conscient podcast

• I think there's a lot of focus on systems change and we need all of that, but what we really need is to change ourselves so that we can actually embody the world that we want to be in, so that has a big piece of healing and how art can be a part of that. 

I heard about Kelly McInnes’ (she/they) work from Kim Richards (see e76 and e171) and had a very interesting conversation with Kelly in her kitchen on May 10, 2024 in Vancouver.

Kelly is a queer dance artist concerned with embodying care and creating as a way of remembering connection to Earth. Her craniosacral therapy practice and her passion for collective healing powerfully inspires her artistry, and inspired me as well. 

For example, Kelly’s description of her creative process :

• The part that excites me about community engagement is that creative practice feels like a way into a life process. Not just sharing the product with folks, but actually inviting them into it, like a birthing. 

I was struck by the simplicity and depth of her latest project : Late Stage Remedy, which she describes as a ‘collective dance meditation practice happening twice a month on Saturdays from May to September 2024 at public parks in so-called Vancouver where through an improvised score, a group of dancers offer grounding presence, attention and care to the lands they dance on together. It’s an invitation to remember ourselves as a part of Earth and honor this vital, potent connection.’

We also talked about the connections between her art practice and her healing practices: 

• I think that a practice of life is so important in these times where there's so much to be heartbroken about and there's so much devastation going on with health responses like trauma and numbing. These practices of resourcing ourselves and of finding beauty and resonance are important and essential to imagine and create the worlds we want to move towards. 

This is the second in my ‘community arts’ series in season 5 (the first was e168 felicia young - together through art).

Her recommended books and podcasts were:

• Yintah, a film directed and produced by Jennifer Wickham, Brenda Michell and Michael Toledano
• The point of relation (podcast) by Thomas Hübl
• Healing Collective Trauma by Thomas Hübl
• We Are the Middle of Forever - Indigenous Voices from Turtle Island on the Changing Earth edited by Dahr Jamail and Stan Rushworth

Photo of Kelly McInnes by Yvonne Chew

*

END NOTES FOR ALL EPISODES

Note : I'm currently 'pressing pause' and am not producing new content until further notice. 

Hey conscient listeners, 

I’ve been producing the conscient podcast as a learning and unlearning journey since May 2020. It’s my way to give back.

This Indigenous Land Acknowledgement statement was developed by members of the Algonquin community for my former employer the Canada Council for the Arts. I have adapted slightly to make it my own.

• I acknowledge that my studio, located in Ottawa, is on the unceded, unsurrendered Territory of the Anishinaabe Algonquin Nation whose presence here reaches back to time immemorial.
• I recognize the Algonquins as the customary keepers and defenders of the Ottawa River Watershed and its tributaries. I honour their long history of welcoming many Nations to this beautiful territory and uphold and uplift the voice and values of our Host Nation.
• Further, I offer my respect and affirm the inherent and Treaty Rights of all Indigenous Peoples across this land and honour commitments to self-determination and sovereignty that have been made to Indigenous Nations and Peoples.
• I acknowledge the historical oppression of lands, cultures and the original Peoples in what we now know as Canada and fervently believe the Arts contribute to the healing and decolonizing journey we all share together

In parallel with the production of the conscient podcast and its francophone counterpart, balado conscient, I I publish a free ‘a calm presence' monthly Substack see https://acalmpresence.substack.com.  

Your feedback is always welcome at claude [at] conscient [dot] ca and/or on social media: Facebook, Instagram, Linkedin, Threads, BlueSky, Mastodon, Tik Tok, YouTube and Substack.

Share what you like, etc

I am grateful and accountable to the earth and the human labour that provided me with the privilege of producing this podcast, including the toxic materials and extractive processes behind the computers, recorders, transportation systems and infrastructure that made this production possible. 

Thanks for listening. 

Claude Schryer

Latest update on March 21, 2026

• What would change things is love. … We ask people to act, to change, to make sacrifices, or what may be perceived as sacrifices, which in the end can turn out to be incredible things as we open up a world we didn't consider possible for ourselves; it was always love that got people to take those steps and those decisions.

Born and raised in the occupied unceded sovereign territories of the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), and səlil̓wətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) peoples on the wild West coast of colonial Canada Beth Carruthers is an artist and researcher whose work and practice focuses on  how aesthetic engagements, and especially arts and design based praxis, can seed and nurture transformative change in socio-cultural systems leading toward a sustainably flourishing future for all life.

My first conversation with Beth was in October 2019, e05 carruthers – art that informs, forms and transforms so I wanted to reconnect with Beth some 5 years later to get an update on what this amazing creative mind is up to.

She told me many new things, for example, about her origins:

• I come from a family of Highland Scots who were driven off their land and shipped to Canada to be placeholders for the empire about five or six generations ago. For some reason the Scots, Irish and Celtic peoples have managed, despite the church and all kinds of other occupations, to hang on to a kind of animist understanding of being in the world and an understanding of the world as a living sentient place. That's not what school tells you and that's not the narrative of modernism in the West. 

At one point Beth referred to this poem, A Walk, by Rainer Maria Rilke, from his Uncollected Poems, which opens Beth’s book chapter, Response: Deep Aesthetics and the Heart of the World, in Aesth/Ethics in Environmetal Change (2013). Beth asked that it be mentioned in the episode notes:

‘Already my gaze is on the hill, that sunlit one,

up ahead on the path I’ve scarcely started.

In the same way, what we couldn’t grasp grasps us:

blazingly visible, there in the distance –

and changes us, even if we don’t reach it,

into what we, scarcely sensing it, already are;

a gesture signals, answering our gesture…

But we feel only the opposing wind.’

Beth recommended the following reading and viewing materials: 

• At Work in the Ruins: Finding Our Place in the Time of Science, Climate Change, Pandemics and All the Other Emergencies by Dougald Hine
• The world is not a problem: a conversation between Dougald Hine and Iain McGilchrist

*

END NOTES FOR ALL EPISODES

Note : I'm currently 'pressing pause' and am not producing new content until further notice. 

Hey conscient listeners, 

I’ve been producing the conscient podcast as a learning and unlearning journey since May 2020. It’s my way to give back.

This Indigenous Land Acknowledgement statement was developed by members of the Algonquin community for my former employer the Canada Council for the Arts. I have adapted slightly to make it my own.

• I acknowledge that my studio, located in Ottawa, is on the unceded, unsurrendered Territory of the Anishinaabe Algonquin Nation whose presence here reaches back to time immemorial.
• I recognize the Algonquins as the customary keepers and defenders of the Ottawa River Watershed and its tributaries. I honour their long history of welcoming many Nations to this beautiful territory and uphold and uplift the voice and values of our Host Nation.
• Further, I offer my respect and affirm the inherent and Treaty Rights of all Indigenous Peoples across this land and honour commitments to self-determination and sovereignty that have been made to Indigenous Nations and Peoples.
• I acknowledge the historical oppression of lands, cultures and the original Peoples in what we now know as Canada and fervently believe the Arts contribute to the healing and decolonizing journey we all share together

In parallel with the production of the conscient podcast and its francophone counterpart, balado conscient, I I publish a free ‘a calm presence' monthly Substack see https://acalmpresence.substack.com.  

Your feedback is always welcome at claude [at] conscient [dot] ca and/or on social media: Facebook, Instagram, Linkedin, Threads, BlueSky, Mastodon, Tik Tok, YouTube and Substack.

Share what you like, etc

I am grateful and accountable to the earth and the human labour that provided me with the privilege of producing this podcast, including the toxic materials and extractive processes behind the computers, recorders, transportation systems and infrastructure that made this production possible. 

Thanks for listening. 

Claude Schryer

Latest update on March 21, 2026

• One of the roles that artists play within the poly crisis is supporting us through processes of unnumbing. Sometimes we might describe it like a re-tuning of our senses through listening. All of that is about undermining the ways that we are taught to master ourselves, to not show emotions, to disconnect our heads from our bodies so that we work more efficiently within the capitalist paradigm. 

I first met Kimberly Skye Richards, also known as Kim Richards, while doing a conscient podcast soundwalk on November 1, 2021 in Trout Lake Park in Vancouver.

I invite you to listen to e76 kim richards – seeding a green new theatre in canada, where we talk about the role of theatre in the climate emergency and in particular ‘what kind of plays that already exist in Canadian theatre history about environmental issues’. This intrigued me then, and still does today. We tend to have short memories and yet art has a very. long. tail. 

I got to know and appreciate Kim when we were both members of the Mission Circle of SCALE, the Sectoral Climate Arts Leadership for the Emergency. We also have regular exchanges about education and learning such as the Facing Human Wrongs course which we took together as a cohort of artists in 2022.

• One of the many important teachings within Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures’ (GTDF) work is learning from what is currently dying and applying them so that we don't just continuously repeat these mistakes. … Being open and talking about what isn't working or what traps we're falling into is so instructive. We can also learn a lot from listening to our friends and colleagues tell us their stories.

During our second conscient conversation we focused on climate arts education and the recent launching of the Department of Utopian Arts and Letters, of which Kim is the librarian. It's a series of free courses and lots of fun. 

We also talked about the importance of self care for activist and artists and how the arts contribute to healing and resilience:

• One of the most important roles for the arts in climate work for me right now is creating the time to develop, maintain or begin somatic, movement, sound or writing practices. 

At the end of the episode I practiced saying ‘thank you to my guest’ with a gentle up-tone of emotional gratitude, like New York Times journalists do on The Daily podcast:

• Well, Kim, thank you very much.

I’m still working on it… 

Kim’s reading suggestions are worlds ending and engaging multispecies experiences:

• Flightways : life and loss at the edge of extinction by Tom Van Dooren
• Undrowned : black feminist lessons from marine mammals by Alexis Pauline Gumbs
• I want a better catastrophe by Andrew Boyd

*

END NOTES FOR ALL EPISODES

Note : I'm currently 'pressing pause' and am not producing new content until further notice. 

Hey conscient listeners, 

I’ve been producing the conscient podcast as a learning and unlearning journey since May 2020. It’s my way to give back.

This Indigenous Land Acknowledgement statement was developed by members of the Algonquin community for my former employer the Canada Council for the Arts. I have adapted slightly to make it my own.

• I acknowledge that my studio, located in Ottawa, is on the unceded, unsurrendered Territory of the Anishinaabe Algonquin Nation whose presence here reaches back to time immemorial.
• I recognize the Algonquins as the customary keepers and defenders of the Ottawa River Watershed and its tributaries. I honour their long history of welcoming many Nations to this beautiful territory and uphold and uplift the voice and values of our Host Nation.
• Further, I offer my respect and affirm the inherent and Treaty Rights of all Indigenous Peoples across this land and honour commitments to self-determination and sovereignty that have been made to Indigenous Nations and Peoples.
• I acknowledge the historical oppression of lands, cultures and the original Peoples in what we now know as Canada and fervently believe the Arts contribute to the healing and decolonizing journey we all share together

In parallel with the production of the conscient podcast and its francophone counterpart, balado conscient, I I publish a free ‘a calm presence' monthly Substack see https://acalmpresence.substack.com.  

Your feedback is always welcome at claude [at] conscient [dot] ca and/or on social media: Facebook, Instagram, Linkedin, Threads, BlueSky, Mastodon, Tik Tok, YouTube and Substack.

Share what you like, etc

I am grateful and accountable to the earth and the human labour that provided me with the privilege of producing this podcast, including the toxic materials and extractive processes behind the computers, recorders, transportation systems and infrastructure that made this production possible. 

Thanks for listening. 

Claude Schryer

Latest update on March 21, 2026

(Note: some quotes below have been edited for concision)

• Soundwalking is always like magic. It is a magical experience. It is so simple, Hildi, as you said, and it’s as much about listening to sounds or listening to absences of sound. It's not very typical in our lives. We don't live the kinds of lives that require this kind of presence. And so it’s restorative for me and calms my spirit. But also it's such a reminder each and every time I do a soundwalk of the power of just simply listening and opening up that register with all of its span from appreciation to analytics, to criticality and to spirituality. (Milena Droumeva)

This is part 2 of a conversation with colleagues and friends from the Sonic Research Group at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia. This time with Milena Droumeva, Hildegard Westerkamp, Barry Truax, Jacek Smolicki, Freya Zinovieff and myself. 

If you might have heard in part 1, e157, the Sonic Research Group is a bi-monthly zoom gathering of acoustic ecology researchers, activists and artists from around the world about sound studies and our shared passion for listening. 

This second conversation was on recorded on April 30, 2024 and flows freely on a range of issues, for example, Milena Droumeva talked about stages of life: 

• I think stage of life is really important. If you're a young person who has to find a place in the world, or if you're a parent of young children or you're aging or entering a kind of middle age, you have to think about the futures of kids but there's work to do at every stage. 

We also talked about sound and artificial intelligence and I'm sure we’ll revisit this one. In fact, how do you even know that I’m human? This could easily be a synthetic voice, right? Jacek, help us...

• What differentiates us from machines is historical consciousness. Algorithms are operating using biased and skewed data without considering the context within which this data has emerged. Our role as educators is to be reminders of historical context that this whole machinery is digesting and using it to produce futures comes from.. 

Education in sound and listening was a throughline in our conversation as Barry Truax observed:

• I'm still cautiously optimistic that we could still use those same techniques that we've used in the past to create a more creative, analytical and critical listener.

We shared our common interest and passion for soundwalking. Hildegard Westerkamp noted that :

• A group can become a community even though we don't know each other, which creates an atmosphere of willingness to be open and grounded inside ourselves. We can get to that energetic place because we've slowed down.

You can hear more about soundwalking in e22 westerkamp – slowing down through listening, e78 milena droumeva – art needs to get on the street and e113 soundwalk (part 1) - what is my position in listening ? and e113 soundwalk (part 2) - how can we deepen our listening?

We also talked about current affairs such as the encampment at the University of British Columbia that day about the war in Gaza and calls for disinvestment. Freya Zinonieff told us a fascinating story (which you’ll hear at the end of the story made me laugh) 

• A music teacher at Columbia University was teaching John Cage’s 4’.33’’ and made a big fuss about how they couldn't teach that class because there was a loud protest outside the classroom and all she could hear was ‘from the river to the sea’. She said, okay, this just means we can't teach this now because it’s ruining 4’.33’’. We have to continue reminding ourselves and others that listening is a project and we need to learn together how to listen to what is actually there.

We also discussed the sound of air conditioning systems in urban spaces as a symptom of climate change, the media practices of Neo-Nazi groups and more. Enjoy. 

*

END NOTES FOR ALL EPISODES

Note : I'm currently 'pressing pause' and am not producing new content until further notice. 

Hey conscient listeners, 

I’ve been producing the conscient podcast as a learning and unlearning journey since May 2020. It’s my way to give back.

This Indigenous Land Acknowledgement statement was developed by members of the Algonquin community for my former employer the Canada Council for the Arts. I have adapted slightly to make it my own.

• I acknowledge that my studio, located in Ottawa, is on the unceded, unsurrendered Territory of the Anishinaabe Algonquin Nation whose presence here reaches back to time immemorial.
• I recognize the Algonquins as the customary keepers and defenders of the Ottawa River Watershed and its tributaries. I honour their long history of welcoming many Nations to this beautiful territory and uphold and uplift the voice and values of our Host Nation.
• Further, I offer my respect and affirm the inherent and Treaty Rights of all Indigenous Peoples across this land and honour commitments to self-determination and sovereignty that have been made to Indigenous Nations and Peoples.
• I acknowledge the historical oppression of lands, cultures and the original Peoples in what we now know as Canada and fervently believe the Arts contribute to the healing and decolonizing journey we all share together

In parallel with the production of the conscient podcast and its francophone counterpart, balado conscient, I I publish a free ‘a calm presence' monthly Substack see https://acalmpresence.substack.com.  

Your feedback is always welcome at claude [at] conscient [dot] ca and/or on social media: Facebook, Instagram, Linkedin, Threads, BlueSky, Mastodon, Tik Tok, YouTube and Substack.

Share what you like, etc

I am grateful and accountable to the earth and the human labour that provided me with the privilege of producing this podcast, including the toxic materials and extractive processes behind the computers, recorders, transportation systems and infrastructure that made this production possible. 

Thanks for listening. 

Claude Schryer

Latest update on March 21, 2026

• How can we remind ourselves that we're all creative and we're all artists? I think that we need all parts of ourselves to be able to navigate this transition that we're in as a species and as a part of the world.

I first met Louise Adongo at the Transition Innovation Group (see e163). We spoke on Monday April 22, 2024, earth day.

Louise is a bold and grounded leader in systems change, policy and evaluation who is a founder of Caprivian Strip Inc (CSI) and a co-steward with the Transition Bridges Project.

Louise's work brings care and intention to uncovering the roots of tangled problems; enabling shifts to greater resilience, sustainability and impact. I’ve heard her talk about it many times and noticed that there is often an arts component in her work. For example:

• There are artists in communities and creativity is really important in a context where you're trying to inspire imagination and do strength-based and asset-based work in contexts that maybe people do not naturally see and think of things that way. I've always understood that creatives and artists have a way of drawing out of us more than what we even understand about ourselves on a surface level.

Louise believes that co-creating more nimble, transparent and creative institutional spaces is key to the reinvention that we all need.

I agree. A key part of this is knowing how to slow down. I appreciate Louise’s take on this: 

• My perspective on what slowing down means is that we really need to think more deeply before we take the actions, which is different than let's slow down and not take any actions at all. And so the system mediation feeds my action orientation because it's willing to actually step in and say the hard thing to people that need to understand their readiness to hear the hard thing. So it's not waiting to say the hard thing until people are ready to hear it. It's almost saying the hard thing to determine how ready people are. 

We also discussed how to invite people to get further involved.

• It’s less about wanting to convert or convince people to respond to the reality of our state than figuring out how to create invitations for people to come to it for themselves.

Consider yourself invited. 

Louise recommended Soil: The Story of a Black Mother’s Garden by poet and scholar Camille T. Dungy, The Creator film and suggested that we spend time outside. 

Links that Louise mentioned in the episode include:

• Berkana Loop
• Panarchy Loop
• We Will Dance with Mountains, notably the work of Cara Judea Alhadeff

*

END NOTES FOR ALL EPISODES

Note : I'm currently 'pressing pause' and am not producing new content until further notice. 

Hey conscient listeners, 

I’ve been producing the conscient podcast as a learning and unlearning journey since May 2020. It’s my way to give back.

This Indigenous Land Acknowledgement statement was developed by members of the Algonquin community for my former employer the Canada Council for the Arts. I have adapted slightly to make it my own.

• I acknowledge that my studio, located in Ottawa, is on the unceded, unsurrendered Territory of the Anishinaabe Algonquin Nation whose presence here reaches back to time immemorial.
• I recognize the Algonquins as the customary keepers and defenders of the Ottawa River Watershed and its tributaries. I honour their long history of welcoming many Nations to this beautiful territory and uphold and uplift the voice and values of our Host Nation.
• Further, I offer my respect and affirm the inherent and Treaty Rights of all Indigenous Peoples across this land and honour commitments to self-determination and sovereignty that have been made to Indigenous Nations and Peoples.
• I acknowledge the historical oppression of lands, cultures and the original Peoples in what we now know as Canada and fervently believe the Arts contribute to the healing and decolonizing journey we all share together

In parallel with the production of the conscient podcast and its francophone counterpart, balado conscient, I I publish a free ‘a calm presence' monthly Substack see https://acalmpresence.substack.com.  

Your feedback is always welcome at claude [at] conscient [dot] ca and/or on social media: Facebook, Instagram, Linkedin, Threads, BlueSky, Mastodon, Tik Tok, YouTube and Substack.

Share what you like, etc

I am grateful and accountable to the earth and the human labour that provided me with the privilege of producing this podcast, including the toxic materials and extractive processes behind the computers, recorders, transportation systems and infrastructure that made this production possible. 

Thanks for listening. 

Claude Schryer

Latest update on March 21, 2026

• Community arts became my initial quest in the 1980’s as a reaction against the commercial art world. How can art participate in a functional way to connect not just art educated people, but our overall communities on issues affecting them that have meaning and purpose. Can we just speak about these issues or can we actually have it be transformative in some way to actually lead to some kind of social or policy change within  the community by bringing people together and getting them working together.

Felicia Young is the founder and executive director of Earth Celebrations, a non-profit organization engaging communities to effect ecological and social change through the arts. 

Felicia has developed a methodology utilizing the arts and the theatrical pageant art form, along with civic engagement and activism. 

She’s a 3rd generation New Yorker, with deep roots in the City of New York, as well as much inspiration from the festivals, ceremonies, and mythic dramas from her mother’s native land of India.

I’ve never met Felicia in person but I know about her work through social media such as the YouTube video Celebrations Director Felicia Young - 30 Years of Cultural Organizing for Ecological Change. 

In particular I was moved by Felicia’s response to a question I ask all of my guests about how to prepare for the end of the world as we know it : 

• I don't just see it as doom and gloom because I have been directly involved in 30 years of local people who've just moved forward with implementing these solutions without waiting for the government … My involvement has always been at the grassroots level. And on that, I'm encouraged, but where I'm afraid is the overall political system where we see our elected officials owned by the industries that are doing all of the polluting and controlling the bigger picture, but are we just going to be paralyzed because they're doing the wrong thing and not go ahead with what we know is right? 

This is the first in a series of conversations about community engaged arts, their contribution to society. My second all be e173 with Kelly McInnes. 

Felicia suggested the following reading and listening materials : 

• Center for Artistic Activism resources
• William Cleveland’s podcast on community engagement and the arts
• eco art space publications
• Artists and Climate Change facebook page

*

END NOTES FOR ALL EPISODES

Note : I'm currently 'pressing pause' and am not producing new content until further notice. 

Hey conscient listeners, 

I’ve been producing the conscient podcast as a learning and unlearning journey since May 2020. It’s my way to give back.

This Indigenous Land Acknowledgement statement was developed by members of the Algonquin community for my former employer the Canada Council for the Arts. I have adapted slightly to make it my own.

• I acknowledge that my studio, located in Ottawa, is on the unceded, unsurrendered Territory of the Anishinaabe Algonquin Nation whose presence here reaches back to time immemorial.
• I recognize the Algonquins as the customary keepers and defenders of the Ottawa River Watershed and its tributaries. I honour their long history of welcoming many Nations to this beautiful territory and uphold and uplift the voice and values of our Host Nation.
• Further, I offer my respect and affirm the inherent and Treaty Rights of all Indigenous Peoples across this land and honour commitments to self-determination and sovereignty that have been made to Indigenous Nations and Peoples.
• I acknowledge the historical oppression of lands, cultures and the original Peoples in what we now know as Canada and fervently believe the Arts contribute to the healing and decolonizing journey we all share together

In parallel with the production of the conscient podcast and its francophone counterpart, balado conscient, I I publish a free ‘a calm presence' monthly Substack see https://acalmpresence.substack.com.  

Your feedback is always welcome at claude [at] conscient [dot] ca and/or on social media: Facebook, Instagram, Linkedin, Threads, BlueSky, Mastodon, Tik Tok, YouTube and Substack.

Share what you like, etc

I am grateful and accountable to the earth and the human labour that provided me with the privilege of producing this podcast, including the toxic materials and extractive processes behind the computers, recorders, transportation systems and infrastructure that made this production possible. 

Thanks for listening. 

Claude Schryer

Latest update on March 21, 2026

• The garden doesn't have to be something that's instrumental. It can be just a place where you sit, where you're thinking of growing something, you know, where the sun shines and where photosynthesis takes place and everything is sort of manifested through the sunlight and the water. It's a fantastic thing on its own without actually having to produce a lot of stuff.

Replace 'garden' with 'art'.

Barbara Cuerden is a neighbour in the Sandy Hill neighbourhood of Ottawa, a colleague in ecological art and a family friend. 

Barbara completed a Masters degree in ecoliteracy and place-based education in 2010 and is also a professional back-of-the-book indexer among other things. 

Overall, her artworks and her way of life, I think, reflect local particularities of place and time

When I asked Barbara to be a guest on the conscient podcast she wrote to me with this thought, that I think you’ll appreciate:

• The solution is nature, which is still out there, in the world outside of our heads. We belong to it. A feeling of connection with the air, the light, the green, the animals, that feeling of connection most of us felt naturally as children... That connection can be found again (and again) and like you say, it can be accessible if we allow for it to take hold of us.

We talked about many connections and points of contact during our conversation, concluding, not surprisingly, that we would all be well served to pay more attention to local particularities of place and time.

There were some very poignant moments during our exchange, which you’ll hear. For example, when Barbara told me a story about

• A little seminar where John K. Grande was speaking. I considered myself an eco-artist until I heard him speak about the meaninglessness of spectacle. Reading his stuff changed my life and thus I became a non-entity.

I was struck by this idea of being a non-entity. Barbara’s story reminded me of conscient episode e74 letting go where I talk about ‘the main barrier to my re-education is… ‘me’, and that the solution, simply, is to let it go…’. 

So this episode explores the dichotomy between connection and letting go and the tightrope between being present and being a non-entity. 

Barbara’s recommended reading is Jenny Odell’s Reading the Rocks in Emergence magazine. 

*

Note: Links mentioned during the conversation:

• Regeneration Hoodoo (click on ‘installation’)
• Stephen Lewis (Canadian politician)
• e161 alchemize - a conversation with kamea chayne (special episode about a 40 part course)
• What can an individual do? (claude’s newsletter posting where Barbara commented about Bill McKibben’s question)

Exact wording of quotes in the episode:

• Instead of the dying light of Western civilization, why not a swinging hoodoo cloud? - Ishamel Reed
• During the Vietnam War... every respectable artist in this country was against the war. It was like a laser beam. We were all aimed in the same direction. The power of this weapon turns out to be that of a custard pie dropped from a stepladder six feet high. - Kurt Vonnegut
• The effects of modern-day media have led us to generalize and simplify nature, as we do all things. We read experience in an informational way. - John K. Grande

*

END NOTES FOR ALL EPISODES

Note : I'm currently 'pressing pause' and am not producing new content until further notice. 

Hey conscient listeners, 

I’ve been producing the conscient podcast as a learning and unlearning journey since May 2020. It’s my way to give back.

This Indigenous Land Acknowledgement statement was developed by members of the Algonquin community for my former employer the Canada Council for the Arts. I have adapted slightly to make it my own.

• I acknowledge that my studio, located in Ottawa, is on the unceded, unsurrendered Territory of the Anishinaabe Algonquin Nation whose presence here reaches back to time immemorial.
• I recognize the Algonquins as the customary keepers and defenders of the Ottawa River Watershed and its tributaries. I honour their long history of welcoming many Nations to this beautiful territory and uphold and uplift the voice and values of our Host Nation.
• Further, I offer my respect and affirm the inherent and Treaty Rights of all Indigenous Peoples across this land and honour commitments to self-determination and sovereignty that have been made to Indigenous Nations and Peoples.
• I acknowledge the historical oppression of lands, cultures and the original Peoples in what we now know as Canada and fervently believe the Arts contribute to the healing and decolonizing journey we all share together

In parallel with the production of the conscient podcast and its francophone counterpart, balado conscient, I I publish a free ‘a calm presence' monthly Substack see https://acalmpresence.substack.com.  

Your feedback is always welcome at claude [at] conscient [dot] ca and/or on social media: Facebook, Instagram, Linkedin, Threads, BlueSky, Mastodon, Tik Tok, YouTube and Substack.

Share what you like, etc

I am grateful and accountable to the earth and the human labour that provided me with the privilege of producing this podcast, including the toxic materials and extractive processes behind the computers, recorders, transportation systems and infrastructure that made this production possible. 

Thanks for listening. 

Claude Schryer

Latest update on March 21, 2026

• What you do as an artist is crucial. Do not abandon that for a desire to serve a kind of utilitarian purpose of ‘I'm gonna make sure people know more’. The faith in knowing more is the siren song of our society that constantly sees us leaping off of the vessel that can carry us through this, with this belief that we can suddenly transform society because we can provide information. Decorating climate policy with the arts is not transformative. What you know how to do as an artist is so fundamentally important.

David Maggs defines his work as an attempt to integrate the core capacities of the arts with larger social challenges, sustainability, health, social justice, community development, etc. 

David grew up in Corner Brook, Newfoundland and spent much of his developmental years as a classical pianist. In 2002, he founded Gros Morne Summer Music (now Camber Arts) and continues to be active in cultural production and cultural theory. 

My first conversation with David was e30 maggs – art and the world after this recorded during an outdoors COVID era walk on March 25, 2021 in Vancouver. We talked about artistic capacity, sustainability, value propositions, disruption and recovery, including his Art and the World After This paper for Metcalf Foundation.

Since then David has become Metcalf Fellow on Arts and Society, where he nurtures and supports the desire in Canada’s arts sector to both move with, and shape ongoing patterns of transformative societal change. 

David and I were co-founders of SCALE along with Anjali Appadurai. Anthony Garoufalis-Auger, Kendra Fanconi, Judi Pearl and Robin Sokoloski in 2021 and have been corresponding ever since, including my March 16, 2024 posting on a calm presence david maggs’ art and the climate crisis.

Our second conversation focused on being and transformation. For example :

• My argument is that we are intuiting the ability of art to work at the level of being, to engage with transformative change. But what happens is we live in a culture that is so structured around problem solving at the level of information and knowledge that as soon as we think, OK, yes. course art has something really important to do with this, then, immediately, instead of allowing the arts to pull climate discourse into the realm of being, climate discourse pulls art into the realm of knowing. And it becomes a tool for knowing rather than something that allows us to start to engage with ourselves at the level of being.

David also talks about the cultural gap in the climate crisis which he defines as ‘the difference between the imperative of transformation at the level of being and a particular society's capacity to do so. Ours is really low.’

David’s recommended reading is the work of Richard Powers and Don McKay’s Vis à vis. 

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END NOTES FOR ALL EPISODES

Note : I'm currently 'pressing pause' and am not producing new content until further notice. 

Hey conscient listeners, 

I’ve been producing the conscient podcast as a learning and unlearning journey since May 2020. It’s my way to give back.

This Indigenous Land Acknowledgement statement was developed by members of the Algonquin community for my former employer the Canada Council for the Arts. I have adapted slightly to make it my own.

• I acknowledge that my studio, located in Ottawa, is on the unceded, unsurrendered Territory of the Anishinaabe Algonquin Nation whose presence here reaches back to time immemorial.
• I recognize the Algonquins as the customary keepers and defenders of the Ottawa River Watershed and its tributaries. I honour their long history of welcoming many Nations to this beautiful territory and uphold and uplift the voice and values of our Host Nation.
• Further, I offer my respect and affirm the inherent and Treaty Rights of all Indigenous Peoples across this land and honour commitments to self-determination and sovereignty that have been made to Indigenous Nations and Peoples.
• I acknowledge the historical oppression of lands, cultures and the original Peoples in what we now know as Canada and fervently believe the Arts contribute to the healing and decolonizing journey we all share together

In parallel with the production of the conscient podcast and its francophone counterpart, balado conscient, I I publish a free ‘a calm presence' monthly Substack see https://acalmpresence.substack.com.  

Your feedback is always welcome at claude [at] conscient [dot] ca and/or on social media: Facebook, Instagram, Linkedin, Threads, BlueSky, Mastodon, Tik Tok, YouTube and Substack.

Share what you like, etc

I am grateful and accountable to the earth and the human labour that provided me with the privilege of producing this podcast, including the toxic materials and extractive processes behind the computers, recorders, transportation systems and infrastructure that made this production possible. 

Thanks for listening. 

Claude Schryer

Latest update on March 21, 2026

• Being an artist, or making art, in the context of climate is more about being a kind of light in the darkness, making us believe in ourselves and believe in the future so that we want to endeavor to save the thing that we have, our habitat. Some people like to say art can't change the world, but art can change us. Then we can change the world more effectively.

I first heard about Bill Crandall from his Viaduct Arts project, a newsletter that brings together various ways artists can help carry us up and over the climate crisis. Bill is from Washington DC though he currently lives with his family in Nairobi, Kenya.

As a longtime photographer, his personal long-term projects focus on the human dimension of sweeping historical changes, and take nuanced, poetic, and empathetic looks at topics from gentrification to cultural identity.

I appreciate his one person efforts to empower artists in the climate emergency through Viaduct Arts and so I called Bill up on Zoom and we talked about his climate art activism including his observation that ‘art can help us stay centered in ourselves, be resilient, and have some spiritual grounding that's going help us no matter what comes’. 

Bill's recommended book is Tales from Moominvalley by Tove Jansson.

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END NOTES FOR ALL EPISODES

Note : I'm currently 'pressing pause' and am not producing new content until further notice. 

Hey conscient listeners, 

I’ve been producing the conscient podcast as a learning and unlearning journey since May 2020. It’s my way to give back.

This Indigenous Land Acknowledgement statement was developed by members of the Algonquin community for my former employer the Canada Council for the Arts. I have adapted slightly to make it my own.

• I acknowledge that my studio, located in Ottawa, is on the unceded, unsurrendered Territory of the Anishinaabe Algonquin Nation whose presence here reaches back to time immemorial.
• I recognize the Algonquins as the customary keepers and defenders of the Ottawa River Watershed and its tributaries. I honour their long history of welcoming many Nations to this beautiful territory and uphold and uplift the voice and values of our Host Nation.
• Further, I offer my respect and affirm the inherent and Treaty Rights of all Indigenous Peoples across this land and honour commitments to self-determination and sovereignty that have been made to Indigenous Nations and Peoples.
• I acknowledge the historical oppression of lands, cultures and the original Peoples in what we now know as Canada and fervently believe the Arts contribute to the healing and decolonizing journey we all share together

In parallel with the production of the conscient podcast and its francophone counterpart, balado conscient, I I publish a free ‘a calm presence' monthly Substack see https://acalmpresence.substack.com.  

Your feedback is always welcome at claude [at] conscient [dot] ca and/or on social media: Facebook, Instagram, Linkedin, Threads, BlueSky, Mastodon, Tik Tok, YouTube and Substack.

Share what you like, etc

I am grateful and accountable to the earth and the human labour that provided me with the privilege of producing this podcast, including the toxic materials and extractive processes behind the computers, recorders, transportation systems and infrastructure that made this production possible. 

Thanks for listening. 

Claude Schryer

Latest update on March 21, 2026

• Proximity proportionate responsibility: if we were to do an inventory of where all the things we own were made, that would give us a very interesting map of where our responsibility, our attention and our donations ought to go because our pressures on the global systems can be revealed. That's a much more reasonable way to interact with different crises than to simply read about it on the news and interact with the whole of it without the context of our footprint. 

Jimmy Ung was born in Montreal to a family of refugees from the Cambodian war. He has traveled to over 50 countries and worked for Collège Reine-Marie, the Canadian Commission for UNESCO, the Parliament of Canada, and the charity WE (Free the Children). He is currently working on a book about Privilege, Power and Social Responsibility.

I first met Jimmy at the Canadian Commission for UNESCO while I was working at Canada Council for the Arts. Jimmy impressed me with his brilliant mind, boundless curiosity and his kind heart. We kept in touch over the years, including my fascination with his motorcycle crossing of the Americas in 2014-15 covering more than 30,000 kilometers. 

I interviewed Jimmy in French for balado conscient on April 17, 2021 (see é28 ung - résilience et vulnérabilité) where we talked about resilience and vulnerability.  

I was struck by Jimmy’s observation that ‘resilience is the capacity to be vulnerable’ which at the time seemed like a contradiction but now makes sense to me.

During this 2nd conversation, this time in English, some 3 years later, our focus was on privilege, in relation to his upcoming book, including the role that privilege plays in the arts and in relation to both the ecological and humanitarian crisis. 

At the end of our conversation, Jimmy quoted Bayo Akomolafe saying ‘our times are urgent, so let us slow down’ and recommended this video:  Climate Crisis, Fragmentation and Collective Trauma, with Bayo Akomolafe, Eriel Tchekwie Deranger, Angaangaq Angakkorsuaq & Dr. Gabor Maté as part of The Wisdom of Trauma - Talks on Trauma Series.

I mentioned this link from my ‘a calm presence’ newsletter during the conversation : l'orchestre de paris à montréal.

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END NOTES FOR ALL EPISODES

Note : I'm currently 'pressing pause' and am not producing new content until further notice. 

Hey conscient listeners, 

I’ve been producing the conscient podcast as a learning and unlearning journey since May 2020. It’s my way to give back.

This Indigenous Land Acknowledgement statement was developed by members of the Algonquin community for my former employer the Canada Council for the Arts. I have adapted slightly to make it my own.

• I acknowledge that my studio, located in Ottawa, is on the unceded, unsurrendered Territory of the Anishinaabe Algonquin Nation whose presence here reaches back to time immemorial.
• I recognize the Algonquins as the customary keepers and defenders of the Ottawa River Watershed and its tributaries. I honour their long history of welcoming many Nations to this beautiful territory and uphold and uplift the voice and values of our Host Nation.
• Further, I offer my respect and affirm the inherent and Treaty Rights of all Indigenous Peoples across this land and honour commitments to self-determination and sovereignty that have been made to Indigenous Nations and Peoples.
• I acknowledge the historical oppression of lands, cultures and the original Peoples in what we now know as Canada and fervently believe the Arts contribute to the healing and decolonizing journey we all share together

In parallel with the production of the conscient podcast and its francophone counterpart, balado conscient, I I publish a free ‘a calm presence' monthly Substack see https://acalmpresence.substack.com.  

Your feedback is always welcome at claude [at] conscient [dot] ca and/or on social media: Facebook, Instagram, Linkedin, Threads, BlueSky, Mastodon, Tik Tok, YouTube and Substack.

Share what you like, etc

I am grateful and accountable to the earth and the human labour that provided me with the privilege of producing this podcast, including the toxic materials and extractive processes behind the computers, recorders, transportation systems and infrastructure that made this production possible. 

Thanks for listening. 

Claude Schryer

Latest update on March 21, 2026