22-25 September 2022
SPHERE is co-curated by Canadian-Icelandic interdisciplinary artist Dr. Angela Rawlings and Music Director Alexander Shelley. Taking place throughout the NAC stages and public spaces, at the Canadian Museum of Nature, and at Club SAW.
In SPHERE, the NAC Orchestra joins forces with Canadian, Indigenous, and Nordic composers, musicians, visual artists, writers, and scientists for a multidisciplinary conversation about the sphere we call home. Performances, talks, visual and audio arts, and sensory installations offer a response to the environmental crisis through the intersection of art, creativity, and science.
As a nickname for our planet, ‘sphere’ is a suffix indicating Earth’s overlapping subsystems. The four primary subsystems are lithosphere, biosphere, hydrosphere, and atmosphere. NACO’s four-day festival has been designed to feature one subsystem per day. The word ‘sphere’ also contains the word ´here´ (current location) in English and ‘ère’ (time, era) in French. How do we listen to ourselves, to one another, and to the ecosystems on which we interdepend at this time of climate crisis and biodiversity loss?