Brenda Longfellow is a Canadian Filmmaker and York University Professor. As co-creator  of The Circle Project she agreed to do an interview with me to accompany the work currently on exhibition.

When I asked Brenda about her current personal art practice she expressed how it has shifted over the years to these more collaborative projects.“Over the last ten years my practice has shifted from linear documentaries on women artists and the environmental crisis to large collaborative projects that involve co-creation and new participatory modes of creating art in and with the community. I feel deeply honoured and grateful to have been part of these processes, and have learned so much from all of my collaborators.”

You can definitely see this focus on community and collaboration in the work of The Circle Project. Brenda goes on to describe the founding ethos of the project having “really just naturally evolved out of a series of talking circles my research partner [Brenda Morrison] and myself held in Vancouver with a group of formerly incarcerated women. Our process is very much inspired by Indigenous processes of circle work, so all the collaborations we do begin and end with circles as a way to build good relations with our collaborators. We had a mandate to do public art projects that could begin to challenge the way we think about incarceration as a social necessity and natural part of the criminal justice system but we never know the shape or form these will take until they have been worked out through circles and brainstorming sessions with the women. 

Since 2019, we’ve had about 20 formerly incarcerated women in and around Vancouver come to our circles and a core of about 14 who have participated in the creation of the art pieces. We started with an interactive documentary “The Circle” that reflected our circle process with each woman telling parts of her story to the camera. During the pandemic we did “Lockdown” a funny short on surviving lockdowns and last winter we started the biggest collaboration ever with artist Adad Hannah. 

Adad frequently works with communities and his work is known for his spectacular tableau vivants (living pictures). So we knew which form the project would take, we just didn’t know the content! The practice of co-creation and of community engaged collaborative art making can be joyful, inspiring but it is also complex and a bit scary when you have a project you have to deliver and you don’t want to compromise the community and relations you have built through the slow work of circles, talking and sharing meals. But ideas come from all sorts of unexpected places and one of the women remembered a highschool play that she auditioned for but didn’t get the part. That was Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream and that became the frame for What Fools These Mortals Be.”

Brenda also comments on the making of Intravene, an immersive audio feature of the exhibition at Artspace that is co-created by Brenda, Darkfield, and Crackdown Vancouver. “During the first year of The Circle Project, one of our most beloved members, René Chan suddenly and shockingly died from ingesting drugs laced with fentanyl. The impact was deeply traumatic for all of us. René was a life force, the manager of a recovery house, a leader in the recovery movement, a wise and wise-cracking woman who had been to the brink and had pulled her life together. Her death haunted all of us and maybe we would never know or understand how this happened but I wanted to do something to honour her life and bring that crisis into focus for myself. 

This project evolved out of the UK/Canada Immersive Exchange, a joint initiative of the Canadian Media Fund and StoryFutures UK that brought 12 creatives together from each side of the Atlantic for a series of intensive workshops with the intention of fostering international co-productions. The process was a bit like speed dating and the Hunger Games: you had to locate an international partner, come up with a joint project and pitch your idea. Andrea Salazar from Darkfield, a UK theatre company specializing in immersive binaural theatre and I hit it off and conspired to pitch the idea of an immersive audio experience on the overdose crisis. 

Darkfield was excited about the possibility of exploring what the binaural form could do with factual and documentary. I brought on Crackdown, a Vancouver based podcast produced by artists, journalists and drug user activists who had deep links to the community. And we started from there. “Benzos” the first episode playing at the Festival uses binaural sound to recreate the sounds and impressions from an OPS in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver. Trey Helten, the Manager of an actual OPS is our guide and takes us through his work and a simulated overdose. The focus of this episode is on the impact that benzos are having on a contaminated illicit drug supply.”

The Circle Project / What Fools These Mortals Be is on exhibition at Artspace until February 25th, 2023. Click the link for more information about The Circle Project.