11 minute read
Comment pages 10 to
from 9 March 2022
Fame is beating experience in upcoming byelection
Fort Whyte byelection is a popularity contest, not a sample of the 2023 elections
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COMMENT
Ivan Nuñez Gamez, staff As the Progressive Conservative Party of Manitoba (PC) continues to lag behind Manitoba’s New Democratic Party (NDP) in province-wide polling, the Fort Whyte byelection could not have come at a better time for the traditionally conservative electoral division. The riding, which has remained vacant since the resignation of former premier Brian Pallister, is set to hold its election on March 22.
The primary candidates running for the position include Obby Khan representing the PCs, Willard Reaves running for the Liberals and Trudy Schroeder running for the NDP. Reaves and Khan are both former Winnipeg Blue Bomber players with little legislative background, while Schroeder is an experienced former board member for a plethora of organizations including Concordia Hospital, Manitoba’s arts and culture advisory council, Canada’s voluntary sector initiative and the University of Manitoba’s community leadership development program. Despite the PC and Liberal candidates’ lack of administrative experience, both are polling significantly better than Schroeder.
The Fort Whyte riding, which has been held by the PCs since its creation in 1999, has featured two PC leaders in its brief history. But the Liberal party is seeking to break the PCs’ stronghold. According to mid-January polling, Reaves is in a better position to win the Fort Whyte election than Khan. Reaves, who claims to have lived in Fort Whyte for 36 years, asserts the election should be an opportunity to send the government a message — that a change from PC legislative dominance over the last few elections is desperately needed. Recently, however, Liberals have been on the tightrope after releasing inappropriate merchandise in the form of a red dress — a symbol for missing and murdered Indigenous women — with the message “overthrow the government” on it. After the action was condemned by NDP house leader Nahanni Fontaine, the Liberals rapidly apologized on Twitter and removed the product from the party’s official website. But can the apology save its electability in Fort Whyte?
Likely due to the PCs’ predominance in Fort Whyte, its candidacy election featured three people seeking the nomination. After a two-day voting process, Khan won the bid. Despite having no legislative background, he describes himself as a community champion and, alongside Premier Heather Stefanson, vowed to place emphasis on issues like reducing surgical diagnostic test backlogs, strengthening the health-care and education systems, increasing immigration to tackle the labour shortage and leading Canada’s economic recovery.
Despite a significant social media following and community involvement, his nomination comes at a troubling time for the PCs as the party struggles to regain momentum following two horrific years of scandal and public criticism, particularly regarding its response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Furthermore, Khan’s nomination, just like Reaves’s, hints that the PCs and Liberals are trying to regain appeal among voters by putting forward popular, and subsequently electable, candidates rather than experts with public service experience.
While the Liberals and PCs chose appealing candidates, the NDP nominated a more-than-qualified candidate in Schroeder. Beyond her experience with several prominent boards and with Manitoba’s arts and culture scene, Schroeder has proved to be an advocate for COVID-19 vaccination while firmly standing against rhetoric and racism. Schroeder said she would abstain from participating in a community question and answer forum if Patrick Allard — an independent candidate who has ties to the People’s Party of Canada and their far-right anti-vaccine and racist ideals — was invited. Her record of public service clearly makes her the most prepared candidate to fill the Fort Whyte leadership vacancy.
Despite Schroeder’s track record, according to mid-January polling, she is polling last among the primary candidates, and the Liberals’ growing appeal among centre-left voters is not making her work any easier. Unless she is able to break away from the other candidates in a meaningful way, Fort Whyte looks like it is bound to have a former Blue Bomber as its MLA.
comment@themanitoban.com
A blend of science, art and activism
‘Sea Sick’ is a call to action for ocean awareness
ARTS & CULTURE
Shaylyn Maharaj-Poliah, staff This month, the Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre presents Sea Sick, written and performed by Alanna Mitchell, as part of the second annual The Bridge: A Festival of Ideas. Beginning last year, The Bridge invites audiences to explore the numerous social issues that are impacting our world today. The theme of this year’s festival is “Our Only Earth” and it aims to raise awareness about climate change through discourse and performance. The festival is being held semivirtually, with programming typically beginning at 12 p.m. daily.
Inspired by Mitchell’s bestselling book of the same name, Sea Sick recounts her journey and desire to learn about the land, ultimately becoming invested in the pollution of the world’s oceans and the urgent issue of climate change. A blend of personal anecdotes, scientific facts and investigative journalism, there is a lot to take away from the 80-minute presentation. Patrons are invited to stay after the show for a 15-minute informal talkback with Mitchell.
The set, created by Shawn Kerwin, consists solely of a chalkboard and a high table. This simplicity belies the complex content of the piece. When Mitchell makes her entrance, the lights do not immediately dim, allowing her time to greet and connect with her audience personally. As she weaves her tale of emails, expeditions and apprehensions, the house lights gradually fade until the spotlight shines only on her.
Mitchell is an excellent storyteller and wordsmith. Her speech is conversational, authentic and easy to listen to, from describing the sensation of accidentally drinking poisonous red tide to divulging her fears about travelling thousands of leagues under the sea in the back of a tiny submersible. Rebecca Picherack’s lighting design reflects these stories — one example is by slowly darkening the space as Mitchell describes a long descent into the ocean — but these techniques could have been utilized to an even greater extent.
However, as Mitchell readily admits in her monologue, she is a journalist rather than a performer. At times, her delivery lapses into more formal, academic language. Though she tried to make the scientific aspects of the piece accessible by defining her terms and paring down explanations of chemical reactions, concepts and processes, the presentation overall felt more like a TED Talk than a theatrical performance.
If you are more interested in traditional theatre, Sea Sick might not be for you, but it is a passionate cautionary tale about humanity’s impact on the world around us, meant to provoke change and inspire reflection.
The Bridge: A Festival of Ideas and
/ provided The Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre image /
Sea Sick will both run until March 19. For a full festival schedule, ticketing information and more, please visit royalmtc.ca.
arts@themanitoban.com
An artistic history of the natural world
New virtual reality exhibit centres adaptation for survival
ARTS & CULTURE
Grace Paizen, staff As the climate crisis escalates, it is important to remember the interconnectedness of nature and humanity. Adaptation has never been more imperative if we wish to continue to call Earth home and preserve the beautiful natural world.
Montreal-based interdisciplinary artist Frances Adair Mckenzie’s latest project, The Orchid and the Bee, is an artistic reminder of this connection.
A 360-degree virtual reality exhibit, The Orchid and the Bee is a five-minute artistic tour of Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection — it is not the strongest that survive, but those best adapted to the changing environment.
The exhibit highlights the essence of nature through the repeated generation and degeneration of stop-motion plasticine puppets in the “primordial soup of life” — from stardust to life’s oceanic origins to land-dwelling mammals, flowers and bees.
Mckenzie emphasizes interconnection most through the image of the roots of flowers imagined as veins attached to organs, running through the earth.
The concept of nature’s origin from seemingly nothing is highlighted through the bottomless perspective of the 360-degree lens.
Watched online, the exhibit can be viewed in its entirety by changing the angle with the arrows on a keyboard or by clicking and dragging the screen.
The exhibit has been optimized for an Oculus Quest, but in the absence of a VR headset it can always be experienced in the form of your own museum space. By watching the exhibit in a pitch-black room with earphones in on your smartphone or tablet you can recreate the Oculus experience in a museum-like setting. While the exhibit can be somewhat frustrating to experience in the way Mckenzie intends, finding the right platform is the best bet for the best experience.
The exhibit itself is beautifully done — the plasticine jellyfish are quite the highlight, and the falling stardust of the cosmos invokes a magical touch when looking up.
The sound and music are a bit ominous when juxtaposed against the beauty of the creatures and flowers on the screen, but this becomes more fitting by the end of the piece, where the universe returns to nothingness.
It is also fitting for the wheezing human face featured in the exhibit, which can be read as a depiction of humanity’s unwillingness to adapt when compared to the other creatures, which constantly transform from polyp to organism and back again.
In this way, the brief scene with the plasticine face accentuates the shortness of the time humans have spent on the screen of the planet’s history, whereas other lifeforms have managed to thrive throughout many millions of years.
Mckenzie’s exhibit, then, promotes environmental reform by situating adaptation as inherent to survival and implying that although on the surface a human may be more intelligent than a jellyfish, humans have failed to adapt to the changing planet — including the climate crisis they created. This raises the question: how intelligent is humanity if adaptation is the key to survival?
The project may come across as art for art’s sake, especially due to its potentially frustrating viewing format, but the simplicity of Mckenzie’s piece is a foil for much deeper questions about the interconnectedness of nature and humanity’s role and purpose within it.
The Orchard and the Bee is streaming for free on nfb.ca.
arts@themanitoban.com
Building an inclusive space in music production
In conversation with Lana Winterhalt of the Good + Plenty Producer’s Club
ARTS & CULTURE
Alex Braun, staff Despite recent strides, inequality and a lack of representation persist in the music production world. This field in particular is a very male-dominated space, with women representing only 2.6 per cent of producers credited on the highest-charting songs of the 2010s in America.
Local songwriter, artist and producer Lana Winterhalt sees a complex history behind this issue.
“There are so many factors for why we aren’t seeing as many women and gender-diverse people in music production — historically, men have been scouted, recruited or encouraged into technology-based jobs, leaving women to find ways in for themselves rather than doors [being] opened for them to walk through,” she said.
“It’s by no means impossible, and we’ve seen women climb to the top of these industries — Susan Rogers, Sylvia Robinson, Linda Perry — yet still, these women were anomalies.”
Even for those women set on a career in music production, Winterhalt feels there is a lack of community and support networks to help them get their start.
“The boys’ club is easy to find,” she said. producers, it’s easy to form a community. Many women and gender-diverse folks are producing music alone in their home studio with little to no community for support. It can be incredibly isolating, and [it is] harder to break into a pre-existing male-dominated community because ‘no one has heard of you before’ — you happen to be working alone, at home [or] in your basement.”
So, inspired by her fruitless search for a female mentor in the field, Winterhalt took it upon herself to build the community she wanted to see through the Good + Plenty Producer’s Club.
“Surely there were more of us out there and we just didn’t know about one another. The idea for some sort of ‘community’ came from this — we need to know who one another are, need to find mentors and be mentors and need to encourage one another in our growth,” she said.
Good + Plenty is a multifaceted initiative. First, there is a Facebook group exclusive to women, non-binary and trans-femme people in Manitoba.
Winterhalt said the Facebook group in particular has been used to “share resources with one another, opportunities for submissions or workshops with other organizations, [ask] questions about one another’s workstations or workflow and [start] introducing ourselves and making new friendships.”
Winterhalt also hosts a podcast under the Good + Plenty name.
“It’s me chatting with a woman, non-binary [or] trans producer or audio engineer from across Canada to talk about their creative process, how they got into audio and any encouragement for the next generation of producers,” she said.
The club is also beginning to look into putting on in-person events in the community, including technical workshops, mixers, collaboration days and other events tailored to the interests and needs of the group.
“The main goal is to create a strong community and network which was literally non-existent previously, and to ensure that wherever folks are in their journey they have every resource available to them for growth,” said Winterhalt.
provided / / Lana Winterhalt image
“Many folks don’t even know that we have a school for recording within Manitoba — Mid-Ocean School of Media Arts [or] MOSMA. Many folks don’t even know what grants or programs are available to them for learning, growing [and] funding their career. Many folks don’t know how to even begin working and making money in the industry.
“We want to ensure the knowledge is available and that everyone with the talent has an equal and fair shot for the same success.”
