Reconnecting to the Bow
in collaboration with Justin Langlois and Josh Babcock
“Hello. One moment as I connect you to the Bow River.”
In 2014, we created an artwork that aimed to connect Calgarians to the Bow River. With a simple greeting, callers were transported to the river’s edge and experienced the Bow’s rushing, gurgling and babbling voice on the other end of the line. Anyone could call and connect to the Bow, experiencing its wisdom, its secrets, its songs, creating a unique opportunity to explore proximity and access as fundamental components of our relationship to the Bow River.
We want to capture this relationship once more, with added nuance and complexity in how we think about our relationship with the Bow a decade later. The Bow is not static, it is constantly in motion and shifting its flow, strength and sound depending on where you meet it. We highlight this characteristic with a multi-site re-recording of the Bow River by James Clemens-Seely, who is a sound specialist. These are long field recordings of the river that capture the variation of the Bow, changing throughout the six-month run of the project.
Another update is to the phone number. The original number highlighted a proprietary and commercial relationship with the river (‘our’). In this version of the work, we shift the context of the phone number to give the authority back to the Bow. For example, choosing a local number that centres the Bow River as a beacon of knowledge and understanding.
With eight newly designed advertisements that act as the relaunch frame for the artwork, we use billboard space and street level ads throughout the city, as well as online platforms such as Facebook and Instagram, as targeted ads for Calgarians to call in and reconnect to the Bow.