Walking up to the entrance of the LSPU hall on Saturday afternoon, I’m greeted with hugs from Jenelle Duval and warm introductions to Damien Pitter. We are sitting in the sun chatting, as friends new and old pop in and out of our conversation. It’s not for about 15 minutes till I’m told that the power has gone out all over the place. I’m meant to be hosting a panel called “Thank God We’re Surrounded by Water” shortly, so Damien suggests we hang out for another few minutes and see if the power returns. When it doesn’t, staff and volunteers set out chairs on a beautiful terrace laced with cedar. The sun is bright and the shade is cold. I’m worried about people being able to access the terrace and hear us as we speak above the motorcycles revving down Duckworth Street. The ASL interpreters comes up with a quick plan and we dive in. Someone quips that this is a very relevant context for a talk about the realities of making art in Newfoundland and Labrador.

When I was thinking through the shape of this panel, I really wanted to avoid themes of isolation. Not because those conversations aren’t important, but because I really wanted the opportunity to centre Newfoundland and Labrador experiences outside of our relationship to the mainland. I wanted to think about our relationships, responsibilities, and artistic practices and identities within the context of this place. And to not centre, explain, cater to, or spend time defining our varied identities from the outside in. It was so special to make space to have nourishing conversations amongst really diverse cultural and artistic perspectives of Newfoundland and Labrador artists, especially not having the nuance of those conversations derailed by the touristic urge to homogenize, capitalize, or consume cultural legacies. This conversation doesn’t fit on a post card.

What emerged, for me, was interwoven yet distinct experiences of intergenerational legacy, land based traditions, archival and memory work, and a really engaging thread about honouring those who came before us, our responsibility to the land based contexts of our work and to future generations, as well as speaking to the long histories of movement and migration that define this place. I was also taken with the idea of balancing cultural values like humility in both our storytelling and in our professional conduct, and honouring legacies of creative practices like storytelling around the kitchen table, folk music, hunting and fishing, craft, foodways, as well as community organizing, that inform our shared and distinct experiences as artists from Newfoundland and Labrador.

Jenesta spoke about working in electronic music and how she has carried familial inheritance via technologies that were not and could not have been known by past generations. She quipped about being a techno bay grandma for future generations just as the muffled bass from a car driving by drowned us out. We laughed so much throughout this panel, everyone was happy to pivot and be out in the sun and cedar. But we were also talking about legacies of violence, of erasure and genocide, of family shame and cultural loss. I felt the familiar tug of contradiction, and the possibilities that paradox offer us when we find ways to be in the between spaces, the bothness or the multitudinous. The past and future, the analog and digital, isolation and connection, shame and desire, disruption and harmony, speaking and listening, remembering and dreaming, erasure and creation.

I was left thinking so much about all who have shaped my path, my practice, and my identity as an artist and a Newfoundlander. Sometimes I feel like I am drowning in despair - oil slicked death feels all around me. From this conversation I felt the enormity of resilience that these artists draw from within themselves, their families, their culture, histories and archives, as well as the lands, water, fish and animals around them. A resilience not built on silver linings, but on perseverance, courage, moral clarity, humility, communal responsibility and creativity.

Dierdre McGuire wrote a wonderful review in “Weird and Wired” which you can read here.

I also wanted to share the questions I posed to the panelists. Please email me YOUR responses to these questions, if you’d like.

Round 1: What is your relationship to this place? Maybe you can tell us about where you are from, something about your family name(s), a memory you have of growing up here, or some other way that you would like to position yourself in relation to Newfoundland and Labrador.

Round 2: If you were to imagine your artistic practice as a basket, what are some of the berries, leaves, or fungi that you have gathered to nourish, shape, hold or constitute your artistic practice? (For example, this could be community organizing, a favourite hiking spot, a superstitious practice like counting crows, a folk tale, a medicine, a memory, a skill, or perhaps the support offered by being close to family or friends).

Round 3: If you were to imagine your relationship as an artist to Newfoundland and Labrador as fish, how has migration and spawning, and long histories of movement informed how you roll upon the shore?

Round 4: If you were to imagine how you have learned and practiced art, how have intergenerational mentorships, teachings, stories, or the absence of these, informed how you relate to your own voice as a storyteller?