False; Flat; Fake - a soundwalk

False; Flat; Fake - A Soundwalk

By focussing on the study of humans in society, Turberville reminds that historical research brings together human character along with human wills, minds and emotions. Many fields of research, including history, are enveloped in understandings of subjectivity as a cultural artifact that varies with time. Westerkamp likens our current environmental, social and economic challenges to an opportunity to reflect on personal (subjective) connections in relation to the present situation, as well as the need for individual actions and responsibility to counteract present day imbalances. Hindsight is indeed twenty-twenty, leading one to wonder how those in the near future will perceive our subjective examinations of the current global situation, as well as the wills, minds and emotions that led to those cultural artifacts.

This map-directed, self-paced "digital soundwalk" stirs up subjective and objective particulate matter, and hopefully also action and responsibility, floating in the spaces and places of two of Vancouver's rapidly evolving neighbourhoods, the False Creek Flats and Olympic Village. Names changes to this area - from Snauq to False Creek - underscore its interstitial nature, with the ebb and flow of social, cultural, economic, colonial and political forces influencing its spatial configurations. Yet our hold over this land is tenuous at best: as artists Rhonda Weppler and Trevor Mahovsky remind with their public artwork "A False Creek," the repercussions of climate change and rising tidal waters could potentially undermine and drown out any short-sighted and thin understanding of humankind's grip on power and control over this area.

Meandering through highly managed spaces and places, this soundwalk draws scant remnants from this area's previous lives and histories. Our wills, minds and emotions inform the subjective cultural artifacts that bubble forth as walkers and listeners circulate, energize and engage with notions of home, place and belonging in the interstitial tidal zone among the area's more current flotsam, jetsam, and detritus.

Tune your eyes and ears to this space for publication of the map and instructions for this sound walk's self-directed tour. Details will be provided prior to soundwalk Sunday, the September 1st kickoff to a month-long series of international soundwalk events.

Artist Bio: Jorma Kujala’s research, carried out through academic and interdisciplinary art practices, are enveloped by theories of identity and the construction of a global cross-cultural “home.” Building on his BFA (Emily Carr University of Art + Design, 2010) and MA (Simon Fraser University, 2016), as well as a process-based art practice that includes painting, drawing, and soundwalking, his PhD studies at SFU have advanced his research in the shared knowledge, identity, memory, and social interaction that occur when culture, communication, and social change intersect. He is currently exploring theories relating to embodiment, phenomenology and performance, and how the human interacts with the non-human, predominantly through his sensory ethnography research, including soundwalking. He also investigates repetition and re-enactment and the bodily interplay between individual, senses, and environment.

Photo Credits: Jorma Kujala