PODCAST · arts
conscient podcast
by Claude Schryer
e243 was the last episode of season 6. I’m now on a break from hosting and producing conscient podcast and balado conscient episodes until further notice, except for narration of ‘a calm presence’ Substack posting and occasional ENCORE episodes. Comments and questions are always welcome: claude [at] conscient [dot] ca
Episodes
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in memoriam - chantal dumas – a certain gentleness
Hello, I’m interrupting my period of pause in the production of this podcast to share some very sad news. A good friend and colleague, Chantal Dumas, passed away on May 17th 2026 after a long struggle with cancer. She was 66 and had much more to live and to give. I invite you to share a moment of...
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a calm presence - pressing pause
pressing pause An extended break from the production of conscient podcast, balado conscient, a calm presence and related social media Why do this? One reason is that I noticed that I sleep better when I don’t produce podcasts or essays about the end of the world as we know it. Imagine that. But...
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e244 roundtable – death as transformation
Death might be one of the most relational acts possible. I think death is that threshold moment where that illusion is dissolved. Our death is a moment of redistribution of nutrients, of memory, of rhythm, of vibration into the wider field, from the illusion of a single self into the remembering…
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ENCORE e41 jen rae – emergency preparedness
The thing about a preparedness mindset is that you are thinking into the future and so if one of those scenarios happens, you've already mentally prepared in some sort of way for it, so you're not dealing with the shock. That's a place as an artist that I feel has a lot of potential for…
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a calm presence - uplift
uplift here are some uplifting words for the new year drawn from 9 episodes of conscient podcast et 3 extraits du balado conscient This posting of a calm presence was designed as an audio listening experience though it also exists in written form, here. Ceci est un episode bilingue. Afin de...
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e243 francisco rodriguez – amazon awareness
Take care of the earth. We have grandsons and great-great-grandsons, and we have to, we, our generation, has to teach the young people what we lived, the beauty of the world that we lived, not the disaster we have today. Hello conscient podcast listeners, Many of us do international travel,...
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e242 roundtable - dissolving boundaries
In an era where pressures on climate and environments grow even stronger, we should not underestimate the transformative power of art. (Ambassador of the European Union to Canada Geneviève Tuts) When you do the trigger, the emotional part, you can go down hope and fear both. Both lead to action…
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e241 roundtable – everyday habits for transforming systems
The question the book asks is obviously transforming the system is not an individual task, it's a collective activity. But it still begs the question, if we're trying to contribute to that, what do we need to do? Not every four years when we vote, not every year when we go to a strategy workshop,...
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e240 claudia salguero – community, beauty, nature
To me, there's three key things and it's community, beauty and nature. I think if we connect with nature and if we produce beauty, that is something that we as humans I think is our biggest gift. And I'm not just talking about creating art : speaking beauty, listening to beauty, creating beauty,...
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e239 roundtable – imagining in public e2 - artist perspectives on social impact
I love policy because it allows for surrealism, it allows for creativity, it allows for dancing, it allows for all the skills and disciplines and interests and tools that as artists we have gravitated towards. We need to enter it with both the courage and the fear that all bets are off, that the...
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e238 roundtable – sonic research group - low tech
This is a special edition of conscient roundtable featuring Aaron Lui-Rosenbaum, Barry Truax, Jacek Smolicki (for more on Jacek’s work also see conscient e113 part 1 and e133 part 2) Kathy Kennedy, Lindsey French, Natalie Dusek, Sabine Breitsameter (all see conscient e175) Vincent Andrisani and...
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e237 helen yung – art as refuge
Artistic practice, cultural traditions, cultural practice, folk traditions… These are all places where we have where wisdoms that might otherwise have been lost have been protected, sheltered or found refuge. And like, artists have this like hoarding tendency sometimes, right? Like maybe not all...
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e236 keiko torigoe – the power of listening
The environmental issues currently at hand, including global warming, are related, but I believe that at their root lies the decline of our listening ability and the power of listening as humanity. This decline is not merely a matter of our listening ability weakening as we age, but rather it...
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e235 lallan – art from the soil
My advice to artists would be drop every garb that you have, drop every piece of knowledge that you think you have. Head to the jungles, head to the rural places. We are living in a time of crisis. We need artists more than the scientists. We need artists more than the healers. We need artists…
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e234 emily marie séguin – a sense of community
Alongside the responsibility of holding people accountable and calling out what they see as unjust, I think that there's also an element of hope with artists, even when we're maybe a little bit melancholic, or even when we're in heavier periods in our lives, the act of creating denotes hope,...
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e233 andrew freiband – care as artistic practice
If we start to pay attention to what we pay attention to then we start to naturally slow down. We disconnect from the urgency, the crisis, and we start to realize that care, and I don't just mean care for one another, although that's a piece of it, but care also for our surroundings, care for our...
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e232 meghan moe beitiks - angles of consequence
Even being confronted with something that is weird or uncomfortable: it’s character growth. You have to ask the question: why is this person doing this weird thing? It's a good exercise in empathy, to be perfectly honest. Why is this person doing this thing? Why does that make me uncomfortable?...
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e231 kelly wilhelm – what can we contribute?
Part of the answer to that question lies in the arts and culture understanding the role it can have in a time of collapse or crisis, and to understand that itself is not in crisis. I think that's a big point because we hear a lot right now around the crisis that is happening in cultural...
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e230 sarah peebles – how can we reciprocate?
How can we reciprocate since the world keeps us alive on the one hand, and on the other hand, all these things, birds and you name it, right? Fish and moose and beaver, these are things we love. So, if this is the world we love, we're going to have feelings about how we might want to do positive...
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e229 don hill – amplifying voices
There are a lot of people that don't have the kind of talent that you do, Claude, or for that matter, I do and they have voices, but you can't hear them. So our job in the art world, I would say, is to amplify those voices in a way that's comprehensive and understandable by the folks who should…
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e228 rafael zen – artists as dreamers
The role of artists is the role of dreaming. I've worked as a poet, as a multimedia artist, sound artist, storyteller. I think we hold the capacity to shape the narratives that build our present, our future, reshape the narratives that inform our past. I still believe in that role. I do believe...
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e227 judith marcuse – spiritual strengthening
In a time when it's easy to become defeated, when one can succumb to despair and negativity, a question I use when I reflect on the state of the world right now is what gives me energy, what animates my imagination, and what do I need to defend in that context? So many, many questions. A lot of...
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e226 roundtable - listening in relation
This is a special edition of conscient roundtable featuring Lara Felsing, Adrian Avendaño, Hildegard Westerkamp, Toni-Leah C. Yake as part of the Listening in Relation gathering at Emily Carr University of Art and Design on March 21-23, 2025 on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territories…
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e225 hildegard westerkamp – when we were young
The first thing that comes to mind is my young activist in me that says, of course, let's just fight. Let's just do what we can to speak out against, be revolutionary, be, you know, like we were when we were young in the 60s, 70s. Now I think that my response is to stop and to slow down and to do...
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e224 sarah heynen – food as a solution that invites people in
The approach of the Canadian Centre for Food & Ecology (CCFE) is what has been so attractive to me. It's a conviction around joyful, immersive experience and it starts with the conviction that until someone has experienced the sensory joy of experiencing food in a new way, there's little interest...
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e223 anonymous - #downtowncritters
I think there's a lot of roles for art generally, and one of my favorite ones is kind of imagining that art helps you imagine, even if it has nothing to do with it. It helps. You can be a springboard to help you dream and stuff like that. The project that we're going to talk about today has a lot...
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e222 wendalyn bartley – restoring our connection with nature
How do we restore our connection with nature? Because I think that part of the crisis that we're in, especially with the climate, stems from the fact that we've been disconnected from our relationship to nature. And so how do we restore that? How do we get back in touch with non-human beings? You...
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e221 annais linares and ben finley – arts-based kin making
People maybe are used to being bombarded at this point with the news of what's happening. And that's the reality. And we need to face that. I think alongside that, we need to make moments of grounding, of rootedness and remembering our real belonging to this earth. Because without that, we don't...
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e220 tina pearson – what is art anyway?
What is art? What is art anyway? It's a new term, really. I think we need to go a little bit beyond that. I think of myself as a sound practitioner, so what can I offer? If someone has a visual acuity, if someone has acuity with body and movement and voice, you know, what is it that we can do in...
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e219 adam kahane – radical engagement
Radical engagement with the system doesn't mean participating in that system, distractedly resigned, knowing it all hierarchically at arm's length, with arms crossed, superficially, impatiently. Saying take it or leave means taking part in it alertly, with hope and curiosity, horizontally…
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e218 roundtable - surviving the future
Hey there faithful, brave and patient conscient podcast listeners, Welcome to the 3rd conscient roundtable. Live radio style again. First take, only take, kind of thing so please bear with me. This is an exciting and unique episode coming up, with an international scope. It was recorded on...
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e217 devora neumark - sitting with emotions
What can I do to support the grieving? There's so much to grieve. Whether we think about the crisis of climate, whether we think about the political crises, the issue of displacement, which is around the world. Forced displacement, such a huge crisis. How do we manifest the kinds of spaces that...
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e216 roundtable – in memoriam tracey friesen
Hey there faithful and brave conscient listeners, Welcome to the second conscient roundtable conversation. This one was recorded on Sunday, March 16, 2025 in Vancouver. In a minute you’ll hear an acknowledgement about the original stewards of these lands followed by a minute of silent...
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e215 chris creighton-kelly – optimism of the will
I would say that while there's absolutely no question that we're in a crisis, there's no question about multi crisis. I'm not sure we're in the state of collapse. And I think that methodology, that vision, that understanding of the world can lead to... You were talking about it a few minutes ago,...
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e214 roundtable – this moment in canadian culture
I think, as has already been mentioned by a number of you, that we need to slow down, not speed up. This is a moment for really slow thinking and to be listening and to be doing deep listening. I like this concept that we use, again in Primary Colours. Instead of thinking of outreach and trying…
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e213 stephen huddart – so much to do
The arts have that capacity to be powerful broadcasters, conveyors of messages, invitations to celebration, reflection, storytelling, narrative building and so on. There's a vital role here for the arts. But like the rest of society, frankly, whether it's the banking system or government we're...
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e212 max wyman – taking action
There's been a real lack of positive action and response from the arts community to these existential questions that confront us. And I really wonder whether that's not because they're simply bewildered by what's been going on. They're terrified, most of them. A lot of the conversation that goes…
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e211 azul carolina duque - art as medicine
I think there is a responsibility we have as artists to relate to our artistry responsibly. And that has to do with sensing into our artistic sensibility as a medicine or a gift that we were given to come into this embodiment, to become the people that we are and share this medicine with the…
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e210 roundtable – art and science
Hey there Welcome to the first conscient roundtable conversation recorded on Saturday March 1, 2025 in Tiohtià:ke (also known as Montreal). This episode features local artists, activists and cultural workers Alyssa Scott, Devon Hardy, Jimmy Ung, Katrine Claassens, Sophie Weider, Sébastian Méric…
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e209 robert and peter janes – telling the truth through art
I think that the first thing artists have to do is to start telling the truth. You know, just like climate change five or six years ago, you just didn't really want to talk about it. You got shunned in polite company if you talked about it. Now we have the c word, right? We've got collapse. But…
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ENCORE e01 terrified - climate denial bubble
What triggered my climate denial bubble to burst? I feel compelled to share this personal experience, in the hope that it might help others who are also struggling with the current sustainability crisis and searching for a path forward… This is an ENCORE episode of the conscient podcast from…
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ENCORE e85 tracey friesen (in memoriam) - narratives of resilience
What's starting to interest me is stories of resilience for a post-carbon world. What are we going to need for our emotional well-being? It's going to be a different world, not long from now. If we do this, and we must do this, this transition has to happen and there's going to be a sense of loss...
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e208 clara schryer - science as story
My interest in science is quite poetic. The things that I find the most interesting about science are when it can be woven into a story that makes sense and I think that's kind of artistic in a way: you take the scientific knowledge and make it into a more abstract kind of poetic thing. Note…
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e207 kenneth newby - living with grace
The planet's not dying. Our place and our version of it may be dying. So how do we deal with that? How do we accept and live with the knowledge that our version of it is dying. It's not something to panic about in the sense that the whole thing's going away, hopefully. We don't know, but I think...
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e206 arno kopecky - art as an inexhaustible resource
I think if we can reimagine what matters to us and pursue that, then perhaps there's a chance that we can stop this truly self-destructive pursuit of infinite more, and in material terms, become happy with enough, without giving up the idea of personal growth and evolution, because I do think...
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e205 sheila james - create, heal, love
In the face of destruction, we should create. In the face of hurt, we should heal. In the face of hate, we should love. That's my feeling and figuring out how to do that is everybody's job. I’ve known Sheila James for 25 years as an arts funder colleague, artist, filmmaker, writer, but also her...
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e204 sophie weider - hearing young voices through art
I'd like to use art more as a tool to get people thinking, get people involved, especially young people, and hopefully, help them process the emotions of climate change and move towards a space of action and hope. At least for me, as a young person, art felt like the way to have my voice be…
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e203 leslie reid - climate as art
All artists have to be aware of climate because otherwise it's not art (and that's going to piss some people off - Claude Schryer). I think it will. Climate infuses all our responses to everything, to relationships, to our culture, to our history. You can't ignore the climate that it's happening...
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e202 coman poon - what are you doing with your life ?
We're going through a crash, the sixth extinction, climate collapse, geopolitical collapse, economic collapse, all types of overlapping, interlaced cycles of destruction. And like on planes, what you can do, at best, is to get ready for a glide as opposed to a hard landing, because that means…
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e201 robin sokoloski - why arts matter
I believe that we are all connected by these invisible threads, the shared sinew amongst all living things, that includes humans, plants, animals, what have you, and that what art is, is the lighting up, making those invisible threads visible. … It doesn't really explain in that analogy what art...
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
e243 was the last episode of season 6. I’m now on a break from hosting and producing conscient podcast and balado conscient episodes until further notice, except for narration of ‘a calm presence’ Substack posting and occasional ENCORE episodes. Comments and questions are always welcome: claude [at] conscient [dot] ca
HOSTED BY
Claude Schryer
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conscient podcast currently has 244 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is conscient podcast about?
e243 was the last episode of season 6. I’m now on a break from hosting and producing conscient podcast and balado conscient episodes until further notice, except for narration of ‘a calm presence’ Substack posting and occasional ENCORE episodes. Comments and questions are always welcome: claude...
How often does conscient podcast release new episodes?
conscient podcast publishes regularly with 244 episodes available. Check the episode list for the typical release schedule.
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conscient podcast is created and hosted by Claude Schryer.
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