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THIRD SHIFT ARTISTS

Brandon Hoax

Trickster in the Long Grass

 
Long grass grows, a endless field of swaying stalks.
This installation is comprised of walls made of ribbon, extending from the ceiling to floor. The moving ribbon walls are open for the viewer to travel and explore inward, at the center is a field of LED screens, strewn along the floor, light emits upward, as stalks of wild grass grows through the broken cracks and holes. 
 

You can check out Trickster in the Long Grass and more at King’s Square on Saturday, the 15th of August!

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Brandon Hoax (they/them) (@BrutalistLonghouse) is a Haudenosaunee, Onyota’a:ka (Oneida), Two-Spirit Queer artist from London Ontario, and Oneida Nation of the Thames. Residing in K’jipuktuk (Halifax). Hoax’s practice explores the ever oscillating tensions and weight of yearning and desire (romantic, platonic, the self) using themes of hard and soft, sensuality and clinical, the body and the incorporeal, the threats of violence or invitations of care, desirability or disgust, while using materials and iconography from different facets of the artists personhood and interests.

THIRD SHIFT 

COMMUNITY PARTNERS

Key Industries

Details coming soon!

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Key Industries Inc. (@keyindustries1) is a Saint John-based organization that empowers individuals with disabilities through employment support, life skills training, and inclusive community programs. As part of their creative team, Sarah Gorospe (she/her), a Filipina artist and immigrant, contributes to the organization’s mission by facilitating expressive, hands-on art sessions that promote confidence, connection, and self-expression. Her work supports Key’s commitment to fostering dignity, purpose, and opportunity for all participants. Through collaboration and creativity, Sarah helps create welcoming spaces where individuals are encouraged to grow, belong, and thrive—reflecting the heart of Key Industries’ vision for inclusive community impact.

THIRD watch ARTISTS

Frida Jiaying Chen

A world that you left behind

In this experimental video essay, the “I” revisits a constellation of political ruptures and collective memories that unfolded after 2019-the year of their grandfather’s death. Structured as a letter addressed to him, the film reflects on how the “afterlife” he left behind —familial, social, and political —has continued to transform in his absence. The grandfather here becomes both an intimate witness and a symbolic interlocutor, someone shaped by another historical epoch to whom the present must now be explained. Through this epistolary form, the “I” recounts a world increasingly defined by mediation and instability. The film weaves together fragments of what Hito Steyerl terms “poor images”: compressed, low-resolution visuals that circulate through digital networks and accumulate meaning through repetition and degradation. Drawing from found footage, news clips, online archives, social media reels, and livestream recordings, the work assembles dispersed traces of events such as the COVID-19 pandemic, imperialist projects, far-right protests, and hyper-technological robot performances. Rather than presenting a coherent narrative, the film constructs an unstable visual field in which history appears as an overwhelming stream of recirculated images. Mourning becomes both personal and collective: a way of grappling with loss in an era of digital saturation, political polarization, and technological acceleration. By addressing the grandfather across the threshold of death, the “I” questions what kind of world has emerged since 2019-and whether it can still be meaningfully narrated or shared.

 

You can check out A world that you left behind and more on Friday, August 14th at the Saint John Arts Centre!

FridaJiayingChen
Frida Jiaying Chen (b. 1996, Shenzhen, China) (she/her) (@fridas.friday) lives and works in Montreal. Working primarily with moving image, her artistic research investigates alternative modes of knowledge production through counter-archaeology and vernacular archives, unsettling what is conventionally taken as given. Chen holds an MA in Contemporary Art Theory from Goldsmiths, University of London. Her research and practices have been presented internationally, including by Routledge, the Critical Planning Journal (UCLA), Rising Asia Journal, Ada X, Céline Bureau, among others.