conscient podcast

‘This episode lasts 59 seconds. I want to share a November 13th, 2021, tweet by British writer and climate activist George Monbiot: 'Now we have no choice but to raise the scale of civil disobedience until we have built the greatest mass movement in history. We do not consent to the destruction of our life support systems’.’ George Monbiot, November 13th, 2021, tweet  This episode lasts 59 seconds...

My goal with this episode was to record the soundscape of a public protest : the singing, chanting, speeches, random chatter and marching as well as the ambiance of the city, however what I witnessed and heard at this event was the response of the protesters to Vancouver Police around the arrest of group of young people who were doing a ceremony with washable red paint onto the windows of the fede...

'Art is a practice of expanding consciousness, which gives us a tremendous opportunity to explore and to embody possibility and to engage with the earth as it continues to change and with each other. Rebecca Mwase, excerpt from e10 mwase – expanding consciousness (from an interview at Creative Climate Leadership USA, March, 2020) * e81 inspiration are excerpts from all my conversations up to today...

'We, the undersigned, declare that people, their cultures, and the natural and cultural heritage of the earth are profoundly at risk from human-caused climate change and the climate inaction that is deepening the unfolding climate crisis even while we reaffirm the immense power of arts, culture, and heritage to inspire climate action and enable a just transition to low carbon, climate resilient fu...

'I think art needs to get on the street, because raising awareness in a gallery is really speaking to the choir. I'll leave raising awareness, because we both agree that the time for that has passed, but I think art needs to revert back to artisan and crafts, in the sense that imagination can lead to crafting things that we will actually need for survival. I think that - and again, this is my radi...

'I think the same model (climate emergency coalitions) could and should be used by SCALE to have these arts and culture groups come together, identify a shared vision and a shared set of actions that together constitute a true climate emergency agenda for the arts and culture sector. That's step one and then agreement to jointly campaign all with your individual constituencies on that declaration...

'I wrote an article called Seeding a Green New Theatre in Canada that is drawing on a lot of principles of conversations happening around a green new deal in the United States and elsewhere, as well as other kinds of social justice movements happening on both sides of the border and thinking through what's the kind of theatre and what are the plays that already existed in Canadian theatre history...

'To me, radical listening is about stepping out of our comfort zone when we listen. Radical listening about thinking beyond what we think we know when we listen. Radical listening is about recognizing our biases, both conscious and unconscious. It’s about listening actively and sincerely. Ultimately, it’s about getting to the truth and facing reality.' Claude Schryer, FKL’s Unheard Landscapes Symp...

'I’ve come to realize that the main barrier to my re-education, and I might not be the only one in this situation, is… ‘me’. My personality, my baggage and that the solution, simply, is to let it go. To release it.' Claude Schryer, October 26, 2021, Vancouver e74 letting go – laisser aller  was recorded on Tuesday, October 26, 2021, at 6.40am. It’s a bilingual monologue about how I’ve come to real...

'I feel really at the base of myself that creating anything, art, sofas, whatever it is, allows us to give of ourselves to something that may not be lasting but in the moment, that act of creation can engender hope, can engender a sense of autonomy, a sense of possibility and we can't despair right now, we're at a tipping point, as everyone is saying and the question for me is how do we find the e...

'It’s 2.29am on Sunday October 17th, 2021. I can hear the rumble of the city in the background, but the rain has stopped for a few minutes. Yesterday, I walked by the People’s Coop Bookstore on Commercial Avenue in Vancouver and thought I saw a new book by Richard Wagamese in the corner of my eye. How could this be? The title was What Comes From Spirit. My heart was pounding. Could this be a new b...

'The Green Sessions was invented because this small group of people got together and decided we wanted to do something that created impact. I'm really interested in new and more opportunities for us to collaborate as a sector and putting people into focus and a place of knowledge on this agenda' Emma Stenning, former Executive Director, SoulPepper theatre company Complete excerpt The Green Session...

'We make choices by not making choices And we live with unbearable consequences We hear alarm bells, but do not respond We cling to uncertainty like a sad song We act as if unaware and innocent We are cognitively dissonant'  Claude Schryer, September 28, 2021, Duhamel, QC one step at a time (September 28, 2021) We make choices by not making choices  And we live with unbearable consequences  We hea...

'It's 4 56 am on Tuesday, rather than Wednesday, September 29th. I'm about to do something I've never done before, a soundwalk in the dark. I wanted to share with you this experience of walking in the dark and see what happens.' Claude Schryer, September 29, 2021, Duhamel QC You’ll hear two excerpts from season 2 of the  conscient  podcast in this episode: e22 westerkamp (Claude Schryer) I'm inter...

'I think the transformation of knowledge is really important. What we can do from our generation to the next is try and help prepare them for the impacts of climate change, but it doesn't have to be all doom and gloom…' Andrew Davies, September 26, 2021 e68 andrews davies and no. 9 gardens is a conversation that I recorded on September 26th 2021, in one take, while in a yurt with Andrew Davies, Di...

'I've been thinking about decolonization and reconciliation and other issues in our relations with indigenous communities. I was reading the 'wanna be an ally' poem the other day that really affected me positively but also emotionally and I wanted to read it to you.' Claude Schryer, Duhamel QC Transcription of monologue   conscient podcast, episode 67, ‘wanna be an ally’ I've been thinking about d...

'I’m interested in doing episodes that are in the moment, unedited moments of thinking out loud and not thinking too much because the rest of my body is working at soaking in this space.' Claude Schryer, Duhamel QC e66 stillness is a monologue that I recorded on September 14th, 2021, in one take, while sitting still in a kayak in a shallow bay on the Preston River, in Duhamel Québec where I talk a...

'What I'm looking for, ultimately, is an anchoring point: where are we at and what can we do to ensure the continuation of life?' Claude Schryer, Duhamel QC (transcript) This is Claude Schryer,  conscient  podcast, the first episode of season 3. I took me a while to figure out what I wanted to do in season 3, because there are so many things that podcasts can do : interviews, or you can do, monolo...

'Welcome back to the History of 2021 in Canada seminar. We’re going to conclude our case study today of the 2nd season of the conscient podcast.' Claude Schryer ou can listen to part one  here . This is the conclusion! The setting is an undergraduate university history seminar course called ‘ History of 2021 in Canada ’. I want to thank my son Riel for the idea. It is set in the distant future, wh...

'Welcome to the History of 2021 in Canada seminar. We’re going to do a case study today of the second season of the conscient podcast.' Claude Schryer The setting is an undergraduate university history seminar course called ‘ History of 2021 in Canada ’. I want to thank my son Riel, student of history, for the idea. It is set in the distant future, where a professor is presenting a ‘case study’ ba...

'I think capitalism is over, but the problem is we have nothing to replace it with. Here's when we need artists, and others, to tell us what kind of vision they have for a future that is different than that: a future of play and meaningful work would be one future that I think is not just utopic, but very possible. ' dr. todd dufresne, e21 conscient podcast Video version: Transcription e21 dufresn...

I think that there needs to be greater capacity within the art sector for research to action. When I say that the art sector itself needs to be driving policy. We need to have the tools, the understanding, the training, the connections to truly impact policy and one thing that  Mass Culture is really focused on at the moment is how do we first engage the sector in what are the research priorities...

'SCALE (Sectoral Climate Arts Leadership for the Emergency) is a national round table for the arts and culture sector to mobilize around the climate emergency. A few months ago, you and I, and a few others were all having the same realization that while there was a lot of important work and projects happening at the intersection of arts and sustainability in Canada, there lacked some kind of struc...

This is now an existential crisis, and we have in a way, a conceptual crisis, but just understanding we are and what this is, this moment, all of history is behind us: every book you've ever read, every battle, every empire, all of that is just there, right, just right behind us. And now we, we are in this position of emerging awareness that in order to have this civilization, in some form, contin...

I don't want to confuse the end of an ecologically unsustainable, untenable way of civilization working in this moment with a complete guarantee of extinction. There  is  a future. It may look very different and sometimes I think the inability to see exactly what that future is – and our plan for it - can be confused for there not being one. I'm sort of okay with that uncertainty, and in the meant...