Events

The 13th Annual Indian Summer Festival took place from July 6-16th in Vancouver. In 2023 our distilled, powerful, ten-event lineup spoke to the theme of ‘inter/dependence’’. The idea of the individual human being as a distinct, autonomous, and self-determined unit is a fiction created by Euromodernity. Rather, Ancient Cultures have long understood that we exist in relationship to all. How could we truly understand our/selves in isolation when we are sculpted by near and distant conditions, and we affect all through our actions?

Our 2023 festival theme of inter/dependence was an invitation to our artists to unpack the illusion of separateness, to explore shifts in their own work from fragmentation and isolated individualism to constellations of connectedness. It is with this sentiment in our hearts – the power of the collective and the multivalent interdependence that is essential to societies and ecosystems – that we delivered this festival edition.

Imaginarium: Parables for a Planet in Crisis

Performance Works 1218 Cartwright St, Vancouver

Imaginarium is an electric evening of ideas, conversation and music hosted by award-winning Indigenous broadcaster and curator Jarrett Martineau and visionary artistic director Sirish Rao. Together, they invoke a long continuum of storytelling to weave present and past into intimate interviews with some of the world’s most noted writers and thinkers.  For this inaugural edition […]

$10 – $50

5×15: The Art of the Wild

Performance Works 1218 Cartwright St, Vancouver

"If 5x15’s packed soirees feel like an evening of offline, communal surfing, it’s due to the eclectic menu of speakers."  5×15 is a global speakers series that has hosted some of the world’s most highly regarded thinkers. Quite simply, it features five stellar speakers, speaking for fifteen minutes each on a topic they are deeply […]

$10 – $50

Rajni Perera: In Conversation with Devyani Saltzman

SFU Goldcorp Centre for the Arts 149 W Hastings St, Vancouver

"I've been an artist for thousands of years. I'm here again just to do the same that I've always been doing. ” –  Rajni Perera, The Globe and Mail (December 2022) Rajni Perera (Toronto) is one of the country’s leading multimedia artists. Her work explores issues of hybridity, futurity, ancestorship, immigration identity/cultures, monsters, and dream […]

Not What You Expected: Harsha Walia & Anjali Appadurai with Anoushka Ratnarajah

Performance Works 1218 Cartwright St, Vancouver

"Walia has played a central role in building some of North America’s most innovative, diverse, and effective new movements. That this brilliant organizer and theorist has found time to share her wisdom in is a tremendous gift to us all. ” –  Naomi Klein Two powerhouse activists pushing against the expectations to behave like a […]

Punch Up

Performance Works 1218 Cartwright St, Vancouver

“People want to laugh in order to deal with the pain and frustrations they’re feeling with the world.” -Hari Kondabolu, The Guardian For the first time ever at Indian Summer, we’re handing the mic over to a diverse roster of laughmakers for a dynamite night of standup. Sharing comedic rants, sharp satire, and hilarious reflections, […]