The 2025 Modulus Festival invites audiences to explore the future of music through four days of performances, art installations, workshops and social gatherings. The festival runs from Nov. 7 to 10 at the ANNEX and Roundhouse Community Arts & Recreation Centre in Vancouver.

This year’s festival embraces slow art, storytelling and reinvention, creating a space where audiences and artists come together to reimagine sound in community. Featuring music made from decommissioned weapons transformed into instruments, textile-based installations, and performances by some of Vancouver’s most compelling artists, Modulus blurs the boundaries between art, craft and performance.

Among this year’s most immersive experiences is Luddite Land Assembly, a collaboration between Music on Main and The Only Animal Theatre Society. This multidisciplinary project unfolds over three days at the Roundhouse, combining installation, live storytelling, craft and music. Inspired by the history of the Luddites, skilled textile workers of the Industrial Revolution who resisted automation and fought for fair work, Luddite Land Assembly reimagines their spirit for our contemporary moment.

The installation opens at 5:30 p.m. on Friday, Nov. 7, and remains on view until Nov. 9. Visitors enter a space alive with sound and texture, featuring visual art and design by Keely O’Brien (illustration), Barbara Adler (textiles and texts), Annie Simms (netting, texts and zine), anata laylay (photography and zine) and Ahmed Khalil (infographics). Throughout the installation, recorded soundscapes weave through the space, including Toni-Leah C. Yake’s Chorus of Absence, Julia Úlehla’s Across Watery Bodies I-III, Aram Bajakian’s Return, Why Choir’s (Roxanne Nesbitt and Ben Brown) Mined Dirt or Metal and Jen Yakamovitch’s Dude Chilling Park.

On Saturday, Nov. 8, the project expands into four hands-on crafting sessions throughout the day, where participants are invited to watch “magic tricks with natural dyes.” These one-hour workshops, hosted by The Only Animal, provide an opportunity to explore colour transformations using plant-based dyes while listening to storytellers share personal reflections on how these practices connect them to place, land and culture.

Each session highlights a unique storyteller and material. At 11 a.m., Daphne Woo works with logwood, sharing how her experiences in global fashion shaped her return to slow processes that honour land and community. At 2 p.m., Rita Point Kompst reflects on healing through cedar weaving and mushroom-based dyes gathered by her friend and collaborator, mycologist and artist Willoughby Arevalo. The 5 p.m. session features Bernarda, who connects her Indonesian heritage to the traditional art of batik dyeing and her project the Batik Library. Finally, at 6 p.m., Valérie d. Walker, an “Indigo Griot,” guides participants through the meditative art of shibori and indigo dyeing, sharing her deep relationship with living, bio-fermented indigo vats.

Throughout these sessions, storytelling and making are inseparable acts. As fabrics are dyed, stitched and transformed, stories of migration, healing and cultural memory emerge. Participants’ dyed and embroidered pieces gradually come together into a large-scale, plant-dyed textile installation, revealing hidden designs by Keely O’Brien. The process itself becomes a form of collective composition, where each gesture, each story and each shade of colour adds to the evolving tapestry of the work.

On Sunday, Nov. 9, the final day of the installation, the stitching continues during the Luddite Land Assembly concert, a celebration of music and craft. Audiences are invited to pick up naturally dyed materials to stitch or create cordage while enjoying performances by Tsimka & Michael Red and Caley Watts.

Tsimka & Michael Red create deep, meditative soundscapes and atmospheres, with music and energy inspired by dub, nature and non-physical life. Breaking ice, a Squamish Valley wolf, a large cat in the dark, birds, ocean and mist all become part of their sonic palette. Tsimka sings in her heritage language, Tla-o-qui-aht ƛaʔuukʷiʔatḥ, exploring themes of love, cleansing, healing and liberation. Michael layers Tsimka’s ethereal voice over recorded sounds from ƛaʔuukʷiʔatḥ, her home territory, and Sḵwx̱wú7mesh territory, where she recently lived for two years.

They are joined by Cree singer-songwriter Caley Watts, whose music carries the rivers, mountain ranges and rainforests of the Nuxalk territory. Drawing from folk and roots traditions, Caley’s songs reflect her deep ties to place and community. Her debut album, River’s Daughter, was created in collaboration with artists such as William Prince, Serena Ryder and Kinnie Starr, and celebrates the pace and beauty of her home.

Together, these performances, workshops and installations form a living dialogue between past and present, hand and ear, land and sound. The Luddite Land Assembly reminds us that creation can be an act of resistance and renewal, a way to reconnect through listening, care and community.

About Music on Main ‘Music that brings us together.’ That is Music on Main’s mandate. Music on Main, or MoM, presents innovative musical experiences through festivals, free community concerts, immersive productions and high-quality digital programming. Its mission is to connect people by developing artists’ and audiences’ relationships to music, to each other and to themselves. MoM presents top-flight musicians across classical, new and genre-bending music in casual, welcoming environments. Since launching in 2006, Music on Main has built a local, national and international reputation as a storyteller for a post-classical age. Under artistic director David Pay, its programming reflects the intercultural and socially diverse fabric of Metro Vancouver while fostering connection and exploring its role in contributing to reconciliation between settlers and Indigenous communities.

This article is part of a Tyee Presents initiative. Tyee Presents is the special sponsored content section within The Tyee where we highlight contests, events and other initiatives that are put on either by us or by our select partners. The Tyee does not and cannot vouch for or endorse products advertised on The Tyee. We choose our partners carefully and consciously, to fit with The Tyee’s reputation as B.C.’s Home for News, Culture and Solutions. Learn more about Tyee Presents.

• Share:
• **

Get The Tyee’s Daily Catch, our free daily newsletter.

** The Barometer

What Do You Think of PM Carney’s First Months?

• I’m still excited about PM Carney.

• His shine has worn off for me.

• I never liked the guy.

• I don’t know.

• Tell us more…

Take this week’s poll