AP: The show was at 7. Ahasiw came back at 6:30, in a panic because he hadn’t found his bag with all his performance text. “Archer do you have a fax machine?” “Yes.” And then he was on the phone to Regina, asking someone in the office to go into his computer, find a file, print and fax it to us in Vancouver. It came in 5 minutes before showtime.

He had the gallery volunteer (a handsome young Native guy) strip to the waist and lay behind him onstage, below the video projection screen. We had arranged the logs standing on end in a semi-circle in front of the stage. As Ahasiw read his text, the young guy would get up every five minutes or so, and push one of the 8 foot logs over, which would land with a resounding boom that shook the building. The effect was electrifying, and the performance was amazing.

SU: Ahasiw set the bar for being kind to people who he worked with (although he was a challenge when you were his curator – see above). The one time he gave me a talking to (like, a real one) was when I did a solo installation at Neutral Ground in Regina. I was having a moment about some tech glitch and he pulled me aside and told me stop upsetting the staff. Ahasiw was always able to get people to get over it, me included.