Awake and Still Drowning Xosecret

Awake & Still Drowning is a hands-on mixed-reality performance where audiences move together as a flock of seabirds attempting to cross the rapidly flooding Chignecto Isthmus—the narrow land bridge connecting Nova Scotia to mainland Canada.Wearing Meta Quest headsets, participants navigate a shifting landscape guided by quiet narration, hand-drawn/animated text, and a bird companion.The work is designed as choreography as much as VR.

Passthrough keeps participants aware of one another, so the movement of bodies in the room becomes part of the piece: people cluster, pause, adjust, and respond together as the sea rises.

Those waiting to enter the headsets observe the group from outside the play space, then roles switch.Rooted in Atlantic Canada’s coastline and climate realities, awake & Still Drowning invites audiences to feel environmental change not as a distant headline, but as something shared, physical, and unfolding in the present.