Listening to Ice and Moving Water
Description of the Exhibition
Although the St. Lawrence River is often enjoyed for its stunning views, we experience it in a multisensory way. Tania Candiani’s work is installed at a lookout where visitors might once have used binoculars to view the landscape. But Candiani wanted to re-involve the body by dissociating ourselves from what we see and, therefore, intellectualize. In this piece, she invites us to experience winter by listening to the ice and the moving water.
The mechanism behind this work was inspired by acoustic mirrors, used during both world wars to determine the location of warplanes and submarines, among other things. Here, Candiani subverts its military function to give it a more contemplative purpose. Inviting us to “connect with our own giant ear,” she reminds us that beyond and before the violence and the battles waged to gain territory, there are land and water—and here, there is also ice.
