Cross-Pollinations Workshop Presentations 2011

Questions about “here” abound in Canadian literary history, from Northrop Frye’s famous “Where is here?” to Tim Lilburn’s meditative “how to be here?” WH New’s book-length poem Underwood Log (2004) takes these fundamental Canadian questions about place and reiterates them historically, lyrically, and playfully, evoking the form of a travel log with entries documenting and meditating on the notion of “here.” Three groups of entries, which are indicated by latitude and longitude co-ordinates, indicate different ways of thinking “here” in New’s poem.

Osborne has been exhibiting in Canada and internationally since the early 1970s and has shown in over 350 exhibitions. Her installation work speaks of the forces of transformation within nature, as well as commenting upon pressing issues relating to the environment. In her recent work Osborne has focused on an examination of the issues of genetically modified organisms for subject matter. Osborne discusses her art work, including Shoalwan: River Through Fire, River of Ice (2003), Endless Forms Most Beautiful (2006), and ab ovo (2008). For more information, visit her webpage

Holmes discusses the Woodhaven Eco Art Project, a community-based, multi-disciplinary collaboration of artists, students and fine arts faculty members. Over 50 people created work over an eight month period in 2010 in a nature preserve in the Central Okanagannin British Columbia. A film, a catalogue and a website showcase the art that was produced. Holmes talks about the art and the issues that arose out of this collaboration, issues around artistic agency and the use of community-based and artist-based practice to develop a new level of attention, knowledge, and stewardship about the conservation of unique landscapes and ecosystems in an ecologically troubled and development-threatened region of Canada.

Carruthers proposes that there are two paths we might take in responding to the current eco-crisis. The first perceives world and complex relationships as objects and systems and relies on developing further technologies to repair and maintain the mechanisms of these. The second she describes as an intertwining of being, a vastly different perception of self and world from which very different responses and technologies may arise. Many are doing exemplary work through education, the sciences and the arts in response to global climate change and other aspects of the eco-crisis. Carruthers both considers the role of the arts and the artists in making this ontological shift, and how they both have the capacity to subvert aesthetical perception and engagement in a non-reductive manner.

How far does the term epic genuinely suit Whyte’s poem? Vadervlist puts Whyte’s epic into context of some works he feels it shares affinities with and explore how he came to an understanding of the epic genre, and suggest what he was able to do as an epic. As an advocate for local environments, a student and teacher of local history, a critic of the history of representation of the Canadian Rockies--and above all, as an epic poet for whom the Rockies served as motif and muse -- Whyte adopted several kinds of responsibility for the places he recognized as a key source of his imaginative identity.

In 2003 Leanne Allison and Karsten Heuer spent five months and three seasons filming, writing, and tracking on foot a porcupine caribou migration across the high arctic of Yukon and Alaska. Allison and Heuer strive to discover what being caribou intimately entails. Chisholm’s aim is to show how Allison and Heuer compose various refrains of becoming caribou whose impact on the senses is directly political. Being caribou, Chisholm argues, involves a de-framing of the standard view of wilderness landscapes as prospects of sustainable development where industry and wildlife can be made to fit with least risk to ecological integrity. In place of sustainable development Being Caribou sees a non-human becoming of man and a non-human becoming of nature whose critical vitality defies the anthropogenic logic of risk and resource management.

Animals may be good to think with, as Paul Shepard said, but for the most part universities are dominated by humanist scholars who can be resistant to discourses about any species other than their own: theorizing `the animal´ from within an English department can meet with obstacles. Working on animals can be a formidable task, especially if one wishes to slip out of the leg-hold trap of representationalism and disciplinary limits to speculate about `real´ wolves and bears on the basis of `mere´ textual acquaintance. I will speak about theoretical and political challenges that emerge as one attempts to think with wild animals. What kinds of knowledge about wild animals do the accounts of naturalists, biologists, and park wardens generate, and what insights can a researcher working in an arts or humanities discipline make of such accounts?