the commute, 2021, continues to explore the concept of commuting and its relationships to safety, accessibility and public transportation. In this iteration we have invited artists who are currently or recently located in the islands surrounding Vancouver. Joy Ngenda, Jay White and Jenni Schine have produced new audio-based works relating to their daily commute or a route between places of their choosing. The works are available for free download accompanied by online maps (when required) to follow while you listen to the artists’ audio works.
Due to the current pandemic that requires us to shelter in place with limited travel, we are adapting the public engagement of the commute as necessary while restrictions are in place.
Curated by Whitney Brennan
Morning Episode | Joy Ngenda
Joy Ngenda’s Morning Episode (2021) takes the listener on a commute through consciousness; rising slowly with what we perceive is daylight, into a brighter, but still drowsy morning ritual. Ngenda guides us into this experience of waking while also retreating into narratives of dreams, of traveling, pitstops, and passing trees. In the overlapping narratives of voices that speak of memories and dreams, we hear the shifting pangs of yearning, of independence, of the weight of family in wakefulness as in sleep. How we dream about the banality of interactions, small gestures, and the smells and flavours of memories.
“Are you ready to wake up yet? It's ok if you’re not.”
yawn.
‘It’s ok if you’re still tired.”
This commuting through consciousness meanders deeply, without pause for waking fully, and asks us how sleep drifts out of the body, or lingers.
If we cannot share the journeys of everyday commuting anymore, where do we find a sense of sharing a to-and-from, a here-to-there, of moving from place to place? In waking, we find ourselves leaving what can still exist in the Before Times; maskless, traveling, sharing tea with family in our homes.
Perhaps there’s also a contemplation on the shift in consciousness that is happening now, into a hopeful and long-awaited After. The ease of sleep, yet one that is plagued with dreams and dis-ease, gives way to a morning that comes with a static, the sound of a boiling kettle, the mechanical sound that pricks wakefulness behind our eyes.
Listening instructions:
This piece is not tied to specific land or territories. Listen to it as you wake up, when you find yourself lost in your own mind, when contemplating dreams. Let it bring you through a resting place, a waking place, and into the day ahead.
Joy Ngenda
Joy Ngenda is a queer, mixed settler + West African transplant who has been living on unceded Lekwungen lands for the last 5 years. They are a multi-disciplinary artist and sometimes student, with a passion for ethical organizing and community justice. Their artistic practice is rooted in conceptualization of experiential emotion and individual moments both imagined and realized.
Find them on Instagram: @contr4ry, @joyngenda
Jay White | Inter-uption
I live on Nex̱wlélex̱m (Bowen Island) in unceded Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Territory, and walk about seven hundred meters to my workplace - a single room studio underneath my father-in-law’s house. Because of COVID, I work online, so I no longer travel to the city.
Walking from home to the studio with a sensitive microphone and earphones guides me to attune more closely to the acoustic landscape of my neighbourhood. It quickly became obvious (and extremely frustrating) to hear the chorus of birdsong talked-over and interrupted by the unearthly drone of machinery, the roar of vehicles, and constant air traffic.
The audio file you are about to listen to is an effort to remove these interruptions, and fake a recording of unimpeded Nex̱wlélex̱m bird-speech. I carefully pieced through one particular recording, attempted to identify each bird species, and found clean recordings of these birds’ songs. The audio clips come from Richard E. Webster (with his permission), who travels Turtle Island and records birdsong in places where they may sing without disruption.
In Order of Appearance,
and including the locale of the recording:
Pine Siskin – Shoshone-Bannock Territory
Dark-Eyed Junco – Mescalero Apache Territory
American Crow – Dënéndeh, Takla & Wet’suwet’en Yintikh Territories
Black-Capped Chickadee – Mississauga & Anishinabewaki ᐊᓂᔑᓈᐯᐗᑭ Territories (Treaty 20)
Yellow Warbler – Chiricahua Apache & O’odham Jeweḍ Territories
Pileated Woodpecker – Mvskoke & Yamassee Territories
Hermit Thrush – Cree & Michif Piyii (Métis) Territories – (Treaty 10)
Black-Headed Grosbeak - Chiricahua Apache & O’odham Jeweḍ Territories
Pacific Wren – Lheidli T’enneh, Dakeł Keyoh (ᑕᗸᒡ ᗲᘏᑋ) & Dënéndeh Territories
*Liberties were taken to share the complexity and beauty of certain songs, which I did not hear in their entirety in the original recording.
**Territory names are from Native-Land.ca. Richard Webster’s recordings can be found at www.xeno-canto.org
Listening Recommendations
I invite you to first find a quiet place to relax for five minutes and appreciate the recording. Draw, journal, write, eat, drink. Don’t work though.
After this you may also want to listen to the recording as you walk through your neighbourhood.
The last portion of the audio file is a section of the original recording.
Jay White
Jay White is a European and Mi’kmaw descendant who lives on Nex̱wlélex̱m / Bowen Island, as an uninvited guest on unceded Skwxwú7mesh territory. His family is from St. Bernard’s / Fox Cove, Ktaqamkuk (Newfoundland).
Jay’s installations have exhibited internationally and his animated short films have won awards internationally. His animations have won Best Animated Short at the Worldwide Animation Festival, and a longlist entry for Academy Award nomination.
Jay teaches media arts, story development and animation courses at Emily Carr University.
Jenni Schine | Year Time
During this pandemic year of restricted movement and travel, a simple shared practice was that of walking through our own neighbourhoods. Movement also has the potential to unearth memories and dreams. What is stored in the layers of our bodies and subconsciousness from over a year of walking, collecting, digging, listening.
Field recordings made over the course of 2020-2021 in the traditional Lekwungen territories of the Songhees, Esquimalt and W̱SÁNEĆ Peoples (Victoria, BC) and in the traditional territory of the ʼNa̱mǥis Peoples (Malcolm Island, BC). Recording devices: H4N Zoom and iPhone.
