By These Presents: ‘Purchasing’ Toronto (2019)

is an episode is the Talking Treaties Suite of works, produced by Jumblies Theatre and Arts.

Historic text, petitions, and oral memory are brought to life through a vibrant all-indigenous cast. Scenes were shot at Historic Fort York and along the waterfront of the Toronto Purchase: the Don and Humber River’s and Etobicoke Creek.

The creek, which has never been ceeded, marks the disputed western boundary of the Toronto Purchase of 1787 and the eastern boundary of the 1805 Head of the Lake cession (treaties 13 and 14 respectively). It is now subject to a waterclaim by the Missisaguas of the Credit.

Rooted in Oral History and community collaboration, Talking Treaties is a multi-year project that artfully shares local indigenous history and awareness.

Launched in 2015, Talking Treaties has many branches, and has engaged thousands of participants in generating symbols, poetry, improvised maps and creative explorations.

in 2017 and 2018, the Talking Treaties Spectacle was staged at Historic Fort York, sharing the research through words, song, movement, giant puppets and outdoor theatre.

By these Presents: ‘Purchasing’ Toronto and accompanying installation were presented at the 2019 Toronto Biennial of Art.

Director: Ange Loft

Co-director: Martha Stiegman

Research: Victoria Freeman

Written by: Ange Loft & Victoria Freeman

Producer: Jumblies Theatre & Arts

Director of Photography: Shannon Harris

Editor: Amy Siegel

Sound Design, Edit & Mix: Alaska B

Original Music:

Alaska B,

Melody McKiver,

Brandon Valdivia,

Rosary Spence,

Martin van de Ven featuring Vania Chan (soprano), the Gather Round Singers, conducted by Shifra Cooper

Cast

Beaver: Candy Blair

Britannia : Theresa Cutknife

Crown Representative: Jesse Wabegijig

The One Who Knows the Rules: Pesch Nepoose

The One Who Remembers: Kitsuné Soleil

Grown Woman: Jill Carter

Young Woman: Ashley Riley

Grown Man: Jamie Oshkabewisens

Young Man: Brendan Austin Loonskin

Assistant Editor: Adrienne Marcus Raja

Production Manager: Caroline Hollway

Sound Technician: Steafan Hannigan

Boom Operator: Adrienne Marcus Raja

Script Supervisor: Ashley Bomberry

Movement Coach: Nimikii Couchie

Designers: Ange Loft, Sonja Rainey, Marianne Alas

Costume Coordinator: Oshan Starreveld

Props Coordinator: Karis Jones Pard

Production Assistants: Tijana Spasic, Sam Egan

Post-Production House: REDLAB Digital

Colorist: AJ McLauchlin

Special thank you

for insight and historical research

Keith Jamieson

Carolyn King

Hayden King

Max King

Bryan Laforme

Stacey Laforme

Bonita Lawrence

Lee Maracle

David Miller

Duke Redbird

Brian MacLean

Ed Sackanay

Garry Sault

Margaret Sault

Zachary Smith

Rebeka Tabobodung

Jesse Thistle

Nathan Tidridge

Andrew Wesley

Darin Wybenga

Thank you

Rosina Kazi

Nikki Shaffeeullah

Tomas Cavalheiro-Chin

Lilia Leon

Julia Hune Brown

Mindy Stricke

Kaia’tanoron Dumoulin Bush

Kelly King

Rhonda Lucy

Iehente Foote

Ruth Howard

York University Faculty of Environmental Studies

First Story Toronto

Historic Fort York

Toronto Community Housing

Metcalf Foundation

Miziwe Biik and many more artists, partners and community members.

Produced with support from:

Toronto Biennial of Art

Government of Canada

Canada Council of the Arts

Ontario Arts Council

Toronto Arts Council

In memory of

Brendan Austin Loonskin

jumbliestheatre.org

© 2019 Jumblies Theatre & Arts

“There’s a whole world contained within Yamantaka // Sonic Titan. They’re a Noh-Wave prog collective, a black-and-white (and sometimes red) theatre company, an operatic psych cult, and the speculative prophets of humanity’s impending doom. Above it all, though, they’re a thunderous rock band, and on their third album, DIRT, they’re the heaviest they’ve ever been.

Though they’ve been an amorphous beast since they formed in 2010, DIRT follows the group’s most significant evolution in years. Now totally Toronto-based, they’ve added new singer Joanna Delos Reyes, guitarist Hiroki Tanaka and bassist Brandon Lim, who, along with the towering drums of leader/artist Alaska B, singer/theatre artist Ange Loft and keyboardist Brendan Swanson, turn the group into a driving engine of sound. Live, the band can be sprawling and theatrical or concise and visceral, filling the stage with noise, melody and cacophony.

DIRT is the band’s first album since 2013’s UZU, their second straight to be shortlisted for the Polaris Prize as one of the best Canadian albums of the year. But the gap between albums hasn’t been a hiatus. Instead, the group hunkered down in the studio composing the mostly-instrumental score to the DrinkBox Studios video game Severed, along with members of the Canadian-Filipina gong group Pantayo. They emerged with new elements to heighten and distort into their already far-reaching sound, which combines and tornadoes Asian diasporic and Indigenous influences and perspectives.

The album was conceived as the soundtrack for an unreleased Haudenosaunee and Buddhist themed Anime produced in 1987. Like UZU, it takes place on the planet Pureland, now 10,000 years after the planet has flooded. The surviving people live within bubble domes floating in orbit. A team of mercenaries descends into the drowned wreckage of the world to receive the last sample of uncorrupted soil.

Never abandoning their irreverent edge, the band pushes further into madness and finds clarity in it, combining Iroquois creation myth and Buddhist principles with classic sci-fi themes to show how humanity continues to succumb to its worst impulses: madness, hubris and greed. With a sarcastic sigh that crosses political spectrums, DIRT confronts the lies that we tell ourselves and each other and asks what it means to push forward for an ideal just to die anyway.

Narratively, it’s the most ambitious project they’ve ever done. Musically, though, they’ve streamlined their sound, digging into both heavy and poppy influences like Judas Priest, Killing Joke, and Jordan Knight and translating them into their own unmistakable aesthetic. The live show is still a sensory overload of makeup and costumes that falls somewhere between Boredoms and Kiss, but the focus now is on their sound - the fullest, most killer version they’ve put on record yet. They think big, but they’re not a thought experiment. They’re a force.

Similar to Sun Ra’s take on Afrofuturism, the band resist being pigeonholed into any one idea, sound or cultural perspective. Instead, they burst their references apart, creating something entirely new. No matter what direction they go in, it can only come from Yamantaka // Sonic Titan.” -

Yamantakasonictitan.com

February 22–April 29, 2019

A new work by Ange Loft, A foreign source of extraordinary power, is the third project in the Art in Use series. Loft’s sculptures are physical references that invite us to think about our habitual holding patterns and over-exertions in the name and image of power.

A foreign source of extraordinary power is a collection of wearable sculptures grappling with the legacy of Saint Kateri Tekakwitha, an Algonquin–Mohawk Saint who practiced forms of self-discipline learnt from her Jesuit nun contemporaries. Each sculpture is twinned with a soundtrack, asking listeners to mimic and move along with Prudence, Justice, Temperance, and Fortitude, as they incite each other in self-making. Part physio routine, Loft’s work attempts to counter the biographical narrative of sainthood, by breaking down historical trauma, saint-making and bad posture.

You can listen to each soundtrack one-by-one; or take a break on the benches in the centre of the room to absorb the sound as a multi-channel piece.

Talk
February 22, 7pm
Floor 1, free

Ange Loft will speak about her practice and specifically the thinking behind and making of A foreign source of extraordinary power.

Workshop
March 9, 3pm
Pre-registration and museum admission required.

Movement workshop led by Ange Loft within the space of A foreign source of extraordinary power.

https://museumofcontemporaryart.ca/ange-loft-programs-2019/

Talking Treaties artfully shares local Indigenous history and awareness. Since 2015, symbols and stories of agreement making were gathered through interview, audio gallery, dance, choral composition, spectacle and arts based research in Toronto. The project resulted in the Talking Treaties Spectacle and an ongoing legacy of creative learning activities.

To book a workshop or presentation email

Performance
All You Can Hold: Ange Loft / LAL with guests Ill Nana, Victoria Mata, Gaitrie Persaud and Jose Garia
March 1, 7pm

Museum of Contemporary Art Toronto

All You Can Hold is a multi-arts spectacle created to the music of LAL’s Album - Find Safety. A big hit at SummerWorks 2015, All You Can Hold incorporates the wearable sculpture of Ange Loft’s Cult of Kateri: Armour and Accessories and is directed by Ange Loft. Featuring Some of Toronto’s top queer and trans artists of colour, including, movement by ILL NANA/Diversecity Dance company and Victoria Mata, and projection design by Jose Garcia. Join us in creating a hallowed space, where we define for ourselves what it means to be holy, sacred, consecrated, sanctified, and blessed.

Design wearable cardboard sculpture and vocal audio tracks through movement and arts based exercises. Quickly create collaborative performance on systems of protection, resilience and hope. The workshop suite is created for Indigenous community groups and can be modified upon request.

For more information email

ReCollection Kahnawake brings together performers and creators to find their way through through books, family photos, and local stories to inspire arts-based research and collective creations. Working toward an eventual large scale community puppetry play, participants learn to facilitate their own arts workshops and pursue community arts training opportunities.

For more information email

Armour and Accessories

photo: Kevin Jones model: Kitsune Soleil

Material Witness

May 12 - May 29, 2026

In association with Spiderwoman Theater & Aanmitaagzi
A Loose Change Production by Spiderwoman Theater
Directed by Muriel Miguel
Written by Cherish Violet Blood, Penny Couchie, Donna Couteau,
Angela Loft, Gloria Miguel and Tanis Parenteau
with Muriel Miguel

Material Witness is part of La MaMa's Safe Harbors Indigenous Arts / Theatre Collective

In Material Witness, Spiderwoman Theater, regarded as one the most influential Native theatre companies “in the history of the country” (Oskar Eustis, Public Theater), turns their “story-weaving” dance-theatre to issues of violence against women in Indigenous communities.  Weaving together the real-life experiences of a multigenerational cast that also includes Native actors from Canada, the collaborative piece celebrates courage and generates healing.  Stalwarts of the downtown performance scene, Spiderwoman, cited for their "rollicking humor" by The New York Times, are marking their 40th anniversary.

Material Witness is "rowdy and playful, displaying an enormous sense of energy, strength and good will.  Yet its subject is dead serious: the physical abuse of indigenous women in the United States and Canada."
~ Anita Gates, The New York Times

After the Fire: Based on Interviews about Idle No More (2015)

Directed by Ange Loft. Featuring Cherish Violet Blood, Iehente Foote, Dustin Frank, Rosina Kazi, Gilda Monreal, Simone Schmidt, and Ange Loft.

poster art by Fiya Bruxa . photos by Jeff Bierk

In Case I Gotta Walk Back, 2018

My nation's territory extends beyond Montreal, Toronto and New York City. How nice of the highways, railways and borders to run through our towns. How clear the path, moving along the side of the highway, leads back home. My work deals with Haudenosaunee history, symbolism and buried narratives of displacement and resistance. Through arts based research, talking and sewing, I endeavour to name what is missing, draw attention to the changes and to reconstruct belonging.

You're Welcome

Jason Baerg, Vanessa Dion Fletcher, Ange Loft, Logan MacDonald

A SPACE WINDOWS

Exhibition runs November 6 2018 - January 19 2019

Reception: November 9 2018: 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM

Curated by: Ryan Rice

Public Presentation Panel on Thursday, January 10, 2026 from 7pm- 8:30pm.

Re:Place: An Inquiry is a panel discussion co-presented with A Space Gallery @ UrbanSpace Gallery, 401 Richmond St. Toronto ON. Urbanspace Gallery is located on the ground floor beside Trinity Square Video.

The welcome mat, a rug that is placed on the ground in front of one’s home, is repurposed by Indigenous artists Jason Baerg, Ange Loft, Vanessa Dion Fletcher and Logan MacDonald as a metaphorical device to initiate and locate narratives to place. For You’re Welcome, the mat becomes the site of contemplation to address shared spaces, Indigenous presence, the colonial affect and personal / collective relationships to land. Each artist activates their mat as a means to contemplate and illustrate the discourse around land acknowledgment and protocols, which recognizes stewardship, ownership and hints of hospitality.

Drawn from creative expression and curatorial practice bearing in mind mediative actions, Land is Where Your Feet Touch the Ground (#LIWYFTTG) is a curatorial investigation led by Ryan Rice to examine forms of visual literacy to place through lived experience and collective mappings. You’re Welcome is framed as a tangible collective work developed for #LIWYFTTG and is about listening, looking, imagining and locating the stories the land will tell us through interpretations by Indigenous artists who navigate Tkaronto on a daily basis.

Ange Loft, Jason Baerg, Logan MacDonald, Vanessa Dion Fletcher and Ryan Rice are creative minds who embody the diversity Indigeneity offers. Individually and collectively, they activate and centre themselves on the land – in life, love, creation, and community.

ON TUESDAYS A Musical Neighbourhood Tour

Composer: Kyle Brenders

Librettist: Ange Loft, inspired and informed by community generated text

Musicians: Vania Chan, Christine Duncan, Ryan Scott, Kyle Brenders, Allison Au, the Ground Floor Choir & Making Room Choir, Conducted by Shifra Cooper. Recording Engineer: Alaska B. Design & Layout: Liam Coo, Parker Dirks, Sam Egan. Produced by : Jumblies Theatre (2017).

To book a tour email

This live radio play follows three women who grew up across the street from each other, tied forever through a mysterious disappearance. (2017)

director + designer+ performer Ange Loft
performer Cherish Violet Blood/ Iehente Foote
performer Dayna Danger
stage manager Iehente Foote
audio engineer Alaska B

http://buddiesinbadtimes.com/show/the-37th-rhubarb-festival/

The Rivers Speak: A Central Algoma Community Play (2017)
Performed at the Mississaugi First Nation Pow Wow Grounds, this is multi-year community play process that began in August 2013.

The project is led by Thinking Rock Community Arts in collaboration with a Creative Team of local and visiting artists, community advisors, Anishinaabe knowledge holders and Elders.

Something has changed, at least for one of us (2016)

Procession, poetry and evolving installation

Community members from Guelph and Kitchener responded to a public call to collaborate with artists Ange Loft, Gabriella Caruso, and Leslie McCue in a creative project inspired by and responding to the natural landscape found at the rare Charitable Research Reserve.

This project is part of SenseLabs, an initiative of Musagetes, with this edition co-presented by the rare Charitable Research Reserve.

Clay and Paper Theatre’s Our Last Best Hope (2013)

role: co-writer, costume designer

Yamantaka Sonic Titan's Opera 33 (2014) 33 is a 'Noh Wave' rock cantata featuring a polytextural melodramatic ballad presented in the reality of the YT//ST "Neverflat" Mythscape and is exactly 33 minutes in length. Blending a backing track and live musicians performing in time, a tale of jealousy, profound emptiness and worldly attachment is told. The repeated, self-destructive assassination attempts on Sister Brother (Ange Loft), mother of the "House of 33 Queens” by her jealous protege Diva Data (Daniel Ellis), are seemingly triggered by an austere techno beat, sound and vision becoming a sinister, living metronome, a performance score of repeated choreography, complicating vacuous club culture and underlining the rich tradition of Drag and lip-synching.

role: director, designer, performer