Parkland Walking Tour

Our friends and Emerging Artist partners, Parkland, have helped us to create a custom walking tour of Nocturne projects. This list was inspired by the residents at Parkland, their interests and their shared love of art, creative expression, and the city of Halifax. These projects include exhibitions, performances, installations, videos, and animation. They showcase emerging artists around themes of history, storytelling and culture.

See you at Nocturne!

Zeno Box
Hyperloop Theatre

W Suites
1241 Barrington Street

Inspired by the on-again, off-again nature of theatre during the pandemic, Zeno Box is a performance art installation that investigates the value of creating art that never reaches its audience. Zeno Box places a single actor inside of a plexiglass box, in which they perform excerpts from a variety of plays. Meanwhile, a randomized set of cues turn the lights and microphone inside the box on and off, leaving the actor with no control over what parts of the performance the audience is able to enjoy, and what is performed to no one at all. After each excerpt, the actor writes a note to themselves on the box itself, leaving echoes of past performances visible to future audiences and creating a physical structure that evolves over the course of the festival. Zeno Box originated as part of Eastern Front Theatre's Macro Digitals: CONNECTIONS, under the guidance of Kat McCormack, with original collaborators Kya Mosey, Trent Logan and Ryan Wilcox.

Grammar of War Remnants
Kaashif Ghanie

Art Gallery of Nova Scotia
1723 Hollis St

Grammar of War - Remnants is a ceramic and audio art installation meant to discuss the racism seen in the persecution, violence, and cultural suppression in recent years to Muslims across the globe.

Grammar of War - Remnants will be 100-150, 5” tall vases made from specific white earthenware clay that when over fired in a kiln slumps, almost like it has deflated like a balloon. The deflated vases will have a cobalt slip screen printed onto the surfaces depicting various motifs from my family members' prayer rugs. The vases will then be arranged in the dimensions of a rug on the floor during the presentation. The cobalt slip is both a historical reference to Islamic tile and pottery decoration and also to subvert blue and white pottery as a whole. The collapsed vases will represent physical stand-ins for victims of violence due to Islamophobic practices. It denotes the loss of society, culture, family, brothers, and sisters within the Islamic community.

ᓃᒥᐦᐃᑐᐃᐧᐣ Nîmihitowin
Sandra Lamouche & Lowell Yellowhorn

Maritime Museum of the Atlantic
1675 Lower Water St

ᓃᒥᐦᐃᑐᐃᐧᐣ Nîmihitowin is a multidisciplinary performance that uses Indigneous dance, drumming and storytelling to connect with the night sky and each other. Performance timees:

6:30 pm: Storytelling, Kids performance, and Hoop Dance (approx. 45 minutes)

8:30 pm: Storytelling and Hoop Dance

10 pm: Storytelling and Round Dance

ᓃᒥᐦᐃᑐᐃᐧᐣ Nîmihitowin means to dance. This performance honors the ancestors and legacy of Indigenous people. Using the concept of the Northern lights, which my mosom called Cipayak E’ Nimihitowin, meaning the spirits dancing in the sky. They are our elders and ancestors dancing in the spirit world. We respect and honor those who have gone before. These phenomena are known to occur during the fall and winter across Canada. In Cree culture they are also associated with and may occur during a round dance. Sometimes called a friendship dance, it is also done in remembrance of our ancestors and relatives who have gone on to the spirit world. This performance will tie in these connected themes through hoop dance, storytelling, live drumming, and a round dance or friendship dance for the audience to participate in.

What We Will Not Leave Behind
Jenny Yujia Shi 施雨迦

Halifax Central Library - 1st Floor Reading Room
5440 Spring Garden Rd

What We Will Not Leave Behind is an animation installation that draws from memories collected from Chinese Nova Scotians. This work reaches past stereotypes to connect with viewers through small, everyday moments.

Starting in 2021, Shi has been conducting a series of conversations with members of the Chinese diaspora living in Kjipuktuk. What We Will Not Leave Behind chronicles the lived experience of these community members: from records of railroad workers in the 1890's, to the Shanghai exodus in the 1940s, to the Hong Kong handover in the 1990s, and to international students in the 2000s. Memories of daily life are presented in a series of short animated vignettes. Scenes of cooking, playing childhood games, and moving about the world are presented in dream-like paper-cut stop-motion animation. This work reaches past familiar stereotypes to connect with viewers through small, everyday moments.

Weji’skesnilk
Anonymous

Museum of Natural History
1747 Summer St

The hope of this piece is to give hope and freedom to the original 215 found and the ones still being found.

In May of 2021, 215 children were found on the grounds of the former residential school in Kamloops, British Columbia. In Canada there were 139 residential schools, these grounds are still being searched. The current number of graves and children found is staggering and continues to grow.

These feathers represent the first 215 children found and the children that followed. Hanging these feathers allows them to have freedom of movement again. This piece is a reminder that this is ongoing, and that we cannot forget the children that were found and how incredibly strong and resilient the survivors are.

Every child matters.