Equinox Vigil: Virtually Yours
Saturday Sept 18 7:00 pm MDT
How do we grieve for the many losses we have had over this past year? The spirit of Equinox Vigil is returning to respond to the need for community comfort and connection, to acknowledge and honour those who have died, and the times we are living in.
From 2012-2018 Equinox Vigil supported artist-led responses to death and loss, transforming the historic Union Cemetery into a world of shrines, music, poetry and community. Occurring on the Autumnal Equinox, a time for reflection, introspection and change, this participatory event created a sacred, non-denominational space for the public to reflect on love and loss – inevitable, twinned parts of our human experience.
This year, Equinox Vigil is bringing together visual art, music, poetry into a live-streamed one-hour event on Saturday September 18. We encourage you to join us, and also to use this time to mark your own rituals, to remember your loved ones: create a shrine, gather in small safe groups, lighting candles …we all are the creators of our own ceremonies.
Watch a short video about the 2021 edition
Missed Virtually Yours? Watch the recorded livestream below!
The Artists
Olivia Davis
Olivia Davis is a Metis poet, whose work begins to focus on Indigenous identity and reconciliation. She began creating powerful, raw poems with Downstage Theatre. Her poem Eulogy For The Children (Who Never Came Back), reflects on reconciliation and presents the message that when denying history we further dehumanize the communities affected. Olivia found it important to remember those children we often see in historical photographs and memorials.
Kirti Bhadresa
Kirti Bhadresa lives in Calgary/Moh’kinsstis on Treaty 7 territory. She has been recently published in the Quarantine Review, Short Edition’s 300+ short story dispensers, and Thin Air Magazine. In 2021, Kirti graduated from OwnVoices Alberta, a mentorship program for emerging writers, and became an Associate Mentor for the Calgary Chapter of the Shoe Project.
Lisa Murphy Lamb
Lisa Murphy Lamb is director of Loft 112 a literary creative space in Calgary’s East Village and the 2021 recipient of the Sandstone City Builder Award. She is publisher of New Forum magazine, Tap Press Read and works with Stonehouse Publishing where her novel Jesus on the Dashboard was published (prior to her employment!). Lisa is slowly working on another novel.
Kenna Burima
In her adopted hometown of Calgary (Mohkinstsis, Treaty 7 land), Kenna Burima has earned a reputation as someone who can turn ideas into big projects, teach the unteachable and inspire people to come together. But at her core, Burima wears one label most proudly: musician.
Since her completing classical music education with an Artist Diploma in piano performance from Mount Royal University and a BMus from University of Calgary, Kenna’s love for all musical forms has seen her involved in a diversity of projects over the years; the indie-folk of Woodpigeon, the garage sludge of Brenda Vaqueros, and the retro-punk of LoveWaves. She currently plays keys in organ punk band Jeans Degrees and the sweaty stoner rock of Beaver Squadron and continues to work with other artists when time allows.
Cheryl L’Hirondelle
Cheryl L’Hirondelle (Cree/Halfbreed; German/Polish) is an interdisciplinary artist, singer/songwriter and critical thinker whose family roots are from Papaschase First Nation, amiskwaciy wâskahikan (Edmonton, AB) and Kikino Metis Settlement, AB. Her work investigates and articulates a dynamism of nêhiyawin (Cree worldview) in contemporary time-place incorporating Indigenous language(s), audio, video, VR, sewn objects, the olfactory, music and audience/user participation to create immersive environments and performative events towards ‘radical inclusion’. As a songwriter, L’Hirondelle’s focus is on both sharing nêhiyawêwin (Cree language) and other Indigenous languages with ceremonial and contemporary song-forms, and personal narrative songwriting as methodologies toward ‘survivance’.
She is the recent recipient the 2021 Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Art. In addition, she was awarded two imagineNATIVE New Media Awards (2005 & 2006), and two Canadian Aboriginal Music Awards (2006 & 2007) and has been nominated for or received honorable mention for various other arts or music awards. Additionally, Cheryl has exhibited and performed extensively both nationally and internationally. L’Hirondelle holds a Master of Design from OCAD University’s Inclusive Design program (2015) and is a member of the university’s Indigenous Education Council. She is currently a PhD candidate with SMARTlab at University College, Dublin, in Ireland.
Matthew Waddell & Laura Anzola
Matthew Waddell (b. Calgary, Canada) & Laura Anzola (b. Bogotá, Colombia) have been working together for the last six years, creating work under their own names and through their collective Axis Z Media Arts (AZMA). During this time they have realized over 15 projects that explore the relationships between human interaction and digital media. Their work has been presented at festivals, galleries and theatre spaces across the country. In 2015 and 2019 they were awarded prizes for outstanding theatrical design.
Julian Zwack
Julian Zwack is a Media Artist and 3D Designer based in Calgary and earned his Bachelors of Fine Arts with Distinction in Media Art & Object Design from the Alberta University of the Arts in 2019 and is currently completing his Architectural Technologies diploma at the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology. His artwork explores social theories of post-humanism & object oriented ontology through the mediums of media art installation, celluloid moving film & computer-aided ceramic & glass sculpture + structures.
Julian has been the technology driver behind the Digital Shrine the last 3 years.
Digital Shrine
From 2012 to 2018 in Calgary’s Historic Union Cemetery, the Digital Shrine consisted of a station on a specially designed table where the public were invited to write tributes and messages with pen and paper. The tributes were entered into a software program on a laptop and this text was projected onto a screen, scrolls slowly and visible to the public.
Now in 2021 Digital Shrine will form the interactive part of the Equinox Vigil: Virtually Yours event on Sept 18. Participants are invited to send tributes to the Digital Shrine: words they wish they had said, heartfelt thoughts they carry with them, or simply the names of the dead. We are inspired by each other’s words, and sharing our thoughts amplifies the presence of the dead in our thoughts and hearts.
Tributes can be sent in advance of the Virtually Yours event on our Digital Shrine page
The tributes will run concurrently with the pre-taped and livestream programming during the evening.
Previous Virtually Yours Events
Equinox Vigil: Virtually Yours
Saturday Sept 19, 2020 7:00 pm MST
Missed the event? Watch the video of our livestream!
How do we grieve for the many losses we have had these short few months? How can we come together, when we need to be apart? The spirit of Equinox Vigil is returning to respond to the need for community comfort and connection, to acknowledge and honour those who have died, and the times we are living in.
From 2012-2018 Equinox Vigil supported artist-led responses to death and loss, transforming the historic Union Cemetery into a world of shrines, music, poetry and community. Occurring on the Autumnal Equinox, a time for reflection, introspection and change, this participatory event created a sacred, non-denominational space for the public to reflect on love and loss – inevitable, twinned parts of our human experience.
This year, Equinox Vigil is bringing together visual art, music, poetry and more into a live-streamed one-hour event on Saturday September 19. We encourage you to join us, but also to use this time to mark your own rituals, to remember your loved ones: create a shrine, gather in small safe groups, lighting candles …we all are the creators of our own ceremonies.
Kenna Burima
Musician
In her adopted hometown of Calgary (Mohkinstsis, Treaty 7 land), Kenna Burima has earned a reputation as someone who can turn ideas into big projects, teach the unteachable and inspire people to come together, but at her core, Burima wears one label most proudly: musician.
With Kenna’s recent work on her third solo album underway, Kenna has turned inward, away from the angry intensity found on her prior album Hymn to unravel the quiet mysteries of creation. Gone are the trappings of large-scale band dynamics and musings on the societal ills of the day. It’s just her and a grand piano. And motherhood, she admits, has changed her. Most notably it seems through the necessity of process – the concept album While She Sleeps, slated for 2021 release, is a direct reference to the entire album being written and recorded while her daughter sleeps. First to be released as a community inspired illuminated songbook designed by lifelong collaborator visual artist Brianna Strong and then as a full album for auditory enjoyment online.
Cobra Collins
Poet
Cobra Collins is a Mohkínstsis based Metis poet of significant height.
She has represented our city on a national level at the Canadian Festival of Spoken Word as well as collaborated with artists of different backgrounds for dance (Fluid Movements Arts Festival) and performance festivals (IKG 1 ! Live Performance Festival). Cobra was also honoured to be shortlisted as a nominee for Calgary’s 2016 & 2018 poet laureate.
Kris Demeanor
Poet/Musician
Calgary born songwriter/spoken word artist Kris Demeanor exposes the underbelly of western Canadian culture- gambling, alcoholism, murder, religion, the suburbs.
Kris has released seven recordings, and has toured numerous times in Australia, Europe, solo and with his Crack Band. They’ve shared bills with such artists as David Byrne, Cake and Elvis Costello, Ray Davies, Billy Bragg and Black Francis, and Kris recently co-wrote two songs on music legend Ian Tyson’s 2017 release Carnero Vaquero.
Kris’s present musical projects are ’Cutest Kitten Ever’, a pop harmony trio that includes beat programming and co-writes with Rae Spoon, and a one man show of music and comedic monologue called ‘Russell’ that will premiere January 2020 at Calgary’s High Performance Rodeo.
Kris was Calgary’s poet laureate from 2012-14.
He tours every spring with Geoff Berner and Carolyn Mark, The May 3 Way!
Cheryl Foggo
Author
Cheryl Foggo is a multiple award winning author, playwright and filmmaker, whose work over the last 30 years has focused on the lives of Western Canadians of African descent. Her full length National Film Board documentary John Ware Reclaimed will have its World Premiere at CIFF on September 24th. The 30th anniversary edition of her book Pourin’ Down Rain: A Black Woman Claims Her Place in the Canadian West, has just been released by Brush Education Press. She also recently directed the short film Kicking Up a Fuss: The Charles Daniels Story. Her play, John Ware Reimagined, won the 2015 Writers Guild of Alberta Award for Drama and was produced most recently at Workshop West Theatre Company in November, 2017. Also in 2017 she was recognized by the YWCA as one of 150 outstanding Calgary women. She is a past recipient of the Sondra Kelly Screenplay Award from the Writers Guild of Canada. In 2014 she co-produced Alberta’s first Black Canadian Theatre Series with Ellipsis Tree Collective Theatre Company.
Lisa Hodgkinson
Artist
Lisa Hodgkinson is a Calgary based sculptor working from the back of an autobody shop in Forest Lawn. Her process for this sculpture developed out of her love of the folktale, ‘The Town Musicians of Bremen’, a story of the power of companionship and bravery. Using high heat, Lisa bent steel rod into a three dimensional drawing of a tower of animals. This sculpture was created for the Equinox Vigil as a monument to commemorate pets who have died. In previous years at the vigil, the public were invited to write the name of their pet on a stone and place it beneath the sculpture. After the vigil was over, the names of each animal were read aloud as the stones were returned to the Bow River.
Sarah Kerr
Artist
As a Ritual Healing Practitioner and Death Doula, Sarah helps her clients integrate experiences of illness, death and loss.
Sarah’s work draws on ancient wisdom teachings, naturebased spirituality, sacred sciences, and the richness of the human soul. She designs and facilitates ceremonies that help her clients and their families to integrate experiences of illness, death and loss. These rituals honour the spiritual significance of what is happening, and bring healing to the living, the dying, and the dead.
Sarah’s PhD research explored ways that modern, Western people can restore and re-create meaningful rituals for the significant transitions of life. She has a Master’s degree in Environmental Studies and a PhD in Transformative Learning. She’s been a student of energetic and systemic healing modalities since 2000.
Miranda Martini
Musician/Author
Miranda Martini is a musician and writer based in Calgary. Her writing has appeared in several local and national publications, and she received the Western Magazine Award for Best Emerging Writer for her article “Women in Charge” (Alberta Views Magazine, 2014). She performed in and co-wrote music for the play John Ware Reimagined, which completed its successful second run at Edmonton’s Workshop West Theatre in 2017. More recently, she’s written new material for the film John Ware Reclaimed, premiering at the Calgary International Film Festival in September. Her music is also featured in the pilot of an upcoming webseries from Gender? I Hardly Know Them, an Edmonton sketch comedy duo.
Digital Shrine
Part of Digital Shrine’s artistic process is to empower people to take ownership of memorial ceremonies, and to encourage the creation of new rituals, which will be a focus of artist talks.
From 2012 to 2018, the Digital Shrine consisted of a station on a table where the public may write tributes and messages with pen and paper. The tributes are entered into a software program on a laptop, and this text is projected onto a screen, scrolls slowly and is visible to the public. The Digital Shrine station is staffed by facilitators and designers of the shrine.
Now in 2020 Digital Shrine will form the backbone of the Equinox Vigil: Virtually Yours event on Sept 19. Participants will be invited to interact, submit their tributes, and view other participants memorial during the one hour event. The tributes will run concurrently with both the pre-taped and livestream programming during the evening.