WORKSHOP

From May 27-30, 2019, thirty-three participants gathered in Toronto for the workshop component of the Museum for Future Fossils project. The guiding question was: what kinds of collaboration are possible in a time of crisis? On Day 1, led by the SHATTERED MOON ALLIANCE, we discussed different forms of collaboration and shared our research in a lightning round of presentations. Day 2 brought environmental crisis home as we met on Toronto Island under the threat of evacuation due to high floodwaters. There we learned about erosion prevention and artificial reefs from Meg St John; science fiction, art, and digital futures from Dr. Sara Mameni; and plastics pollution and research from the Synthetic Collective arts/science collaboration. Deep time and natural history characterized Day 3 as we participated in artists Meghan Price and Suzanne Nacha’s boulder kite project, toured Marc Dion’s Life of a Dead Tree at MoCA (staging our own intervention), and ended on a high note with a cabaret for the end of the world.

The moment before A Museum For Future Fossils opens

Meg St. John presents work undertaken by the Toronto Regional Conservation Authority to protect Toronto Islands while outside news crews gather to cover a possible evacuation

Workshop participants make rubbings of erratic glaciers as part of the boulder kite making (photo by Meghan Price)

Workshop participants assemble the glacier rubbings into kites (that were flown at Lake Huron later in the project) (photo by Suzanne Nacha)

Alexandra Ntoukas describes her research into the emerald ash borers that killed the tree in Marc Dion’s Life of a Dead Tree at MoCA (May 24 - July 28, 2019)

Participant Amanda Boetzkes stages an intervention with Ntoukas, re-imagining Dion’s work as a Joseph Beuys’s work for the contemporary age (How to Explain Art to a Dead Tree) (with permission)

Poster for the Concret Cabaret, Future Fossils edition

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