Calder Harben
b. 1986

Entering. Like arrival into a chorus of anticipation. Like coming in to oneself. Like moving towards an unknown. Like refusing what one can no longer accept, like asking the questions that feel the most vulnerable, like feeding an appetite, like setting a waypost.

My entry into PolArt is first marked by desire and trepidation. Both institutions of Science and Art know themselves, their histories are marked by violence and exclusion, by deliberate not- knowings. They share many struggles but don’t often share conversations. Both feel unstable as categories but materially necessary to engage in. The bodies and the seeds and the stories and the knowledges.

I work in ways that want to know. That feel insatiable. I want to hear the same story 20 different ways. What is translatable across knowledge - and what is not? Who said some ways are not possible to know? Are not valuable? Are not reliable? And who set them? What are the limits of our senses? As a settler* born on unceded lands, my senses are colonized. My languages given to smell, to taste, to hear, to feel, to intuit, to see, to speak, to desire, to gesture, to imagine. My body is trained and shaped into what coloniality desires. Though, my body is marked partially a ‘failed’ one, and I relish in those perceived failures as powerful ways of possible knowing.

Water in my practise has become a form of orientation, and a form to orient towards.

I am thinking about all the ways that I know myself through water.

I think about the bodies of water that have known my body in them.

I think about how at the same time I grew a fear of my body, I grew a fear of my body in water I think about my gender in water.

I think about my body, weighed, buoyed, revealed and hidden by water.

I think about the dream of becoming a fish, of my fish body and fish hearing in water.

I think about knowing a body of water for so long, yet still unable to hear its stories.

Questions mark my process, where some I experience as tangible and concrete - What is the experience of sound in the oceans? What does an image of ocean noise look like? How can it be tracked? recorded? translated? transmitted? What is sound and how does it move? What is there before the energy wave? What holds it’s memory? What are all the ways water acts as a transmitter? While other questions feel directed for specific bodies - Can Science and Art listen? What makes one an expert? And still some questions float around me - what does it know to swim in the same water for 30 years? When is my body? What do you google while lying in bed before sleep? When does knowing transform into knowledge?

When I work, sometimes I listen, to oceans, lakes, rivers, ponds, record and reamplify the lowest frequencies possible, to the threshold of ‘hearing’.

Sometimes I write words that try to outline while staying open to their sounds.

Sometimes I talk with others, ‘google’ other people, asking beyond what I know.

Sometimes I draw out shapes of words with my mouth, illegible to certain scales of time intervals, I call back out to myself to see if a different one will answer.

*Calder Harben was born 1986, in Tkaronto,  the unceded territory of the Huron-Wendat and Petun First Nations, the Seneca, and most recently, the Mississaugas of the Credit River. Known colonially as Toronto, Canada . He received a BFA in 2009 from NSCAD University in K’jipuktuk, Mi’kma’ki the ancestral and unceded territory of the Mi’kmaq People, known colonially as Halifax, Canada. In 2015 he received an MFA from Kunstakademiet i Tromsø / Dáiddaakademia Romssa, known as Tromsø, Norway, and Romssa, Sámi, simultaneous to a diploma from the Nordic Sound Art program. Calder: rough or cold waters (British) river of stones (Celtic).

Listening to Water,  2017
Sound installation
Verkligheten Galleri
Umeå, Sweden/ Sápmi,

Listening to Water comes out of a continuing question of the limits of our senses and auditory experiences, and the limits of our ability to communicate beyond the ways we have learned how to. The exhibition is comprised of two works, one in the garden house with a single channel audio installation, 1 hour in length, with audio recordings from three different bodies of water. The audio has then been reduced for the installation to only the low frequencies of 50hz and below (the human ear supposedly drops off around 20hz)



The viewer is invited to use a pair of in-ear protectors to assist in the concentration of focused listening with the body, rather than through a dependence on just our ears. The room holds 3 pillows filled with air to sit on, and lights help to maintain focus and minimize visual distraction. Off the edge of a small island in the North Atlantic Ocean of Northern Norway/Sápmi, a hydrophone listens in the month of June 2017. In the North of Sweden/Sápmi runs Umeälven, draining to the Gulf of Bothnia, a hydrophone listens over the course of one week in October 2017. On the unceded territory of the Algonquins called Frontenac by Canada, lies Saint Andrews lake, one of thousands in the region. A hydrophone listens in the month of July 2017. During the opening a live performative reading was held by Calder Harben asking how these recordings, sites and locations form relationships between one another.

“trying to find another way to reach you”, 2017
Sound installation
Verkligheten Galleri
Umeå, Sweden/ Sápmi

Verkligheten is housed in what was originally a small 2 storey industrial building. The audio is played at a volume to be heard echoed throughout the building, as well as from outside on the street. 1 hour long in duration, the work is comprised of a short text written by the artist, recorded, at a length of 5 minutes. The recording has been stretched out so that it now takes 1 hour to complete. Language has become illegible on a different time scale - but to whom? The work takes a speculative starting point, inviting the viewer to join in as the co-speaker, in attempt to communicate in a way that may be illegible to us, but maybe not to others. The text is made available as a risograph poster that can be taken by the viewer and presented in a way as to refer to a speakers podium. The resulting audio rings with the vibration of vocal chords, and gives off hymnal or chant like qualities. The text speaks to the inabilities to break out of the only communication given, in attempt to break out of self imposed limits of bodies, and time and communication.





In the summer of 2017 I was invited to Røst AiR to begin testing on methods of recording the oceans surrounding the island of Skomvær in the Røst Archipelago of Norway/Sápmi. This work comes as part of a larger body of work looking at questions of ocean noise pollution, marine soundscapes, and the sensory experience of sound and listening. After partnering with different organization to use archival audios, the desire came to attempt as taking more control fo the recording and locations myself, along with the collaborative support of artist Elin Mar Øyen Vister. Recording underwater presents unique challenges, and part of the desire is to capture long duration recordings - with the goal of eventual live streaming. 24 hour test recordings were done at different points on the island, factoring in currents, tides, and ecosystem activity. The high quality recordings become material for future installations such as for the exhibition in Umeå - Listening to Water.