HORIZON FACTORY:
SISTERS OF THE CELESTIAL ORDER OF NEPHOLOGY

The Sisters of the Celestial Order of Nephology (the study of clouds) is an interdisciplinary performance project by Horizon Factory (Erin Hill and Nina Vroemen).

Deep Gazing, a term coined by The Sisters, is a practice for personal and collective attunement to the environment and self. Inspired by Pauline Oliveros’s Deep Listening work, it bridges cloud identification and forecasting with tools for creating personal and intimate links with the weather.

A storm does not end, but continues to move, to shift, and influence other systems.

Deep Gazing is a timely practice that has helped The Sisters think through what it means to be a part of a complex, interconnected world and how to attune to the environment sensorially, sensually, and spiritually.

Polluting clouds from factory smoke stacks, exhaust clouds from fume pipes, atmospheric clouds on the horizon, electronic clouds where data is stored; The Sisters of the Celestial Order of Nephology (the study of clouds) is an interdisciplinary performance project by Horizon Factory (Erin Hill and Nina Vroemen).

Forming in 2019, during a dance residency at Studio 303 (Montreal), the fictitious, sudo-sect of two, blue cloaked, atmospheric-nuns were called by the unseizability of clouds and the ephemeral narratives that form them. These narratives are personal, environmental, futuristic, and potential warning signs.

DEEP GAZING EXHIBITION
PHI CENTRE, 2025



DEEP GAZING BOOK:
Small-print publication,  2024

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The Sisters of the Celestial Order of Nephology want to thank the people and places that have supported this work since its beginnings. Thanks to Studio303, RURART, Fonderie Darling, OBJECTO festival, Centre de Creation O Vertigo, Artscape Gibraltar, Summerworks Festival, PAF-Performing Arts Forum, Eastern Bloc. We thank and acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts. We especially want to thank our celestial mentorsand honorary cloud sisters, Anne Bourne and Erin Robinsong. Two beautifully attuned and inspiring people who have helped us in thinking through what it means to be a part of the hydro-commons and how to attend to the environment sensorially, sensually, spiritually. & to Sydney McManus, our graphic designer, who has rendered all of these ideas into a gorgeous, playful visual language. She has put so much care in connecting with our ideas and materializing them through design.
Lors de sa deuxième édition, l’évènement À TABLE sondera la notion de territorialité en rassemblant différentes pratiques artistiques et agricoles qui (re)pensent nos façons d’entrer en relation avec les territoires, à la fois en surface, en profondeur et en hauteur. Les artistes et intervenant·es invité·e·s à faire territoire partagent une volonté de décentrer les humain·es de l’histoire et du territoire, de décoloniser les espaces et les savoirs tout en adoptant une multitude de points de vue sur le monde. Leurs intérêts se situent aux croisements de différents modes d’occupation et d’utilisation du territoire propres aux humain·es et au autres-qu’humain·es. Les interventions artistiques qui ponctuent la programmation porteront notre attention sur l’interrelation entre les règnes végétaux, animaux et minéraux, sur des phénomènes météorologiques, sur des traditions ancestrales ainsi que sur des pratiques contemporaines qui brouillent les frontières entre nature et culture.

Deep Gazing Performance
Spring Pique Festival, Arts Court, Ottawa
2024



DEEP GAZING RESIDENCIES:
Eastern Bloc & Performing Arts Forum
summer 2023

                                                                                                                             

                                                                                                     

DEEP GAZING: SUMMERWORKS + ARTSCAPE GIBRALTAR RESIDENCY
summer 2022



This insight into clouds and reattuning to weather is significant information for the world today as we open to change with guidance from quantum work like yours, that activates beauty, irony without cynicism, and the infinite of the surreal with a loving gaze, as ways through.
-Anne Bourne

Let the clouds direct you in ways of seeing, slowing, being in-relation,and reimagining possible futures.

Deep gazing, led by the Sisters of the Celestial Order of Nephology, is an interdisciplinary performance project inspired by experimental composer Pauline Oliveros and her practices of Sonic meditation and Deep Listening®,

Oliveros asks, what does it mean to listen? In response, the Sisters ask, what does it mean to look?

For the SummerWorks Lab Horizon Factory shared how to identify messages and meanings in the clouds beyond the conventions of weather forecasting, and explain how to make predictions with cloud formations through a series of embodied exercises.

Huge thank you to Deep Listening practicioner and artist Anne Bourne was a consultant on the project.
and the generous support from The Canada Council for the Arts.

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Place Publique is a space for visual arts and the public, set up every summer on Ottawa Street in front of the Fonderie Darling buildings. Site-specific artworks, performances, and workshops activate and transform the space into an interactive platform that brings together artists and citizens. Through a variety of activities, audiences have unique aesthetic experiences in a friendly and festive open-air environment. By creating this site of expression, the Fonderie Darling affirms the role that art plays in enriching the community’s well-being and quality of life.

HORIZON FACTORY performed The Sister’s of the Celestial Order of Nephology August 27th, 2020 as #4 instalment of the Allegorical circuits for Human Software.

Curator: by Laurie Pigeon

In response to the covid pandemic masks were manditory at the event and the experince was also live streamed. The experience is now availble on vimeo: