RE: COMPOSITION

RE: COMPOSITION is an arts/sciences installation series juxtaposing the compositional materials of ecosystems and artists. As the planned or incidental fixing of constituents into a whole, “composition” may conjure the final stroke on canvas, the conclusive mark of a story, or the resolving fragments of new musical work—each a snapshot of an artist’s generative process. The prefix “re” offers an alternative context through organic matter’s growth and decay (“decomposition”)—the repeated, recombinant nature of ecosystems and artistic practices. Rawlings’ curation embraces multiple temporalities, presenting time scales of varied organicity while reaching toward human and non-human survivorship: “How do we listen to ourselves, to one another, and to the ecosystems on which we interdepend at this time of climate crisis and biodiversity loss?” The LITHOSPHERE installation includes rock specimens, fragrant phytolith, a music score, and a copy of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species decomposed by a British Columbia ecosystem. The BIOSPHERE installation features moss specimens, predator skulls, a tree cookie, and a copy of Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures sprouting oyster mushrooms. The HYDROSPHERE installation displays whales’ tympanic bullae and vertebra, fish otoliths, a score for drowning a violin, and percussion mallets covered in silt and glacial meltwater. The ATMOSPHERE installation exhibits bird skulls, a rare book of beetles and butterflies, a flute stained by sulphur steam, and a toolkit for speculative listening.

This event is free.

This event is part of a hub:

National Arts Centre

National Arts Centre Ottawa, ON

The National Arts Centre (NAC) is Canada’s bilingual, multi-disciplinary home for the performing arts. The NAC presents, creates, produces, and co-produces performing arts programming in various streams—the NAC Orchestra, Dance, English The...