Reflections, Relationships, and Remedies

A conversation with Christina Battle and Rita McKeough in three parts.

This conversation took place over Zoom on July 17, 2022. Alana Bartol was in Mohkinstsis/Calgary, Alberta, in the Treaty Seven region, the traditional territories of the Niitsitapi (Blackfoot) Confederacy (Siksika, Kainai, Piikani), as well as the Tsuut’ina, the Îyâxe Nakoda Nations, the Métis Nation (Region 3). Christina Battle was joining from Treaty Six Territory in amiskwaciy waskahikan/Edmonton, Alberta, homeland to the Métis and Métis Nation of Alberta Region 4 and traditional territory for many First Nations, including the Nêhiyaw, Dené. Anishinaabe, Nakota Isga, and Niitsitapi peoples. Rita McKeough was in Mi'kma'ki, just outside of Clam Harbor, NS, the ancestral and unceded territory of the Mi'kmaq People.

Image: Centre for Interspecies Mutual Support in Troubled Times (CIMSITT)/Rita McKeough, *Song for the Birds*, 2022. Photo Credit: Bryce Krynski. Courtesy of the artist/CIMSITT.
Image Description: A group of people wearing masks gathered together low to the floor, looking at a number of plant/machine-like robots on the floor. Each object is the size of a remote control car but looks like a section of earth with moss, roots, and soil. Round to triangular-shaped green and yellow leaves stand on the end of thin stems coming out of the top of each object. A small red glowing light can be seen underneath each machine. There are branches and small black oil barrels on the floor. The floor of the room is black, and the wall behind them is black. Two people are wearing grey button-up work shirts with their names in white letters.

Part I

Alana Bartol:

I wanted to start the conversation by saying that I am grateful to work with you both on Remediation Room and that I learned a lot from all of the projects and the conversation that I had individually with the artists as they develop their ideas. And so, I wanted to begin with a few questions about your projects [Remedy Toxic Energies: Summoning Circle by Christina and Center for Interspecies Mutual Support in Troubled Times by Rita]. How do you feel about how each of your projects unfolded and were they what you were hoping for? Was anything surprising or unexpected that happened?

Christina Battle:

Yeah, I thought it was really great. I learned so much in thinking through the project, but then also implementing it and running into things that I didn't think I would learn or knew enough about; even the basic sense of thinking about participation and the ways that I'm most comfortable with it.

I think the project really helped me answer some of those questions for myself. I think, in a lot of ways, having to do things across distance, just because of the pandemic, has actually been really helpful for me. Because I really like doing things with others and organizing and facilitating: what I am coming to feel more comfortable calling “participatory practice.” But I am not always super comfortable with having to, I don't know, lead the room, I guess, and you know, because at least in my experience of doing this kind of work more formally for galleries, it often looks like being invited to do something and then having to stand in a room with a group of people who are complete strangers and present something and then also get them excited about doing that thing. I find that pretty exhausting, actually.

And because of the last couple of years of moving things online and because of those earlier experiences of discomfort, I've been thinking a lot about how to work along with others in other ways so that the group that is taking part knows what they're getting into before the project begins; that they’re also keen to do stuff, and don't really need a lot of convincing. And then also trying to decentre my role so that it doesn't always have to be me just talking and telling people stuff. This project really was one of the first where I feel like that was quite successful, for me at least, this idea of distributing things out to others, setting up a loose framework (maybe loose isn't the right word, maybe it's actually a kind of rigid framework, I haven't thought about that) and then letting others control the space for their own, in this case, summoning circles, or projects or conversations, and thinking about how those conversations spread out away from me and take up life on their own. So that's been really amazing.

I think one of the things that surprised me that I didn't really think about when developing the project is where responsibility sits from my end within these circles. I really have no idea what went on in a lot of them. Alana, you and I have talked about this a little bit, and now I'm trying to think that through some more: what does that mean, and where does my comfort lie with it? And how I feel about having to trust that folks did things in ways that were responsible and caring and all these things that really matter to me.

Image: Christina Battle, *Remedy Toxic Energies: Summoning Circle*, 2022. Photo: Courtesy of the artist.
Image description: a top-down photograph of overlapping postcards and two copies of a zine (one opened, one closed), with a small beeswax candle, a brown packet, and a kraft envelope/seed packet on a table. The postcards and the front of the zine have a circle of pink candles with yellow flames with blue text in the centre on white backgrounds. The words “REMEDY TOXIC ENERGIES” are in light blue on the zine and the postcard, and the other postcard says “IMAGINE BETTER FUTURES,” also in light blue and written in all caps. The text in the zine is light blue and pink. The kraft envelope has a yellow label that says “seeds are meant to disperse” and “CHAMOMILE, German and Roman Mix.”

Alana:

I keep slowly learning about who participated in your project. I went to a neighbourhood art event recently at a gallery in a backyard greenhouse [curated by artist Logan Lape], where I ran into a couple of people who participated and commented on how it was such a cool way to disseminate an artwork and allow others to facilitate and participate in it.

Christina:

I love hearing that because I also have no idea who most of the people were. I know who all of the hosts were, but necessarily who was inside of their circles.

Alana:

I said I'll share this with Christina because we don't know all the people that participated and may never know.

Christina:

Yeah. And I really do like not knowing. It's important to me that those circles are intimate and personal to whoever hosted them. But I'm curious. It's weird to put things out into the world and have no idea where it goes, but I guess that's true of artwork in general.

Alana:

Yeah, for sure. And I really like that question you bring up “was it a rigid or loose framework?” I feel like it was neither in a way. It was a framework to work within, and I think it worked so well because you were being a guide, and then you let others guide. I think that created a space to open up dialogue. It's also not something we do all the time. I mean, we do it amongst friends, I guess, when we have conversations about issues, but it's a different kind of role and responsibility when you are hosting a group. You want to make sure everyone's included, and you want to keep it flowing.

I hosted a group, and Rita was in that group. I like the connections that happen organically, but also somewhat strategically, that I've heard of from conversations with people about their circles; people selected people that they wanted to bring together to have these kinds of conversations.

Christina:

Yeah. And I'm imagining that you made those decisions also thinking about your own comfort. Who did you feel comfortable having conversations with? I think that's the part that galleries really often miss when it comes to this kind of thing with outreach, or maybe it's not possible to set up a space from the start that's already comfortable. You know, it takes time to wanna be in conversation with certain people.

Alana:

Yeah, definitely.

Rita:

These were some of the questions I was asking myself too. COVID was the only thing that made it a little bit more challenging and took me in a little bit of a different direction, but having a community meeting to gather people together and create an activist voice from a group was what I was really interested in. Often, I create an environment where people are free to move through and interpret, but there's a lot of... I don't think control is the right word, but there are particular limitations to it. And I think that what I was really interested in was opening it up to this kind of group meeting, which was kind of a speculative narrative where these aspen leaves and these sparrows and the people that were invited all have a conversation together and use it as an activist voice to speak to the Energy War Room.

And so, it was exciting to try that. I think it was successful in some ways and very exciting for me. And I learned a lot. I was really, really excited and honoured that people were, you know, offering ideas about what this group, Center for Interspecies Mutual Support in Troubled Times (CIMSITT), can do. And what we can do as a group in an artistic way, but also in a practical way. People had some great ideas. Things that I wouldn't have thought of, and I've never really done that before, [having] people come into the middle of a piece and giving such insightful, kind directions. And I really like that handing over (still maintaining responsibility, I hope), but handing over control. It was a great experience for me and a very different way of working.

I would change some parts if I did it again and parts that I would improve and develop. I think COVID made it difficult because the space was hard to access, and a limited number of people could come, so it was not quite what I had hoped, but it worked out. I think it worked out great in the end in terms of what we were able to do. And thanks to you, Alana, EMMEDIA, and everybody there that opened themselves up to let it happen, and you and Bryce are just incredible. I felt so supported through all that you did behind the scenes and also all the amazing work that Alec Brilling did to develop the programming and the technical understructure. It was quite magical. It was a good experience.

Alana:

Thank you. You put a ton of work into it, and I couldn’t believe how much you did in developing the technology and creating the installation and how thought-out everything was but still maintaining an open, experimental vibe. People could come in and, like you're saying, could listen to the sparrows and watch the live translation, and it was a great way of setting up that conversation and thinking about how do we work together in interspecies ways? How does this get organized? How do you move from symbolic action to action? So, I love creating the postcards and sending them to the [Energy] War Room [aka the Canadian Energy Centre]. It had an element of play that I feel people gravitated towards.

Rita:

There's something quite remarkable about doing it as a group because you're all working together to come up with ideas and solutions, and it just seems so much more powerful than one proposition. One thing I would improve, or can improve, is making it a little bit clearer before people came what would be happening. Like you were saying, Christina. We did that, Alana, but I think there's a potential to really open it up by making sure everyone's aware of what they'll be doing and what's possible before they come. So, I think there is more I can learn from that.

Christina:

It sounds like, though (because I saw some of the invitations that you had sent out before the group came together), knowing that there definitely is something within that [invitation] that made it clear, or there's something about inviting folks to come, even if it's a wide audience that is invited, and helping them sort of make the decision that they wanna come and be part of this thing. I'm imagining that's sort of where all of these ideas are able to come in that you mentioned: folks were able to really contribute. And I really love that. I also love imagining that it's probably something to do with safety and numbers, too - sending these postcards to the [Energy] War Room - I imagine it is easier to do as a group.

Rita:

And the postcards were so damn friendly that I think they would be caught off guard <laugh>. Two little squirrels with a stretcher, you know? “Wait, what's this?” And then, “holy shit!”

Image: Centre for Interspecies Mutual Support in Troubled Times (CIMSITT)/Rita McKeough, Postcards (back), *Song for the Birds*, 2022. Photo Credit: Alana Bartol. Courtesy of the artist/CIMSITT.
Image description: A pile of white postcards with green and red text. There is a Canadian stamp on the upper right corner of the postcard on top. Each postcard has a drawing of two squirrels carrying a green empty stretcher. The cards say Centre for Interspecies Mutual Support in Troubled Times in red, and they are addressed to Tom Olsen, CEO, Canadian Energy Centre (The Energy War Room) in Calgary, AB. There are signatures in pen at the bottom of the cards.

Alana:

Yeah <laughs>. You both did so much research and created resources for not only the participants in your project but that anyone can access after the projects or gatherings through the project website (see Summoning Circle Resources, Summoning Circle Guide, and CIMSITT Resources). Do you want to share a little bit about your research for these artworks and maybe things you were learning about along the way?

Christina:

Yeah. Maybe I'll say something, and then we can come back, and I'll think about it a little more. I think because you gave us this awesome prompt to think about the [Energy] War Room itself and just how successful of a propaganda machine it is. I think a lot of the research that I was doing and thinking about was really thinking about how information spreads. And about what information needs to be spread that is in opposition to this overwhelming, powerful machine. And I don't have answers for this or solutions, but a lot of what I was trying to think through was: in what ways is information most taken up? And so, all this research that I was doing, thinking about extraction and remediation and reclamation, it's a lot. It's really heavy stuff. It's dense, especially when you start getting into the scientific evidence, which I really do spend a lot of time engaging with, and I was thinking about how to translate that for others, for a public.

That's one thing that I was trying to spend a lot of time thinking about: distilling things, editing things down, using fragments and text, but also what I still struggle with because there's so much, and it's such a massive propaganda machine that we're up against. I don't know what the right communicative tool is, but some part of me thinks that by throwing a bunch of stuff out there, that people will maybe glom onto some of it and run with it themselves - that’s kind of my strategy.

Christina Battle, *Exercices in Trust*, 2020 - ongoing. Courtesy of the artist.
Image description: An animated GIF of repeating text in large pink font that reads: “Can collective reading, / when performed across distance, / turn into a sort of spell?”

Alana:

I think about distilling information a lot in my practice, and I'm sure you do too, Rita. How do you take, <laugh> a ton of research that you've done, and some may be difficult to decipher, like legal or scientific terms or economic policies, and then trying to figure out, okay, now how do I communicate this, not only to a public or publics but through art?

Rita:

I really appreciated all the information that you sent to all of us beforehand. I started thinking about the idea specifically of remediation and thinking about something that looks at the consequences of the [Energy] War Room and instead of following their strategy, using a strategy to look at the kinds of consequences and work as a group to focus on something very, very real that could be done in a speculative way. It is real in terms of going to the tailings ponds and finding a system to locate, identify, and release the birds that were trapped under the water and in the oil. And so, it was about imagining a situation where this proposition where you locate them, and then you're able to release them with the help of, you know, the leaves and the dirt.

We can't go out on top of the water, but the dirt and the leaves can float out, and they can locate the birds that are trapped underwater. And then the technology and the humans can help to move the dirt and leaves to the right location so that the leaves and the technology can then release the birds. So it was a real team effort of using technologies and skills, and knowledge to enact something very particular and very real to end suffering. I researched what scientists are doing to stop the production of tailing ponds and what they're doing to keep the birds away. And it's so surreal. And, if you believe it, it seems like some of the solutions, could actualy help but it's just not enough, and it's too late, and there's just too much suffering. It seems like you have to take your own power and create another alternative.

And so I think as you say, Alana, art is really important in that, because yet, no, I can't go there and float out on the water and pull the ducks out, but I can draw attention to it and I can kind of reveal the suffering and the specifics of it. And also the desire of all the people interested in helping. And in that there's something that changes, you don't ever stop working on it then after that, and everybody's kind of become – myself included after the research – become aware of it, you know, and become concerned and become deeply empathetic.

Image: Centre for Interspecies Mutual Support in Troubled Times (CIMSITT)/Rita McKeough, *Song for the Birds*, 2022. Photo: Bryce Krynski. Courtesy of the artist/CIMSITT.
Image description: A bright projection of an image in a dark space of a desolate-looking landscape with a duck flying against a bright blue sky. There are smokestacks in the distance with smoke billowing out. There is some grass in the foreground but it looks like the land has been stripped bare of vegetation. The ground is muddy and brown and there are some piles of dirt surrounding pools of liquid that looks like dark water. The duck is headed upward and its wings are spread out wide.

Alana:

You become emotionally connected to it, too; I think is part of it. You're pointing to the suffering and maybe [providing] different ways of grieving or accessing emotions around these issues.

Rita:

That’s an interesting thing about the research, I'm not a scientist, but I read and read and read and read just like you were talking about. There's so much out there, but what keeps coming to the surface is the death, the incredible death. And how it's not deemed as important, more important as, you know, keeping the plant running; keeping the tailings. It's like, there's no ethical reason for one to be prioritized over the other. And I think it's just horrific. That was something I felt so struck by that I just had to attend to it in the research.

Christina:

And there's something so important about making all of that stuff visible. In [some] ways, I feel like I have been a part of a few conversations, especially in the last month or so, where I've been really struck by how there's a real sense of hopelessness among others out there and grief. I'm sort of specifically speaking around climate change stuff. And I think there's something that your project does, Rita, too, to help combat that grief. It brings people together, but there's also this playfulness that’s part of it that I think is so important because otherwise, I really do think that's when denialism can creep in really easily, right? When folks feel so hopeless that there's nothing they can do and there's no way they can look at it. Having something that brings folks together even for a little bit, that is playful, or that counters that slip into denialism, something that helps translates all the dense problems into something more tactile.

sources:
Canada’s oil and gas sector received $18 billion in subsidies, public financing during pandemic: report.
Government of Canada ‘Greenhouse Gas Emissions’.
Reducing oil and gas production is Canada’s ‘only possible lever’ to hit 2030 climate goals.
Zero Carbon: So not ready.
Image: Christina Battle, *Remedy Toxic Energies: Summoning Circle Resources*, 2022. Courtesy of the artist.
Image description: Three colourful icons divided by thin black lines under the heading “Data” provide information about subsidies to the oil & gas sector in Canada, Canada’s top polluting province: Alberta, and how reducing oil and gas production is the most cost-effective way to reduce our emissions. The first icon is a pink money sign in a circle, the second a pink smoke stack with smoke, and the third a yellow sun. Text citing the sources for the data is below.

Rita:

Yep. Yeah, exactly. And also, if you have a conversation with, you know, you've got a couple of sparrows, and you're talking to a group of Aspen leaves, they're so specific about what they can do. They can do this, they can help with this. This can be done. It's so important, it's encouraging, and it empowers you. I think that that interspecies connection really helps motivate and connect 'cause you feel this bond that so much more can be done when we connect with all plants and animals so much more we do.

Christina:

It's a great reminder.

And something you said too, Rita, about the ethics of the way that industry operates – I think we're all quite accustomed to thinking really linearly about this stuff. Like, “oh, this is the way it is now, and that's just the way it's gotta be.” And that it is this way for a reason. You're sort of pointing toward this alternative: that actually there are these other ways that things could be done. And just introducing that slight questioning of the status quo, I think, is so valuable. It gets taken up in all these other ways once people have access to imagining in that way. I just feel like that is kind of the only hope we have, really, right?

Rita:

Exactly.

Christina:

And I mean that in a hopeful way, not a cynical way.

Alana:

Thank you for those answers.

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