Chris Hadfield’s Generator is an interdisciplinary supershow
Not just any old Earth rodeo, Generator is a joyful clash of science and art from out of this world.
On Thursday January 11th, 2018, hordes of science enthusiasts poured into Roy Thomson Hall on King Street in downtown Toronto to witness what is arguably a groundbreaking approach to science here on Earth — and it took a man who went to outer space to share it with us.
Generator started humbly in Toronto’s Massey Hall three years ago. Having attended that inaugural event, I expected to be amused, prone to wonderfully science pun-filled comedy, and tossed into a state of wonder at this year’s Generator. Despite not being advertised at all, it was nearly sold-out.
It’s hard to describe exactly what Chris Hadfield’s Generator experience is, but I will try to with my top 5 performances of the night below.
- Evan Hadfield, the man behind this mission and the son of the famed astronaut, Chris Hadfield, opened with a beautiful, moving speech about the future of storytelling. He commented on the state of the world and the emergence of a Canadian identity. He spoke about the founding of the Canadian culture, answering a long-asked question, But who are we as Canadians? He spoke of the ‘now’ — of the hall filled with excited citygoers, eagerly awaiting a slew of performers who all had their start right here in Toronto. He spoke about how each person had traveled a distance — some by bus, others by plane — to return to their home city to perform at Generator, and how the call of home was evidence enough of this age of enlightenment.
- The show was wonderfully tied together by Robin Ince, a English comedian whose witty commentary touched on Western politics, science marches that took place over the summer of 2016, and one-liners like, “What do we want? Climate change. When do we want it? On a geological timescale!” He flipped through photos of goats — his favourite piece in an art gallery, he said — and told the story of the artist Robert Rauschenburg, whose most moving truth set the stage for the show: “Why is art sad, and reflective of our pain? Why does our art not come from our joy?”
- The show continued with an equally stunning performance by spoken word poet Anis Mojgani, who delivered lines about togetherness and acceptance, asking the audience, “Come with me,” as he drew them into the age of enlightenment that Generator Toronto ultimately sparks and represents.
- Andrew Huang then joined the artists on stage, asking the audience to make a collective “Shhhhhh,” with the ease of a YouTuber making his millionth video. The 33-year old Ottawa-born musician, known for creating music by manipulating a single, strange object’s sound (such as crunching cabbage leaves, or a hundred-person audience making a shushing noise), then produced a song onstage, narrating and displaying his editing process as he created a complex melody from that single noise. The YouTuber then played it back, adding in lyrics to create a moving ballad, before exiting the stage.
5. He was then replaced by Space Archaeologist Sarah Parcak, an American archaeologist whose opening remarks were: “History is both a line and a circle…tyrants rise and tyrants fall”. She told the story of the looting of a precious historical site and explaining that all excavated artifacts had to be studied in context. When pilfered by looters, historians have their work doubled, trying to place the finds before they can begin studying them.
“Our shared history is effectively being lost,” she said, and then demonstrated her solution — an online game, GlobalXplorer , that she and her team created for users worldwide to help archaeologists analyze thousands of dig sites worldwide for signs of looting.
(It’s too hard to chose just 5 — here’s a bonus!)
6. After a rousing round of applause, we were introduced to Moshe Safdie, a Canadian-Israeli architect with a portfolio that can only be described as impressive. His work spans the globe — from a National Art Gallery on the Ottawa waterfront and the Institute of Peace in the United States, to the World Holocaust Remembrance Center in Israel. Safdie studied Sikh culture intently for almost two years in Anandpur Sahib before designing the Khalsa Heritage Center, a museum that vividly represented and embraced the cultural landscape of the community.
Chris Hadfield’s Generator is, at its core, a message of hope — the herald of a new age in which all intellectual disciplines will merge to complement each other in helping us answer life’s biggest questions: Who are we? What do we stand for? If we stand for hate, what happens to hope? And where exactly is our pale blue dot taking us?
Hadfield’s medley of performances doesn’t answer these questions, but it gives the audience the tools to think deeply and — even joyously — about them.
