As a Creative in Residence for the Ontario Culture Days 2022 Festival, Tanya Lukin Linklater has penned a series of scores which are shared here as a digital publication. To prompt listeners, the written scores are paired with an audio performance by Cedar Aisipi, Omaskeko Cree youth. The scores may be experienced as gentle instructions returned to daily, or intermittently, in a practice of listening, breath, sensation and embodiment.

This publication relates to a commission from The Toronto Biennial of Art 2022, in which Lukin Linklater wrote a series of open yet concise scores to prompt performances for camera with four dancers. Shot over late summer, fall and early winter in Toronto and Montréal neighborhoods, near rivers, lakes, land formations, under the sky and amidst weather, ‘Sensation is a circuit of experience, a circuit of the felt traveling in and adjacent to the body’ premiered in 2022.

The artist is grateful for the generous contributions of Ivanie Aubin-Malo, Ceinwen Gobert, Hanako Hoshimi-Caines, and Emily Law, dance artists, and Neven Lochhead, editor, to the original video installation. The support of folks at Toronto Biennial of Art including Clare Butcher, Roxanne Fernandes, Candice Hopkins, Myung-Sun Kim, and Ilana Shamoon helped this project come into being. Meaghan Froh Metcalf and Noor Khan at Ontario Culture Days have supported the continuation of the project into this iteration. The artist is grateful to Sebastien Aubin at Studio Otami for his design of the publication. Cedar Aisipi’s audio performance breathes life into the text.

Artist Biography:

Tanya Lukin Linklater’s performances, works for camera, installations, and writings centre Indigenous peoples’ lived experiences, (home)lands, and structures of sustenance. Her performances in relation to objects in exhibition, scores, and ancestral belongings generate what she has come to call felt structures. Her work has been shown at the Aichi Triennial, Toronto Biennial of Art, New Museum Triennial, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Chicago Architecture Biennial, Art Gallery of Ontario, and elsewhere. Her Alutiiq/Sugpiaq homelands are in the Kodiak archipelago of southwestern Alaska. She lives and works in Nbisiing Anishnabek territory.

Visit Tanya Lukin Linklater’s website.

Artistic programs are made possible thanks to support from Canadian Heritage, the Province of Ontario, the Ontario Arts Council, the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Toronto Arts Council.