Below the Radar SFU's Vancity Office of Community Engagement

On this episode of Below the Radar, our host Am Johal is joined by Seth Klein, Team Lead and Director of Strategy of the Climate Emergency Unit, a 5-year project of the David Suzuki Institute that Seth launched in early 2021. Am and Seth discuss how he and his team are working to mobilise Canada for the climate emergency, including their latest project evaluating how the CBC reports on climate.

Full episode details: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/episodes/241-seth-klein.html

Read the transcript: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/transcripts/241-seth-klein.html

Resources:
Seth Klein: https://www.sethklein.ca/
Climate Emergency Unit: https://www.climateemergencyunit.ca/
A Good War: https://ecwpress.com/collections/books/products/a-good-war
CBC Climate Emergency Campaign: https://www.climateemergencyunit.ca/cbc-climate-emergency-campaign

Bio:
Seth Klein is the Team Lead and Director of Strategy of the Climate Emergency Unit (a 5-year project of the David Suzuki Institute that Seth launched in early 2021). Prior to that, he served for 22 years (1996-2018) as the founding British Columbia Director of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, a public policy research institute committed to social, economic and environmental justice. He is the author of A Good War: Mobilizing Canada for the Climate Emergency (published by ECW press in 2020) and writes a regular column for Canada’s National Observer. He is an adjunct professor with Simon Fraser University’s Urban Studies program, an honorary research associate with the University of British Columbia’s School for Public Policy and Global Affairs, and remains a research associate with the CCPA’s BC Office.

Cite this episode:
Chicago Style

Johal, Am. “The Politics of Climate Emergency Mobilization — with Seth Klein.” Below the Radar, SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement. Podcast audio, May 7, 2024. https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/episodes/241-seth-klein.html.

Artist and comedian Kira Nova joins us this week on Below the Radar. Alongside our host Am Johal, they chat about growing up in the circus, clowning, experimental pedagogy, and Kira’s psychedelic clown workshops.

Full episode details: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/episodes/240-kira-nova.html

Read the transcript: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/transcripts/240-kira-nova.html

Resources:

Kira’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kira.nova_/?hl=en
Psychedelic Clown Workshops: http://clownsonacid.tilda.ws/

Bio:
Kira Nova is a world renowned artist, comedian and producer whose credits include the MoMa and the MET. Over the past 10 years she has created 5 solo shows and curated a number of variety theater productions. Among which was a show she created with Michael Portnoy and Reggie Watts — “Alligators! Experimental Comedy Lab”, presented in The Netherlands and Belgium.

Nova has presented her breed of one-woman shows at such venues as MoMa PS1, MET Breuer, The Kitchen in New York; Center Pompidou in Paris, Royal Academy Theater in London, Art Basel in Basel among many. While as a comedian Nova performed in many venues around NY, which include productions at The Box and House of Yes.

For the past 10 years, Nova has been leading workshops and teaching at many North American and European Art Academies, that include: Columbia University in New York (US), Banff Center for the Arts in Alberta (Canada), Paul Klee Center in Basel (Switzerland), Sandberg Institute in Amsterdam (The Netherlands), de Appel Curatorial Program in Amsterdam (The Netherlands), dOCUMENTA (13) in Kassel (Germany), Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam (The Netherlands). Since 2013, Nova works as a professor at Lunds University (Sweden).

Cite this episode:
Chicago Style

Johal, Am. “Clowns on Acid — with Kira Nova.” Below the Radar, SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement. Podcast audio, April 23, 2024. https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/episodes/240-kira-nova.html.

This week on Below the Radar, we’re joined by Patrick Blenkarn and Milton Lim, co-creators of the participatory videogame performance asses.masses. The show recently wrapped up a run at Vancouver’s PuSh International Performing Arts Festival. Patrick and Milton discuss the show’s development, videogames as performance, and what they’ve discovered as they’ve toured the piece.

Find out more and get tickets for their upcoming performances at https://www.assesmasses.work/performances

Full episode details: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/episodes/239-patrick-blenkarn-milton-lim.html

Read the transcript: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/transcripts/239-patrick-blenkarn-milton-lim.html

Resources:
asses.masses: https://www.assesmasses.work/
Patrick Blenkarn: https://patrickblenkarn.com/
Milton Lim: https://www.miltonlim.com/
culturecapital: https://www.culturecapital.cards/

Bio:
Patrick Blenkarn and Milton Lim are conceptual artists exploring urgent questions around the social value of art, digital labour, and the political potential of games. Mixing their backgrounds in performance, philosophy, psychology, and digital media, their collaborations have manifested in video games, participatory installations, digital archives, and card games. In addition to asses.masses, Patrick and Milton are also the co-founders of the Canadian national video archive of performance (videocan) and the co-creators behind a performing arts economy trading card game (culturecapital). Their projects have been presented across Canada, as well as in Argentina, Mexico, and the United Kingdom, in English, French, and Spanish.

Cite this episode:
Chicago Style

Walters, Samantha. “Ass Power — with Patrick Blenkarn and Milton Lim.” Below the Radar, SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement. Podcast audio, April 9, 2024. https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/episodes/239-patrick-blenkarn-milton-lim.html.

This week, we’re sharing an episode from our friends at FCAT After School. FCAT After School is a podcast project led by student hosts from across SFU’s Faculty of Communication, Art and Technology speaking with alumni about their career journey since graduation. You’ll hear stories of and advice for traditional and unconventional career paths across communication, interactive arts and technology, contemporary arts, publishing and digital media.

What does it mean to fail and succeed at the same time? How can one offer joy as a form of activism? What is the purpose of comedy in 2024? In this episode, host Torien Cafferata explores these questions with SFU School for the Contemporary Arts alum June Fukumura, an interdisciplinary theatre artist, clown, and comedian.

June has appeared on the Arts Club stage, in film and TV, and an award-winning Fringe Festival solo show. Together she and Torien explore how, in June’s line of work, failure is very much a form of success — and re-enchanting the everyday can happen both on and off the stage.

To learn more about June’s work, check out her website: junefukumura.com or Instagram: @june.fukumura

Find full episode transcripts and more info on FCAT After School: sfu.ca/fcat/news/podcast.html

To learn more about SFU’s School for the Contemporary Arts, Theatre & Performance BFA: sfu.ca/sca/programs/theatre-performance.html

Follow SFU's FCAT on social media:
Twitter: twitter.com/FCATatSFU
Instagram: instagram.com/fcatatsfu
Linkedin: linkedin.com/school/fcatatsfu
Facebook: facebook.com/FCATatSFU

On this episode of Below the Radar, we’re joined by Ania Malinowska, hypnotherapist, cultural theorist and Professor of Media and Cultural Studies at University of Silesia in Katowice, Poland. We discuss Ania’s scholarly practice, love, and how Ania found herself being trained in hypnosis.

Full episode details: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/episodes/238-ania-malinowska.html

Read the transcript: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/transcripts/238-ania-malinowska.html

Resources:
Ania Malinowska: https://aniamalinowska.com/
The Unhappy Ending Project: https://unhappyendingproject.com/
Hypnotic AI: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhptkULpzkk
Data Dating: https://www.datadating.online/
Love in Contemporary Technoculture: https://www.cambridge.org/core/elements/love-in-contemporary-technoculture/074FE883A89E836B494D581E7C74A3AB?fbclid=IwAR1Kw7BqgQ8sdCZRMmz80YHApzetCqdjg6h43Zoq3wT8Yt0SmB3GJcNH00A
The Materiality of Love: https://www.routledge.com/The-Materiality-of-Love-Essays-on-Affection-and-Cultural-Practice/Malinowska-Gratzke/p/book/9780367886639

Bio:
Ania Malinowska is a cultural theorist, poet and author. She is Professor of Media and Cultural Studies at the University of Silesia in Katowice (Institute of Culture Studies and Centre for Critical Technology Studies), and a former Senior Fulbright Fellow at The New School in New York. Malinowska’s work is associated with critical posthumanism and cultural semiotics, gathering approaches from media and cultural studies, anthropology, philosophy of technology, and digital humanities. Her critical writing focuses on technologically shaped love practices and emotional traditions under digitalism. A licensed hypnotist and an author of fiction and poetry, Malinowska is a proponent of textrapolation, a method of poetic experimentation based on intuitive assemblage she employs for her cutout and stamp poems.

Cite this episode:
Chicago Style

Johal, Am. “The Art of Love, Hypnosis, and AI.” Below the Radar, SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement. Podcast audio, March 26, 2024. https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/episodes/238-ania-malinowska.html.

Curator, writer, and educator Moroti George joins our host Am Johal on this episode of Below the Radar. Moroti is the curator at The Black Arts Centre in Surrey, BC and the Director/Curator of Gallery Gachet in downtown Vancouver. Together, they chat about how Moroti became interested in the arts, their experience working in two different art spaces, and their approach to curating in Greater Vancouver.
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Full episode details: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/episodes/237-moroti-george.html

Read the transcript: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/transcripts/237-moroti-george.html

Resources:
Gallery Gachet: https://gachet.org/
Gallery Gachet’s instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gallerygachet/
The Black Arts Centre: https://theblackartscentre.ca/
The Black Arts Centre’s instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theblackartscentre/
See How We Run! Art as Agency, Autonomy and Community — with Demi London and Moroti George: https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/series/see-how-we-run/229-art-as-agency-autonomy-and-community.html

Bio:
Olumoroti (MorotiI) Soji-George (he/they) is a curator, writer and educator based in Vancouver, BC. He is the curator at the Black Arts Centre in Surrey, BC and the Director/Curator of Gallery Gachet in downtown Vancouver.

Olumoroti's curatorial practice primarily involves unravelling and demystifying the ways Blackness is embodied and codified in our shared milieu and conceptualizing the works of Black Contemporary artists and their contributions to the Black cultural lexicon and our understanding of the state of Blackness. His research and curatorial practice also involve envisioning accessible and community-centred art spaces and highlighting the stories of individuals and communities who construct new ways of being that challenge the Western status quo. At the core of his practice is the belief that space could be used to reflect the agency and lived experiences of individuals whose bodies and identities are not typically valued, respected and represented in traditional art and academic settings.

Through an exploration of language, the archive, lens-based works, history and cultural theory, Olumoroti's curatorial practice is grounded in a passion for non-hierarchical epistemological production that could contribute to the creation of a pathway where new approaches to cultural production and the politics that fuel the ways different bodies perceive and understand the world could emerge.


Cite this episode:
Chicago Style

Johal, Am. “Community-Centred Curating — with Moroti George .” Below the Radar, SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement. Podcast audio, March 12, 2024. https://www.sfu.ca/vancity-office-community-engagement/below-the-radar-podcast/episodes/237-moroti-george.html.