Cairns began as an art-science collaboration housed between the University of Utah (UU) arts presenter, UtahPresents, and the UU Global Change and Sustainability Center, and the UU Sustainability Office.
From 2017 - 2021, Cairns featured one or two projects each year, during which performance artists participated in classes, hosted workshops, and performed their work.
In 2021, Cairns expanded beyond the UU, collaborating with partners at Michigan State University (MSU) in the Center for Interdisciplinarity and the Department of Community Sustainability.
Dark Skies
In 2019, Cairns at the UU began a project about dark skies with All My Relations Collective, an art, theater, design, and film collective. During a yearlong virtual residency in 2020, All My Relations collaborated with dark sky studies, theater undergraduate classes, and sustainability graduate courses to explore star stories. They also hosted public workshops and a performance-in-progress while developing their original work: GIZHIBAA GIIZHIG | Revolving Sky.
Our hope from the onset of this project was to grow it beyond a typical artist residency engagement. This became possible with the addition of faculty and resources from MSU. In 2022, All My Relations Collective, lead collaborators, and a group of artists and scientists from the UU met at the Taft-Nicholson Center in Montana, to think, talk, and consider dark skies.
UU Project Leads
Brenda Bowen
Brooke Horejsi
Liz Ivkovich
MSU Project Leads
Megan Halpern
Lissy Goralnik
Artist Collaborators
All My Relations Collective
Funding Provided By
MSU C4I
UU 1U4U Seed Grant
Years
2019-2022
Falling Out
In 2018, Cairns at the UU partnered with Phantom Limb Company and writer Mary Dickson for a project exploring nuclear fallout. Nuclear power has been resurging in the national discourse, and the University has an existing nuclear engineering program, making this a compelling topic for our audiences.
Phantom Limb Company brought their original work: Falling Out, which examines the earthquake, tsunami, and subsequent nuclear meltdown that ravaged the region of Fukushima, Japan in 2011.
Fallout from nuclear testing is a salient issue in Utah, specifically fallout from nuclear weapons testing in the Four Corners region of the United States. Mary Dickson, an award-winning writer, downwinder, and thyroid cancer survivor from Salt Lake City, Utah, worked with director Robin Wilks-Dunn to stage a reading of her play Exposed in several Salt Lake City and County libraries.
With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic just days before the performance of Phantom Limb Company’s Falling Out, the performance was switched to a virtual screening with live chat commentary from the performers and directors.
UU Project Leads
Liz Ivkovich
Brenda Bowen
Brooke Horejsi
Play Reading
Robin Wilks-Dunn
Mary Dickson
Artist Collaborators
Phantom Limb Company
Years
2018-2020
Sprouting Seeds
The week began with a lecture on seed sovereignty by Dr. Vandana Shiva, describing sustainable farming practices, and sharing insights into how learning to coexist with the earth can better inform our coexistence with each other.
Building on her visit, contemporary Indian dance company, Ananya Dance Theatre, or ADT, spent a week leading workshops that explored how relationships between people, as well as the earth, transform the future.
Inspired by the work of Shiva and other women activists of color, ADT’s residency culminated in a public performance of Shyamali: Sprouting Words.
Project Leads
Liz Ivkovich
Brooke Horejsi
Adrienne Cachelin
Artist Collaborators
Ananya Dance Theatre
Dr. Vandana Shiva
Funding Support
Council of Dee Fellows, UU
Years
2017-2018