About
Moose Bed is located on the edge of Treaty 6 and 7 Nations, on a quarter section farmland near Lacombe. Moosebed includes organic cropland, aspen and balsam poplar forest, and some cleared areas with trails and cut lines.
The site is available for artistic and cultural activities that engage and work with the land. The space is intended to generate artworks and discussion on issues related to the land, such as settlement/displacement histories and politics; negotiating the imposition of agricultural activity on Prairie ecology, resource extraction and land use; climate change; the anthropocene; animal studies; critical cow studies; farm art and earthworks.
Projects
October 2017
During the initial visit to the site, Montreal based performance artist Sylvie Tourangeau led a small group of visitors through a performative exercise. Walking through the open fields, eyes closed, they imagined the space within their minds, and then moved towards imagining themselves within the space. During this excursion, we found the remains of a moose bed, and later on, the partial remains of a moose hoof. Tamara Cardinal wrote the following text as a response:
Recalling Oct. 9/17 on the Land
(Esprit de corps)
Serenity - a quiet place unlike that of the city
Alive - thick with the abundance of an untouched landscape
Machinery - but what is that over the hill? A clean cut field...
Farming - a community still ongoing
Animals - those who are still free to walk, dig, burrow
Medicines - of all unannounced and common nature.
