Kevin Jesuino Q&A
By Ado Nkemka
Photo Courtesy Kevin Jesuino. A black and white headshot of a white man (of Portuguese decent) with dark, somewhat short, hair and a dark beard, standing against a white backdrop in a dark shirt.
New Works Marketing Intern, Ado Nkemka, spoke to interdisciplinary artist Kevin Jesuino (of TRAction) ahead of “The Nature of Us,” an outdoor concert which is a collaboration between TRAction and Artio Choir. Register here and read this Q&A to learn more about this unique outdoor experience. This interview was edited for brevity and clarity.
Ado: Can you introduce yourself, your co-facilitator Melanie Kloetzel, and tell me a bit about what you do at TRAction?
Kevin: Hello, my name is Kevin Jesuino and I am an interdisciplinary artist that was born on the lands that we call Edmonton, what is traditionally known as amiskwacîwâskahikan (Beaver Hills House). I’m of Portuguese descent. My parents immigrated here to escape the fascist government that was happening in Portugal in the 1970’s and I’ve made my way through different lands. I’ve been in Mohkinstsis, in Calgary, and I now find myself on the west coast in the traditional and unceded lands of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh Nations – what we call Vancouver.
I come to my art practice as a deep collaborator – someone that’s invested in collaboration with not just artists, but with people and with what humans would classify as living and non-living things. One of the people I collaborate more directly with is Melanie Kloetzel. Her and I collectively make up this collective called TRAction. We’ve been going for about five years. We have come to develop some key core principles we want to strive for. Most important is in collaborating and centering indigenous voices and artists making climate based work. We’re trying to remind people that Indigenous people have been doing this work for millennia, especially in the 100 plus years that this land has been colonised. They’ve been actively doing that work and not putting that work in art galleries, but doing that work on grassroots levels.
I come to this work as someone that was invited into the environment club in Grade 7 in 1996 and has been curious about how art can bring our hearts and bodies closer to understanding and creating empathic understandings between humans and earth. So Melanie Kloetzel and I run the collective, but within that, as people that have different social practices, there’s a lot of people that come and go from that collective.
We collaborate with different people. Right now, I’m working with Artio Choir, which was, in the past, founded under the Mount Royal Choral Association, but that has disbanded so Artio is no longer a choir in that program. But this project, “The Nature of Us,” lived beyond that, so I’ve been working with them. They are a predominantly LGBT choir with allies also in there.
That’s one community of people that I have worked with under TRAction. Sometimes Melanie and I work together, sometimes Melanie and I work apart. In this case, I’m working apart on this, but working in collaboration with Artio. So TRAction is sort of this very loose bubble of collaboration. But, at the centre of it, is this idea that art is for climate justice.
I’m curious about the genesis of this event. I don’t know if it was your idea – as in you individually – or TRAction’s? Could you speak to how the idea for this event came up?
This has been a journey, Ado. This initially started with a man named Jean-Louis Bleau (JL) who was the former conductor of Artio Choir. And he, for a number of years, with Artio Choir, had done a lot of collaborations with movement artists, dancers, combining their expertise in choreography with the choir. And I believe Kunji Ikeda was the human that was prior to me. So Kunji then put me and JL in touch. And I came on board to collaborate with them. JL and I talked about what our interests are and I told him I’m really curious about creating empathy with nature and how voice also is a regulator of our nervous systems, that in harmony, we regulate together, as humans.
I’m always fascinated about the things that co-regulate our bodies together. We lost that over COVID and I think that’s why it was very highlighted for me. In conversations, there’s evidence that our heartbeats will sync. Even over this conversation between you and I right now, I could imagine that our heartbeats are actually beating at the same pace, Ado. And so there’s moments of that co-regulation. There’s moments of us harmonising together, if we chorally sing together. There’s a co-regulation that happens when we dance together – we feel the beat together. So there’s all these things that we lost, during COVID, that I was thinking about a lot.
So when he approached me, we started engaging in that kind of dialogue and this underlining question of “How do we then do that, not just with each other, but how do we co-regulate with the earth?” So over two years, we developed a first draft of what would become “The Nature of Us.” It had a whole different title at that time (called Divisions) and we then presented it at the Equinox Vigil that happened in Calgary. That was the first draft and we put it to sleep.
Through some extra funding that Mount Royal Choral Association got through Calgary Arts Development, we got to re-mount it. And that was very exciting because how often do you get some money to draft something then put it to sleep and then come back to it with fresh eyes, with more money and then be able to re-envision it. So that second phase of it really started to develop it and that was actually the last time that Artio presented something under the Mount Royal Choral Association.
We did that piece produced under Mount Royal Choral Association’s 2022 season and we presented it at Confederation Park. That’s when we started to really think about co-regulation with the earth in a more deeper way. We experimented with this idea of blindfolding the audience – that the audience’s acoustic awareness would expand beyond just the choir but to the environmental sounds around them. So that was when that project really solidified.
Take a look behind the scenes of the 2022 performance of “The Nature of Us” at Confederation Park below.
I did read that you’re working with an Indigenous Advisory Council and you’ve touched on the importance of and the work that Indigenous peoples have been doing on this land. Could you share more about how this work touches on Indigenous ways of knowing? I also understand that this might be a question best directed at the Council, but if you could speak to what you feel comfortable speaking to?
Yeah, thank you for that. What I’m about to say has been through years of listening, and really listening to Indigenous elders, Indigenous artists, and different community members, to really embody in myself and to try and use the privilege that I have to help change and to make change in the world. I am in no way the person that is the ultimate teacher on this.
However, what I have learned – I’ve mentioned already that Indigenous artists and communities have been using art that has never really been accepted in the museum, or contemporary art world, or in theatres, maybe up until recently and they’ve been doing that work forever. When it comes to climate art, it seems like because the funding bodies are now accounting for that, and giving out funding for that, now all the artists are jumping on board with climate art.
Melanie and I recognized that early on. It was something that I also found a lot of discomfort in, when I would sit in rooms with mostly white people, white settlers, who are talking about climate change. And from their heart, they’re meaningfully, really wanting to make change. But from their minds, I could see how there were certain people in the room that were like “No, this is the way you fix it! No, this is the way!” I could see that the idea of “Things aren’t moving as fast as I need them to.” And so “I have the idea, and I will be the leader, and I will drive.” Although that urgency is necessary, I think that we miss things when we go fast like that. I think that we don’t address the systemic problems underneath us, by driving with our heads forward. So I think we’re turning us down to the body: to the complex system of the entire body that keeps us all living without us really thinking about it. And then how that relationship is with the earth.
As Chantal Chagnon has told me and countless other people in Mohkinstsis and other places, it’s all about: “All my relations.” Repairing those relationships is essential. So when Melanie and I really started to get into our third year of this collective, we started to think about these issues: What does it mean for us two, as white settlers – a white woman, a queer man?
We’re both white. What does it mean for us to be the people that are running a climate arts collective – an ad hoc organisation. So we really had to lean into it. We were already working with Chantal, for a while, on different projects. And then we thought “Well, let’s gather an Advisory Council.” So we gathered an Advisory Council. They really helped us craft a Decolonial Toolkit, which is on our website. It’s open source, anyone can look into it. And anyone that is in the realm of – either as an artist wanting to do climate-based work or an organisation or collective that is interested in doing climate-based work – I think It’s really pertinent that they go take a look at that document because it helps really to ground how to approach climate art by understanding what’s underneath us and what’s been done already, as opposed to a singular solution, or to drive by yourself. With that framework, Melanie and I developed the pillars for how TRAction wants to move forward.
I will say that both the decolonial toolkit and these pillars are aspirational. I don’t think we’re ever going to be in this state of 100% perfection. But I want to move my body in that orientation, towards that space. And these pillars are centering Indigenous voices, relationship building, action-based work, care, and self-reflexivity. Those five things really are at the heart of how Melanie and I work, in terms of trying to understand what our position is. The Advisory Council really helped us develop the decolonial toolkit that is, again, open source for everybody, but then it also helped Melanie and I craft an orientation or a way of being that we want to cultivate whenever we’re making work under the banner of TRAction.
What elements of the performance do you expect audiences to be the most engaged with?
Their ears, laughter. That’s pretty much what New Works is all about, I get that. But I think that it’s the environmental acoustic relationship that we have in this show. It’s not just the choir. It’s not just people singing at you. We’re asking you to take away your visual sense and to really open up your acoustic hearing. Take in the bird you hear far off, the kid that’s playing at the playground, and the tree swooshing in the air, and the twigs that are cracking under people’s feet, in relationship with a choir that’s singing and coming in and out of these noises.
There’s also an element of challenging the idea of being entertained. I don’t think this show is about entertaining you. I think this show is about giving you an experience and helping you settle into something. But it’s certainly not something that’s gonna mean that there’s a jester dancing in front of you, singing an aria. That’s not the work. The work is really about leaving your body in a different state, from when you enter to when you exit.
About 18 people standing and sitting in a circle in a field. In the distance, there is a building and a baseball field. An abundance of trees with green and yellow leaves frame the shot. This image seems to have been captured right before sunset, in the fall.
What are you most looking forward to at this event?
It’s an honour to be able to present at the confluence of where the Elbow and the Bow RIver meet. I don’t take that lightly. I think that’s a huge privilege. We’re going to be presenting on St. Patrick’s Island. I think most Calgarians, at this point, know the historical significance of that site, not just the colonial history but also the Indigenous history. And to have an artist like Chantal Chagnon join us, and have different members of the LGBT community come together, and then also nature itself, the sort of “come together in confluence.” I think that’s really powerful. I think it’s really magical. I’m very careful with how I say this – but there’s some elements of ritual and ceremony that sort of are imbued in that and I don’t take that lightly, I think that it’s going to be very significant. So I’m looking forward to having those feelings and sitting in that.
Is there anything else you’d like to share that I haven’t given you the chance to share?
On top of the colonial history and the decolonial history that is being interwoven in this collaboration, I think it’s also worth mentioning that St. Patrick’s Island is also, historically, a site of queerness and where homosexuality went to hide. It’s a space where a lot of people, predominantly men – and that definition of masculinity is very broad – there’s historical significance around that site as a place where people went to hold, and kiss, and make love, when they couldn’t do that in public, in general, especially in a city like Calgary.
So I also want to acknowledge that I’m with an LGBT choir. I am, myself, a member of that community. There's a lot of histories bound up on that site that have been erased. A lot of it has been erased. I want to just hold my heart for all those people that couldn't love fully, be who they are fully, and who were forced down by skyscrapers, oil and gas, and colonial oppression.
Register for “The Nature of Us” on Showpass.
