On September 6, Fleeting Form Studio held their first workshop in a warm, bookish room in the Critical Media Lab at Peterson Hall. The atmosphere was laden with warmth, hinting to its occupants what was to come. As the workshop began, the room filled with excited chatter as attendees fed into this eclectic learning space. Black and white checkered floor tiles, walls of bookshelves, windows ajar, and warm lighting from well-lit lamps set a tone of openness that welcomed all participants into the community.
Fleeting Form Studio is a workshop series formed by McGill students Ava Williams, Saskia Morgan, and Hannah Marder-MacPherson. The founders first met each other in FSCI 198 – a class on the climate crisis and climate action – where they formulated the idea for this project. The goal of the workshop series is to provoke discussions about changing the way McGill students think of climate activism, and to nurture the community around the visual arts at McGill. I went to the first workshop hoping to learn more about textiles from the featured artist, Tina Marais, and came out with so much more. One week later, I met with the founders of Fleeting Form Studio to talk more about their process and the series as a whole.
This interview has been edited for clarity and concision.
Evelyn Logan for The McGill Daily (MD): When did you begin to draw parallels between climate action and art? Was that always a part of your project or did it come later?
Saskia Morgan (SM): We came up with this project – which was absolutely guided by our professors and TAs – where we would invite artists who were all already working at this interesting nexus between climate action and art. [These artists] could come and speak about what they’re doing and how their art is transformative – and how it should be seen as more than just beautiful. We also made this to address both the lack of fine arts at McGill, and the lack of emotive ways of learning about the climate crisis.
Ava Williams (AW): I’ve always heard of climate change deemed as a wicked problem. The solution is hard to find because it’s a convergence of larger issues that have been created over a long time. Some include colonialism and extractivism and [other] really deep-seated, systemic problems. And if you’re just learning [about this problem] intellectually and technically, it’s solely information and facts. Which is harder to internalize and make sense of the scale of the problem. How can we make sense of it in a way that makes sense to us as people? Art. Art is a very human thing. And so I think for me, it’s a lot about making sense of it.
Hannah Marder-MacPherson (HMM): With all of us being environment students, we’re learning about climate action from a particular lens. Something that dominates our focus is that we learn a lot about our own destruction, and it’s very negative. Then, the corresponding response to that is often limitation, which is not tangible and is also still very negative and directionless. We find there’s never any action [in response to the climate crisis] that’s centered around creation. So that’s where the art comes in, because it’s very much about creation, and it’s very positive, inspiring, and unifying.
MD: Why did you choose Tina Marais as the first artist in your series? What stood out to you about her work?
SM: Just by going down a rabbit hole I stumbled upon Tina, and I found the piece that she explored the most in this workshop: The Entangled Materiality of Water. I was absolutely struck by this work because it was not just about climate change, which so often is too broad [of a topic] to really get a sense of, but instead, specifically about water and how much water is within the fabrics that make our second skin. It also [raises the questions] how many hands touch the clothes that are on us now? How do we take for granted something that we paid $15 for?
AW: [Mirais] said one thing in an interview that I wanted to repeat: everything is made of the same molecules, but in different arrangements. How it just so happens that we as humans have a lot of power over the other arrangements. And she talks a lot about non-human and human interactions, which is going to be a huge thing in the series.
MD: Can you speak a little bit about the lack of fine arts programming at McGill? How has it affected you? How do you feel like your workshop is…
[The group breaks out into laughter]
SM: You’re preaching to the choir.
HHM: I was just going to say, I feel like the arts in general draw upon a different type of knowledge and a different type of thinking. Now, I don’t think this is unique to just McGill, but I feel like a lot of institutions that are more prestigious tend to fall into that pit of promoting science and engineering. There isn’t a recognition that these other types of thinking and creating are just as valuable and are actually very compatible with more scientific pursuits, and they shouldn’t be separated. A large part of our project is working towards interdisciplinary thinking.
SM: Another thing that we’re trying to do with this workshop is not only bring something that a lot of people here may just be missing but also to make art more accessible. We’re so lucky that the Sustainable Projects Fund has helped us basically provide free materials for every participant. We’re limited to the amount of people who can come, but the act of being able to touch materials that you may not be able to otherwise is so important.
The next Fleeting Form Studio workshop will be centered around photography and will take place on October 4. To stay up to date with the workshop series, follow the project on Instagram at @fleeting_form_studio.