Science-Art Symbiosis: Professional Inspiration Session
The Ocean Decade Community of Practice has been exploring the practice of science-art with the intention of inspiring future creations by the network to be showcased at the Annual Meeting in November, and beyond. Developed by interdisciplinary scientist Samantha Jones, these activities aim to engage diverse participation across the network and centre the science-art practices of diverse folks. No previous experience with art is necessary.
This Inspiration Session builds on content included in the workbook, and will lead up to the Annual Meeting Science-Art Showcase. This synchronous panel discussion is complementary to the workbook, and aims to engage the science-art practices of folks inside and outside of the MEOPAR network. This experience will focus on possible entry points into science-art work, how creatives generate ideas, and developing a creative practice that is engaging for the artist and the people who interact with the finished work.
For more information about the Science-Art Symbiosis Series and Workbook, click here.
These activities align with the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development Challenge 10: Change humanity’s relationship with the ocean and Outcome 7: An inspiring and engaging ocean. Ocean literacy and communicating the value of the oceans is important for knowledge mobilization and to inspire people to get involved. These activities are officially endorsed as UN Decade contributions.
About the Practitioner:
Samantha Jones, BSc. (Hons), MSc.
she/her | PhD Candidate, Geography, University of Calgary | Location: Moh’kins’tsis/Calgary, AB | Area of Focus: Arctic inorganic carbon cycling
Sam is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Geography at the University of Calgary. Her research focuses on inorganic carbon cycling in a connected lake – river – coastal ocean system in Iqaluktuuttiaq, Cambridge Bay, NU. Her poem “Ocean Acidification,” first published in Watch Your Head, was developed into a multimedia clip with science and policy partners and included in the Virtual Ocean Pavilion at COP26. Other examples of her science-poetry are published in GeoHumanities and Arctic.
About the Panelists:
Dr. Jenna Butler, PhD
she/her | Award-winning Canadian poet, essayist, and editor | Location: Treaty 6 Territory
Dr. Jenna Butler is the author of three books of poetry, Seldom Seen Road, Wells, and Aphelion; a collection of ecological essays, A Profession of Hope: Farming on the Edge of the Grizzly Trail; and the Arctic travelogue Magnetic North: Sea Voyage to Svalbard. Her newest book, Revery: A Year of Bees, essays about beekeeping, climate grief, and trauma recovery, was a finalist for the 2021 Governor General’s Literary Award in Non-Fiction. Butler is a retired professor of creative and environmental writing and an off-grid organic farmer in Treaty 6.
Further readings: Review of Magnetic North;Environmental Column “Field Notes” at Alberta Views Magazine
Brittany Schaefer, MA
she/her | Project Manager for Civic Laboratory for Environmental Action Research (CLEAR), Memorial University | Location: Dish with One Spoon Territory
Brittany (settler, she/her) is a social scientist interested in human-environment relations and ways of doing science better; specifically, interdisciplinary collaborations and feminist approaches to knowledge production. She is the Project Manager for CLEAR.
Sample works from CLEAR’s Artist-in-Residence program: Knowledge quilt; Workbook on colonialism, mapping, and oil
Naomi Bird, BCD
they/them | W2SA Educational Consultant; M. Ed Student, University of Saskatchewan | Location: Treaty 6 Territory/Saskatoon
Naomi Bird is a Two-Spirit Nehithaw person. They completed a double major in Sustainability and Urban Planning at Dalhousie University and are currently working on a masters in Land-Based Indigenous Education. Naomi is an educational consultant for the Wabanaki Two-Spirit Alliance and sits on the National Two-Spirit youth council. Their research interest include 2SQ health/identity, and trauma informed pedagogy. In their free time, Naomi likes to bead, watch Netflix, and can usually be found at the local climbing gym.
Further Reading:The Emotional Labour of Indigenous Post-Secondary Students: A Trauma-Informed Auto-ethnography; Two-Spirits’ response to COVID-19: Survey Findings in Atlantic Canada identify Priorities and Developing Practices; The Oxford handbook of sexual and gender minority mental health (chapter 18)
Jennifer MacLatchy, MA
she/they | Artist, kayak instructor, and Interdisciplinary PhD candidate, Dalhousie University | Location: Mi’kma’ki
Jennifer MacLatchy uses emergent arts-based methods to engage with marine debris as a way of enacting an ethics of care in the current moment of climate crisis and mass extinction. She looks to plastic waste as artifacts of Anthropocene delusions that tell stories of the inextricable interconnectedness of every part of the living world. She works to enact material responsibility by transforming this abundant, durable, and versatile material resource from its destructive state as trash adrift in the oceans to a constructive state as a material collaborator towards the ends of building liveable future worlds. Working with marine plastic as a material for mending tears in the web of life, she works towards imagining and then building post-Anthropocene life-sustaining multi-species entanglements.
