Getting to know the School for the Arts inaugural director

By Kristen McEwen

Artist, filmmaker and scholar Andrew Denton has travelled to every province and nearly every territory in Canada. In his 20s, he hitchhiked across the country—twice.

This is the first time Denton and his family have lived in Saskatoon thanks to his new role as the inaugural director of the School for the Arts at the University of Saskatchewan (USask).

The creation of the School for the Arts is the result of a multi-year project within the College of Arts and Science to elevate fine arts programming. As part of this revisioning project, the Department of Art and Art History, Department of Drama, and Department of Music have merged into a single school as of July 1.

Denton was “incredibly excited” when he learned he had been chosen to lead USask’s School for the Arts and its inaugural director.

“It’s an amazing opportunity to be part of a new school, its future history, and legacy,” he said.

The depth and breadth of expertise in the existing fine arts faculty, the programs already in place and the research culture were all elements that drew Denton to the position.

“There’s a strength to that group of discipline areas that supports a solid foundation for the new school,” Denton said. “Everyone here is so welcoming, warm, gracious and generous of spirit.”

Born in Vancouver, BC, Denton grew up in New Zealand. Denton estimated he has lived about half of his life in both countries.

“For me – when I was a kid, movies were everything. I worked in a video store and brought home piles of VHS tapes every weekend. As I grew up, that’s what I wanted to do, but I was living in a small country with no film schools at the time.”

Denton moved to Canada to attend film school at Simon Fraser University in B.C., where he earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts, focusing on experimental film, live performance (dance), and mediated technology practices.  During summers, Denton worked as a tree planter and reforestation supervisor in B.C., to support his studies.

After completing his BFA, Denton worked in the film industries in Canada and in New Zealand for a decade before moving into academia.

“I was doing lots of different things while I was studying,” he said. “I fell in love with cinema, and then the tree planting experience gave me a deep and tangible understanding of what human activities have done to the environment.”

He completed a Master of Contemporary and Performing Arts at the University of Auckland in New Zealand and a PhD at Monash University’s School for Art, design, and Architecture, in Australia.

Denton’s PhD had an ecological lens to exploration and investigation. One of his early films for his PhD project was about the pine beetle epidemic in B.C. and Alberta – focusing on subjective emotional responses to the beetle infestation in the provinces.

His next series of works (Crude and Flight), were informed in part by environmental philosopher Timothy Morton’s wry observation that “modernity is the story of how oil got into everything.”

“The series of works is a place to contemplatively think about how we move through the world and our impact upon it,” Denton said.

“Those films are more ... about how we sense things,” he added. “They’re not telling people how to feel, what to think or believe – they’re about asking people to be affected by their reception of the images and sound, as a way to maybe think the world differently.”

Denton’s artistic and scholarly works have included collaborations with his partner, Jennifer Nikolai, a dancer—choreographer, scholar, and associate professor. The pair have collaborated as co-researchers on projects involving film, dance, and live performance technologies. Denton’s other interdisciplinary collaborative research projects have included working with Antarctic geoscientists, dance and ageing, and early childhood engagements with water and the lived environment.

Before moving to Saskatoon with his family—including his partner and son—Denton was an associate professor in the School of Art and Design at New Zealand’s Auckland University of Technology. His leadership experience included terms as a program leader, department head, head of research, research ethics committee representative, and associate head of the School of Art and Design.

For Denton, the new School for the Arts is about providing excellent student experiences, a strong research culture, and working in a collegial environment where people are supportive of one another.

“It’s an education period for me, especially understanding the workplace culture, the strengths that already exist and how to build upon core values across the discipline areas collectively, to gain a deeper understanding of what we are and where we want to go together,” he said.

Denton will seek additional opportunities to connect with USask alumni and the local arts community.

“The three discipline areas are deeply connected with the community,” he said. “There’s a history of mutual respect, activity, and engagement that we want to build upon.”

Bringing different disciplines together will also bring opportunities for collaboration and research opportunities.

“The school will be looking for ways to create meaningful connective tissues between the different disciplines to create a strong collegial environment across the school and then build on those opportunities around research,” he said.

Denton encourages interdisciplinary research practices and approaches between the fine arts and other disciplines. “What do creative practitioners bring to other conversations that can guide alternate ways of understanding the complexity of our world?”

“I think about how creative practices can interface with other disciplines that they’re not traditionally aligned with,” he said. “What (impact) do the performing and fine arts have outside of the cinema? The gallery? The concert hall? The theatre?”

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