Green Gazing
Lesley Marshall & Ashley Bowa
Plants, video projection, interactive experience
When: Feb 16–19 // 5:00 – 9:00 PM
Where: Market Square
Green Gazing is a participatory movement exchange led by instructor Ashley Bowa with projection visuals and audio manipulated by both artists Ashley Bowa and Lesley Marshall. In a room filled with plants and surrounded by screens, electronic impulse sensors are hooked up to the plants which connect to the projections and the audio. From this data, a meditation and movement practice is led by Bowa (like a yoga class) providing reflexive commentary and questions on current events and wellness spaces. An immersive multimedia participatory movement exchange using sound, image and botanicals, this experience is for everyone including families. The ambient electronic sound and videoscape becomes a co-creation between plant, participant and artist. An accompanying zine "Green Gazing Victoria" explains the technology, gives tips on your house plants and introduces you to local underrepresented ecologists.
Ashley Bowa
Ashley Bowa is a Toronto-based artist, cinematographer and arts educator with a background in recreation therapy, mental health, outdoor education, dance, yoga and Pilates. Working in film/video, sound and projection mapping via the Black Women's Video Collective, Ashley has been creating movement workshops for the past five years and working in commercial cinematography at cinematographer's union on major motion films. She is trained as a yoga and Pilates instructor and in Outdoor education (Humber College) and these inspire an interest in ecopsychology, looking at relationships between humans and the nonhuman world, specifically in the context of ecological destruction. As an artist of colour, representation both in the subject and in the participants involved in the work is essential, specifically to disrupt traditional narratives of who is and belongs in certain spaces (like wellness spaces or the outdoors) by visually reclaiming them.
Motivated by technology, feminism, queer theory and geography, Lesley's projects intercut fragility and the gritty honesty of real life. Desire, longing, satire and femme iconography are found dispersed throughout their often tongue-in-cheek work. An award-winning filmmaker with films appearing in 50 festivals nationally and internationally, music videos made by Lesley have been featured on Rolling Stone, American Songwriter, Vice, Exclaim!, Brooklyn Vegan, Aux, Rookie Mag, Stereogum, ClashMag and UPROXX. Projection art by Lesley has been performed at the National Art Centre, Montréal Jazz Fest, CentrePHI and in galleries in NYC, Toronto, Montréal, Ottawa and the Netherlands. Lesley presents on anti-oppression filmmaking practices and has done so at the Royal Anthropological Institute Film Festival, and Conference London UK, University of Ottawa, CineVic, Carleton University, and Surveillance and Society Conference, Netherlands. They are the 2023 CMPA Mentorship Recipient for the CBC/PBS Feature "Animal Pride."