AWAKE
AWAKE is a growing body of art, film, writing, and teaching - to help us understand power, politics, each other, and ourselves - how they all connect, and how we relate with them in our search for meaning.
I worry about the world we are leaving to our children, and to the generations after them. But I don't believe the drift toward the emerging dystopia is unstoppable. Every right we hold today was fought for, against apathy and greed, in waves, by ordinary people who kept up the good fight. I am a documentary filmmaker and an educator, and I believe both art and education still have real work to do here. AWAKE is my attempt to do my part of it.
AWAKE casts a wide net of mediums and forms of interaction, from interactive public art, to documentary shorts and recurring publications, and more.
O Canada My Canada, first of a series of installations revealing mechanisms of power, propaganda, and censorship, has an interactive version online. To understand the gap between what Canada claims about reconciliation with its Indigenous peoples, and what it actually keeps doing - you can interact with it here.
The ABC of Political Awareness offers a vocabulary of simple definitions, giving politically aware and concerned parents a way to engage their teenage children in conversations that matter, conversations our education systems don't make enough room for.
Map of Hope is named for what it's actually trying to find. It doesn't start from a fixed definition of hope, it's a search for one, built case by case and contributor by contributor: current leaders, historic wins, individual stories of sacrifice.
I imagine creating these works in collaboration with youth and the community. A term in the ABC book could start as a classroom project, students researching it, debating it, and defining it, working alongside an artist in residence. Parents could join the editorial process, shaping the book around the conversations they actually want to have with their kids. A short documentary on a value like courage could be built by young filmmakers, finding the people who live it, having conversations with them, assessing the footage to find the narrative thread that brings it together, collaboratively in group settings.
I'm looking to connect with the people and places who might want to build this alongside me: university departments and research centres who might host it, graduate students and faculty who want to build it as part of their own practice, and classrooms, parents, and communities who want a hand in shaping it. If that's you, I'd like to hear from you.