Kent Tate is a Canadian artist/filmmaker whose work explores the dichotomy between tranquility and activity in our natural and manufactured worlds. Time, motion and stillness are intertwined through Tate's work to act like a fulcrum upon which the environmental, social and philosophical aspects of his projects are held in dynamic balance. Tate has received awards, grants, and artist residencies for his projects which have been exhibited internationally at film/new media festivals, symposiums, group screenings/exhibitions and solo gallery exhibitions/tours.

Kent Tate: ARK (2023)

Preview: Moving Images & Music - Kent Tate. Ark describes a time when we had a front row seat where it seemed that we could see everything yet it felt as if we were seeing nothing at all.

Director’s notes: Over the years I’ve found fewer and fewer animals when I go out into nature to look at this or to film that. In the last year I haven’t found any wild animals and I've rarely heard any birds. So where have all the other animals gone? What has happened to them and what is happening to us?

The human niche or ecological polis of human society has created entirely new arrangements of ecosystems as we convert matter into technology. Currently, livestock make up 60% of the biomass of all mammals on earth, followed by humans (36%) and wild mammals (4%). As for birds, 70% are domesticated, such as poultry, whereas only 30% are wild.

“Modernization is the process by which capitalism uproots and makes mobile that which is grounded, clears away or obliterates that which impedes circulation, and makes exchangeable what is singular.” Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, Gilles Deleuze & Felix Guattari.