How Searching for Truth is Like Bobbing for Apples: Explorations Through Dance, Photography and Sound

Can art help us navigate a “post-truth” age? Is there a resonant truth within dance, music, sculpture, architecture, colour or sound, and what role does truth play in an artist’s work? How do we trust and recognize truth in a time when the very concept is being so boorishly vandalized? This panel discussion opens a new mini-series, Truth in Art, hosted this term by Writer in Residence Alison Wearing, which will bring together some of Vancouver's finest artists—multidisciplinary artists, installation artists, a composer, a choreographer, an actor, a singer and a writer—to discuss, explore and demonstrate answers to those questions. The complementary, intersecting mini-series on Imagination in Science begins in a few weeks’ time.

Olivia C. Davies Olivia Davies creates across choreography, installation and community-engaged projects, exploring the emotional and political relationships between people and places, often investigating the body’s dynamic ability to transmit narrative. Her work traverses boundaries and challenges social prejudice, conveying concepts and narratives with creations and conceptual platforms that open different ways to see and experience the world. She honours her mixed Métis-Anishnaabe heritage in her work. She is the Artistic Director of the Vancouver-based Contemporary Indigenous dance company, O.Dela Arts, co-founder of MataDanze Collective, and founder of Crow's Nest Collective. Olivia Davies has taught Creative Dance and Ballet technique for several decades, most recently teaching Creative Dance for Seniors through Vancouver Parks Board "Arts & Health" initiative since 2016 and Beginner Modern Dance for Adults at the Shadbolt Centre for the Arts since 2017. www.oliviacdavies.ca

Andreas Kahre is an interdisciplinary artist and designer whose work combines images, sound and text in a variety of configurations. Based in Vancouver and on Gabriola Island, he has been working as a freelance artist, musician, writer and designer since the 1990s. His work encompasses interdisciplinary performances, audio art installations, and collaborations with theatre, dance and new media artists. Andreas was one of the director/curators of the Western Front artist run centre in Vancouver for more than ten years. He has taught as adjunct and sessional faculty at the department of Theatre, Film and Creative Writing at the University of British Columbia. He is currently the founding artistic director of the Xenographic Society and the Gabriola Institute of Contemporary Art artist-run centre.

Carol Sawyer is a visual artist and singer whose work encompasses photography, installation, video, and improvised music. Her work explores the territory between photography and fiction, memory and history. Her critically acclaimed Natalie Brettschneider Archive was exhibited recently in a solo show at the Vancouver Art Gallery. A monograph on Brettschneider will be launched at the upcoming exhibition of the Archive at the Art Gallery of Windsor. Sawyer was awarded the 2017 Duke and Duchess of York prize in Photography.

Sawyer sings regularly with various improvising ensembles, including her band ion Zoo (with whom she has released three CDs). Her work is represented by Republic Gallery, Vancouver.