planet species animal human water free Agent in motion on the move in flight of the Earth of the Land of the Ocean her ecology here and there sea and ice wind and current seed and settlement birthing stretching growing learning lamenting fearing conquering breaking bruising rejoicing rounding looping surviving dying becoming born and dying anew a willful urge an urgent call to return a traumatic flight an existential passage an Oceanic Fantasy breathe breathe breathe compete create destroy win release rush rush of anticipation rush of adventure bully dominate maim kill rush greed to pillage rush to sex defile the bloodline crush settle colonize give it a name call it Power a Nation State reorganize order categorize Institutionalize Rule of Law Religion and State spread the Language spread the Lie Authority syntax CAPITAL Letters the Printing Press to the Internet educate assimilate annihilate exploit and syphon up exercise brutality divide and conquer caste and creed colour and other clear the land corral the people camps and cages prison and zoos guns and cameras walls and fences borders and zones evidence documents and predatory bureaucracy keep some in and others out in flight the Siren calls She is playful. She is Welcome. refuge beckons hope is horizon She is lunar. tide and current She is elemental. She is the sun. She is the storm. wind against the sea ice desert sands fields of wheat solid rock She is refusal. She is fleeting. accelerating heartbeat raising hairs disembodied Witness universal Ancestor broken from tribe tribalized anew you and me over millennia peopling the planet. diaspora.

Siren lll is a monumental ceiling mounted LED grid featuring under ocean video captured off Newfoundland paired with a complex ambisonic soundscape composed of traditional and experimental vocal ululations. The artwork considers near drowning. The installation offers a meditation on urgent will, a celebration of survival, and a love letter to the fragile and finite majesty that is the Atlantic sea ice. How Nature’s fractals are replicated through scale and through topographies more and less solid, stable, fluid and fleeting. How the iceberg belly is sensual, swollen, ripe, full and undulating as tissue of a soft inner body.

Since my first Siren performance 2018, I have described my investigation as an unquenchable tidal-pull of return to the complex planetary geo-cultural corridor that is the north Atlantic. I have scrambled her edges, immersed in her frigid waters, and submerged to deep depths. In parallel, I have contemplated flows of people –taking and being taken, leaving and arriving, cultures of enforcement and cultures of Welcome.

Siren lll has two primary inspirational texts. 2017 Sea Watch (a humanitarian organization active in the Mediterranean) posted video showing an open water ruckus involving the Libyan Coast Guard working in the interests of Europe, and an inflatable boat full of vulnerable people. The incident resulted in several on camera deaths by drowning. 2018 Behrouz Boochani published his book length prose, No Friends but the Mountains, in which the author describes his own near death by drowning having been thrown from the inflatable in which he traveled a harrowing journey from Indonesia to Australia.¹

¹ Behrouz Boochani No Friends but the Mountains Sea Watch Forensic Architecture Sea Watch vs the Libyan Coastguard Roxham Road Bridges Not Borders - Créons des Ponts Plattsburgh Cares Harsha Walia Undoing Border Imperialism Border and Rule Global Detention Project No One is Illegal Todd Miller Storming the Wall Al Otro Lado World Central Kitchen Canada Multiculturalism Act Human Rights propaganda state systemic racism Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada Canadian Border Services Agency Dale Lewis predatory bureaucracy indefinite detention Ebrahim Touré Lindsay superjail Caged in Canada Brendan Kennedy Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms Jered Will Canada-US Safe Third Country Agreement