Water-witching Workshop Alana Bartol

September 23, 2018

Clarkson Wastewater Treatment Facility, 2307 Lakeshore Rd. W., Mississauga

Events are FREE and open to the public. All are welcome.

Presented as part of The Work of Wind: Air, Land, Sea.

Alana Bartol, Water-witching Workshop: “a slick, a smear...awash in green”, 2018. Photo: Yuula Benivolski.
Information

Water-witching Workshop
a slick, a smear...awash in green
Alana Bartol

September 23, 2018

Clarkson Wastewater Treatment Facility, 2307 Lakeshore Rd. W., Mississauga

Events are FREE and open to the public. All are welcome.

Artist Alana Bartol will lead an exploration of the use and tools of dowsing (a.k.a. water-witching). Drawing on her family’s water-witching history and traditions of divining, she explores dowsing as a creative method in her art practice. Dowsing or water-witching is a form of divination used to locate ground water, ores, oil, and information. While there is no scientific evidence that dowsing is accurate, a fascination with this practice still persists. All are welcome, even the skeptics!

The workshop will take place outside and will involve moving throughout the area on paved and unpaved terrain. During this workshop, participants will be provided with and introduced to the tools and techniques of dowsing. During the second part of the workshop, the pendulum dowsing performance “a slick, a smear…. awash in green” will take place:

A pendulum responds to contamination in the Southdown region. Audiences are asked to reflect on the past, present, and possible futures of this site. How do we arrive at an understanding of remediation in this region? How can we consider empathy and care in this process?

Open to children seven years of age and older. Children under twelve must be accompanied by an adult.

Presented as part of The Work of Wind: Air, Land, Sea a site-specific exhibition, public program series, and publication platform designed to expand perspectives on climate change through artistic practices, cultural inquiry, and political mobilization.

Biography

Alana Bartol comes from a long line of water witches. Her site-responsive works explore walking and divination as ways of understanding across places, species, and bodies. Bartol’s work has been presented across Canada at Walter Phillips Gallery (Banff), InterAccess (Toronto), Plug In Institute for Contemporary Art (Winnipeg), Access Gallery (Vancouver), and Art Gallery of Windsor, as well as in Romania, Germany, Mexico and the United States. Recent and upcoming residencies include Santa Fe Art Institute (USA), Eastern Edge Gallery (St. John’s), and Canadian Armed Forces Artist Program. Bartol currently lives in Calgary where she teaches at the Alberta College of Art and Design.

Documentation
Acknowledgments

The Work of Wind: Air, Land, Sea is presented by the Blackwood Gallery at the University of Toronto Mississauga in partnership with the City of Mississauga.



This is one of the 200 exceptional projects funded in part through the Canada Council for the Arts’ New Chapter program. With this $35M investment, the Council supports the creation and sharing of the arts in communities across Canada.