Decolonial Echoes: Voicing and Listening in Rebecca Belmore's Sound Performance
Focusing on the Canadian settler context, this article analyzes two of Anishinaabe artist Rebecca Belmore’s interactive works that enact alternatives to colonial understandings of voicing and listening that have centred the human ear and vocal apparatus. In particular, I analyze Ayum-ee-aawach Oomam...
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Institute for Performance Studies, Simon Fraser University
2020
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fterudit:oai:erudit.org:1075796ar 2023-05-15T13:28:31+02:00 Decolonial Echoes: Voicing and Listening in Rebecca Belmore's Sound Performance Blake, Iris Sandjette 2020 http://id.erudit.org/iderudit/1075796ar https://doi.org/10.7202/1075796ar en eng Institute for Performance Studies, Simon Fraser University Érudit Performance Matters vol. 6 no. 2 (2020) http://id.erudit.org/iderudit/1075796ar doi:10.7202/1075796ar ©, 2021Iris SandjetteBlake text 2020 fterudit https://doi.org/10.7202/1075796ar 2022-01-16T00:12:38Z Focusing on the Canadian settler context, this article analyzes two of Anishinaabe artist Rebecca Belmore’s interactive works that enact alternatives to colonial understandings of voicing and listening that have centred the human ear and vocal apparatus. In particular, I analyze Ayum-ee-aawach Oomama-mowan: Speaking to Their Mother (1991), where Belmore constructed a large wooden megaphone for participants to speak into and address the land directly, and Wave Sound (2017), where Belmore installed four sculptural listening tubes in Canadian National Park and reserve sites that invited visitors to listen to the land. Through my analysis of these two iterative performances, I examine how the echo functions as a decolonial gesture and multisensorial (re)mapping that can generate alternatives to modernity’s spatial-temporal-sensorial order and unsettle the coloniality of the voice. Engaging critical work in sound studies and Native feminist theories to think about vibration, I propose that voicing and listening can be understood as a set of social relationships between people and space/time. Text anishina* Érudit.org (Université Montréal) Performance Matters 6 2 8 25 |
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Érudit.org (Université Montréal) |
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fterudit |
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English |
description |
Focusing on the Canadian settler context, this article analyzes two of Anishinaabe artist Rebecca Belmore’s interactive works that enact alternatives to colonial understandings of voicing and listening that have centred the human ear and vocal apparatus. In particular, I analyze Ayum-ee-aawach Oomama-mowan: Speaking to Their Mother (1991), where Belmore constructed a large wooden megaphone for participants to speak into and address the land directly, and Wave Sound (2017), where Belmore installed four sculptural listening tubes in Canadian National Park and reserve sites that invited visitors to listen to the land. Through my analysis of these two iterative performances, I examine how the echo functions as a decolonial gesture and multisensorial (re)mapping that can generate alternatives to modernity’s spatial-temporal-sensorial order and unsettle the coloniality of the voice. Engaging critical work in sound studies and Native feminist theories to think about vibration, I propose that voicing and listening can be understood as a set of social relationships between people and space/time. |
format |
Text |
author |
Blake, Iris Sandjette |
spellingShingle |
Blake, Iris Sandjette Decolonial Echoes: Voicing and Listening in Rebecca Belmore's Sound Performance |
author_facet |
Blake, Iris Sandjette |
author_sort |
Blake, Iris Sandjette |
title |
Decolonial Echoes: Voicing and Listening in Rebecca Belmore's Sound Performance |
title_short |
Decolonial Echoes: Voicing and Listening in Rebecca Belmore's Sound Performance |
title_full |
Decolonial Echoes: Voicing and Listening in Rebecca Belmore's Sound Performance |
title_fullStr |
Decolonial Echoes: Voicing and Listening in Rebecca Belmore's Sound Performance |
title_full_unstemmed |
Decolonial Echoes: Voicing and Listening in Rebecca Belmore's Sound Performance |
title_sort |
decolonial echoes: voicing and listening in rebecca belmore's sound performance |
publisher |
Institute for Performance Studies, Simon Fraser University |
publishDate |
2020 |
url |
http://id.erudit.org/iderudit/1075796ar https://doi.org/10.7202/1075796ar |
genre |
anishina* |
genre_facet |
anishina* |
op_relation |
Performance Matters vol. 6 no. 2 (2020) http://id.erudit.org/iderudit/1075796ar doi:10.7202/1075796ar |
op_rights |
©, 2021Iris SandjetteBlake |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.7202/1075796ar |
container_title |
Performance Matters |
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6 |
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2 |
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8 |
op_container_end_page |
25 |
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1766404599452794880 |