Sciences. Translated by Jonathan Bennett, 2017, www.earlymoderntexts.com/assets/pdfs/descartes1637.pdf.

Kwon, Miwon. One Place after Another: Site-Specific Art and Locational Identity. MIT Press, 2002.

Martins, Leda Maria. Keynote Address. 30th Annual Performance Studies International Conference, December 2025, Fortaleza, Brazil.

Socially engaged art, at its core, seeks to dismantle the traditional artist-audience binary, fostering collaborative experiences that generate knowledge and catalyze social change. Within this realm, research-creation, a methodology that blends artistic practice with rigorous inquiry, becomes a potent tool for exploring the nuanced interplay between embodiment, emergence, and relationality. Research-creation, crucially, is not simply art that illustrates research findings, nor is it research that merely analyzes art. It's a dynamic interplay where creative processes are integral to the generation of knowledge, emphasizing the investigative journey and recognizing that artistic forms can produce unique and valuable insights. It is an approach to research that combines creative and academic research practices, and supports the development of knowledge and innovation through artistic expression, scholarly investigation, and experimentation. It is about the creation process being situated within the research activity and producing critically informed work in a variety of media (art forms). Rather than simply observing or documenting, artists become active participants, generating new forms of understanding through embodied action and shared experience, using methods that combine creative and academic research practices.

Embodiment in this context moves beyond the individual body as a site of expression. It acknowledges the body as a locus of lived experience, memory, and cultural inscription, deeply intertwined with social and environmental contexts. Research-creation methodologies that prioritize embodiment often involve participatory workshops, site-specific performances, or interactive installations that invite participants to engage physically with the artwork and its surrounding environment. For instance, a project exploring urban displacement might involve walking workshops that map embodied experiences of navigating contested spaces, or collaborative movement exercises that explore the feeling of being uprooted. These methodologies, through the lens of research-creation, recognize that knowledge is not solely cognitive but is also felt, sensed, and lived through the body, contributing to the development of knowledge through artistic expression.

Emergence, a concept borrowed from complex systems theory, recognizes that meaning and understanding are not pre-determined but rather arise through the dynamic interactions between participants, materials, and contexts. In socially engaged art, this translates to a research process that embraces uncertainty and allows for unexpected outcomes. Research-creation methodologies that foster emergence might involve open-ended creative prompts, iterative prototyping, or collaborative world-building exercises. Rather than seeking to control the outcome, the artist acts as a facilitator, creating the conditions for collective exploration and discovery. For instance, a community garden project might employ emergent methodologies by allowing the garden’s design and purpose to evolve organically based on the participants' needs and contributions, demonstrating how the creative process itself is a site of knowledge production.

Relationality, the understanding that all beings are interconnected and interdependent, is fundamental to socially engaged art research creation. Methodologies that emphasize relationality prioritize dialogue, collaboration, and co-creation. This might involve participatory action research (PAR), where community members are actively involved in all stages of the research process, or collaborative storytelling projects that amplify marginalized voices and foster intersubjective understanding. Relational methodologies, when approached as research-creation, recognize that knowledge is not produced in isolation but rather through shared experience and mutual respect, producing critically informed work through collaborative art forms. For instance, a project addressing environmental justice might utilize collaborative mapping techniques to visualize the interconnectedness of human and ecological systems, or employ storytelling circles to create spaces for collective healing and transformative dialogue.

By integrating embodiment, emergence, and relationality through the lens of research-creation, socially engaged art moves beyond traditional research paradigms. It embraces the subjective, the affective, and the experiential, recognizing that knowledge is not a static entity but rather a dynamic and evolving process. The artist, in this context, becomes a facilitator of shared meaning-making, creating spaces for collective learning and social transformation. Through embodied action, emergent processes, and relational encounters, socially engaged art research creation has the potential to generate new forms of knowledge that are both deeply personal and profoundly social, contributing to a more just and equitable world, with the creation process itself situated within the research activity.

I once dreamed of a life within academia—a vibrant contemporary arts department where my role would be to enlighten visual art and performance students, inspiring them to become citizen activators, community art facilitators, and socially engaged artists. My vision was not confined to the traditional classroom; I imagined an interdisciplinary space where the tools of the artist would reach out beyond campus walls, sparking change at both personal and community levels. I saw art as the heartbeat of society, a dynamic force capable of liberating knowledge and connecting people in ways that transcend institutional boundaries.

Over time, however, I have come to see that academia along with the field of contemporary art, in its current form, operates on an ethos of exclusivity. The sanctuaries of learning and artistic endeavor have become more about gatekeeping than about genuine engagement with the world beyond their ivory towers, white and black boxes. The narrow parameters of “serious art” have left little room for expressions rooted in lived experience—like folk dance or spontaneous community art-making that emerges in the wake of natural disasters. Such art, which embodies the resilience and spirit of a community, is too often dismissed by those who should be its most ardent champions. This disheartening dismissal has shown me that the academic system is ill-equipped to embrace art’s true purpose: to serve as the connective tissue of society.

My disillusionment with academia’s failure to relate to community has compelled me to change course. I now choose to immerse myself directly in the communities I serve. By embracing a path defined by art, activism, and education, I will work alongside community members to co-create art that speaks to our collective experiences, challenges injustices, and celebrates the everyday beauty of human connection. In this new direction, I see art not as an isolated academic pursuit, but as a living, breathing practice that thrives in the public square, nurtures dialogue, and cultivates transformation.

Looking to the future, I envision a world where the old structures of academia and the contemporary art scene crumble, replaced by a more inclusive, democratic culture of art-making. Imagine a society in which every neighbourhood becomes a gallery and every public space an arena for creative expression—a world where art is the pulse of community life, where knowledge is shared freely, and where cultural expression is recognized as both a personal balm and a tool for social change. In this future, art would not be the exclusive domain of the elite; it would be the common language of resilience and hope. This is the promise of my new path, and it is the future I now choose to help create.

I repel against any sense of artist elitism.

I advocate for the public to value artists.

I sit in that space where the curtain rises and falls - between the public and artists.

Then ask that we, the audience and the artists, go witness how the curtains were made, revealing the unseen and the hands and the stories that made them.

This is the transcript of my keynote address delivered as part of my completion of the Trico Changemaker Studio Artist-as-Changemaker Fellowship held on May 3, 2024, in Calgary, Alberta. The event was sponsored by Calgary Arts Development and Trico Changemaker Studio.

I've been deeply moved by the work of the Alex Community Food Centre (CFC). Walking into their space, you immediately feel the warmth and community. It's a place where people come together to grow, cook, and share food, and importantly, to fight for good food for all. They provide access to healthy meals and an affordable market, which is so crucial. What's even more inspiring is seeing people learn cooking and gardening skills, and watching kids get excited about trying new things in the kitchen and garden. It's not just about food; it's about empowerment. People find their voices, build connections, and discover a real sense of belonging. The CFC shows how food can build so much more than just meals – it builds health, hope, skills, and a strong community.

I want to extend a heartfelt shout-out to Daryl Howard and Katherin Yee, who approved my proposal to collaborate with them two years ago. My sincere thanks also go to Bernadette Lumungdanceg and Ashley Irving for their invaluable legwork in procuring ingredients and promoting this project at the Alex. I also want to acknowledge and celebrate Jhumar Devnath, Deon Nelson, Leanne Cripps, Joanne Tschudy, Miry Bol, and Ajoy Seghal, who work tirelessly at the Alex Community Food Centre, providing food, garden, and cooking skills programming in a decolonial and community-centered manner. Additionally, I'd like to recognize the peer advocates at the Alex, Ladyne Kala, Lorraine Macarenhas, Krista Jensen, and Vanessa Adamche-Edwards, who work diligently to connect community members with essential resources.

It's with a heavy heart that I acknowledge the Alex Community Food Centre is currently grieving the loss of a beloved community volunteer, Keely. Keely greeted guests with a radiant smile at the Wednesday and Friday open lunches and breakfasts. I vividly recall walking into the Alex and being welcomed by Keely, who offered hand sanitizer and a warm greeting. I had the privilege of getting to know their beautiful spirit during some of the activations I led during my residency. I learned of their passing today. My thoughts are with Keely, as well as with everyone at the Alex, both those present tonight and those unable to attend. This serves as a poignant reminder that we never truly know the challenges our community members face, but a simple welcome and invitation can make a profound difference. I dedicate this presentation tonight to all the volunteers and staff who make the Alex Community Food Centre a place to thrive, and especially to the memory of Keely.

Tonight, I'll be discussing THE ROOT FOOD PROJECT, which began two years ago. While it culminates today, it feels more like a transition into an ongoing endeavor.

Since 2004, I've developed a diverse portfolio encompassing interdisciplinary performances, temporary public art, participatory works, teaching, and interventions.

My artistic vision is deeply collaborative, process-oriented, and politically/socially engaged, drawing inspiration from the post-studio movement, theatre/dance, performance art, participatory practice, dematerialization, and activism. I explore themes ranging from public and private landscapes, the theatre of everyday life, uncertainty, urbanism, masculinity, queer history, and place-based knowledge.

My creative process intertwines movement, performance, participatory practice, education, and performative inquiry, resulting in site-specific and socially engaged works. At the core of my artistic mission lies the exploration of power dynamics, access, participation, and authority. Through a fusion of performative actions, discussions, and innovative teaching, my ephemeral, short, and long-term projects aim to empower the public to shape their own futures while navigating the complexities of contemporary experience and interpersonal dynamics.

After a discussion with Katherin and Daryl at the Alex, this complex question emerged:

HOW MIGHT WE SHINE LIGHT ON & ACTIVATE AROUND ISSUES OF FOOD SECURITY?

Immediately, I envisioned a food systems map encompassing everything from Indigenous stewards of the earth, farmers, laborers, truckers, grocery store operators, city planners, park rangers, parents, and children, to people experiencing poverty and those who can afford fine dining, compost bins, community gardens, kitchens, soil, the soil's bugs and microbiome, our gut microbiome, the earth, water, and sunlight.

It was an expansive map. How could I possibly create an activation around this proposed question?

I realized I needed to consult experts, people with deep relationships with food. And so, my journey began almost two years ago.

Some of the individuals I spoke with included:

Cease Wyss, an Indigenous Matriarch of Skwxwu7mesh, Sto:lo (Coast Salish area), and Hawaiian ancestry, is an ethnobotanist, artist, activist, and community-based educator. They are dedicated to sharing Indigenous customs and teachings.

We spoke at length about decolonizing the food system, specifically replacing invasive species with foods indigenous to the land. We also discussed their aging mother, the shift to Cease caring for her, and the increasing cost of food, which makes it challenging to provide for them both.

Jeremy Zoller specializes in edible landscapes, gardens, and food forests.

He is a co-farmer at Highfield Farm, a collective of Calgary food and environment stewards who are dedicated to a decentralized, hyper-local model for waste management, soil creation, food production, and community collaboration. The farm is a project of the Compost Council of Canada and the City of Calgary.

Through land revitalization, regenerative food practices, and community building, Highfield Farm is transforming an underutilized brownfield site into an active urban community farm hub.

I visited their farm to understand how such a decentralized, hyper-local model could function. I participated in a honeybee hive tour, helped make compost, and enjoyed a meal prepared entirely from produce grown by various farmers on the site. That very evening, a hailstorm ripped through Calgary, destroying everyone’s plots. This experience highlighted the fragility of such systems.

I spoke with Rick and Ashley, whom I met while walking downtown. They agreed to talk with me in exchange for a meal and a $100 grocery gift certificate. They shared the difficulties they faced in accessing nutritious food. Reaching the food bank was challenging, and once there, they had limited choices. They also expressed feeling a lack of dignity during the process. They explained that the constant struggle for food and shelter kept them in a perpetual state of survival.

We shared a meal, and I spent the next hour and a half talking with them about other things, such as Rick’s visual art and Ashley’s ability to freestyle rap.

And yet, I still found myself grappling with this complex question.

So, I arrived at the Alex Community Food Centre to undertake a two-week intensive residency with the community there.

I pitched a stone soup of options

Stone Soup is a European folk story in which hungry travelers persuade villagers to contribute small amounts of their food to create a shared meal. In various traditions, the stone is replaced with other common inedible objects, leading to alternative titles such as axe soup, button soup, nail soup, bolt soup, and wood soup.

The story unfolds as follows: Travelers arrive in a village, carrying only an empty cooking pot. Finding the villagers unwilling to share their food, the travelers fill the pot with water from a stream, add a large stone, and place it over a fire. A curious villager asks what they are doing. The travelers explain they are making "stone soup," a delicious dish they would gladly share, but it lacks a crucial garnish.

Intrigued and anticipating a share of the soup, the villager contributes carrots. As other villagers pass by and inquire about the pot, the travelers repeat their story, emphasizing the soup's potential. More and more villagers add ingredients, including potatoes, onions, cabbages, peas, celery, tomatoes, sweetcorn, meat (such as chicken, pork, and beef), milk, butter, salt, and pepper. Eventually, the stone, being inedible, is removed, and a delicious, nourishing soup is enjoyed by both travelers and villagers. Although the travelers have cleverly encouraged the villagers to share their food, they have also transformed it into a communal meal that benefits everyone.

MOVEMENT ECOLOGY – Explore the complexity of food systems through this movement-based expressive arts workshop, designed to cultivate resources that nourish and move the body.

ALL BODIES YOGA – Give your body time to regenerate with this inclusive and supportive gentle yoga class. Perfect for seniors, those with limited mobility, or anyone new to yoga.

THE ROOT FOOD PROJECT – (which I will elaborate on shortly) Explore our collective stories surrounding cultural, familial, and favorite root foods while engaging in the creation of a dish associated with the artist's own root food story.

I met Ajoy Seghal, the head chef at the Alex, who had worked extensively around the world. He shared his experience catering to over 900 guests daily in Dubai.

I spent a significant amount of time observing his interactions with the community, particularly how he engaged kitchen volunteers in the daily food preparation. On my last day, he approached me with words that deeply resonated. He expressed how profound it was to witness an artist engage with the community in ways that fostered a sense of welcome and sparked creativity. He said, “Kevin, you are so important to society! Artists give life meaning. They help us understand things. It was an honor to have you in our community. You are always welcome back!”

I met volunteers and assisted in making a strawberry, mint, and lime dressing.

And I plated the salads for the afternoon lunch.

Every Wednesday and Friday, the Alex hosts a community meal for everyone. Anyone can walk in and enjoy a meal, but they should also expect to engage with the community while doing so.

I cut fries. SO MANY FRIES!

I lead a movement workshop to explore food security .

And yet, I remained perplexed about how to address this question.

I tried to ground myself in the origins of food. The earth, as I've always said, is the greatest artwork ever created. To create is magic, and the ultimate artist in this equation of creation is the earth itself. It creates, it nourishes, it teaches, and it feeds us.

YOU CAN'T HAVE EARTH WITHOUT ART.

And so, I rooted myself. I reflected on my connection with the earth. I considered the fact that I walk on sidewalks in a concrete city and buy my groceries from Safeway, which receives weekly produce shipments from truck drivers coming from California and beyond, from farmers and laborers who spend their days planting and harvesting so they, too, can feed their families.

I thought about my grandparents, tilling the land in northeastern Portugal in the mid-1900s, and the cycles of food waste that went from plates to compost to soil, and then back to growing food.

I thought about my mother, immigrating from Portugal 55 years ago with her family, so that her brothers could avoid being conscripted into the Angolan war, fought by the fascist government of Portugal and its dictator, Dr. António de Oliveira Salazar. I thought about how much land-based and food knowledge was lost in that immigration and across three generations—my grandparents, my parents, and me.

In elementary school, I often went to my godparents' house after school. My godmother would serve me whatever she had prepared for lunch that day. She frequently served what I called 'grass soup.' I detested this dish—a bowl of what looked like soggy grass in hot water. I reluctantly ate the soup because there was a house rule: I couldn't leave the table until I finished my food. This dish became inextricably linked to my association with my godparents' house. I often tried to persuade my parents not to send me there after school, primarily out of fear of being served 'grass soup.'

As I grew older, I came to appreciate the taste of this soup. I began calling it by its traditional name, 'caldo verde,' which literally translates to 'green soup.' I also came to understand the historical significance of this soup during the fascist era in Portugal under the dictator Dr. António de Oliveira Salazar. With poverty being the norm for most people at that time, and with their strong agricultural history and knowledge, this simple dish became known as a traditional soup of Portugal.

Looking back at my time at my godmother's house and my reluctance and disdain for 'grass soup,' I now, as an adult, appreciate the cultural connection I was taught by being served that soup. 'Caldo Verde' is more than just a soup; eating it reminds me of my family, my culture, and the oppression occurring in Portugal at that time. I imagine my grandfather pulling potatoes from the earth, my grandmother slicing kale into fine shreds with a perfectly sharpened knife, my uncles tearing day-old bread and adding the pieces to the soup to soak it up, and the smell of chouriço in the kitchen. This single dish connects me to my ancestors, to the land, and nourishes me beyond simply filling my stomach.

Caldo Vered was my root food..

What is your root food? This could be a favorite vegetable, a cultural dish, or a family tradition.

I shared the process of cooking this Portuguese dish, inviting people to tell me stories of their root foods as we worked.

Tonight, I've invited two participants from the Alex Food Centre to share their Root Foods with you. Ladyne and Francis have graciously prepared their dishes.

What is your root food?

What are the ingredients?

Who taught you this recipe?

When is this food typically served?

Ladyne, you mentioned there's a song associated with this dish.

Francis, you noted that Peru is known for its variety of potatoes and their medicinal purposes.

I imagined all our root foods being served on a huge table where everyone could sit. I envisioned beneath that table our roots intertwining into a thick, supportive, rhizomatic network, where all people and species of plants and animals could thrive, even if one element in that network needed extra support. I thought of Ricky and Ashley, Jeremy Zoller, Cease Wyss. I thought of the grocer, the truck driver, the farmer, the laborer. I thought of my parents, my grandparents, my aunts and uncles. I thought about my neighbors, your neighbors, the strangers I see walking on the streets in Forest Lawn, Marlborough, downtown Calgary, and Shaughnessy. I looked into everyone's eyes at the table and imagined their parents and grandparents. And I couldn't help but think about my question: how might we shine light on and activate around issues of food security? And my answer is, I don't know. No single solution will solve the problem of food insecurity. There are countless, endless possibilities. But what I do know is that the earth and people's connection to the earth, and to each other, are at the heart of it all. That the lessons I've learned from Cease Wyss, along with Cree/Métis artist and storyteller Chantell Chagnon, Elders Leroy Little Bear and Elder Randy Bottle, and the countless Indigenous artists and knowledge keepers from this area in Treaty 7, who have reminded me that above all else... “all my relations.” The North American conquest was a project in amnesia, designed to make us forget in the pursuit of productivity, growth, and capitalism. To forget what was here before settler-colonialism, what the earth felt like, and where our food came from. It made us forget how food brought us together, that food was cyclical, that food passes through us and returns, not as waste, but as compost back to the earth, in a cycle that connects, restores, and is itself rhizomatic, linking us to smaller organisms such as insects and the microbiome.

There is a series of words painted above the kitchen at the Alex Community Food Centre: “Good food is just the beginning...” and I feel that this sums up what I'm trying to say here. Food connects us to the land, to our individual histories, to generations of family members, to stories and recipes. It puts our hands in the soil, helps us generate compost for future soil, and allows us to learn about different cultures and lived experiences through conversation. And together, each person contributes something to the stone soup. And together, our roots grow deeper.

Thank you.

Now, let's enjoy Ladyne and Francis' root food!

Softened Cement: Intimacy in the Urban Environment

Cities, where many now reside, paradoxically breed isolation. The UN reports 55% of the global population lives in urban areas, projected to reach 68% by 2050. North America, the most urbanized continent, has 82% in urban regions. Despite high urban concentrations, a substantial number feel lonely. Toronto Foundation's report states 28% of Canadians feel lonely at least three days a week, Toronto leading at 37%, Vancouver at 28%, and Montreal at 17% (Ayer 11). Sexual minority men, too, face loneliness, with 13-24% experiencing it most or all the time (Salway, Travis, et al.). The question arises: why does a heightened sense of loneliness persist where vast populations gather?

In this essay, I examine how modern cities are built, how alienation emerges, and how intimacy is found in the city. Furthermore, I explore how different demographic groups have subverted this alienation and how masculinities ultimately find intimacy within the urban environment.

I stroll through the streets, pondering over how the city is an example of men’s hardened hearts, built with hardened materials, with durability and order in mind and whose effect leaves those who live within the city feeling lonely, alienated and lacking intimacy.

The Modern City: History, Materials, and Design

Concrete, steel, asphalt, and plastic are the predominant materials in modern urban landscapes. Modernity brought the technology and, thus, the ability to build with more durable materials. The origins of construction can be traced back to the need for environmental control and climate moderation (Chang, Pao-Chi, et al.). Early building materials of the Stone Age, such as leaves, branches, and animal hides, were perishable and easy to transport or gather with nomadic cultures. The Renaissance revived Roman and classical forms, leading to the "ideal city" concept of order, symmetry, and balance (Urban Design Lab). This concept has continued until today. Still, over time, advancements in technology, access to materials and the dawn of settlements led to the utilization of more durable substances like clay, stone, and timber, and eventually, as modernity set in, synthetic materials such as brick, concrete, metals, asphalt and plastics (Urban Design Lab).

Buildings commonly take on a soaring rectangular form, with some cities competing to showcase the world's tallest structure, as exemplified by iconic landmarks such as Dubai's Burj Khalifa. The urban environment relies on robust materials and visually embodies a towering and explicit expression of phallic symbolism, evident in the skyscrapers that dominate the cityscape.

Throughout history, men have dominated city planning, architecture and construction fields (Flannagan 2). However, urban activist Jane Jacobs and planner Robert Moses famously had polarizing opinions on urban planning. Where Jacobs emphasized the importance of organic community-driven development and mixed-use diverse neighbourhoods and opposed large-scale urban renewal projects, Moses, on the other hand, advocated for centralized large-scale infrastructure projects, usually prioritizing vehicles, to shape and modernize the city no matter what community displacement was necessary in achieving this (Paletta). In an attempt to stop a Moses-proposed 10-lane highway through SoHo from being built in the neighbourhood that Jacobs lived in, she organized on a grassroots level to have this stopped (Paletta). During this process, Moses vehemently stated: “There is nobody against this – nobody, nobody, nobody but a bunch of ... a bunch of Mothers!” And then he stomped out (Paletta).

In comparison to Jacobs, Moses represented the male-driven top-down capitalist approach to city building in the modern era. Jacobs, being an otherwise voice, was determined to make cities about people and communities. Jacobs writes in The Death and Life of Great American Cities:

This [city] order is all composed of movement and change, and although it is life, not art, we may fancifully call it the art form of the city and liken it to the dance – not to a simple-minded precision dance with everyone kicking up at the same time, twirling in unison and bowing off en masse, but to an intricate ballet in which the individual dancers and ensembles all have distinctive parts which miraculously reinforce each other and compose an orderly whole. The ballet of the good city sidewalk never repeats itself from place to place, and in any one place is always replete with new improvisations (Jacobs 50).

Jacobs did not see the city as a stage built for order and unison and defined by the singular gaze of the male ‘city builder’; she saw the city as a stage full of citizen dancers, all participating with their individual dances. She saw a grander composition of city life. This contrasts with Moses, who imposed infrastructure on city inhabitants to craft order and unison.

I am struck with an image: I imagine these male “city-builders” sculpting hardened phalluses into the skyline. Initially, when the sculptor was in tune with the changing seasons and the need to migrate with their food sources, the materials were softer and more organic – leaves, tree trunks, branches, and animal hides. However, once modernity set in, order, balance and efficiency contributed to the sculptors' vision of the ‘ideal city.’ Thus the city became made of solid, durable materials – concrete, steel, asphalt and plastic. Empowered by technology, they erected taller, stronger buildings, showcasing prowess. In this process, they imposed infrastructure, using concrete to dictate human pathways, creating a stark separation from nature and interpersonal connections. As city dwellers adapt to this unyielding environment, I envision their pericardium, the muscle surrounding the heart, encased in concrete and hindering connections. This results in an inability to connect with others, deeming empathy and sonder of ‘the other’ as unbalanced.

This image parallels my relationships with men: a hardened exterior focused on strength, efficiency and order that keeps us disconnected from our hearts and each other.

The Alienating City: Individualism and the “Other”

Georg Simmel contributed significantly to understanding modernity and its impact on social life. He explored how the shift from traditional, rural societies to modern, urban environments influenced social interactions, individual identity, and the structure of society. In his work, The Metropolis and Mental Life, he discusses the idea of urban alienation. According to Simmel, the city fosters a sense of detachment and individualism among its inhabitants (Simmel 12). In the city, individuals are surrounded by many people, yet there is a certain anonymity and indifference in social interactions. Simmel argued that this urban experience can result in alienation, where individuals feel detached from their surroundings and each other (Simmel 15). The fast pace of urban life, the fleeting and impersonal nature of social interactions, and the constant exposure to external stimuli contribute to isolation.

He writes, “Here in buildings and in educational institutions, in the wonders and comforts of space-conquering technique, in the formation of social life and in the concrete institutions of the State is to be found such tremendous richness of crystalizing, de-personalized cultural accomplishments and the personality can, so to speak, scarcely maintain itself in the fact of it” (Simmel 19). Simmel articulates how much modernity has transformed people's sense of identity. This included identity and our relations in urban settings, educational institutions, technological progress, social frameworks, and governmental structures. He notes a concern with the potential alienating effects of modernity on individual identity. While impressive, the richness of cultural accomplishments may lead to a sense of depersonalization and challenges for individuals to assert and maintain their unique personalities within modern life's vast and complex landscape (Simmel 18).

Simmel's insights into the alienating effects of modernity on individual identity lay the groundwork for scrutinizing how societal structures, including the built environment, exacerbate these challenges. Female, Indigenous and Homosexual perspectives have shed light on the historical divisions influencing the physical spaces of cities, underscoring a white, hetero-patriarchal capitalist perspective that has marginalized many within the public sphere.

The historical gender divide between men and women has contributed to a built environment that reflects a male-centric perspective. Women have been excluded from the public sphere of urban development. I have already stated how Jane Jacobs was dismissed for her community-minded ‘bottom-up’ approach. Maureen Flanagan, in her book Constructing the Patriarchal City: Gender and the Built Environment of London, Dublin, Toronto and Chicago, writes that it was men who:

...promoted a vision of the city that imposed a conceptual and geographical division between public spaces, intended mainly for men and their economic activities, and domestic areas reserved for family, home and women.... [Men] began inserting walls, hedges, and gates between the house and the street to spatially divide the productive from the reproductive while simultaneously delineating the private domestic spaces as those associated with womanhood containing things made intimate by their relegation to private, hidden spaces (2-4).

Furthermore, Elizabeth Wilson in her book, The Sphinx in the City: Urban Life, the Control of Disorder, and Women writes:

The city is “masculine” in its triumphal scale, its towers and vistas, and arid industrial regions; it is “feminine” in its enclosing embrace, in its indeterminacy and labyrinthine uncentredness. We may even go so far as to claim that urban life is actually based on this perpetual struggle between rigid, routinized order and pleasurable anarchy, the male-female dichotomy (7).

Both Flanagan and Wilson see the development of cities through a feminist lens and posit that the city, in the vision of man, was not a place for women, as men were trying to make the city a place of order and efficiency. For men, Flanagan and Wilson argue, women brought with them disorder and inefficiency. Men went about requiring control and modernization through a series of tactics (Flanagan 4-5). First, they implemented a spatial division between the workplace (site of production) and the residence (site of reproduction). Additionally, women faced limitations in travel, encountered barriers to accessing comprehensive university education or training in emerging professions such as architecture, and occupied a disproportionately small number of university positions. Finally, because men viewed the city as disorderly, they prioritized technological innovations such as bigger skyscrapers and advanced building technology. With these three tactics, men managed to fashion the city in their likeness while demanding the removal of any disorder, woman or otherwise.

Historically intertwined with the land, Indigenous worldviews emphasize a symbiotic relationship, maintaining balance among all human and other relations. Before European contact, Indigenous Peoples thrived in complex, self-governing territorial Nations across Turtle Island (North America), with sustainable economic systems tied to traditional governance (Siyám, Raphael 35; Kimmer). Economic practices focused on taking only what was needed and migrating with seasonal changes, devoid of monetary concepts (Siyám, Raphael 34). The advent of settler-driven capitalism led Indigenous communities to adopt labour roles in fur production, ultimately forcing them into urban centers (Siyám, Raphael 85; Glover).

As industrial capitalism gained momentum, Indigenous nations faced displacement, confinement to reserves, and Residential School placements under strict cultural, economic, and migration laws framed as part of the Indian Act (Coates). This forced assimilation illustrates how hetero-patriarchal capitalism confines individuals to serve its order. The diminishing access to food and resources compelled Indigenous nations, including the Huron-Wendat, Algonquin, Innu, and Haudenosaunee Confederacy, to participate in the capitalist labour market, leading to urban relocation (Simon 7). In 2021, Statistics Canada reported 801,045 Indigenous people in urban centers. Urban Indigenous communities endure daily alienation from colonization's effects, facing challenges such as police oppression, addiction, and legal battles (Department of Justice Canada). Shawn J. Bobb from the British Columbia Canadian Bar Association notes that misunderstandings and misperceptions contribute to Indigenous people avoiding the system or experiencing alienation, stemming from limited colonial knowledge or experience with Indigenous ways of life.

Homosexuals have long attempted to assimilate or disguise their sexuality. The idea of ‘passing’ as heterosexual was conceived, in part, as a form of self-preservation and safety. Lisa Duggan calls this “homonormativity” and writes: “Homonormativity is a politics that does not contest dominant heteronormativity assumptions and institutions but upholds and sustains them while promising the possibility of a demobilized gay culture anchored in domesticity and consumption” (79). Homonormativity, ultimately, kills queerness by assimilating homosexuals into the dominant heterosexual world. Jose Esteban Muñoz, in reflection on this idea, states:

On oil dance floors, sites of public sex, various theatrical stages, music festivals, and arenas both subterranean and aboveground, queers live, labor and enact queer worlds in the present[...] Can the future stop being a fantasy of heterosexual reproduction? (49)

He argues that homonormativity is the conservative homosexual’s retreat into the private sphere as a way to assimilate (54).

Examining these demographic perspectives highlights the modern city as more than a physical construct; it is a crucible of social and cultural constructs perpetuating alienation. The intersectionality of gender, cultural identity, and sexual orientation intertwines with the urban landscape, shaping the experiences of women, indigenous peoples, and homosexual men within the city's intricate web of power dynamics and societal norms.

Making Contact

In Cruising Utopia: the Then and Now of Queer Futurity by Jose Esteban Muñoz, the author contrasts two queer nightclubs in New York City: The Magic Touch and The Gaiety (56-60). The two bars vary in a variety of ways. The Gaiety adopts state policies before they are officially instituted, thus playing by the state's rules, whereas The Magic Touch does not explicitly follow state policies. The Gaiety has strict rules about physical touch between performers and patrons, going so far as to have security guards who patrol the bar to prevent physical contact. Private engagements can be had through discreet financial transactions. On the other hand, The Magic Touch allows for physical touch after contests and in their VIP basement. At The Gaiety, performers are exclusively white, tall and blonde with muscular builds and focus on ‘poses’ with a limited dance repertoire. At The Magic Touch, the performers and patrons are predominantly Latino and African American, with some lesbians and straight women in attendance. The performers present diverse dancing styles, including highly sexualized break-dancing (57).

The Gaiety creates an antiseptic and controlled environment with limited physical contact, catering to a specific demographic. In contrast, Magic Touch introduces a contest format, embraces diversity in performers, and allows for more dynamic and tactile interaction, especially in the VIP area, creating a more engaging and varied experience. This comparison is demonstrated through Muñoz's notion of ‘network relations’ (The Gaiety) and 'contact relations' (The Magic Touch).

Muñoz's exploration of 'contact relations' in the context of the sex trade economy challenges the standardized pathways dictated by heteronormative capitalism. It rejects the conventional norms of networking relations involving the exchange of sex for money, deviating from the prevalent narrative perpetuated by corporate American sex trade portrayed in media and advertising culture, as well as traditional institutions like heterosexual marriage. Muñoz argues that the hustler-john relationship, prevalent in establishments like Magic Touch, poses a threat to the normalized performances of sex for money. This threat arises, in part, from its potential to foster contact and connections between individuals of different class and racial backgrounds, disrupting established societal norms (Muñoz 59). 'Network relations' imply a structured and often transactional form of engagement where individuals establish connections based on specific rules, norms, and predetermined pathways. Muñoz uses the concept of 'network relations' to critique and challenge the conventional and commodified nature of interactions within the broader context of sexuality. It contrasts with 'contact relations,' which involve more dynamic, varied, and potentially disruptive connections that challenge established norms and power structures.

Muñoz describes what he calls the “late Disneyfication” of Times Square in the 1990s under Mayor Rudy Giuliani (53). At the time, Times Square was home to many adult businesses, including adult bookstores, adult theatres, strip clubs, and other venues that catered to mature audiences. Amidst these business elements was a relationship amongst citizens of the area that exemplified the idea of ‘contact relation’ – different classes and intersectional backgrounds would see and come into contact with each other in ways that counter the hetero-patriarchal capitalist ideal (53). As Giuliani enacted his “quality of life campaign,” he took steps to ‘clean up’ Times Square. Here, we suddenly saw the forced removal of differences, including poverty, homosexuality, people of colour and the sex economy of that area. In its place, we saw Starbucks, The Lion King: The Musical, big brand advertising and the move towards ‘network relations’.

The suburban tourists... are shuttled into the city in large tour buses. On the bus, they interact exclusively with other tourists who have decided to venture into the big city. These tourists might then take in a show – let us just say it is Disney’s The Lion King at a corporate-sponsored venue such as the American Airlines Theatre – and perhaps go out for dinner at a chain restaurant such as Applebee’s or Red Lobster. These tourists then hop on the bus and are safely deposited in their suburban homes. The only contact they have outside their class strata is with representatives of the service industry who take their tickets or serve their meals (Muñoz 53-54).

As men shaped the city to mirror their desires, the resulting emphasis on order and cleanliness compelled individuals to withdraw into private spaces, perpetuating 'network relations' over 'contact relations.' Pursuing the ideal city inadvertently fostered alienation, prompting marginalized groups to resist the dominant system through various means.

The Intimate Male: Cruising

It is 2001 and I find myself in a bathroom stall in the men’s bathroom at Edmonton City Centre Mall. I am 19 years old and have limited experience with gay men.

Alone in the stall, I heard the bathroom door open, and someone entered the adjacent stall. The sound of a zipper, pants coming down, and then he sits. I noticed his foot tapping under the stall. A sense of curiosity led me to tap my foot in response. He extended his hand under the stall, signalling an invitation. He unlocked his stall door. I hesitated. Eventually, I crossed over into his. Our lips, hands and bodies met. We became entangled in intimacy.

Cruising is the act of men seeking out sex from other men in public spaces. The term ‘cruising’ emerged as a code word that allowed those “in the know” to understand the sexual intent. Muñoz suggests that the acts of public sex were ‘rituals of reconstructed intimacy’ (Muñoz 51). These acts would be defined through the heterosexual gaze as perverse, and municipalities have often curbed this ‘disorder’ through policing under sodomy and perversion laws (Espinoza 21).

In my mind, men, although the sculptors of the modern city, have, as I mentioned before, poured concrete over their pericardium and thus have hardened their ability to be intimate with others and, most importantly, with each other. Cruising offers a different and counter perspective to male intimacy in the urban environment. Muñoz argues that these public sex acts were examples of men having a delicate intimacy and care for one another in public (51).

Ultimately, Muñoz states that the future is already in the present. This notion that men are not intimate with each other is false. Indeed, the heterosexual male rarely has moments of intimacy with another heterosexual male. This act of homosocial intimacy typically occurs in moments of celebration amongst men, as seen in a study by Michael Flood through gathered observations from eight separate stag night groups. The observations showed how these men worked to maintain and strengthen their friendship bonds by “striving for group cohesion, togetherness and intimacy, rather than interpersonal competition and creation of male hierarchies” (Flood 3). Samuel R. Delany’s memoir The Motion of Light in Water describes a moment of cruising he experienced.

At those times, within those van-walled alleys, now between the trucks, now in the back of the open loafers, cock passed from mouth to mouth to hand to ass to mouth without ever breaking contact with other flesh for more than seconds; mouth, hand, ass passed over whatever you held out to them, sans interstice; when one cock left, finding a replacement – mouth, rectum, another cock – required moving the head, the hip, the hand no more than an inch, three inches (103).

Delany details how the men in this urban setting supported each other through physical offerings and by demonstrating self-care that extended to a profound, intimate connection with other men.

As Espinoza writes in Cruising: An Intimate History of A Radical Pastime, “[Cruising] grew from a collective desire to connect, to experience any act of intimacy, no matter how fleeting and despite the risks involved (55).” As I navigated the years of my youth, my experience at the Edmonton City Centre Mall bathroom was more than just a hormonal – some might say ‘perverse’ or ‘risky’– desire to get off with someone. In fact, it was my first encounter experiencing intimacy with another man in the urban environment.

Conclusion

Men erected towering skyscrapers to shape the city as a symbolic extension of their desires. They constructed efficient, straight roadways and rectangular buildings, all centred on the ideals of growth, productivity, and individualism. This meticulous crafting utilized hardened materials to create an 'ideal city' by eliminating disorder. However, this pursuit inadvertently fostered a sense of alienation in our identities within the urban environment. Many individuals have experienced this alienation and devised ways to counter its effects.

I invite the words of Michael Warner as I close this essay:

Queer politics, in short, isn’t always or only about sexuality. More generally, one might even want to say that sexuality isn’t always only about sexuality, that it is an autonomous dimension of experience. The demands and strategies of queer politics are burdened by – which also means motivated or energized by – less articulate but still powerful demands that have to do with the organization of social and public life. In a similar way, feminist and racial movements, along with the lesbian and gay movement, are frequently animated by displaced frustrations with atomizing conditions of market-mediated life, frustrations that find expression in the otherwise misleading and damaging ideal of ‘community’ (221).

Different demographic groups that have felt the alienation of the hetero-patriarchal capitalist-crafted city have found ways to counter its impacts on their social connections. The act of cruising, in particular, serves as a vivid example of how men can cultivate intimacy in public spaces while also countering the dominant system that is imposed on homosexual men.

In conclusion, the relentless pursuit of imposing masculine desires on the urban landscape through symbolic structures, capitalist endeavours, and the quest for order has resulted in the estrangement of marginalized groups and others. Paradoxically, this alienation has also fueled a determined resistance among 'the other'. As individuals strive to reclaim their right to the city, they navigate a complex interplay of societal expectations and their own desires, exemplifying the resilience of the human spirit against the rigid structures of the urban environment. Through acts of subversion, whether in the form of cruising or otherwise, individuals assert their agency and challenge the dominant narratives, paving the way for a more inclusive, less lonely, urban experience.

Works Cited

Ayer, Steven. “Power of Us: Toronto’s Vital Signs 2023 Special Report.” Toronto Foundation, 15 Nov. 2023, torontofoundation.ca/powerofus.

Bobb, Shawn J. “Indigenous Alienation.” Canadian Bar Association of British Columbia, 2021, www.cbabc.org/BarTalk/Articles/2021/October/Columns/Indigenous-Alienation.

Coates, Ken. “The Indian Act and the Future of Aboriginal Governance in Canada.” Centre for First Nations Governance, fngovernance.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/coates.pdf. Accessed 4 Dec. 2023.

Delany, Samuel R. The Motion of Light in Water: Sex and Science Fiction Writing in the East Village. Open Road Integrated Media, 2014.

Department of Justice Canada. “Overrepresentation of Indigenous People in the Canadian Criminal Justice System: Causes and Responses.” Department of Justice Canada, Government of Canada, 20 Jan. 2023, www.justice.gc.ca/eng/rp-pr/jr/oip-cjs/p4.html.

Duggan, Lisa. The Twilight of Equality? Neoliberalism, Cultural Politics, and the Attack on Democracy. Beacon Press, 2014.

Espinoza, Alex. Cruising: An Intimate History of a Radical Pastime. The Unnamed Press, 2019.

Flanagan, Maureen A. Constructing the Patriarchal City: Gender and the Built Environments of London, Dublin, Toronto, and Chicago, 1870s into the 1940s. Temple University Press, Philadelphia, USA, 2018, pp. 1–9.

Flood, Michael. “Men and Masculinities.” Men, Sex, and Homosociality: How Bonds between Men Shape Their Sexual Relations with Women, Sage, Brisbane, Australia, 2007, pp. 339–359.

Flynn, Alexandra, et al. Overview of Encampments Across Canada: A Right to Housing Approach. Office of the Federal Housing Advocate, Ottawa, Canada, 2022, pp. 1–71.

Glover, Fred. “Fur Trade in Canada (Plain-Language Summary).” The Canadian Encyclopedia, 15 Jan. 2020, www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/fur-trade-in-canada-plain-language-summary.

Jacobs, Jane. The Death and Life of Great American Cities. Bodley Head, 2020.

Muñoz, José Esteban. Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity. New York University Press, New York, USA, 2019, pp. 49–64.

Paletta, Anthony. “Story of Cities #32: Jane Jacobs v Robert Moses, Battle of New York’s Urban Titans.” The Guardian, 28 Apr. 2016.

Salway, Travis, et al. “Prevalence of exposure to sexual orientation change efforts and associated sociodemographic characteristics and psychosocial health outcomes among Canadian Sexual Minority men.” The Canadian Journal of Psychiatry, vol. 65, no. 7, 2020, pp. 502–509, https://doi.org/10.1177/0706743720902629.

Simmel, Georg. “The Metropolis and Mental Life.” Metropolis, 1995, pp. 30–45, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-23708-1_4.

Simon, Scott. “Indigenous Peoples, Marxism and Late Capitalism.” New Proposals: Journal of Marxism and Interdisciplinary Inquiry, vol. 5, no. 1, Nov. 2011, pp. 6–9.

Siyám, Sxwpilemaát, and Lily Raphael. “Step into the River: A Framework for Economic Reconciliation in BC.” Simon Fraser University Faculty of Environment, www.sfu.ca/ced/economic-reconciliation/framework-for-economic-reconciliation.html. Accessed 4 Dec. 2023.

Statistics Canada. “How the Census Counts Indigenous People in Urban Areas.” Statistics Canada, Government of Canada, 23 Sept. 2022, www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/11-627-m/11-627-m2022059-eng.htm.

United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs. “68% of the World Population Projected to Live in Urban Areas by 2050, Says UN.” United Nations, 16 May 2018, www.un.org/development/desa/en/news/population/2018-revision-of-world-urbanization-prospects.html.

Urban Design Lab. “History of Urban Design: From Ancient to Modern Cities.” Urban Design Lab, 11 Mar. 2023, urbandesignlab.in/history-of-urban-design-from-ancient-to-modern-cities/.

Warner, Michael. Publics and Counterpublics. Zone Books, 2002, pp. 65–124.

Wilson, Elizabeth. The Sphinx in the City: Urban Life, the Control of Disorder, and Women. University of California Press, 1992.

Yellowhorn, Eldon, and Kathy Lowinger. Turtle Island: The Story of North America’s First People. Annick Press, 2017.

Making Friends with Uncertainty

Scenario #1:

A blank stage. The lights have not gone down yet. The audience waits for the show to begin.

Scenario #2:

Midshow an actor’s sleeve captures a vase. It falls to the stage and shatters. The show must go on.

Scenario #3

Turning on the television to hear your hundredth report on climate change. You worry about what you can do.

The three scenarios listed above provide different grounds to examine what emerges in moments of uncertainty. In this essay, I will argue how in moments, such as beginnings, moments of failure, and how we respond to the global climate crisis, our human reaction, driven by our instinctual fight or flight response, demands our body find ground or stability amidst this uncertainty. How might we unbind this response and instead work with what Italian philosopher, Giorgio Agamben, calls ‘potentiality’? How might we make friends with uncertainty as a way to create and rehearse for the future?

I will explore this notion of potentiality by examining the theatrical experience. I will use the scenarios listed above, and, using the work of Daniel Sack and Jose Estaban Muñoz as my primary sources, examine what uncertainty does to us when creating and presenting theatrical work. I will also reference other theorists and writers such as Erwin Schrödinger, Peggy Phelan, Audre Lorde and Hannah Arendt to find interdisciplinary understandings of uncertainty and potentiality in the state of emergence.

Prior to writing these first two pages I sat in front of a blank page and asked myself: How do I face the uncertainty of a blank page when I am unsure of what will arise from my writing? This is a process, which ultimately, you will experience as the final paper that you are currently reading. My thoughts are not linear, but language and writing, demand linearity. I have chosen to reveal a bit of my process and have kept all my edits intact in an accompanying appendix. My hope is that this will reveal, more evidently, my emergent thought process. Peggy Phelan, American feminist scholar and co-founder of Performance Studies International, writes: “In writing the unmarked I mark it, inevitably. In seeing it I am marked by it. But because what I do not see and do not write is so much more vast than what I do it is impossible to ‘ruin’ the unmarked.” (Phelan) In submitting the accompanying draft version of this essay, I hope to demonstrate the emergent process that unfolded from the blank page to this final document you are currently reading.

BEGINNINGS

I sit in a theatre awaiting a performance to begin. I am unsure of what I will experience. Before the house lights go dim, before the entrance of light, sound, props or of humans on stage, there we sit as an audience, fully open to what will emerge. This moment is crucial in understanding what I am attempting to investigate. In this ‘waiting’ state, I, the audience, begin to generate possibilities, through my imagination, of what I will see. But until I see them, I will not have had that experience. This is somewhat of a Schrodinger's cat phenomenon. I can anticipate, in my mind, what will occur. As the show opens, it emerges and continues to emerge in front of me. In real time, present with the other audience members and the actors and theatrical elements involved in the unfolding of this story, my emotions and thoughts emerge. However, in the beginning, before it all starts, the possibilities are endless. As Professor of Literature, Edward Said writes: beginnings are “histographical demarcations applied retrospectively to mark the initiation of a chain of actions…They are transitive since they are “for” something in the same way that a means is devoted toward, and consummated by, an end.” (Said) We refer to what we have seen in the show only after we have seen it. Until then, we imagine possibilities and stay present to what is immediately emerging.

In 2005, Kevin McCarty captured a series of photographs titled The Chameleon Club. The images are of empty stages in the underground queer nightclub scene of Las Angeles. These mundane images of bare stages, exposed lighting and sound systems, offer up space to think of the potential futures these stages could have. Queer performance theorist, Jose Estaban Muñoz, examines McCarty’s photos through the lens of queer performativity (Muñoz 97-113). He considers how this potential of an empty stage, particularly in queer spaces, as the site of queer futurity. He writes: “Queerness is not yet here.” As if to say that queerness is not definitive of someone’s identity but is an opening for the potential of intersecting identities in relationships with other individuals considering the dynamics of time, emotions, place, etc. and yet never arriving at a fixed point of queerness. Queerness is continually changing. Always in a state of emergence and potentiality. The queer potential of McCarty’s photographs, not only in the content (ie. drag performances) but also in form (ie. nightclub, experimentation, relationships, community, dancing, music, joy, rejection) generates a complex future to these static images of empty stages. McCarty uses photography to capture or hold in time, this space where any number of things could happen and have happened. Much like our experience of sitting in a theatre auditorium waiting for the show to start, these photographs allow our imagination to thread multiple complex and emergent futures out of one stable image. McCarty’s photographic series exemplifies this idea of beginnings, and, along with Estaban's consideration of the queerness of these photos, it allows us to ponder: what could happen?

Although I have used the example of being an audience member in relation to an empty stage, I want to bring our attention to a different sort of beginning – the beginning of a creative process. We arrive in a studio – now what? There seems to be something about the beginning of a creative process that seems to create an opening of sorts. Much like the waiting audience member, for artists, this gateway of beginning initiates a future of emergence. One can argue that this gateway is not bound by an exact moment: at what point does a creative process actually begin? Is it from the inception of the idea? When the body becomes engaged in relation to other people, objects or space? When the artist steps back to reflect? When an audience witnesses the work? Emergence in the creative process can have no fixed starting point. However, I look to Hanna Arendt here to consider how we initiate work, not only through thought but also action. There seems to be a series of liminal gateways that one crosses in order to put thought into action into artistic work into reflection into development into sharing and witnessing and so forth. This action typically takes on a certain risk in the container of uncertainty. To use an overused academic saying: in unknowing comes knowing. Or in other words, in taking the first step we step towards emergence. And as we continue to take more steps, the creative process unfolds, and the work reveals itself. My film professor Denise Kenny once reminded me that “The script you write, isn’t the script you film. The script you film isn’t the film you edit.” There seems to be something constantly emerging as we create. It is through risk-taking, regardless of how high or low the stakes are, that things iteratively unfold. However, without that initial step, the work is withheld and merely lives in thought.

Beginnings are prefigurative and the space in which we can begin to imagine. From this imagination, our thoughts need to lead to actions that, oftentimes, are also uncertain. This, in performance creation, may look like improvisation or play in order to generate something. The risk is low at the beginning but has limitless potential. In the example of waiting for the show to start, we anticipate what we might see on that stage. It’s like waking at 4 a.m. to watch the sun crest over the horizon and imagine what the rest of the day will be like. It's like beginning the first day of rehearsals with a new cast and getting to know each other and considering the depths and places that these relationships will go over the course of the process. It’s like opening the door to something you are curious about and not knowing what you will learn once you look back at the door frame you walked through. It’s like starting the writing of this essay with a blank page and coming to the end of this paragraph while understanding what I’ve learned in getting here.

FAILURE

I’d like to note my usage of the word theatre in the following paragraphs. Theatre is part of the larger umbrella that we call performance. To be clear, when I am referring to ‘theatre’, I am referring to dramatic theatre – one that is rooted in the literary and then performed on stage. Elements of dramatic theatre include a traditional plot or story arch, a linear narrative, scenes are linked together, and usually require that dialogue, sound and lighting cues work in sequential order without disruption. When I speak of theatre or dramatic theatre, I am not speaking of post-dramatic theatre, improvisation, dance, performance art or live music. Although much of what I write about can be applied to these art forms, and as I will argue, to life, I am using the dramatic theatre, not only because it was the training I was brought up with and am attempting to critically override, but because it, of all the other forms, works with set cues, entrances, and text. Any veering from what is expected to occur on stage would mean ‘going off script’.

Theatre has all the potential for something going wrong. In fact, there have been a number of dramatic scripts written using this theme such as “The Play That Goes Wrong”. Ironically, this show is scripted, cued up in sequential order and the spaces of failure are planned as gags and rehearsed for comedic purposes. However, in this section, I am not speaking of shows that have well-rehearsed failures as gags. Those are examples of stable states of theatre even though the narrative they are performing is not the case. What I am speaking about are well-rehearsed performances where certain cues and actions drive towards a linear plot but where an unrehearsed moment of failure arises between the actors (not the characters) that throws the moment, and sometimes even the entire show, off script. This is exemplified in the second scenario I have listed at the start of this essay.

Moments on stage where things fall apart, and actors are left to put the show back together in a way that seems natural to the storyline inevitably draws everyone in the room into a state of true liveness. Although the form is being presented live, the reality is that dramatic theatre has been rehearsed tediously before it is presented in front of a live audience. It’s in the moment where it is evident that something unrehearsed has occurred on stage that we all (the actors, the technicians, the audience) imagine the many possible ways in which things can get back on track. This moment asks everyone to be present in order to re-find stability, certainty or to ‘get back on script’. Daniel Sack, in After Live: Possibility, Potentiality, and the Future of Performance writes: “In a small way, we encounter such an experience in the theater whenever we watch an actor forget his or her lines or an object malfunctions onstage, the mistake tearing open a small catastrophe where the potentiality of this singular moment suddenly appears and we wonder what or who (character or actor or other) will happen next.” (Sack)

Just like a beginning, failure is transitive. It’s a space to move through. In this moment of failure, we find ourselves again, in a momentary space of uncertainty. Failure allows us to work through the next steps. But in that moment of failure, we once again find ourselves in this space of instability reaching for the ground while traversing through all potential futures. As we move through failure, something emerges that we may not have known from the beginning.

I am particularly inspired by failure when considering queer theory perspectives. Jack Halberstram, queer theorist, and author of The Queer Art of Failure writes “The queer art of failure turns on the impossible, the improbable, the unlikely, and the unremarkable. It quietly loses, and in losing it imagines other goals for life, for love, for art, and for being.” (Halberstam) With this perspective, we consider how, within systemic dominant structures, certain people are born to fail that system. However, as Audre Lorde suggests in their book The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House the conventional way of doing things may not set everybody up for success and therefore, may require that failure leads individuals or communities to generate new systems that emancipate them from a system of oppression. This queer perspective on failure complexifies potentiality even further, considering a pluralistic possibility based on one’s lived experience and how that experience may offer different avenues of future-making through failure.

EARTH & HUMANS

My entire curiosity about emergence and potentiality has been to get to this point – how might we apply our understanding of emergence, potentiality, beginnings, and failure to the real world? The theatre (and performance at large) are testing grounds for what occurs in the world.

There is a lot of uncertainty at this point in history. One would argue that humanity is always in a state of uncertainty about the future. However, at this specific moment in time, where we are faced with the realities of climate change and systemic oppression, how we might we re-imagine a future where all humans can thrive in a mutually respectful and copasetic relationship with Earth and with each other?

I imagine the land as the stage, the sky as the area above the stage and the sun as the lighting. This is a stage that has been here for 4.5 billion years. Upon humans starting the show they considered the multiple narratives that could unfold on stage. But no one noticed the leaking pipe above the stage. As the show progresses, the pipe drips onto the lighting grid and causes a small electrical fire. The electrical fire grows to consume the fabric of the curtains. Suddenly the entire stage is engulfed in fire. We are barely 5 minutes into a 2-hour performance, and something has gone wrong. Reality has set in. How does this show go on?

For some, it’s hard to imagine a world without the use of fossil fuels. For others, it’s hard to imagine a world without corporate greed. And in the midst of all this consumption and extraction, we sit with a history of colonization and oppression. How do we individually take the first steps toward embodying the change? How does humanity get back on script? Or, does that script need to be thrown out and something new needs to be attempted? What can emerge from any of those actions?

ENDINGS

I have examined theories centred around potentiality and synthesized them through queer and performance theory as a way to consider how we might create and rehearse for the future. I have explored the uncertainty that comes from initiating a project into the world or having something begin. I have looked at the failure that comes when we create prescribed stable structures without access or ability for flexibility. I have recognized that it is in attempting to hold something in a stable state that eventually leads to failure. How we respond to failure, generates its own potential for the future. And, finally, I’ve applied what I have understood from my research to climate change and humanity’s current destabilization and uncertainty as we simultaneously attempt to re-write a script, convince people to experiment with the dramatic theatre form, and all the while, recognize that the art is just the central piece that brings us all into a relationship with each other.

Although my research, metaphor and application of my study have led me to some interesting curiosities as I approach the end of this paper, I am still left grappling with the uncertainty beyond this paper. This has left me, ultimately, with more questions than answers. What I do know from the research I have gathered is that it’s through uncertainty that we can begin to reimagine other potential futures. Some of these futures will mean that we close the show early to reassess our next steps. Others will leave us in excruciating pain while we beg for it to end. And finally, there may be a future that leaves every single one of us in a closer relationship with that 4 a.m. sunrise. One that redefines what living is (or in the case of dramatic theatre, what “liveness” is defined as) and being in relation with all the other elements of the stage, including, and most importantly, with each other as audience and performer(s).

It’s this that I have hope in – a relationship that reminds us that no matter what, the curtain will always rise, that we may not individually know what show we are doing (or watching) but in doing and failing and considering all potentials, something else, unexpectedly, emerges.

WORKS CITED

Agamben, Giorgio. Potentialities: Collected Essays in Philosophy. Edited by Daniel Heller-Roazen, translated by Daniel Heller-Roazen, Stanford University Press, 1999.

“Age of Earth Collection.” National Geographic Society, https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/resource-library-age-earth.

Arendt, Hannah. “The Human Condition.” The University of Chicago Press, 1958, https://monoskop.org/images/e/e2/Arendt_Hannah_The_Human_Condition_2nd_1998.pdf.

Halberstam, Judith, and Jack Halberstam. The Queer Art of Failure. Duke University Press, 2011.

Lorde, Audre. “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House.” This Bridge Called My Back, Suny Press, 2015.

Mischief Theatre. “The Play That Goes Wrong.” The Play That Goes Wrong | MISCHIEF, https://theplaythatgoeswrong.com/.

Muñoz, José Esteban. Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity. New York University Press, 2009.

Phelan, Ann O'Day Maples Professor of the Arts/Professor of English Peggy, and Peggy Phelan. Unmarked : the politics of performance. Routledge, 1992. Accessed 5 December 2022.

Sack, Daniel. After Live: Possibility, Potentiality, and the Future of Performance. University of Michigan Press, 2015. Accessed 5 December 2022.

Said, Edward W. Beginnings: Intention and Method. Columbia University Press, 1985.

Schrödinger, Erwin. “Die gegenwärtige Situation in der Quantenmechanik (The present situation in quantum mechanics).” Naturwissenschaften, vol. 23, 1935, pp. 807-812, https://www.jstor.org/stable/986572#metadata_info_tab_contents.

THE FEAST OF KNOWING

I have resprouted.

Remembering the mother that feeds me.

This land in which I have been birthed from.

I have reconnected.

Remembering the friendships that feed me.

This land in which I have felt belonging.

I have rerooted.

Remembering the earth that feeds me.

This land in which I have been nourished.

I call back to my ancestors.

I sing the songs of my grandmothers and aunties.

I labour on this earth that my grandfathers and uncles have sweat.

I touch the unseen that desperately want to be made visible. Water into air into fire into anything that can be dreamed.

From within me this “mudanca”,

A Portuguese word that means both movement & change.

I dance to change. I change to dance.

And, in doing so,

I return to this Earth.

I return to my friends.

I return to my mother.

Here I will lay for a bit more time.

And in one hundred years my body will still know.

Still know the home that provides me the feast of knowing.

In knowing, I come close to seeing.

In seeing, I come closer to being.

In being, I dance, I dance, I dance.

Life is a series of emergent experiences.

No one really knows what will happen to a baby in its life as it grows older. The chaos that is life provides it the right amount of disturbances, changes, adaptations, reflections and transformations that propel it forward. As this child grows, it attempts at achieving something and failing becomes its existence. One could look at these failures as a way to bound their inability to grow. But, the reality is that, for all humans and species on this earth, resilience is natural. It is the substance that makes and propels life forward.

I am in interested in the emergent qualities of life and live performance. I remember when I was a very young emerging artist, I enrolled in an extra-curricular class in high school called "Theatre Appreciation". As a group of students, my peers and I, would venture to a theatre once a month, typically a regional A-house-type theatre to watch your basic mainstage type programming ("Hello Dolly", "Of Mice of Men", "A Street Car Named Desire", etc.). Sitting there amongst the 300-or-so audience members watching a live performance, I was taken by a moment when an actor, playing a character on stage, dropped a handkerchief on the stage floor. The dropping of the handkerchief had no meaning to the narrative. This was a moment when the actor had accidentally dropped something on the floor. Something unscripted. The scene went on, but nobody picked up the handkerchief.

It dawned on me, at this young high school age, that, in real life, regardless of what was happening, if I had an object in my hand and it had accidentally fallen to the ground, I would, uninterrupted from what I was doing, naturally bend over and pick it up and keep doing what I was doing. I would not wait until the moment I left the area (or the "end of my scene") to walk by it, pick it up, and leave.

The experience of watching this at a young age stayed with me while I went forth with my theatre education. Later, in my early thirties, this moment back in high school made me realize the importance of liveness and what the real potency of live performance is. It is in these absurdities (ie. the actor on stage attempting to figure out when a good time to pick up the handkerchief would be so as to not interrupt the flow of the dialogue or action on stage) that we propel art into a space that is devoid of realness. However, in the theatrical representation of realism, we also breed the act of non-participatory citizen engagement. (I have a future blog post scheduled on my thoughts around church, state & theatre)

Going back to this moment of failure on stage, this moment made me embrace the emergent elements of live performance, usually based in theatre as failed moments, or unscripted moments, or things that were not supposed to happen on stage. These moments bring with it an increased level of liveness, not just for the performers on stage (Actor thinks: How do I pick up this hankerchiek and make it look nature in this scene?) but also for the audience, who sits there thinking: How will that actor pick up that handkerchief? Do they know they have dropped the handkerchief? Is this part of the show? Was the actor meant to do that? Suddenly, all 300 audience members and the actor(s) on stage are in a shared state of liveness -- a liveness that was due to a small unexpected element in a highly structured and solidified performance.

And so, when applying live performance understanding to real-world ways of being, I see this ability to embrace the failed/unexpected moments as moments for potentiality, in which one failed or unexpected element can turn into multiple possibilities for a future. This failure turns into re-organization.

This is what makes live performance magical.

It is in these emergent qualities to embrace the aesthetic of failure that we can begin to bring into existence the real transformative power of live performance.

Of course, I say this all, with the inability to know everything at the same time. It's a giant paradox. In an attempt to fail, one needs to somehow unlearn and untrain. Not to mention the many years of placing a public in front of a proscenium theatre that separates the artists from the public, putting the artist on a raised stage that creates a high level of non-interactivity or non-participation, embedding in the audience, this notion, that there are rules here you have to play by and that those on stage should be listened to. (Sounds like any form of authority to me). Moreover, as it has become increasingly popular to do today, when something is uncomfortable on stage it is introduced with a long list of trigger warnings telling the audience what they are about to see before they have even experienced it, subjecting the audience to a certain level of coddling and hyper-safety.

This doesn't treat the audience as a brave spectator, who has shown up, who have re-organized themselves through millennia, adapted during heartbreak or disaster, and who, until the dawn of social media, didn't turn to erasure as a way to become robust.

I am now sitting at my desk transcribing what I initially dictated into my smartphone voice recorder. At 8 am on December 16... no, make that December 19, 2020, I recorded the above thoughts into the voice recorder. After quiet contemplation and reading from my list of essential books to read, I voiced these emergent thoughts into my recorder. And even now, after I review what I said and am transcribing them into this blog, I keep manifesting new ideas. New reflections pop into my head. I propel forward with new knowledge due to wanting to edit, change and reorganize my initial thoughts.

As I move forward from that moment back in high school to this late-30s era I am in today, I am reflecting back on the many points in my life when I was challenged. In those moments where I felt like I would fail, I look back now, and realized, that time kept going forward. And, from those moments of uncertainty, I looked down to the ground, picked up the handkerchief and kept going. This time, with a handkerchief in my hand.

I am preparing for my upcoming performance creation residency of "Cruising at 30 km/s and Attempting Not To Crash". Anxiety has set in based on my inability to make decisions about what the show will look like. Ever since the development of The End, the show I created last year, I have been attempting to embrace a certain level of unknowing. I feel I have made some terrible work in the past because the audience, artistic programmers and marketing staff demand a certain level of what I call 'arrival' (this attempt at knowing what the show is about before you've even made the show; removing the true liveness from the live art), I am compelled to stay in this state of unknowing and move through a performance creation residency without making a firm plan, but this doesn't always work when audiences, programmers and marketing staff require this level of knowledge.

I've been examining this tyranny of planning for over 7 years now. Last year I was invited to participate in a queer performance residency as part of CANdance (a partnership between Springboard Performance (Calgary) and Studio 303 (Montreal)). The residency was titled This Is Actively Built and featured 4 queer Canadian artists (Kevin Jesuino, Melina Stinson, Winnie Superhova and Nuiboi). The residency was the idea of contemporary dance artist Nate Yaffe. Nate had established similar residencies in the past with other queer artists. At the beginning of the residency he reminded me of queer theory texts such as Jose Esteban Muñoz' "Queer Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity" and Jake Halberstram's "The Queer Art of Failure". Both of these texts provided me with a strong inspiration towards the unravelling of these expectations on me as a performance creator to know what I will do in a performance before I even know what the show is. Munoz suggests that the future relies on the queering of systems (very similar to offerings suggested by Afro-Futurism); an idea that is grounded in examining pluralistic, diverse and anti-fragile systems or ways of being that come when we open a system up to all future possibilities once the mainstream has dissolved. Halberstam, in The Queer Art of Failure, suggests that anyone born queer (or marginalized in any way) is destined to fail from the onset. This is best exemplified in the online videos that have been coming out around the game of privilege. Certain folks, based on their privileges (and this is always intersectional) have a head start in what society calls 'success in life'. However, those with less privilege start the race further back and, in many circumstances, are destined to fail or lose the race. Halberstam suggests that queer folks are destined to fail. It is in this failure that we can find resilience, opportunity and a difference we can offer the world. In this 'failing' we, queer humans of this Earth, can offer up different ways of knowing thus leading to a pluralistic future of possibilities.

Both of these texts grounded me in developing a show that never arrives at a complete finish. By 'finish', I mean that is never overly planned that the sense of liveness is removed from the performance. I am interested in the bits of the show that provide opportunities for failure. It's in this failure that the show breaths life and true liveness. And, when examining the role that queer performance makers have in this world, I am interested in examining this failure towards possibilities within my queer lived experience, exploring where I, the ensemble, and the show go when we remove the veil of planned cues and set choreography/blocking, and use the space of live performance to offer a laboratory to explore difference, failure and anti-fragility for the real world outside of the performance.

And so, I sit here, attempting to make decisions about my upcoming show that requires me to be courageous in not knowing what will happen, but also requires a certain level of planning when it comes to casting an ensemble, describing my ideas to the artistic programmer and providing material upfront for any marketing and promotion that is needed; it is a constant internal tug-of-war and often the mainstream can't see any other path then the planned path.

I offer up the question to any performance makers and programmers out there -- what is liveness if we don't allow for failure or unknowing?