Description
Nœuds d’écoute / Listening Knots was part of a project to make a fishing net using paper-thread spun from the pages of four dictionaries relevant to south-eastern New Brunswick: Le Glossaire acadian, Le Petit Larousse Illustré, Silus Tertias Rand’s English to Mi’kmaq and Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate. The technique used is known in Japanese as Shifu. Once finished, the net was carried by the student assistants and artists from the local community along a dyke bordering the Bay of Fundy. It was placed in the water during the rising tide (approx. 2 hours) allowing the paper absorb the red colour of the clay predominant in the area.
As well as being exhibited as a sculpture, a variety of actions using the net were filmed and presented as part of a series of video vignettes in the exhibition Nœuds d’écoute / Listening Knots.
The project took place over a period of two years with the help of art students from l’Université de Moncton in Moncton and Mount Allison University in Sackville, New Brunswick, where Karen was the SONCO artist in residence from 2017 to 2018.
Statement
The work was inspired by Virginia Woolf’s loved novel The Waves. Listening Knots is a literal translation of the French term for the knot used to make nets: nœud d’écoute.
