2022 | 9:13 | Media Installation
As Europeans colonized the Americas, the newly invented microscope led to the discovery of another new world that shifted Western understandings of existence. As Leibnitz noted “There is a prodigious quantity of [living things] in a drop of water tinctured with powder … perhaps the block of marble itself is only a mass of an infinite number of living bodies like a lake full of fish” (1687). Microscopy also contributed to a reductive view of water that is tied to ecological devastation. Emerging from the Water offers an Anishinaabe perspective, asking audiences to re-imagine what water policies, sciences, and human relations with the more-than-human world could look like in a decolonized world. The accompanying interactive microscope features water samples from the St. Lawrence River — a significant trade route for Indigenous peoples, and an artery for colonization in Canada.
Cinematography, Projection Mapping, Editing, and Sound Design by Christina Dovolis. Directed by Dolleen Tisawii’ashii Manning and Mary Bunch. Visual and user design by Michaela Pnacek.
This project was supported by Native Women in the Arts, Mitacs, Science to Applications (VISTA), Canada Research Excellence Fund (CREF), the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), and the Media Arts Program at York University.
Screenings
2023 – UN Water Conference – New York, USA.
2023 – Group Exhibition – On-Site Gallery – Toronto, Ontario.
2022 – Nuit Blanche – Toronto, Canada.
Projects 