Tyson Houseman
Tyson Houseman is a nehiyaw (plains cree) interdisciplinary video & performance artist, puppeteer, and filmmaker, originally from Paul First Nation and Ermineskin Cree Nation on Treaty Six territory. Tyson’s practice focuses on aspects of nehiyaw ideologies and teachings – speaking to Indigenous notions of non-linear time and the interwoven relations between humans and their ecologies. His work embraces ephemerality, ranging from immersive interactive installations to multimedia live video performance events. He has exhibited at various galleries, screenings, and film/media festivals across the US and Canada. Most recently he participated in artist residencies at Vermont Studio Center, the Institute for Electronic Arts at Alfred University, Locust Projects in Miami, FL, and is an upcoming recipient of the summer 2025 Open Call commissioning program at The Shed in NYC.
Along with producing his own works, Tyson directs documentary film and music videos, and is a touring puppeteer on various live cinema performances created by DJ Kid Koala. He spends his summers working with the historic Bread & Puppet Theater in Glover, Vermont, where he performs in shows and helps to grow food. Tyson is also a member of Okichitawak, a community based Indigenous warrior society founded by Ken Roan, a prominent Elder from Ermineskin Cree Nation, and Tyson’s grandfather. Together they have recently collaborated on a live video operatic performance called “The Six Seasons,” featuring lyrics sung entirely in nehiyawewin and written by Houseman and Roan. Tyson has an MFA in Fine Arts from School of Visual Arts in NYC and a BFA in Theatre Performance from Concordia University in Montreal.
Caustics is a new experimental documentary video work examining non-linear time from a nehiyaw cosmological perspective. This project is a reflection on the nature of diffracted time, geologic time, consciousness, and the non-linear paths towards healing intergenerational trauma across family histories and oral archives, all weaved together through teachings and prophecies told by nimosôm Ken Roan, a prominent Elder and community leader from Ermineskin Cree Nation. Drawing from the video essay structure, Caustics is inspired by the works, films, and writings of Deborah Stratman, Carlo Rovelli, Karen Barad, Jane Bennett, and Liz Howard. Caustics explores memories carried through colonial resistance and survivance, and presents an offering for a “place-based” deconstruction of time, ultimately revealing a truth rooted within both nehiyaw teachings and within quantum interpretations of consciousness: the movement of time is a fluid construct being created through our experiencing of it, and through our embodied relations to the movement of land.