To Be In Place
By The Humming Collective
Over the course of late Fall 2020 - Winter 2021, we created a multilayered, soundscape experience for the residents, shop owners, patrons, and visitors of Kensington Market in Tkaronto. Kensington is on the traditional land of the Haudenosaunee, Anishinabewaki ᐊᓂᔑᓈᐯᐗᑭ, Wendake-Nionwentsïo, and Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation and has been the meeting place and land of Indigenous peoples from across Turtle Island since time immemorial.
It is our hope that this project acts as a time capsule, a moving portrait, and a pause for reflection. In a cultural moment that feels incredibly urgent, there is a tendency to lean into calls for doing; for active movement, but how can we also lean back into reflection and the lineage of the people of the market -- how can our moments and art be sustainably momentous through the prioritization of reflection, spaciousness and rest; rest as our conscious exchange with history, and through a multi-sensorial immersive experience in which we are asking community members to show up authentically without the need to code-switch or perform, rest in the sense of feeling able to express oneself fully, openly, and in vulnerability.
Honouring the interdisciplinary nature of our collective, this project has a few components: First, we created a soundscape. A layered, dynamic repository of sounds from the market, music, and interlaced with speech from a variety of interviews with Kensington residents, workers, and shop owners. Then, we introduced an audio-visual immersive experience through our visualizers which can be found on our vimeo. In this moment, we have to prioritize means of connection beyond touch-- we wanted to use the dynamism of sound and light to make a space where residents and visitors can experience a pause of reflection for what it means to be fixed, in this moment, propelling forward with our community onto what’s next, without the chance to really be with each other physically.
Our multisensorial showcase prioritizes understanding the value of lateral networks of care and resilience in the market; especially actions of care towards one another, outside institutions and government systems such as the healthcare network, welfare system, non-profit sector, the police, schools, etc, and visioning and dreaming of just livelihoods and futures. This project also calls attention to the value and importance of intergenerational knowledge that is shared between people, whether they are from the same family, community, etc., or not. Particularly because of the different waves of shop owners, residents, and artists who have lived or currently live, work and move through the market and bring their own unique experiences and perspectives on life and art into the space to be shared with others. Moreover, we were curious about the ways in which the COVID-19 global pandemic and gentrification have affected our community disproportionately, especially Black and Indigenous peoples, care workers, small business owners, house-less folks, artists, and the working class. Our multi-sensorial showcase exhibits these bi-lateral networks of knowledge sharing through projections and oral storytelling.
Thank you to the interview participants, Ukai Projects + 187
Stay connected with The Hum: website: https://thehummingcollective.com insta: @thehummingcollective email: thehummingcollective@gmail.com