Other Channels
What might a river have to say for itself? (Part I)
From the Great Lakes to the Great Plains: The Visible Currents of Climate Change opens today (June 13th) through September 14th at Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts in Omaha, NE.
There will be two ways to experience “Other Channels” during the exhibition:
A new installation of the Bodies of Water series where the revealed audio is the “Other Channels” composition, and
A reprisal of “Other Channels” performed live by a string quartet from the Omaha Symphony on August 23rd (RSVP encouraged here)
The theme of the exhibition is obviously close to my heart — it’s all about water! And this work is the merging of two separate pieces I’ve made for Bemis in the past.
Back in 2019, I was exhibited as part of Inner Ear Vision: Sound as Medium where I had a Bodies of Water tank installed with a composition made from hydrophone recordings of the Missouri River. (I’m deeply indebted to Raven Chacon for including me in that show AND traversing the river with pool noodles and my hydrophone to make the initial recordings for me when I couldn’t be there!) I had also been invited to be one of the initial Artists-in-Residence for the Sound Art + Experimental Music program at Bemis, and my residency was to begin in 2020… but I think we all remember what happened in 2020. I had flown out to Omaha and began interviewing individuals from the community about their work and relationships to the Missouri River, and each day the news was getting more intense. We decided that I should cut my trip short, and I made it home the day before the world shut down. Luckily, I had been connected with some wonderful and generous locals who gave me enough context to begin working on my project from afar. (Any time I’ve ever undertaken a “place-based” work, I’ve always included a substantial community-driven element alongside traditional research. You can’t know a place solely from historical maps, books, or a century of USGS data, but the fourth-generation farmer or local naturalist guide who relies on that watershed can tell you a whole lot about the history of the river that you won’t find anywhere else.)
Despite all the logistical complications of that very strange time, “Other Channels” became one of my favorite pieces to date. We premiered it in 2021 (once restrictions were eased), and it was composed and arranged for a non-traditional string quartet from the Omaha Symphony (Violin: Lucy Duke, Cello: InYoung Park, Bass: Bobby Scharmann, Violist: Bozhidar Shopov). The work was performed while cruising the river on a two-story open-air steamer boat together with the audience and a panel of locals (featuring Shannon Bartelt-Hunt, Professor and Chair in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Nebraska; Jack Phillips, naturalist, poet, nature writer, and founder of The Naturalist School; and Don Moses, retired Civil Engineer, U.S.). You can hear a live recording from that event here. (I highly recommend listening with a good pair of headphones or speakers.)
One of the main reasons it was so special (to me) was the context in which it was performed. To be listening to a piece about the river—while being able to look, hear, and feel that very river around and beneath you—was incredibly moving. One of the main things I heard from locals (when I was originally interviewing them) was how disconnected residents were from the Missouri. At the time, there was very limited access to the river and few people realized that it also provided their drinking water. Some members of the audience had lived their entire lives in Omaha and had never been close to the river, much less experienced it so intimately. And that is perhaps one of the main points of art—to offer up a moment for contemplation. (Maybe in a future post I’ll unpack my thoughts on attention in art, talk about what a complete joy it was to work with the Omaha Symphony, and also explain the big shift that happened for me with “Other Channels” concerning harmony versus dissonance.)
Rachel, Chief Curator + Director of Programs at Bemis, sent these questions to the participating artists in the current exhibition while preparing for their gallery guide. I gave them permission to edit these down (as needed), but I’m including my full answers here:
Your work is situated within the rich and complex landscapes of the Great Lakes, Great Plains or both—regions that have been historically overlooked in national conversations about climate change. How has your personal connection to these regions shaped the way you approach the theme of water within your practice, whether as a subject, a material, or a metaphor?
I grew up in the southernmost region of the Great Plains in Texas where my family has been since 1733. My hometown, San Antonio, would not exist if it were not for the San Antonio River. People have been convening and settling along this river for more than 10,000 years, and its centrality to our city continues to this day. (Many people are aware of the River Walk which was a WPA project that began in 1939.) Our drinking water also comes from the Edwards Aquifer, one of the most substantial aquifers in the world. Growing up here, the river, water, and drought were part of our daily lives. I visited the river often with my parents, we learned about our water system in school, and all of our local news channels reported on the level of the aquifer along with the weather daily. Our water is an ever present reality, but I didn’t recognize how rare that is until I lived in other cities in the US alongside their own rivers. I realized that very few people actually knew where their drinking water came from or the history, impact, and health of their waterways. I ultimately became obsessed with the question that has largely been the focus of my practice for over a decade now: what does it mean to pay attention to what water might be saying for itself?
In this exhibition, water is presented as both a life-sustaining force and a site of political and ecological tension. In your artistic process, how do you grapple with that duality—honoring water’s sacredness while confronting its exploitation and scarcity?
In my process, I start with material conditions and try to avoid anthropomorphizing or sentimentalizing water in its presentation. Not because those are negative, but because my questions are primarily around trying to pay attention to water as it reveals itself to us on its own terms. Because I’m a sound artist and composer first, many of the forms that emerge are also about an embodied listening to water. When you initiate contact with the Bodies of Water tank, for example, you are quite literally resonating your own body (which is made of ~60% water) to hear the composition crafted from the Missouri River inside. Sound is always an embodied experience, but most of us have little awareness of its physicality. The tank becomes a place of encounter where the conversation is between a body of water and your body of water… and whatever you are carrying meets the river there. I have no answers to the vast complexities that surround our stewardship of water, only questions. But my hope is that by taking a moment to listen deeply to the source, we might begin to discover for ourselves what careful awareness brings to the ongoing dialogue around waterways.
If you’re in Omaha, I highly encourage you to check out From the Great Lakes to the Great Plains: The Visible Currents of Climate Change and to join us for the performance on August 23rd! I’ll also be co-leading a guided walk along the river earlier in the day (on August 23rd) that’s a partnership between Bemis and the Luminarium. Would love to see you there if you can make it. 🌊
Stay tuned,
Nadia