I Brought You This
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Dates2011 - Ongoing
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Author
- Location Canada, Canada
For most of us, Covid19 has changed how we look at our world and the goods that sustain us.
For me, how we get things and the structures that make it possible - is a 10-year fascination.
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Since 2011 I have been following - from mine to market - many of the primary bulk commodities that sustain us daily. I have traveled aboard ships and tugs, explored mines and factories, and ridden the rails aboard a restricted iron ore train.
The current conversation around resource extraction and refinement in the arts community polarizes and prevents any real discourse on how industry, and those dependent on extraction, refining, and manufacturing, should be understood and engaged.
"I Brought You This" is an invitation to a new conversation that transcends polarized positions about resource extraction and industry and provides an organizing framework for individuals and groups to begin a new conversation about the way of life we want for ourselves and the systems that make it possible.
The importance of shipping has never been more timely than now. Seafarers are little understood and remain shrouded by layers of invisibility, indifference, anonymity, historical prejudice (the drunken sailor), and ignorance. Yet this is now a high tech industry hungry for the workers who are more important than ever. To provide a window into this well paid industry, I completed the STCW Marine Emergency Duties Course with a group of First Nations students and women who were receiving bursaries to encourage them to consider seafaring as a career. I filmed the firefighting and deep water survival exercises while fully participating. As a result, I am now a Transport Canada licensed seafarer qualified to work as a deckhand aboard ship worldwide.
By humanizing stories of shipping and the resource industry, individuals can reflect on the often-hidden currents that allow for our collective prosperity, celebrate our collective accomplishments, and begin a more nuanced conversation about what comes next.
During Covid19 - now more than ever before - we should consider that our addictive use of cellphones and need for constant connectivity, makes all of us complicit in the mining of metals and ore.
We just can’t say NO all the time.