Rebecca Belmore, 'Lake Minnewanka's shoreline in Banff National Park, heard through Wave Sound,' 2017

Rebecca Belmore, Lake Minnewanka’s shoreline in Banff National Park, heard through Wave Sound, 2017
Audio work, 3:06 minutes
Courtesy of the artist

What is heard here was recorded inside the sculpture, Wave Sound (2017), a work that was intended by artist Rebecca Belmore to amplify the sound of the water at Lake Minnewanka. As a visitor, after walking to the area where the piece was present, you could press your ear against one end of a long, sculptural cone that faced towards the lake, situated on the rocks of the shoreline. The texture of the sculpture was reflective of the rocks in the area, with the shape of an ear at the narrow end of the piece a cue to crouch, press your own ear to the form, and listen.

The focused sound of the movement of water was extraordinary in a place where the visual senses are so flooded with the spectacularity of mountain vistas. This natural amplification of the lake through the sculpture established a sense of an aural connection to this body of water, while the physical act of sitting alongside the work was also a kind of bodily commitment to spend time. In writing on the act of listening as it relates to Wave Sound, which also included three other works in the series intended to be used to listen to bodies of water situated within the National Parks of Pukaskwa and Gros Morne, and on Chimnissing Island, the curator of the work for LandMarks2017, Kathleen Ritter states, “Belmore’s work often uses sound as a site for an encounter, and here the act of listening becomes a slowing down of time and attention and awareness—an attunement with the land.” [1]

In addition to the works temporarily sited at these different National Parks and on Chimnissing Island, Wave Sound at Lake Minnewanka also had a relationship to Belmore’s work, Ayum-ee-aawach Oomama-mowan: Speaking to Their Mother (1991) that takes the form of a large megaphone made to project the voice of the speaker engaged in addressing the land. In an interview, Belmore describes the relationship between Wave Sound and this seminal piece, stating that “[i]n a sense, this current project is similar in that the objects will function as listening devices. It’s more about nature and the human body, and the art object is just the means to have a physical experience.” [2] Wave Sound invited an orientation of awareness towards the ear and to the bodies of water that it was in proximity to. What does it mean to listen to this sound of the lake online, without the presence of the sculpture or outdoors on its shore? As a listening device, the function of Wave Sound persists in the form of the audio work, Lake Minnewanka’s shoreline in Banff National Park, heard through Wave Sound, as through focusing the sound of the water heard as well as one’s attention, one may still become cognizant of what becomes differently present when we listen.

[1] Kathleen Ritter, “Attunement,” in Wordless: The Performance Art of Rebecca Belmore, ed. Florene Belmore. Vancouver: grunt gallery, 2019, 52.
[2] Lindsay Nixon, interview with Rebecca Belmore, “Rebecca Belmore Wants Us to Listen to the Land.” Canadian Art, July 7, 2017, https://canadianart.ca/interviews/rebecca-belmore-landmarks-2017/