The School for the Contemporary Arts on Below the Radar

Conversations on art and pedagogy have always been a main topic on our Below the Radar Podcast. We at SFU's Vancity Office of Community Engagement love talking to artists, which is made all the easier by the fact that we share building space with SFU's School for the Contemporary Arts (SCA) at the SFU Vancouver campus!

On our latest spring season of the podcast, we had the chance to sit down with five SCA artist-scholars for some exciting discussions on their artistic practices and latest research. Whether you're looking to hear more about arts education and the local arts ecology, or just seeking some artistic inspiration, we hope you join us in diving back into these episodes.

We first had the chance to speak to Nadia Shihab, a filmmaker and Assistant Professor in Film at the SCA. Nadia joined host Am Johal to explore her path as a filmmaker, beginning with sharing her university days as an Iraqi student at the University of Texas, feeling a personal sense of loss from the war, and burnout from her student activism within a conservative state. She speaks of this as the inspiration for her first film, I Come from Iraq. Nadia goes on to explore the inspirations and meanings of her other films, such as Amal’s Garden and Jaddoland. She and Am also explore her urban planning background, and Nadia shares some advice for aspiring student filmmakers.

Next, we were joined by Erika Latta, Assistant Professor in Theatre & Performance at the SCA and the Artistic co-director and co-founder of WaxFactory in New York. Am and Erika explore her journey as a theatre-maker – from her memorable experiences touring throughout Europe, pushing platforms in the mud for site-specific work with Begat Theatre, and working with performance students on the production of Strange Joy. Erika also speaks about growing up in the woods in Oregon with artistic parents, pushing artistic boundaries in university, and co-founding WaxFactory.

The meeting of creative practice with academic enquiry is a core value of the SCA, well exemplified by Yani Kong’s thoughtful reflections on her research and writing practice. Yani is a writer, editor, and SSHRC Doctoral Fellow of Contemporary Art at the SCA. Am and Yani discuss Yani’s research exploring enchantment and how she got into her work writing arts criticism, as well as Canadian art at the 2022 Venice biennale and the relationship between public art and real-estate development in Vancouver.

Continuing this conversation on the local arts ecology, Am talked with Independent curator, writer, and SSHRC Doctoral Fellow at the SCA, Joni Low (劉植紅). They discuss Joni’s new book, What Are Our Supports? Joni talks about the various contributors to the anthology and the modes of support local artists find and create, exploring artistic practices and the different potential futures which artists are inviting into the city and the world.

Finally we welcomed another new SCA professor onto the podcast, interdisciplinary choreographer and Assistant Professor in Dance, NiNi Dongnier. Together, Am and NiNi discuss NiNi’s training and artistic experiences across Inner Mongolia, Beijing, New York, and now Vancouver. 

Check out all of these episodes and more in our SCA Below the Radar playlist on soundcloud! Also included are past conversations with SCA Faculty Eldritch Priest, Sabine Bitter, Laura Marks, and Barbara Adler.