Ep. 66 - Deep Time (askîwan)

Gabrielle Martin chats with Tyson Houseman about askîwan ᐊᐢᑮᐊᐧᐣ, coming up at the 2026 PuSh Festival! Show Notes Gabrielle and Tyson discuss:  Where does askîwan sit in your recent work? How does bringing in live image-making evolve your experimentation with form? What made you start working in film after studying theatre and visual arts? What was the initial concept of askîwan? How have you translated the scale of ancestral and deep time into this performance? Is there a connection between the intergenerational teachings in Caustics and the current explorations of askîwan? What are the resonances between the different ecologies of relation in your work? What was it like to collaborate on the music, and how did sound become a vessel for cosmology in this piece? How do you subvert the colonial instrument of the voice? What have the technologies you have used revealed to you about artistic creation? About askîwan ᐊᐢᑮᐊᐧᐣ Part live cinema, part ecological opera, askîwan ᐊᐢᑮᐊᐧᐣ conjures a cosmology of land, memory, and time. This operatic multimedia performance transforms a miniature film set—complete with cameras, mylar, mirrors, and bowls of water—into vast dreamlike mountainscapes that unfold in real time. Through live video projection, electroacoustic sound, and baritone vocals sung in nehiyawewin (Plains Cree), creator and director Tyson Houseman (nêhiyaw) invites audiences into an Indigenous vision of deep, cyclical time: where rivers breathe, fire regenerates, and childhood memories ripple through vibrating water. Viola da gamba and electronics entwine ancient and digital frequencies as landscapes shift from winter ice to aurora skies. At once cinematic and ceremonial, askîwan ᐊᐢᑮᐊᐧᐣ reveals how land remembers—and how, even amid ecological crisis, the earth continues to sing through us. About Tyson Tyson Houseman is a nêhiyaw video artist, performer, and filmmaker from Paul First Nation. Tyson's practice focuses on aspects of nêhiyaw ideologies and teachings – speaking to land-based notions of non-linear time and the interwoven relations between humans and their ecologies. He has exhibited at various galleries, screenings, and festivals worldwide. Most recently he participated in artist residencies at MacDowell, Wassaic Project, Vermont Studio Center, and Institute for Electronic Arts at Alfred University. Tyson is a recipient of the 2025 "Open Call" commission at The Shed in NYC, a 2025 Forge Project Fellow, a COUSIN Collective Cycle IV Fellow, and a 2025 MacDowell Fellow. Along with producing his own works, Tyson is a touring performer on various live cinema performances created by DJ Kid Koala. Tyson has an MFA in Fine Arts from School of Visual Arts in NYC and a BFA in Theatre Performance from Concordia University in Montreal. Land Acknowledgement This conversation was recorded on the unceded, stolen and ancestral territories of the Coast Salish Peoples: the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and Səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh), colonially known as Vancouver. Tyson joined the conversation from Toronto, also known as Tkaronto, on the traditional territory of many nations including the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishnabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee and the Wendat peoples and is now home to many diverse First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples.. It is our duty to establish right relations with the people on whose territories we live and work, and with the land itself. Credits PuSh Play is produced by Ben Charland and Tricia Knowles. Original music by Joseph Hirabayashi. Show Transcript