Jason Baerg
B.F.A. Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Graduate Certificate in New Digital Media, George Brown / Ryerson, Toronto, Canada
M.F.A. Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey, USA
Assistant Professor in Indigenous Practices in Contemporary Painting and Media Art at OCAD University, 2017-Present
Assistant Professor in Indigenous Practices in Contemporary Painting and Media Art at OCAD University, 2017-Present
Adjunct Instructor: Rutgers, Mason Gross School of the Arts, 2014-2016
Institute of American Indian Arts, 2016 - Fall Semester
Asaimîna ᐊᓴᐃᒼ ᐄᓇ All Over Again, 2020
Asaimîna ᐊᓴᐃᒼ ᐄᓇ All Over Again, (2020) is a generative new media projection piece that negotiates abstract spaces and places through a multiplicity of circular notions to contemplate direction. Sensing, intuiting, or knowing comes from understanding and are dynamic concepts that describe the continuum of a sequence of embodied experiences. Asaimîna ᐊᓴᐃᒼ ᐄᓇ All Over Again activates the local and cosmological to serve as a digital compass for our future.
The reward for interactivity is that abstractions appear. Abstractions are landscape inspired which also include Cree syllabics that also reference place. Audio interactivity triggers changes in the soundscape as the participant moves the cursor with the rolly ball to the north, where the sound of the wind occurs. If the cursor is moved to the south, the sounds of waves break. If you move the cursor to the East where the sun rises, crackles of fire are summoned and if the cursor is moved to the west, sounds of tectonic plates rumble.
The central orb is comprised of four stacked transparent video channels, which are composites produced by the animated outcomes of experiments made by feeding images in AI software of Indigenous trees to the local area in Tkaronto, representing the dense forest that once lived here, with current images of this city.
Oskâyi Askîy Series
ᐅᐢᑳᔨ ᐊᐢᑮᕀ
Pronounced Oskâyi Askîy, which means The New World in Cree, Installation @ Mason Gross Galleries, 2016
The current developing body of work, Oskâyi Askîy explores themes of human survivance, engaged by Anishinaabe cultural theorist Gerald Vizenor as he writes about "the enunciations of dominance, tragedy and victimry." Oskâyi Askîy carries survivance into reflective spaces of activation, as we now witness international artistic trends engulfing the apocalyptic as illustrated in numerous symposiums, including the 2015 Art+Climate = Change Festival, which occurred in Melbourne, Australia, highlighting the works of artists and scholars from around the world.
Click above to get a sense of the new media component.
Laser cutting is a means to extend a new sculptural element into the work. I first engaged this process in 2012 while on residency at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology.
Oyasiwewina, which means, The Law in Cree
204"x60" Acrylic and Tempera on Laser Cut Canvas over 12' x 8' Ladder, 2016
In Art in The Age of Asymmetry, Timothy Morton proposes, "that we have entered a new era of aesthetics, shaped by the current ecological emergency."
Oskâyi Askîy is an abstract body of work that considers a disconnected rapport with the environment as a result of misdirected human desire. The Sky, Animals and Land are processed through technology and are translated as flesh, fauna and playful apparatus. As a working artistic practice based methodology, this process acts as an exploratory space to consider future solutions to the calamity at hand.
Onôcihitowipîsim, which is Cree for: September, The Mating Moon
48"x48", Acrylic, Tempera and Oil on Laser Cut Canvas, 2016
Detail
ᐸᑯᐦᒉᓀᐤ
Pronounced Pakohcenew, which means, S/he Removes its Intestines in Cree
8’x5', Acrylic, Tempera and Oil on Laser Cut Canvas, 2016
Other laser cut work within the Oskâyi Askîy Series
Gallery Omar Alonso, Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, 2017
Gallery Omar Alonso, Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, 2017
Gallery Omar Alonso, Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, 2017
New Pangea, 2'x3', laser cut canvas, 2015
Install at Durham Art Gallery
2'x3', Laser Cut Vinyl, 2015
Anthropocene, 2'x3', Laser Cut Paper, 2015
10,000 Sea Lions I, 2'x3', 2015
10,000 Sea Lions II, 2'x3', 2015
The Great Chief Star
Click above for documentation of experimental generative media
performance
The Great Chief Star, a mission to heal water, commissioned for the Pan Am Path, 2015
The Great Chief Star, is an original 45 minute multi-media sunset performative presentation. Cree Cosmology is the central point of investigation in this new work. Cree Métis artist, Jason Baerg takes us on a journey in the four directions around the Earth, past the Moon, beyond Morning Star (Venus) and the Sun, to Kisci-Okima-Achak (The Great Chief Star). DJ, Michael Red enhances the experience as he composes an original music score. New masterworks are created by international acclaimed Mohawk choreographer and dancer, Santee Smith alongside Inuk contemporary performance artist Tanya Tagaq, who will co-pilot this flight with her unconventional approach to Throat Singing. Jason Baerg creates digital abstractions to punctuate this new media voyage, which will be projected behind the performers. The new media in collaboration with JS Gauriter serves to punctuate the dance gestures of Santee Smith and the vocal dynamics of Tanya Tagaq utilizing Xbox Kinect technologies.
Blue Vision Collaboration
"Blue Vision" Installation at Counihan Art Gallery, Melbourne, Australia, Mixed Media Sculpture, 2015, in collaboration with Jen Rae (Metis) and Peter Waples-Crowe (Ngarigo).
Trophies of War
Artists practice visioning and when we (Jen Rae, Peter Waples-Crowe and Jason Baerg) actively imagine the future, we consider how art serves as a mechanism to find language to trigger change. When we contemplate the fate of Indigenous Culture, we welcome this opportunity to transgress loss through acts of reclamation. These actions are taken with intention, through the weaving of abstraction, through figuration, through fictional narrative and nonlinear means of storytelling in the form of a collaborative installation. Our totems are used as vehicles for telling, revealing and projecting empowerment.
Raven, Dingo and Wolf
Blue Vision, Mixed Media Installation, Various Sizes, 2015
Nomadic Bounce Series 
"Four Legged", Nomadic Bounce, Judith and Norman Alix Art Gallery, Sarnia, Ontario, 2015
Various: Site Specific Installation
Acrylic on Laser Cut Wood, Elastic Bands, Industrial Nails / Video
Detail
"Facing Self, Facing Society", Nomadic Bounce, Urban Shaman Gallery, Winnipeg, 2014
Various: Site Specific Installation
Acrylic on Laser Cut Wood, Elastic Bands, Industrial Nails
"This Train is Empty", Nomadic Bounce, Mendel Art Gallery, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Various: Site Specific Installation
Acrylic on Laser Cut Wood, Elastic Bands, Industrial Nails / Video, 2013
Acrylic on Laser Cut Wood, Elastic Bands, Industrial Nails / Video, 2013
Click above for immersive projections / generative interactive digital media
There Was No End -- Artist Jason Baerg (Cree Métis) utilizes significant symbolic Indigenous numeric values to inform narrative, color and repetition in reference to circular notions of time.
The 360° spherical display of 360 abstracted symbols of the Sun the Moon and the Earth appear in sequences of 13 to reference many Indigenous communities' 13-moon calendar. There Was No End utilizes ground-breaking research and development in the integration sensors and interactivity presented in the world's first fully articulated digital dome.
