Current Residents

Macaulay House Studio Residency

March 2024
Dawson City International Film Festival

naakita f.k. (they/them) is an interdisciplinary artist living and working in Tio’Tia:Ke/Mooniyang/Montreal. Their audio and video installations tell stories related to changing landscapes, extractive practices and abstract forms of legacy. Their research uses hauntology to explore the impacts of the colonial project on built and natural environments, while imagining possible futures that can be contained in a haunted place. This practice is rooted in creating modes of listening to landscapes and the other-than-human-beings that inhabit them. They have shown their work nationally and internationally at institutions such as MoMA PS1, New York, NY (2012); Trinity Square Video, Toronto, ON (2016); Mémoire de l’Avenir, Paris, FR (2019); Videofenster, Cologne, DE (2021); Fonderie Darling, Montreal, QC (2022); and Images Festival, Toronto, ON (2023). They are the 2024 laureate of the

Grantham Foundation for the Arts and the Environment’s Grand Prize for Creation.

While at KIAC, naakita will be working toward a project about bodies of water and where they collide with extractive industries. They’ll be busy documenting the area’s surrounding ice and waters through audio, video, 3D scanning and digital sketching. This work will consider what things that have previously laid dormant emerge as waters change globally, and how we can practice attuning ourselves to hear these changes and the voices water contains.

They’d love to hear your stories and experiences with the area’s waters, mining practices, permafrost and local ghosts.

www.naakitafk.com 

@naakitafk

Nisha Platzer (she/her) is a queer artist and filmmaker from Vancouver, Canada. Drawn to vibrant shades, her films meld sounds and imagery that you can dream and drown in.  Nisha’s short film, Vaivén (2020) won the best film award at aluCine Latin Film & Media Arts Festival and competed at festivals worldwide including Raindance, Festival Nouveau Cinéma, FIDBA, and Ji.hlava. She studied at the renowned Escuela Internacional de Cine y Televisión (EICTV) in Cuba and her work has been supported by the Canada Council for the Arts, the BC Arts Council and the National Film Board of Canada. Nisha is a member of Vancouver’s Iris Film Collective, which promotes the creation and sharing of analog film. An alumnus of IDFAcademy, the VIFF mentorship program, and the Hot Docs Accelerator Lab, her work can be found in music videos, narrative, and experimental films. Nisha’s first feature documentary, back home, is supported by Telefilm Talent to Watch and was presented at the Docs-in-Progress Canadian Showcase at Cannes Film Festival 2022. 

During her stay at KIAC, Nisha will be adapting a beloved Canadian novel for the screen and making super8 and 16mm films in the KIAC darkroom with plants, coffee and whatever else she can find! 

She’s curious to learn more about queer, trans and sex worker histories in the region and how they interact with more dominant histories of Dawson and the Gold Rush era. 

www.melodiousimage.com

@melodiousimagefilm

February 2024

 
 
Maria Michails (QC/NY)
Feb 5 – 27

Maria Michails is an interdisciplinary artist based in Quebec and New York. Her installations and social
practice bridge the arts, the natural and social sciences, and technology, focusing on civic engagement
with environmental issues. Her most recent projects turn her attention to cold climates and the loss of
winter, both at home and further afield. As a long-time self-propelled backcountry traveler, she has
witnessed and personally experienced the diminishing snowpack and lake ice formations. Her current
postdoctoral research brings her to the Yukon to observe and learn about how climate change has
affected the Territory’s tundra-taiga ecotone region north of Dawson City. While at KIAC she will be
exploring the soundscape ecologies – a new medium in her working approach – of the rivers,
surrounding mountains, and the town. She welcomes companionship on these excursions as she begins
this new practice of deep listening.

Michails has exhibited in solo and group shows throughout North America and Europe. Her work has
been awarded grants and fellowships from NY State Council on the Arts, Canada Council for the Arts,
Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada, Fonds de recherche du Québec, and
Conseils des arts and des lettres du Québec. Funded residencies include Banff Centre, Eyebeam NYC,
Sculpture Space, and Central Michigan University. Her work has been profiled in Scientific American,
The Alt, the Albany Times Union, as well as books and catalogues. She has published essays and
articles by Routledge, Digital Creativity, and Transformations Journal. Michails earned an MFA in
Intermedia from Arizona State University, a PhD in Electronic Arts from Rensselaer Polytechnic
Institute, Troy, NY, and is currently a postdoctoral scholar at the University of Ottawa with affiliation at
Yukon University.

You can view her works at www.treiastudios.net and www.vimeo.com/mariamichails/