A document of a live, unrehearsed, and intuitive performance. No part of this work was composed or conceived of prior to the recording being made. The decisions of the performers were made in situ and agreed upon only wordlessly. It is presented here in its completely uncut, unedited form and contains no added effects or post-processing.
All reverberation and resonance audible in the recording is a result of the material qualities of the subterranean architecture of the Saddleridge water reservoir in northeast Mohkinstsis/Calgary, where A Monument to Tears took place. The recording is a single raw take.
A Monument to Tears inhabits the space of water; our voices are transformed through the absence of volumes meant to be contained. Tunnel would like to express gratitude and deep respect to those who have fought and continue to fight for the water, against the violence and greed of the colonial extractive industries, corrupt governments and militarized police. This work exists as a document of Mohkinstsis/Calgary subcutaneous worlds: which at the convergence of the Bow and Elbow rivers, are sustained by the water of the Bow glacier and the vessels and capillaries bolstering its flow.
Tunnel was initiated in 2015 as a collaborative sound practice between Magnus Tiesenhausen (S. Wurm) and sound artist Jen Reimer. Tunnel is an ongoing project of yearning for altered states of being compelled by sound. Using extemporaneous and site-specific singing as research methodology, JR and MT undertake embodied communications: devotional hymns to resonance, experiential studies of the architecture of auditory space.
At turns harmonious, microtonal, unresolved and liturgical, the continuity and transformation of this cycle of song draws parallels to the movements of water in it's own cycle; a particulate in cloud form, condensing, freezing and flowing over the land, filling the cistern itself, being circulated through the sequential infrastructures of the city and the body.
credits
released May 31, 2022
Performed and recorded late May 2017 by Jen Reimer and Magnus Tiesenhausen
Mastered by James Plotkin
Layout and Graphics by MH & MT
Made in conjunction with Calgary Arts Development and AUGHT\VOID
Special thanks to Calgary Water Services Dynamic Environment Lab, Dave McGregor, Matt Harrison, Connor Scott, Natasha Chaykowski and Peter von Tiesenhausen
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