INCUBATION

The Parenthood Tapestry – FREE

With Tatiana Nikolaeva

March 12 and 13
2:00PM – 4:00PM
Upper Rotunda, Kitchener City Hall
200 King St. W, Kitchener, ON

Parenthood is transformative—filled with joys, challenges, and countless untold stories. This interactive project invites parents to pause, reflect, and share their unique journeys.

Visit the stand to share your experience: How has parenthood shaped your life? What have you sacrificed, and what inspires you to keep going? Connect with stories from other parents and find solidarity in shared experiences.

In addition to sharing your story, explore reproductions of visual art masterpieces that depicting parenthood throughout history. Take part in meaningful conversations about the broader context of parenthood in visual art and how it reflects the complexities of caregiving, strength, and love.

For those moved to explore further, there’s an opportunity to contribute to a larger creative project. Your stories could inspire a series of paintings that bring the realities of parenting into the spotlight—sparking a larger conversation about care, resilience, and community through visual art. (…more)

(M)otherload – FREE

March 10 and 11
NOON – 3:00PM
Visitor Centre

What do games and the invisible mental load share in common?
Come find out!

Catherine and Kristyna are inviting the public to contribute to the development of the project (M)otherload by playing basic games, set with simple instructions which provoke potentially complex experiences. Players will then be invited to reflect on these experiences, share what emotions arose, and how the invisible mental load affects their lives. Should people want to delve further into the black hole that is the mental load- they can take part in a longer interview with the artists at another time/location. These will form the foundation of the (M)otherload installation scheduled for the fall of 2025.

(M)otherload is a community-based project and an audio/visual installation that transforms the invisible mental load of primary parenting into a tangible, multisensory experience set within a geodesic dome.  (…more)

Channel Migration

March 10 – 16

CHANNEL MIGRATION is a 12-station Audio Walk co-created by Sydney Lancaster and Geoff Martin, that will be presented at Open Ears Festival in late May this year. By gathering “raw materials” (field recordings, video, and still photos) the artists will work with them to explore the potential of taking thjs project in a performative direction. This incubation will workshop parts of the narrative for the audio walk, presenting them in real time, with video and field recordings as part of the reading experience. This opportunity will explore the way our discreet voices/approaches interact (on the page, and in performative contexts). Time in this incubation will be spent exploring possibilities and refining the work as the artists consider how multidisciplinary works/projects can speak to (and/or encourage) relational ways of thinking about the environment and climate change. (…more)