Alyshia Seriani, Alexa Solveig Mardon, Erika Mitsuhashi, Sasha J. Langford
whereverever, 2023
The creators of whereverever characterize the video as a sixteen-minute docu-poem that playfully traces possible beginnings and investigates the roots of belonging. Filmed on location in Japan and Finland, the video follows Mitsuhashi and Mardon as they visit their respective ancestral lands and move toward a deeper understanding of where they come from.
Whereverever was recorded partially with a newly obsolete 3D camcorder with the intention of disrupting/queering the conventions of a family history documentary. Honouring disorientation and play as key tenets, the work formally embraces the confusion and creative negotiation that are central to the business of being and relating.
“whereverever is a call and response: between us and place, between a film and a dance, and between one another. Filming on location in ancestral places, we open ourselves up to instruction: celestial, familial, and invisible. whereverever is a spell to visit with entities past and future through the technologies of dreaming, dancing, and fabulating what we don’t and cannot know — the gaps, tears, and absences of settler-colonial relocation + disruption — as valuable knowledges too.”
About the Artists
Alysha Seriani: co-creator, filmmaker
Alysha Seriani is a settler artist and dyke-umentarian working at the intersections of film production, pedagogy, media art and community projects rooted in intergenerational learning, bewilderment, and queer joy. She gratefully lives and co-creates on the sacred and unceded ancestral lands of xwməθkwəy̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, and səl’ilw̓ətaʔɬ (MST) Nations, also known as East Vancouver, Canada. Her collaborative video projects have been presented at such establishments as: Western Front (Vancouver), Cadence Video Poetry Festival (Seattle), Art Windsor Essex (Windsor), Grenfell Gallery (Corner Brook), Spring Roll Festival (Turku), Richmond Art Gallery (Richmond), Window Gallery (Sointula), Vancouver Queer Film Festival (Vancouver), Inside Out LGBT Film Festival (Toronto), and in various corners of the internet. Alysha has taken part in artist residencies with hosts such as the Gesturing Toward Decolonial Futures Collective, Sointula Art Shed, Empire of Dirt, Ehkä-production, Unit/Pitt Society for Art and Critical Awareness, and the AIRS Program.
Alexa Solveig Mardon: co-creator, performer
Alexa Solveig Mardon is a dancer, performance maker, and facilitator co-creating and seeking spaces for playful ruination, queer fantastical myth-making, and multi-sensorial learning/experiencing across difference. Alexa is a first-generation settler of Finnish/Karelian/British Isles descent living as an uninvited guest on the illegally occupied, unceded Coast Salish territories of the xwməθkwəy̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, and səl’ílwətaʔɬ peoples. Alexa’s work takes forms including installation, performance, print objects, rituals for touch and alchemy, movement workshops for frontline support workers, dreamwork + prophecy practices, the traditional practice of Karelian lament singing, and teaching professional and non-professional dance classes worldwide. Alexa is currently completing their masters at DAS Choreography, University of the Arts Amsterdam, where their research focuses on dreaming, writing + movement practices that seek anti-colonial mythical, queer + speculative relations with ancestors of all species. Alexa’s work has been presented by OFFTA (Montreal), Boombox Vancouver, PS: We are All Here (Toronto), Kinetic Studios (Halifax), Dance In Vancouver, 12 Minutes Max (Vancouver), Surrey Art Gallery, and VIVO Media Arts Centre.
Erika Mitsuhashi: co-creator, performer
Erika Mitsuhashi is an interdisciplinary artist and performer living and working on the unceded, ancestral, and occupied traditional lands of the xwməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Səl’ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh), and Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) Nations of the Coast Salish peoples, known as Vancouver, British Columbia. She studied at Simon Fraser University School for the Contemporary Arts, receiving a BFA (hons) in dance. Erika’s work has taken the form of performance for stage, installation, experimental film, site-specific/responsive performance, scenography and projection design. Most recently, she has been experimenting with live-stream video and digital spaces as sites for intimacy and choreography of attention. Her work and collaborative projects have been presented locally and internationally by PAUL Studios Berlin, Powell Street Festival, Toronto Love-In’s PS:We are All Here series, Surrey Art Gallery’s InFlux, Kinetic Studio’s Open Studio Series, Shooting Gallery Performance Series, Upintheair Theatre’s rEvolver Festival, and La Serre's OFFTA festival of live art. She has been supported by organizations including New Works, Toronto’s SummerWorks, VIVO Media Arts, plastic orchid factory, Dance West Network, and Boca De Lupo in the creation and development of her works to date.
Sasha J. Langford: co-creator, composer
Sasha J. Langford is an interdisciplinary artist who works at the intersection of sound, writing, performance, and social practice. In her collaborations with choreographers and media artists, as well as her solo live performance practice, Sasha's work has been presented at Ehkä-Kutomo (Turku, Finland), FestivALT (Kraków, Poland), Lines of Flight Festival of Experimental Music (Dunedin, New Zealand), Ende Tymes (Brooklyn, NY), Suoni Per Il Popolo (Montreal, QC), Western Front (Vancouver, BC), and the International Noise Conference (Miami, FL).
As a writer and thinker, Sasha has published critical texts and delivered public talks through Access Gallery, About A Bicycle, Charcuterie, The School of Making Thinking, and the Vancouver Institute for Social Research. Most recently, her writing has appeared in the Norient publication on place and sound Home Is Where the Heart Strives (2025) as well as the edited collection Lacan and the Environment (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021). She has been artist-in-residence and produced commissioned work through the Festival of Recorded Movement, Vancouver New Music, What Lab, the Media Arts Committee, and the Strathcona Art Gallery and Library. Sasha is faculty at Columbia College, where she teaches media and cultural studies on occupied xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, and səl̓ílwətaʔɬ territories known as Vancouver, BC.
Additional teammates:
Costume design: Jaewoo Kang
Lighting design: Nien-Tzu Weng
Technical managers: Jack Chipman
Artistic mentors: Justine A. Chambers, Xwechtaal Dennis Joseph, Mala Kline
Dramaturgy support: Joanna Garfinkel
Accessibility consultation: Cara Eastcott, Amy Amantea, Shannon Gagnon
Audio description: Andrea Cownden