Life of Fire Talk by Amy Mazowita

April 2, 2024
8:30 - 9:30 am CT on Zoom
EVENT RECORDING WITH ASL INTERPRETATION

Gallery 1C03 is pleased to host a talk by emerging scholar Amy Mazowita who will discuss her photo-based research project in progress, entitled Life of Fire: An Ethnography of Smoke, Flame, Ash, and Earth. Life of Fire documents the fire affected landscapes of Manitoba’s Whiteshell Provincial Park (Treaty 3). Inspired by the damages inflicted by the 2021 forest fire season, this project is interested in how uncontrolled fire activity contributes towards various shifts in environmental composition. These shifts—which result from both natural and human-induced beginnings—relate to and include the charring of old-growth forests, the appearance of new vegetation and fungal growth, and the destruction of animal and insect habitats. Through a sustained research-creation photo series, Life of Fire will trace the 2023 forest fire season by photographing active fires as well as the resulting changes to the affected and surrounding landscapes. In so doing, the researcher aims to explore questions related to land, relationships, access, and environment. 

This talk is presented in conjunction with Christina Battle's Gallery 1C03 exhibition FORECAST and will be moderated by University of Winnipeg English professor Dr. Bruno Cornellier. Following the talk, there will be an opportunity for questions from the audience.

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

Amy Mazowita (she/her) is a SSHRC-funded PhD Candidate in the Department of Communication Studies at Concordia University in Montreal, QC. Her doctoral research is focused on representations of mental illness in auto/biographical comics and is situated at the intersections of social media studies, comics studies, and critical disability studies. Amy is also interested in the environmental humanities and is currently working on a project titled “Life of Fire: An Ethnography of Smoke, Flame, Ash, and Earth.” This research-creation photo/life writing series is part of the SSHRC-funded “Mobilizing Disability Survival Skills for the Urgencies of the Anthropocene” project (PI, Arseli Dokumaci). Amy is a 2023-2024 Concordia University Public Scholar, a core member of Concordia’s Access-in-the-Making (AIM) Lab, the communications representative for Concordia’s Communication Studies Doctoral Students’ Association, and a TA in the Department of Communication Studies.

Bruno Cornellier is an Associate Professor in the Department of English and the Graduate Program Chair of the M.A. in Cultural Studies. He is currently working on a book on class, race, whiteness, and “la question coloniale” in contemporary Québec cinema and society.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Gallery 1C03 is on Treaty 1 Territory, the homeland of the Red River Métis and the ancestral lands of the Anishinaabeg, Ininew, Anishininew, Dakota and Dene peoples. Our water is sourced from Shoal Lake 40 First Nation.