Earth (Okâwîmâw Askiy – ᐅᑳᐧᒫᐊᐧᐢᑭᕀ)

University of Saskatchewan Art Galleries and Collection (USask Galleries), in partnership with the Centre for Sustainable Curating (CSC) and Otekhnòtshera Ratirihwisaks Etho:Onhwentsyáke (OTEKH), present

Earth (Okâwîmâw Askiy – ᐅᑳᐧᒫᐊᐧᐢᑭᕀ)

12-HOUR EVENT
12 noon – 12 midnight (CST)
December 12, 2025

Online: YouTube Livestream
Live: Rounding space at the Kenderdine Gallery, USask Galleries, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon (free, venue is accessible)

Curated by Christof Migone and jake moore

The word ‘earth’ when preceded by a direct article becomes planetary, the Earth. This proximity shifts our understanding of ‘soil’ into ‘the world’. It moves from ground under your feet and dirt you can hold in your hand, to expanse you walk on and territory you live within. This perceptual transformation makes clear the potency of spatial relationality in language and worldmaking.

Amplifying Earth as a series of relations is our grounding premise.

Samuel Beckett concludes one of his Fizzles with these words “ruinstrewn land, little panic steps.” As both unsettled settlers of Argentinian/Austrian and Scottish/Dutch heritage, the paths we take are teeming with these little panic steps, but they are steps nonetheless.

We are coming to you from this ground here, kisiskâciwan, the traditional territories of the Nehiyawak, Maškékowak, Nîhithaw, Lakota, Nakoda, Dakota, Saulteaux (Anihšināpē), Dene, and the ancestral lands of the Métis, specifically Treaty 6 on the Canadian Prairies.

HOUR 1 (12h)
USask Galleries presents

Joseph Naytowhow, kēhtē-aya (elder), musician, storyteller and artist, Plains Cree/Woodland Cree, Sturgeon Lake First Nation, Treaty 6 Territory, is a steering committee member for kihci-okāwīmāw askiy (Great Mother Earth) Knowledge Centre. He will welcome us and begin this event in a good way.

bounty by Aurora Wolfe

Wrapped in the bones of my kin, 15 years after my departure from the grasslands—I returned. I expected to see the hurt that I had been holding within myself reflected in the landscape. Instead, I found transformation and strength in those reconfigurations.

+ At 12:35, Time (Less): All Flourishing 1 by Laura St. Pierre

St. Pierre’s All Flourishing (1-12) is the through line of the event, closing each hour as part of the Time (Less) series. There is a slowness to the work that becomes the timekeeper, the chorus, the return.

HOUR 2 (13h)
USask Galleries presents

Algae Kin Gatherer by Parsons and Charlesworth

The Sea In Its Thirst Is Trembling by Dawit L. Petros

The Great Thaw (intro) by Michaela Grill and Karl Lemieux

+ At 13:35, Time (Less): All Flourishing 2

HOUR 3 (14h)
USask Galleries presents

The Great Thaw by Michaela Grill & Karl Lemieux

What does it mean to represent the visual traces of environmental destruction? This is the question tackled by this documentary exploring permafrost thaw and its effects on diverse ecosystems.

+ At 14:35, Time (Less): All Flourishing 3

HOUR 4 (15h)
CSC presents

Maybe…EARTH by Christina Battle

It is easy to die on Mars. Yet the race to the oxygen-deprived planet has never been stronger. Maybe it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy driven by billionaires. Maybe plants can help break the spell. Maybe…

being who you are there is no other by Jessica Karuhanga

+ At 15:35, Time (Less): All Flourishing 4

HOUR 5 (16h)
USask Galleries presents

Worried Earth by Jessica Marion Barr, Ufuk Ali Gueray, Ella Dawn McGeough, Erica Mendritzki, Melanie Zurba

The project builds from Gueray’s recent work Irk Bitig (A Catalogue of Omens), a dysfunctional oracle that spits out prophecies with indifference.

+ At 16:35, Time (Less): All Flourishing 5

HOUR 6 (17h)
USask Galleries presents

Arc of Night by Joshua Bonnetta

Arc of Night unfolds over a year in a Bavarian forest, tracing both the nocturnal life of the landscape and the presence of the recordist within it.

+ At 17:35, Time (Less): All Flourishing 6

HOUR 7 (18h)
USask Galleries presents

Cannibal lot Excavations by Car Martin, Coyote, Alexis Kinloch

A treatise on the intermingling of environmental grief and human loss.

+ At 18:35, Time (Less): All Flourishing 7

HOUR 8 (19h)
USask Galleries presents

A Fireside Reading Event (The Nomadic School echo in Saskatoon) by Office for a Human Theatre (Filippo Andreatta and Sarah Messerchmidt)

+ At 19:35, Time (Less): All Flourishing 8

HOUR 9 (20h)
USask Galleries presents

Portrait or Landscape, Anahita? by Sepideh Behrouzian

The work follows the continuous shaping of a colonial frontier: from oil-mining as a colonial practice, to a flattened representation of a dystopian climate devastation that obscures its asymmetrical effects.

+ At 20:35, Time (Less): All Flourishing 9

HOUR 10 (21h)
OTEKH presents

Earth Resonances by Tanya Doody + Jackson 2bears

Blending elements of magical realism with tactile materiality, this work speculates on the natural world and our entanglement within it.

techno natural cyber forest by Cassie Packham

This work considers Sky World as its origin. The vision and sounds of this environment are attributed to space/opal, an avatar and resident on the Second Life grid.

+ At 21:35, Time (Less): All Flourishing 10

HOUR 11 (22h)
OTEKH presents

Moscow recordings by Masha Kouznetsova

Moscow recordings is a project emerging from field recordings I collected during returns to my home city amid escalating repressions that force verbal communication into doublespeak.

Rusty resonance by Danielle Petti

The work emerges from a process of reciprocal pigment foraging and sensory engagement with Land.

+ At 22:35, Time (Less): All Flourishing 11

HOUR 12 (23h)
USask Galleries presents

Crude by Andrew Denton

The film seeks to evoke a space of reflection, uneasiness, and sadness by engaging with the residual and stratified signs of our collective impact on our environment.

+ At 23:35, Time (Less): All Flourishing 12

Tune in to NAISA, Radius, Radio Bloc Oral, Resonance Extra, Wave Farm, and YouTube Live.

Thanks to the School for the Arts, Office of the Vice President Research, Media Production, College of Arts and Science at the University of Saskatchewan, Canada Council for the Arts, SK ARTS, Sask Lotteries.

Full programme: You And I Are Water Earth Fire Air Of Life And Death.

Contact: christofmigone@gmail.com