Episode 66 – Deep Time (askîwan)
Gabrielle Martin: Hello and welcome to Push Play, a Push Festival podcast featuring conversations with artists who are pushing boundaries and playing with form. I’m Gabrielle Martin, Push’s artistic director, and today’s episode highlights expanded cinema, deep and diffracted time, and ecologies of relation. I’m speaking with Tyson Houseman, director and performer of Askiwan, which is being presented at the Push Festival January 29th to 30th, 2026.
Part live cinema, part ecological opera, Askiwan transforms a miniature film set into vast and dreamlike mountainscapes unfolding in real time. This operatic multimedia performance merges live video, electroacoustic sound, and Nehiyawewin song to explore cyclical geological notions of deep time and connections between land, memory, and future.
Tyson Houseman is a Nehiyaw video artist, performer, and filmmaker from Paul First Nation, whose work explores land-based notions of nonlinear time and human ecological relations. A 2025 MacDowell and Forge Project fellow, he has exhibited and performed internationally. Here is my conversation with Tyson.
I would like to acknowledge the unceded ancestral and traditional territories that I’m joining this conversation from. So these are the lands of the Squamish, Musqueam, and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations. And as we speak today of cosmology, ecology, and deep time, I’m inviting myself and our listeners in remembering that these territories have always held sophisticated systems of knowledge, governance, and care for land and water, and to honor these nations whose laws, stories, and temporalities continue to resist erasure and shape what it means to be in relation here.
And Tyson, where are you joining this conversation from?
Tyson Houseman: Um, I’m actually in Toronto at the moment, Toronto. Um, I’m here working on, um, another production, a, a theater performance that my brother has written that I’m doing some video projection design for. So I’m here
Gabrielle Martin: for- All right. What’s- … a
Tyson Houseman: week …
Gabrielle Martin: what’s the name of that show?
Tyson Houseman: It’s, it’s a new show. It’s called Children of the Bear. It’s, we’re still developing it, but it’s gonna have a, a reading at the Native Earth Performing Arts Festival coming up. Weesageechak To- Begins to Dance.
Gabrielle Martin: So I wanna dive right in by talking about, you know, Askiwewan and where that sits within the constellation of inquiries that have risen from some of your recent work.
So Rhizomorph, uh, Mycorrhizal, um, oh, I think the full name is Mycorrhizal Dreaming Tacostics, and Kenopsia. So these span installation, film, and live performance, and they all orbit questions of time, consciousness, and ecology. So my question is where Askiwewan sits within that, those inquiries. And then, and then I think I have a s- I think I’ll leave it at that, and then I have a follow-up question.
Tyson Houseman: Well, what’s so exciting and inspiring to me about working on Askiwewan, on this show, the, like, throughout the entire development, is that for me, it’s, it really sits right at the intersection, like the perfect intersection, the perfect blend of all of these different mediums and formats that you had mentioned.
It’s, it’s, it’s drawing from film, it’s drawing from installation, it’s drawing from performance. And for me, it’s also, like, it’s, it’s exciting because I’m drawing from all of my, my background in all of these different fields. My artistic path has kind of evolved over the years. I, I did a BFA in theater performance, acting and performance.
Um, I’ve made music videos and films. I’ve worked in film. And I have an MFA where I kind of focused a lot more on visual arts installation. And I feel like with this work, it’s kind of- It’s like a culmination of all of, all these different mediums and all of my artistic backgrounds to kind of create something that for me is truly multimedia.
Gabrielle Martin: Yeah. So by bringing in live image making, um, in dialogue with opera and objects theater in this work, so how does that evolve, um, from your experimentation with form and the act of witnessing? Maybe you can talk a little bit more about that, that evolution in terms of the, your Uh, approach and, and, and experimentation with form.
Yeah
Tyson Houseman: Yeah. I mean, to me, the, the live, the liveness, the live image making, the live cameras, um, that element of the format is really… It’s kind of key to the, to what kind of… It’s key to the magic of the entire piece for me. It’s key to the way in which we’re kind of expanding and experimenting on form because, um, I think what’s really, like, the key is the ephemerality.
Um, the piece for me represents, like, um, a, a form of, like, expanded cinema or live cinema, but it’s… What, what I really like to think of it a- as is a film that it only exists, like, in the moment that the a- that you’re experiencing it, in the, this moment of the event of audience-performer interaction. Um, there’s this, like, ephemerality, which…
Ephemerality has kind of always been a big draw for me in terms of my, like, relationship to theater or my relationship to performance. But within this, I feel like, within Askiwan, I feel like the ephemerality creates this immediacy and this fragility, this… Like, there’s kind of, like, this delicateness that at any moment m- like, the, even the possibility that something could collapse, even from a technical perspective, creates this heightened sense of awareness that I don’t feel like I usually get when I’m going to, like, a movie theater and watching a film on a screen, um, in the same way at least.
So for me, this ephemerality is… It creates kind of a unique and special viewing experience if you’re thinking about this as, like, going to see a film, which for me I’m, I’m hoping that it’s… We’re, I mean, we’re creating a, a lot of different things. There’s music here, there’s performance. It’s object theater, it’s opera.
But at the heart of it, it’s like all of it’s culminating together, uh, into this, whatever’s happening on this big screen. And, um, yeah, the, the, like… I don’t know. There’s this kind of… It, it feels like there’s this ability that it can bring everyone in the room together or, like, heighten the ability to listen or the ability to see.
And for the audience, I feel like what’s really special is that, like, you’re going to see this live film that may not be the same thing on each evening in small ways or maybe even sometimes big ways. Like, there, there could be changes.
Gabrielle Martin: I’d love to go back and hear you talk a bit more about why, you know, what made you start working in film after having studied theater and then start working in visual arts.
Was it, was it kind of a happenstance a little bit and just, like… Or being really true to the what form would best realize an idea that you had? Or was it kind of like, you know, a, a moment of realizing that the tools that you were working with was, um, was not fulfilling you or… Yeah.
Tyson Houseman: I mean, it, it’s kind of that.
Like, I feel like- I’m, I’m less, I’m less focused often on like the, the, the medium or the approach, and I’m really like, I’m always continued to be driven by ideas and things that I’m inspired by. And sometimes I find that it, like something that I’m inspired by would, like it’s, it’s hard to know at first what’s the right medium to even tackle it from, and what’s the way to kind of express something.
And so I’ve always, I guess I’ve always just kind of like stayed open in terms of my process, my artistic approach, and I’ve kind of just always said yes at every, at every stage of this path where like there’s been opportunities to evolve or opportunities to shift course. Like, I’ve, I’ve really just like followed a path that, um, yeah, I’ve never really known where it’s gonna lead, but I think what’s been important is like while doing that also, like reflecting and utilizing things and kind of trying to create connections and bridges across mediums that, that, um, that I’ve been picking up along the way.
Like there was, um… Puppetry is something that I wasn’t really expecting to fall into in my life when I was younger, but it’s something that I’ve, I find that there’s this, it’s a huge source of inspiration. It’s a huge source of, um, I don’t know, like, uh, yeah, it’s, it’s a huge source of creativity for me.
So, uh, I feel like taking that and then blending that with video was something I was working in for a long time, and then film as well. Like I, one of my earliest experiences as an artist was I really kind of stumbled into film acting. I was living in Vancouver for three years and, um, when I was 19 years old and ended up, like without even fully realizing it, auditioning for the Twilight Saga films, um, and had a pretty surreal opportunity to work in film, um, from that approach for a while.
But then, you know, like even from there, like I kind of knew that there was more that I wanted to be doing. There was like more creative approaches that I wanted to be taking, so it’s, I really just followed the path.
Gabrielle Martin: And so for Askewon, um, what was the initial concept then, and at what point did you land on this, you know, multimedia opera expanded cinema version?
Tyson Houseman: It’s, it’s themes that I work in in a lot of my pieces, as you were saying. Like, I really, like I… These ideas of nonlinear time, these ideas of like relationships to land, they, they show up across all of my work. And with, with, with this work, I, I feel like- It’s kind of, it’s kind of actually embedded in the, the title itself.
Askiyaw is a, a Cree word, a Nehiyawewin word that doesn’t have like a fully direct translation. But, um, a few of the translations are, um, that it, it, it refers to like it is land or it is earth or sometimes like it is a piece of earth, like a piece of moss. But it also refers to, um, ideas related to time.
Like it refers to, um, when it is one full year. Um, and the word land in Cree, aske, like the root word of Askiyaw, um, it also interestingly has connections to… It can refer to either things related to land or things related to time. So I find that there’s, that right there is a really interesting clue, um, kind of hidden or embedded within the language in terms of this relationship between land and time, which is something that I’m really deeply interested in exploring.
It’s something that I’ve always been interested in exploring. And so this work is, um, this is another attempt at trying to kind of like investigate that. With- within the piece Askiyaw, we kind of, within like the images that you see on the screen or within the structure of the piece, we follow the course basically of a calendar year, um, just in depictions of land really.
It’s like, um, peopleless, uh, depictions of landscapes, mountainscapes. Um, but really it’s following the course in kind of a cyclical pattern through a year starting in winter, uh, going through transitions, going through changes, going through seasons, and then ending up back where we started again. So there’s, um, yeah, it’s…
Th- there’s, within that there’s also kind of a focus on the actual transitions themselves, like that things are shifting and that things are changing. Um, yeah, and then we’re really trying to explore how to kind of depict that in a way where we’re depicting like very wide sweeping expanded senses of, uh, not just like one specific point of time of a landscape, but like possibly many, many broad huge scopes of time
Gabrielle Martin: Thank you.
Yeah, I wanted to talk more about time because you’ve used the term diffracted time in your work, and, you know, there’s this ideology that’s present that time isn’t something we move through, but something that we create through relation. And you’ve spoken just now a bit about how these ideas manifest in Askowan, and I’m wondering if there’s anything you wanna add about how you have translated this scale of geological and ancestral deep time into performance.
Tyson Houseman: Yeah, I mean, scale is actually kind of the, the… It’s, it’s, it’s kind– I feel like it’s the key within this piece of trying to even tackle how you translate deep time into performance, which turns out is kind of a daunting task. Um, but one of the ways that I feel like we’re able to kind of at least address this or investigate it or kind of like present possible questions around, like, ways in which, like, humans could comprehend something that is quite literally like it’s not possible to, to comprehend.
Like, deep time is like with our brains and our scale of life, like it’s… But it’s not possible, but that’s what makes it really beautiful. Um, and so within this piece, I feel like there’s this interesting approach where we’re using We’re kind of subverting scale in a lot of different ways. Like I’m, all of the live cameras and all of the, the camera work is trying to depict these landscapes and mountainscapes and project them huge on a screen for the audience to see.
Um, but it’s all being made using very small objects, found materials, stuff that’s actually there on the stage for you to see as well. It’s, it’s there, um, intentionally displayed in a way where you can kind of create connections. You can look at what’s happening with the cameras on the stage. You can see that like a, a crumpled up pile of reflective mylar, reflective material, um, uh, and just the way that shadows are hitting it and light is hitting it is now being turned into this like vast, giant mountainscape or like, you know, like a pile of sticks or a pile of fabric.
They get translated and transformed through the technology, through the, the cameras, um, through the act of like building all of this performance and the music. Uh, they get translated into something where the scale is kind of like, it’s going from really small to really big. And then within the images as well, that’s something we focus on a lot as well.
Like the, the actual perspective that we’re seeing in a lot of these images, um, we really try and kind of like play with the idea that sometimes you might be looking at a, a vast, um, mountain vista, and then sometimes we might be zoomed in really close to something that is more at the scale of what a human might see in a forest.
So th- to me, this idea of like trying to really transition between scales, um, from the micro to the macro is like a way in which to address this idea and like where, like where do we sit within that, and where do we sit with that in regards to time?
Gabrielle Martin: I’m wondering if you can also speak about your previous work, Caustics, maybe giving our listeners like a, a brief, um, introduction to that.
And specifically my question is about the intergenerational and land-based teachings you explore in that and the, whether there is a connection between that exploration and what you’re exploring in Askowan.
Tyson Houseman: Well, I’d be excited to talk about it. It’s actually, it’s still an upcoming work. It’s, um, a film that’s, uh, that I just finished.
It, it’s still in production. I just finished filming this film called Caustics, and I’m currently right now working on post-production. I’m editing it. Um, and it’s gonna be hopefully… Well, it will be released next year. It’s a, it’s a commission that’s– I’m also gonna hopefully distribute and release next year.
But it’s an experimental documentary that’s focusing on my grandfather, Ken Rone, and his teachings. Um, he, he’s an elder ceremonial leader, um, in our community, and so I really… I, I wanted to make a documentary focusing on his teachings s- and specifically how they relate to these ideas of nonlinear time.
Um, and within that documentary, it really does, it focuses actually, um, quite a lot on ways in which intergenerational trauma or intergenerational family memory also kind of connect in, like, or, or they exist in a nonlinear format. Um, and within the piece, I’m trying to propose this idea that there’s actually, like, not just intergenerational trauma, but intergenerational healing is nonlinear and nonlinear across generations themselves.
Like, that there’s a way in which, like, healing generations ahead actually has ramifications and rippling effects that can obviously spread forwards in time, forwards to future generations, but I think that they also spread backwards as well, so.
Gabrielle Martin: That’s a really beautiful concept that I’ve never thought about before.
Um, really looking forward to when that’s released and when we’ll have the opportunity to experience that. And also I wanna talk about some of the other themes that you’ve explored. So in works like Rhizomorph and Mycorrhizal Dreaming, um, you’ve explored underground vegetal networks as systems of connection and communication.
In Askowan, you’re engaging with other kinds of networks: visual, sonic, human. What are the resonances between these eco-ecologies of relation, um, or does each project open a distinct way of sensing connection?
Tyson Houseman: I mean, in, yeah, exploring like mycorrhizal networks and vegetal under the underground fungi networks is it’s, it’s always something that’s deeply, deeply inspiring to me.
Like I’m just really inspired by all the ways in which, um, fungi, um, rhizomatic connections and, um, mycelial networks under the earth. I’m, I’m just inspired by all the ways in which that actually has– like thinking about the ways in which those networks work, um, really has like effects throughout everything in the world.
Um, for– and for me thinking about this idea of connections and interactions, I do feel like it’s, uh, although there’s less direct references to kind of, um, like fungal, vegetal, mycorrhizal specific kind of like scientific stuff in Askewan, there’s– I feel like it really actually exists in, um, this idea of like connections and rhizomatic connections and interactions, uh, exists kind of in the, the creative process of, of the work itself, of the format of this idea of live cinema.
Um, that’s, you know, it requires performers, it requires musicians, it requires the experience of being there in order to kind of put the, put the whole piece together. Um, and something that I think that is really, for me, really important about this understanding of, of rhizomatic connections in nature, rhizomatic connections in plants, is that it’s non-hierarchical.
It’s something that exists like, like a network under the earth exists where there’s no specific central source. Everything is spread evenly. Resources are spread evenly. Um, and I really n- I, I like how that can be applied to, you know, the ways in which people relate to each other. And for our show, the ways in which, like, our different med- mediums relate to each other, the, the different, um, things that are going on on the stage.
And I often find that’s, you know, there’s a lot of filmmakers that might say that in terms of, like, the viewing experience of seeing a film, you’re … It, it’s there’s this idea that image is kind of a dominating factor, and sound is often considered to be kind of, like, secondary to the image itself. Um, that being said, there’s definitely a lot of sound designers who would also say the exact opposite.
Um, but what I’m … What’s, what’s exciting to me about this piece is that I’m, I feel like we were really trying to create something that was non-hierarchical and rhizomatic, um, and focused on these connections between myself as a performer, the musicians around me, the screen itself, the audience itself.
Like, it’s, it’s not … The focus isn’t any one individual or creating hierarchies about the mediums. Um, it’s instead focusing on, like, what’s happening in the space between myself as a performer and the musicians around me, what’s happening between them and the screen, what’s happening between us and the audience, and really trying to make sure that there’s no hierarchy in terms of, um, you know, you’re not just
You’re not going to see a, like, just a film where the sound is secondary, just a soundtrack to that. Like, this entirely could also be approached as, like, going to see an operatic music performance that happens to have something visual connected to it or going to see, um, object theater live performance that has other elements attached to it.
Like, it’s, it’s making sure that every piece exists kind of in an even plane around each other
Gabrielle Martin: Now I want to talk about the music a bit, ’cause it’s obviously, as we’ve just mentioned, a very important part. Mm-hmm. Um, there’s this electroacoustic score, baritone voice, viola da gamba, and this creates a sonic landscape that feels both ancient and futuristic.
Um, I would love to hear you talk about collaborating with Devin Bate, Jonathan Adams, and Leah, um, Witzner, and how sound became a vessel for cosmology in this piece.
Tyson Houseman: Well, Devin has been a longtime collaborator of mine and a dear friend for many, many years. We’ve worked on many projects together, and he’s, he’s one of those collaborators that, uh, for me, I just…
It’s, it’s, it’s kind of like a synergistic connection. Um, sometimes you just have this artistic connection with a collaborator where they just… It’s almost telepathic. Like I’ll, I’ll sometimes… I’ll, I’ll, you know, I’ll talk about an idea I’m inspired by that is extremely abstract, um, and theoretical, and I’ll say like, like, you know, like, “What about this like, I don’t know, strange, um, random connecting of different ideas?”
And then he’ll just present s- like some kind of sound. I’ll be, “Oh, you mean it sounds like this?” And it’s just always kind of perfect. So it’s great to be working with Devin on this because he really does have an ability to kind of like curate and craft soundscapes, um, especially in regards to thinking about like how do we create sounds that reference or slow down our i- our perceptions of time.
Um, sound is kind of the key element for how we’re thinking about doing that in a space. Um, and collaborating with Jonathan Adams has been like a, a huge and immense joy and pleasure for me, just even just hearing their voice. Like it’s… E- every single time I get an opportunity to hear it, either in rehearsal or performance, it’s like I just feel so excited that I get to be there for that.
Um, and it’s been really nice because Jonathan was someone that I actually went to high school with. Um, Jonathan is Cree, Métis, and we’re from the same place, but we didn’t stay connected after high school. We, you know, like we went off on different paths, and then it was only recently that they reached out and said that they had been following my, my, some of my works, and they had wanted to work together, and so I really jumped on that opportunity.
Um, and then Jonathan knew Leah as well, and having Leah there has been incredible. Um, both Jonathan and Leah come from kind of a baroque background- Um, they have kind of Baroque and classical training, and what I think is really interesting about, um, what that music… Like, trying to, like, bring or, like, find ways of subverting and adapting that music into what we’re doing in this piece, s- similar to what you said about, like, ancestral and futuristic, is, is actually something that Jonathan shared with me, that all of their training in their classical background, in their classical world, they trained in Europe for many years.
They sometimes feel that that training ha- like, came from a very colonial approach, and th- they’ve shared with me that it was, like, such a treat to be able to work on this project because it’s… W- we’re, we’re taking this, this, th- these, like, colonial approaches or this idea of, like, a colonial instrument of the voice and then subverting that completely by, um, the opportunity to be able to sing in our language, which, like, it, it’s…
I mean, Jonathan is… Yeah, I’m, I’m happy that Jonathan is excited to sing the language. I’m incredibly grateful to hear the language being sung in this style because I feel it does… It, you know, it, it’s a blending of two totally separate worlds, but it’s also kind of, like, subverting them into something hopefully new.
And I, I… Yeah, it’s also just being done by someone who is a master at it, so it’s just, sounds beautiful.
Gabrielle Martin: And so, like, I just wanna kind of… My last question is about technologies really. You’ve spoken about reconciling cosmological knowledge and with contemporary tools, film, feedback loops, AI, electroacoustics, like, in general in your, um…
What I’ve read about you. Yeah. And I’m, I’m wondering about what these technologies have revealed to you about, um, Nehiyaw worldviews and how they are shaping your understanding of artistic creation.
Tyson Houseman: Well, what’s funny is I feel like it, um, it always comes back to indigenous teachings. It always comes back to Nehiyaw teachings.
I find that anytime there’s… This is something I, I, I hear elders often say is anytime there’s new scientific discoveries that are coming from, like, a Western context, uh, new breakthroughs, I’ll often hear an elder make the joke that it’s like, “Well, yeah, we, we knew that all along. You just weren’t listening for, like, 500 years.”
So, um, things are al- I find things always come back, come back around, um, from scientific perspectives. But I’m… I, I don’t know. I feel like in terms of, like, thinking about technologies and the way in which, like, various different technologies kind of show up in my art practice, there’s, there’s this… I don’t know.
I, I find there’s kind of, there’s kind of like an accidental subversion that’s always going on because I’m kind of always approaching things from the way that they’re not intended to be done. Like, I… The way that I’m using cameras, um, in this, in, in Askiwan, the way that we’re using video switching, the way that we’re using all of this different stuff to try and build this show is very much not totally how any of these things are intended to be used.
But I think that that’s kind of what’s making a lot of it work in a unique way. Like, people often… Some people who see the show often ask, like, “Oh, what software are you using?” And then I’m shock… They’re, they’re shocked when I’m like, “I, it– there’s no software.” It’s there’s mirrors, there’s tape, there’s, um, there’s some hardware, there’s video switcher stuff.
But, like, it’s… Yeah. It’s, it’s kind of all subverting in, like, a uniquely indigenous way, I feel. Which I’m, I, I’ve kind of just embraced at this point, so I’m… Like, in my practice, I think that anytime I’m approaching new technologies like feedback loops, cameras, um, any of these things, I feel like I’m, I’m allowing myself to just kind of, like, you know, discover them from the unique approach that I have.
Gabrielle Martin: Thank you so much, Tyson. That was a real pleasure, uh, genuinely to be able to just hear your– the rich thinking and research behind these projects, including Askiwan, and I’m so looking forward to experiencing it again at the festival and, and having so many other people get to experience it here.
Tyson Houseman: Yeah.
Thank you so much for the opportunity to talk about it. It’s been… Yeah, it was really great.