Mycelial Connections
"Underground, the structure of a fungus is formed by many filaments,
called hyphae, that grow together in a mycelium. Just one cell thick,
hyphae extend through the soil column in search of water
and nutrients."
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"Fungi, through their underground hyphae, [form] intimate relationships with almost every single plant species, hence enabling plants to survive and flourish."
(Hathaway 2022: 11, 33)
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Like the mycelial connections that foster flourishing amongst flora, fauna and funga; this page honours just some of the networks of connection and collaboration in my own work.
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The Art & Fungi Project is a series of artistic projects led by Willoughby Arévalo and Isabelle Kirouac. These projects provide sensory and playful experiences in relation to fungi and how they shape and connect our world, growing the interconnections between communities, the land, and its more than human inhabitants.
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Willoughby, Isabelle and their daughter Uma are dear friends and collaborators.​
Willoughby Arevalo and Isabelle Kirouac
Saki Murotani is a motion graphics designer, animator and Illustrator who brings stories to life. Driven by her passion to create visually engaging art in motion she enjoys collaborating with other animators, designers, filmmakers, musicians, and artists. Her animated films have been screened at film festivals and also projected in live performances nationally and internationally. Her commercial work has been broadcast throughout Canada and featured online worldwide.
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Saki is a friend and collaborator. She created the beautiful artwork featured in What a Mushroom Lives For. Saki also designed the cover for the Russian translation of Environmental Winds.
Aynur Kadir is an Indigenous Uyghur scholar, filmmaker and curator with a research focus on the documentation, conservation and revitalization of Indigenous cultures and languages. Her work bridges the gap between Indigenous studies in Canada and in Asia. Her research interests are in global indigeneity from the Uyghur in China to Coast Salish and Six Nations in Canada; transnational Indigenous diplomacy; and the safeguarding and revitalization of languages and cultural heritage through digital technology and collaborative initiatives.
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Aynur is a previous PhD student, now collaborator on various projects including Transnationally Indigenous.
The Matsutake Worlds Research Group is an experiment in collaboration. The team explores the more-than-human social worlds this mushroom engenders in Canada, the United States, Finland, China, and Japan. They study matsutake picking and the matsutake commodity chain, showing how diverse cultures and ecologies engage each other in the matsutake trade. The Matsutake Worlds Research Group is interested in matsutake cultures and ecologies as multispecies worlds where life continues in the midst of great disturbances.
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Click on the names below to find more work by members of the Matsutake Worlds Research Group.
Members of the Matsutake Worlds Research Group left to right: Tim Choy, Miyako Inoue, Leiba Faier, Shiho Satsuka, Anna Tsing, and Michael J. Hathaway
This project explores the hidden legacies of Indigenous transnational activism and diplomacy by examining two important trips taken by Indigenous Ainu delegates from Japan and First Nations delegates from British Columbia to China in the mid-1970s. The delegates were impressed with what they saw among China’s ethnic minorities, which inspired them to envision new kinds of activism when they returned home. There is little recognition that Indigenous peoples have travelled and explored the world, especially outside Europe. This project challenges stereotypes that Indigenous people are passive subjects of colonialism and global history-making.
Contributors and collaborators on the project include:
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Rick Colbourne, Cheyanne Brown Armstrong, Glen Coulthard, Michael J. Hathaway, Scott Harrison, Manuhuia Barcham, Aynur Kadir, Kate Henessey, Rudy Reimer, ann-elise lewallen, George Nicholas, Deanna Reder, Keziah Wallis, Regina Baeza Martinez, Kaori Arai, Ty Bryant, Quiton Huang, Yiwen Liu, Yuan Wei, Saki Murotani, Sayano Izu, Cynthia Cui, Jacquelyn Yu, and Nat Begg
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Pasang is a mother, anthropologist, researcher, educator from Pharak, southern part of Mount Everest region in Nepal. She is an Assistant Professor of Lifeways in Indigenous Asia at the University of British Columbia. Pasang uses ethnographic methods to study everyday concerns of Himalayan people in order to normalize our experiences and represent us as equal partners in decision-making spaces. She believes that our sustainability as a Sherpa people in the wake of climate change depends on keeping our songs and stories about people, places and things alive for the next generation. Her current research applies community-based approach to exploring the possibilities of collective survival on warming planet.
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Pasang is a friend and collaborator.
Mendel Skulski is a storyteller with the podcast Future Ecologies: a show produced on (and often about) unceded Indigenous territories across the Salish Sea. Trained in Industrial Design, and steeped in reverence for nature’s infinite, entangled beauty, Mendel opted to devote themself to a less material form of production — that of sounds and ideas. They apply a musical ethos to narrative composition, using soundscape as an indispensable layer of communication. Thematically, they seek to illuminate the assumptions that shape our eco-social relationships, so that we may each discover other ways of being a part of the natural world.
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Mendel is a friend and collaborator in the Vancouver mycological scene.