William Bessai-Saul, Artist – Regina
William Bessai-Saul is an artist, cartoonist, and filmmaker based in Regina (Treaty 4). His drawings, photographs, and performance work mix humour, pop culture, and philosophy, reframing the world through personal narrative and absurdist world building. Bessai-Saul studied drawing, philosophy, and photography at the University of Regina, graduating with distinction in 2025. His work has exhibited locally since 2017 and screened nationally. He currently hosts a weekly community talk-radio show analyzing newspaper comics. His daily strip Bird People is available online and in print in The Carillon (the U of R student newspaper). His forthcoming work includes a Bird People performance with New Dance Horizons, a video installation at Nuit Blanche, and a 2.5D window installation at Neutral Ground. He is also one of three artists in the group exhibition Landscaping, currently on display at The Fifth Parallel Gallery until June 27.
1. No cell phones (or Windows 10)
I don’t consider myself a luddite. I’m generally pro-computer, pro-automation, all that. But when the first iPhone came out, I determined that such an ungainly multi-tool – combining a miniaturized camera, computer, and telephone – would barely suffice at any function and excel at none. I would be having none of it. I hold similarly agonizing foibles regarding Windows 7; namely, that it’s the single greatest operating system ever devised, though this is more so for aesthetic reasons. I find the radically streamlined, Apple-ified look of user interfaces from the late 2010s on to be deeply ugly and inhuman.
2. Dark Shadows
You don’t just watch over twelve hundred episodes of a TV show without it becoming an obsession. It’s hard to overstate the absolute insanity of Dark Shadows: the 1960s daytime soap opera for goths. Nowhere else could you find the ghost of an insane evangelical preacher brick up a vampire in remission behind a brick wall as revenge for doing the same to him two hundred years earlier.
On the corner of Victoria and Scarth in Regina stands an Art Deco construction that is totally unique. Built like a Mesopotamian ziggurat with three tiers culminating in a Sauron-esqe tower, its distinctive contour stands out like a sore thumb: a temple amidst the typical utilitarian grey boxes of the downtown area. I’ve never even been inside.
As a second-generation atheist, being spared the tedium of weekly metaphysical monologues, this grimoires is a fine introductory primer that provides practical guides on protective wards. I personally prefer the Infernal Dictionary, for its more detailed accounts of what political office each demon holds, whether they live in Pandaemonium or just commute in, and if they are or have ever been a member of The Order of The Fly.
In 2019, when I was hospitalized for two weeks after a major spinal surgery, I resolved to get into this show as an alternative to the boredom and horror of in-patient life. As someone who spent much of his childhood snobbishly avoiding whatever was popular, I now felt it my obligation to do my homework to experience this cultural milestone that so shaped my generation. And I get it now. Being a part of this fan base is like being a member of an eldritch cult.