Listening to Fish and Water: The Art of Survival

What lessons can we learn about transformation from fish, water, and other inter-connected oceanic and river beings or ecosystems?

As Dr. Leroy Little Bear says, fish have survived multiple calamities on Earth over half a billion years. He urges us to ask the fish for guidance on how to navigate our current moment. This workshop tends to this message, and asks how do we embrace our relations, through global uncertainty and grief, to our surroundings, our communities and our worlds?

This four day intensive will give participants working with complex and urgent social, political and environmental issues the opportunity to create audio-visual sketches, stories, and other outputs to foster connection and meaning across diverse experiences in this moment of social and ecological change.

Led by fish philosophers and artists Drs. Amer Kanngieser and Zoe Todd, this event will focus on sound and listening practices, multi-media art, story-telling, and interpersonal communication and group facilitation.

Program Highlights

• Daily guided listening practices
• Individual mentoring sessions with facilitators
• Presentation of project and group feedback
• Collective strategy building
• Coastal walks
• Drawing sessions

Program Objectives

• Clarify and deepen each participants own existing local research and practice project
• Create art, stories, and other outputs to foster connection and meaning across diverse experiences in this moment of social and ecological change
• Strengthen arts-based sound and listening practices, with a focus on work with fish, water, and diverse aquatic beings
• Practice interpersonal communication and group facilitation skills

Participants will be guided through daily exercises in listening and attending to their surroundings to building ethical and respectful relationships with themselves, others, place, waterways and land. Participants will also build an understanding the importance of consent, permission and boundaries within the specific territories we each inhabit and occupy. Todd and Kanngieser will support participants to apply these exercises into their own approaches and concerns, helping each to expand their skills and confidence in creative and interdisciplinary based narratives.

This workshop is aimed at encouraging participants to expand their own grounded approaches to ‘restorying’ and responding to our contemporary social, environmental, and political challenges.

Daily Schedule

A detailed schedule will be available at least 2 weeks in advance of the program. View sample schedule here.