Germaine Koh is a Canadian artist based in Vancouver, unceded ancestral territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations. Her work often adapts familiar situations, everyday actions and common spaces to encourage connections between people, technology and natural systems. Her ongoing projects include Home Made Home (http://homemadehome.ca), an initiative to build and advocate for alternative forms of housing, and League (http://league-league.org), a participatory project using play as a form of creative practice. She was the City of Vancouver’s first Engineering Artist in Residence in 2018-20, and is scheduled to be the Koerner Artist in Residence at the University of British Columbia in 2021. In Summer 2020 she worked with the Belkin staff to help shape COVID-19 reopening protocols
On rainy days, set it outside to receive the rain.
Play along if you wish, letting the rain take the lead.
Germaine Koh’s drum is made from one of the cedar tree stumps she first brought to site for use as physical distancing stations. She worked with Belkin staff during Summer 2020 to develop COVID-19 safety and visitor interaction protocols that recognized the importance of collective care and teamwork. That work was guided by the metaphor of crown shyness, the phenomenon in which trees grow with distinct space between themselves, to avoid spreading pests and damaging each other. In the context of COVID, the human equivalent is “crowd shyness” — keeping one’s distance as a form of conscious citizenship. Koh has now adapted one of those stumps to give it voice, by hollowing it and fitting it with a drum head that will sound when it is left out in the rain.
Germaine Koh’s work is part of Soundings: An Exhibition in Five Parts at the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery (September 8-December 6, 2020).
Germaine Koh is a Canadian artist based in Vancouver, unceded ancestral territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations. Her work often adapts familiar situations, everyday actions and common spaces to encourage connections between people, technology and natural systems. Her ongoing projects include Home Made Home (http://homemadehome.ca), an initiative to build and advocate for alternative forms of housing, and League (http://league-league.org), a participatory project using play as a form of creative practice. She was the City of Vancouver’s first Engineering Artist in Residence in 2018-20, and is scheduled to be the Koerner Artist in Residence at the University of British Columbia in 2021. In Summer 2020 she worked with the Belkin staff to help shape COVID-19 reopening protocols
Forming two continuous lines on this part of the traditional, ancestral and unceded territory of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) people, wəɬ m̓i ct q̓pəθət tə ɬniməɬ by Diamond Point presents two images repeating in a sequence hung on the lampposts along UBC’s Main Mall from James Hart’s Reconciliation Pole to the plaza just beyond the Belkin.
[more]In Part One of NDN Love Songs, Peter Morin offers a score of instructions to musicians presented alongside seven video portraits. Part Two presents videos of recordings of previous iterations of the Soundings exhibition at Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Gund Gallery and Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery. In Part Three, Parmela Attariwala performs the score on the violin at the Belkin.
[more]Soundings: An Exhibition in Five Parts features newly commissioned scores, performances, videos, sculptures and sound by Indigenous and other artists who respond to the question, How can a score be a call and tool for decolonization? Unfolding in a sequence of five parts, the scores take the form of beadwork, videos, objects, graphic notation, historical belongings and written instructions. During the exhibition, these scores are activated at specific moments by musicians, dancers, performers and members of the public, gradually filling the gallery and surrounding public spaces with sound and action. Curated by Candice Hopkins and Dylan Robinson, Soundings is cumulative, limning an ever-changing community of artworks, shared experience and engagement. Shifting and evolving, it gains new artists and players in each location. For this iteration on Musqueam territory, the Belkin has collaborated with UBC's Musqueam Language Program in partnership with the Musqueam Indian Band Language and Culture Department; School of Music; Chan Centre for Performing Arts; First Nations House of Learning and Museum of Anthropology to support the production of new artworks and performances by local artists.
[more]The following is a list of resources related to Soundings: An Exhibition in Five Parts. The list of resources compiled here is not an official recommendation, but is rather a list of suggested readings compiled by Public Programs and graduate student researchers at the Belkin Art Gallery. These readings are intended to provide additional context for the exhibition and act as springboards for further research or questions stemming from the exhibition, artists, and works involved.
[more]Editioned face masks by artist Germaine Koh, who worked with the Belkin to develop a comprehensive approach to public interaction - Crowd Shyness.
[more]In crown shyness, trees grow with distinct space between their crowns to avoid spreading pests, to avoid damaging their own fragile tips and to leave room for their peers. They make small, individual sacrifices for collective health.
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