Waste Lands

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Waste Lands uses work by filmmakers from across Canada, with a special focus on our region, to consider what modern cultures have done to our environments, and provoke our thinking about what is really sustainable. The issues are not just ecological, but also cultural. They’re about how we live in the world today, and how we can continue to inhabit it into the precarious future.

In a series of six short films, the program explores a range of perspectives under this topic: touching on urban, suburban and rural areas, addressing issues of economic classification systems, conformity and queerness, to questioning what is really “natural” in our landscapes in the face of a rapidly changing climate. The mediums span from animation, drone footage and photography, paired with audio narratives, natural soundscape and hydrophone recordings, to complete silence.

How do we live between nature and culture, between life and technology, in a way that can endure into the future? How do we find a place for all different kinds of us, in a world of our own creation that seems to have no more room for us? This is the quest for a space that can truly sustain us. It’s what these filmmakers seem to be asking us for, and projected in an architecture that wants to make it real.

This project was developed by 5468796 Architecture and curated by Lawrence Bird for Winnipeg Design Festival 2024.

Organizer

5468796 Architecture and Lawrence Bird for Winnipeg Design Festival

5468796 Architecture is a design studio established in 2007 in Winnipeg, Manitoba, on Treaty 1 territory.

Lawrence Bird is a multidisciplinary artist, curator, writer, spatial practitioner and educator based in Winnipeg, Manitoba.

Winnipeg Design Festival is Storefront MB's annual open and public event that aims to share, discuss, promote and celebrate design culture in Manitoba.