Listener Ship

 
 

Listener Ship was an exploration of place-responsive architecture by considering the land as notation. How can a structure resonate with and fully embody the land? How can a structure be an instrument the land is speaking through? How can the artist be an instrument the land is speaking through?

As a child, one of my first “art practices” was building forts. I would spend hours in the woods collecting and assembling materials to create spaces to be on the land. I remember building a small dome of spruce bows, that just fit my body, and a small structure of fallen branches and birch bark. I always felt safe in these structures, that they were womb-like reflections of me and the landscape. I also felt they offered a frame to listen to the land, through their material resonance.

While at the Banff Centre for the 2016 Visual + Digital Arts Indigenous Residency, I was feeling a need to step out of the institutional studio building, and connect with the land. It was a stretch of -35°C weather in the mountains, and snow had freshly fallen. As I walked around the woods I noticed a lot of deadfall on the ground, matter shed by the trees.

I began collecting and accumulating this material. The intent was to create a temporary structure to listen to the Bow River by employing a creative process of embodied listening—assembling what was offered by the forest, allowing the small parts to inform the larger vision. Over time, a structure emerged and my tracks began to form a kind of notation in the snow, along with other creatures who were sharing the forest: elk, squirrel, deer. Then, eventually, people.

The sculpture became a temporary space for people to gather and listen, and it had its own life as it slowly returned to the land. 

Photo of co-resident Tiffany Shaw-Collinge’s son Jasper enjoying Listener Ship!

 

Video created by co-resident William Franco, an artist from southern California now living in Aotearoa/New Zealand. With little instruction, William was trying to find Listener Ship by following accumulated tracks and traces and resonances in the land.

 
“Made in snowy, minus-30-degree weather in less than a week’s time, Listener Ship illustrates Dobbin’s wilful commitment to making work in tune with the elements. Dobbin invited guests to the studio to sit together and hear the land. The land holds incredible knowledge that is often drowned out by the noises of everyday life and industry. Listener Ship provided a space to spend time with the land and one another, in the important act of listening.”
— Erin Sutherland, Canadian Art Magazine
 

TESTIMONIAL:


“Lindsay Dobbin’s work is often site-specific and furtive. They collaborate with nature, creating with found materials, and playing with sound. Over the five-week residency [at the Banff Centre], I heard murmurs about Lindsay’s “other studio” in the woods, but it wasn’t until the second last day of the program that they led a guided walk to the Listener Ship.

A small group of us quietly walked with Lindsay through the snow covered forest, following their tracks from previous outings–the mark making revealing something like a map to our destination. It was a blue bird day, the sun shining bright despite the frigid cold.

After weaving through the trees for a while, we eventually arrived at the Listener Ship–a small hut made of gathered and arranged deadfall from the forest behind Glyde Hall. The structure sits upon a bluff that overlooks the Bow River–looking west, the Bourgeau mountain range can be seen upstream–looking south one sees Bow Falls tumbling directly below, while the Banff Springs Fairmont Hotel sits across the river reminding visitors of Banff’s colonial history. The view is breath taking–sublime. My breath is visible as it leaves my body. The forest is quiet, yet the roar of the falls is relentless.

Before entering the fort, Lindsay talked about their process of making with the materials “offered by the forest” and the quality of “embodied listening” as they determined the placement of each piece of wood–they talked about their return to childhood and their desire to connect more deeply with the land, and how the marks of their footsteps in the snow became a record of the process. They then invited us inside the fort where we huddled close, shoulder to shoulder, sitting on the ground, filling the ship with our puffy parkas, toques and scarves, rosy cheeks and smiles, breathing each other’s cloud breaths.

For a moment, I felt like a child, recalling a sense of imagination, wonder, and play. Listener Ship is an ephemeral sanctuary for listening and communing with the land.

As I approached Listener Ship, an idyllic setting for a fortress for little (and big) people, I was still very aware of the colonial history of this place and the unresolved contested territories across these lands. Despite these conflicting internal experiences, I do believe it is important to nurture our innate wonderment of creation, and to cultivate a sense of gratitude towards that which is sacred. It is these qualities that help us to love and build healthy relationships–to care for where we come from and our families, the water and land–to pay attention, and tread mindfully as we move forward.”

— Angela Marie Schenstead, Tea & Bannock