salt-stained streaks of a worthwhile grief

salt-stained streaks of a worthwhile grief (2022)

Salt-Stained Streaks of a Worthwhile Grief is the first exhibition by Fathom Sounds as a collective, and incorporates individual work, collaborative processes, and collective work which stems from several residencies we carried out together in Skwxwú7mesh Territory, just north of Vancouver. There, we spent time around the fjord of Átl’ka7sem, where locals are fighting (and winning) a constant battle to protect the waters from a liquid fracked gas pipeline, a waterborne LNG storage facility, and regular mega-tanker traffic delivering LNG overseas. The proposed project sits on the former site of Woodfibre, a 100-year-old pulp and paper mill. Located on the ancestral and Unceded territory of the Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) peoples, Woodfibre LNG claims to be a remediation project, that will “clean up” the site, removing the remnants of pulp and paper mill and replacing them with liquified natural gas (LNG), a fossil fuel contributing to carbon pollution and global warming.

As with the work people are doing in Squamish, we were drawn to the parallels between water stewardship in Comox/Courtenay, the ancestral and Unceded traditional territory of the K’ómoks First Nation, being undertaken by settlers and Indigenous peoples through habitat restoration and protection education, for the K’ómoks Estuary.

We live in times where increasing floods, fire, and other climate events make it impossible to ignore the need for exploitative and extractive colonial culture to find a different relationship to the land and water. This urgency, coupled with the unpredictability of the COVID pandemic has necessitated in us a spirit of flexibility, gentleness, and generosity. Planned gatherings evolved into exchanges of letters, sound recordings, packages of materials, and other projects. We were called to ask: How do we gather, resist and protect in this time? How do artists counter colonial-capitalist perspectives that support exploitation and extractivism? When we take time to listen to these bodies of water, what do we learn? And what can we give back?

-Fathom Sounds (Alana Bartol, Kat Morris, Genevieve Robertson, Nancy Tam and Jay White)

*Salt-Stained Streaks of a Worthwhile Grief,* Outdoor Installation View, Fathom Sounds Collective, Comox Valley Art Gallery, 2022, Photo: Alun Macanulty

*Salt-Stained Streaks of a Worthwhile Grief,* Installation View, Fathom Sounds Collective, Comox Valley Art Gallery, 2022, Photo: Alun Macanulty

Genevieve Robertson, *Meniscus,* video still, digital video, 2:36, 2021
*Meniscus* was made by lighting a fire on the surface of water and filming with an underwater camera from underneath. It records combustion across a water surface, one potential effect of a liquified natural gas (LNG) tanker spill in Átl’ka7tsem (also known as Howe Sound).

Genevieve Robertson, *Meniscus,* video still, digital video, 2:36, 2021

Alana Bartol and Genevieve Robertson, *Letters to Water*, 2021-2022, six water barrels, water, dissolving paper, pencils, willow wands.
Installation documentation, *Salt-Stained Streaks of a Worthwhile Grief* – Fathom Sounds Collective, Comox Valley Art Gallery, 2022, photo: Alun Macanulty.
**Invitation**
“Remember you are water. Of course you leave salt trails. Of course you are crying. Flow. P.S. If there happens to be a multitude of griefs upon you, individual and collective, or fast and slow, or small and large, add equal parts of these considerations: that the broken heart can cover more territory. that perhaps love can only be as large as grief demands. that grief is the growing up of the heart that bursts boundaries like an old skin or a finished life. that grief is gratitude. that water seeks scale, that even your tears seek the recognition of community. that the heart is a front line and the fight is to feel in a world of distraction. that death might be the only freedom. that your grief is a worthwhile use of your time. that your body will feel only as much as it is able to. that the ones you grieve may be grieving you. that the sacred comes from the limitations. that you are excellent at loving.”
—adrienne maree brown, Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds
“You know, they straightened out the Mississippi River in places to make room for houses & liveable acreage. Occasionally the river floods these places. ‘Floods’ is the word they use, but in fact it is not flooding; it is remembering. Remembering where it used to be. All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was.”
—Toni Morrison, The Site of Memory
The artworks in Salt Stained-Streaks of a Worthwhile Grief are our love letters to water. Many of the works in the exhibition evoke the past, present, and possible futures for relationships with water, between water and plants, water and trees, water and contaminants, water and humans, water and wildlife, water, and the other elements.
We invite you to take a moment to reflect on your relationship with water by writing a letter to water. Think about the quotes by adrienne maree brown and Toni Morrison before you write your letter.
What do you want to express? What memories do you want to share? What does water remember? How has your relationship with water developed and changed over time?
Write a letter to water on the water-soluble paper provided
Letters can take the form of drawings, writing, poems, text, or other forms of mark-making
Give your letter to water by placing it in one of the rain barrels
Watch it dissolve
As the materials break down,
What do you see?
What do you feel?
A willow wand can be used to stir the water,
helping the water receive your letter

*Letters to Water*, Interactive Installation documentation, *Salt-Stained Streaks of a Worthwhile Grief* – Fathom Sounds Collective, Comox Valley Art Gallery, 2022
Alana Bartol, *Forgetting Fields II*, 2022, video, 40:13. Photo: Alun Macanulty.

Alana Bartol and Genevieve Robertson, *Letters to Water, Salt-Stained Streaks of a Worthwhile Grief,* Comox Valley Art Gallery, 2022. Photo: Angela Somerset

Alana Bartol and Genevieve Robertson, *Letters to Water, Salt-Stained Streaks of a Worthwhile Grief,* Comox Valley Art Gallery, 2022. Photo: Alana Bartol

Process material, *Letters to Water,* Kootenay River, sn̓ʕay̓ckstx Sinixt Confederacy Arrow Lakes and Yaqan Nukiy Lower Kootenay Band territory, 2021, Photo: Jim Holyoak

Field research in Átl’ka7tsem (Howe Sound), Skwxwú7mesh Territory, 2020

Field research at Woodfibre, an abandoned pulp mill and the site of the proposed LNG mega-tanker terminal, Átl’ka7tsem (Howe Sound), Skwxwú7mesh Territory, 2020

Field research at Woodfibre, an abandoned pulp mill and the site of the proposed LNG mega-tanker terminal, Átl’ka7tsem (Howe Sound), a fjord in Skwxwú7mesh Territory, 2020

Salt-Stained Streak of a Worthwhile Grief was curated by Angela Somerset and Denise Lawson. We would like to thank Angela Somerset, Denise Lawson, David Lawson, Tom Elliott, and all of the staff and volunteer team at the Comox Valley Art Gallery, Wedlidi Speck, Caitlin Pierzchalski and Dan Bowen of Project Watershed, Frank Hovenden and Karen Cummins of Comox Valley Nature, and Tracey Saxby of My Sea to Sky. Thank you to Canada Council for the Arts for their generous support of this work.