Please note that, due to space limitations, our Thursday and Friday sessions are open to contributors only.
We welcome you to join us Thursday evening from 6:00 to 8:00p.m. for our artists talks, held at the McMaster Museum of Modern Art. This event is open to the public.
We also invite you to join us Saturday 21 March. These sessions are open to the public.
Saturday 21 March
Located in L.R. Wilson Concert Hall at McMaster University. Contributors do not need to register.
All events are free and open to the public.
Sign up to reserve your spot for the day.
9:15 to 9:30a.m. – Welcome: one person on stage to welcome attendees and do land acknowledgement.
9:30 to 11:00a.m.
Poetry and Fiction Readings — open to the public
John Hill: Poetry Performance
Madeleine Lavin: Book Louse: A Speculative Fabulation
Joanna Lilley: Hearing Voices: Poems of Extinction
Mandy-Suzanne Wong: Awabi
11:00 to 11:20a.m. – Break and set up
11:20a.m. to 12:40p.m.
Law’s Animal — open to the public
A panel consisting of Lesli Bisgould, Maneesha Deckha, Jessica Eisen, and Angela Fernandez.
Who is law’s animal? How does law view non-human life, and its place in human polities? This
panel will bring together scholars and litigators in the growing field of “animal law” to explore
these questions.
12:40 to 1:30p.m. – Lunch break
1:30 to 2:10p.m.
Colleen Plumb and Mandy-Suzanne Wong — open to the public
Colleen Plumb, Thirty Times a Minute (video with sound)
Mandy-Suzanne Wong, "How Long is a Wish-Walk Minute?" (reading, 22 mins)
The wild shapeshifts into the metropolis. Home is dissonant, destabilizing. Everything is flowing, and we
cannot grasp it, everything’s weird and all mixed up. What’s a nonhuman, a human, and a god at the same time?
Easy: an elephant.
2:20 to 3:00p.m.
Robbie Judkins — open to the public
Robbie Judkins, Game, 2020 (30 mins)
Game is a new performance that repurposes sonic devices and methods used by hunters to allure, trap or confuse non-human animals. A selection of hunting whistles, horns, high frequency sine waves, ultrasound and rudimentary tools will be used and manipulated during this performance. Game is part of an ongoing project researching the sonic methods used to control, hurt or confuse non-human animals.
3:00 to 3:20p.m. – Break
3:20 to 3:50 PM
dave phillips — open to the public
dave phillips, video action 2020 (25 minutes)
video action is an actionistic and physical performance accompanied by visuals, loops and samples of voice and objects are played live over prepared sonic structures and follow a narrative. the video talks of existential, philosophical and sentient matters, on personal, social and global levels. this set is an evocation of 'humanimal',
a sonic ritual, an audio-visual catharsis, a trigger of discourse, offering food for thought.
3:50 to 4:00p.m. - Break
4:00 to 5:30p.m.
Reverse Panel - Challenging Human/Non-Human Boundaries — open to the public
Sponsored by the Socrates Project with Carol Adams, Ron Broglio, David Clark, and Tracy McDonald
Ron Broglio proposed the idea of a reverse panel where scholars ask the audience to engage with them directly
on the themes of the conference. Carol Adams, Ron Broglio, David Clark, and Tracy McDonald will gather questions and themes that arise over the three-days of the AADTS events and engage the audience in a discussion of these key ideas. In this way, the conference will invite the public to weigh in on the issues that have been raised and contribute to a broad discussion of matters of vital importance involving human and non-human animals in the age of the Anthropocene.