Listening Alongside

Sound art examines Indigenous-settler relations.

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Sound is often perceived as an object or a product, when it might be better understood as an action or a process. Soundings: An Exhibition in Five Parts, on view at the Walter Phillips Gallery at the Banff Centre until Dec. 5, considers sound and its properties from many perspectives – not just as an act of reclaiming the power of Indigenous languages that colonialism sought to extinguish, but also to imagine the possible futurities of Indigenous aurality. This large group exhibition focuses on decentring extractive modes of colonial hearing in favour of Indigenous modalities of relational listening.

Co-curated by Candice Hopkins (Tlingit) and Dylan Robinson (Stó:lō), the exhibition is structured as a score with each conceptual section playing an important role in the overall composition. A banner-sized exterior text situates and grounds, calling visitors to be present and mindful of their own listening practices. It acts like a land acknowledgment, but within sonic as well as geographic space. 

Soundings has toured galleries across North America, and resonates in unique ways at at each location, with new artists participating, and other pieces added or changed. A durational aspect – formally and conceptually – reverberates within many works, insisting on greater relational consideration from visitors.

Strata by Olivia Whetung (Anishinaabe) is an assemblage of beadwork tapestries. Visually suggesting sound waves, they also point to the emotional labour involved in sonic production. NDN Love Songs by Peter Morin (Tahltan-French) includes seven small video monitors, each displaying sound and movement-based performances. While the performances were previously recorded, they are also re-enacted at each iteration of the exhibition, echoing backward and forward in time and space. Do’-gah – I don’t know [shrugging shoulders], a large-scale painting by Greg Staats (Skarù:reˀ - maternal / Kanien’kehá:ka), creates a pattern across the canvas through repetitions of the work’s title. Visitors are invited to interrogate their own knowledge systems by repeating all 60 phrases of Do’-gah, along with additional instructions in the work's didactic label.  

The exhibition encourages visitors to listen beyond the gallery’s walls in relation with the land itself. A laser-cut sculptural fire bowl created by Tania Willard (Secwépemc) is a functional device that creates social interactions both inside and outside the gallery during gatherings. While it might be an empty vessel, it holds a future sonic imaginary full of endless potential. 

It’s the work of Sebastian De Line, an artist and scholar of Kanien’kehá:ka and Cantonese descent, that most profoundly affects me. Their audio guide, Walking Ohénton Karihwatéhkwen (walking + words before all else), requires the listener to participate in private sonic experiences while navigating public spaces both inside and outside the gallery.  During the sixth track – “Who’s left in the space?” – De Line’s voice pounds in my ears, as their feet pound the floor during this literal running dialogue. The audio guide is a durational performance piece, and De Line’s words call into question who is represented, and who is not, within often-exclusionary contemporary art spaces. A frantic feeling is evoked. While De Line’s fatigue is evident by the end of the piece, there’s a sense of intimacy, drawing me into a different physical, psychological and emotional state of being.

The works in Soundings may not be easily consumable from a settler-colonial perspective, but that’s why they are so powerful – they are layered with meanings that resist easy interpretation. A deeper affective understanding can come from not simply hearing, but really listening to what they say. 

During my visit, other patrons repeatedly sought explanations from a young docent. I thought of co-curator Dylan Robinson’s recent writings about the settler-colonial practice of “hungry listening,” which seeks to extract and consume Indigenous ways of knowing, rather than relating to them. Was this desire to “know”  a form of relational exchange or one of consumption? Hopefully, a visit to this exhibition can provide – as the curators mention in the show’s introductory text – an opportunity to “listen alongside.” 

Soundings: An Exhibition in Five Parts at the Walter Philips Gallery at the Banff Centre for Arts and Culture from Sept. 10 to Dec. 5, 2021. The artists are Raven Chacon, Cristóbal Martinez, Sebastian De Line, Camille Georgeson-Usher, Maggie Groat, Kite, Germaine Koh, Aaron Leon, Tanya Lukin Linklater, Ogimaa Mikana, Peter Morin, Diamond Point, Heidi Aklaseaq Senungetuk, Greg Staats, Olivia Whetung, Tania Willard, Chandra Melting Tallow, T’uy’t’tanat-Cease Wyss and Anne Riley. 

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Walter Phillips Gallery, Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity

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