‘It’s in our spirit’: Dartmouth waterfront transformed by live art exhibitions
The Halifax Regional Municipality (HRM) became a canvas when the Nocturne: Art at Night festival returned with installations throughout the city Saturday. Not to be outdone, downtown Dartmouth hosted several exhibits and complemented them with a second festival of its own. The Fire and Water Cultural Festival brought singing, dancing and storytelling to Alderney Landing, within walking distance of all the Dark Side’s Nocturne installations.
“I’ve heard a lot of people are choosing to stay on the Dartmouth side this year and explore,” said Abbey Girard, business development manager at the Dartmouth Adult Services Centre (DASC). DASC artists marked the centre’s 60th year with “Layers,” their show at Alderney Gate Public Library. The pieces will go up for auction on Oct. 22 at a fundraiser for the anniversary.
“I’ve been really inspired sitting here, watching people look at all the art and talk about different art pieces they’ve seen on the Dartmouth side specifically,” Girard said. “The artists are very excited that their pieces are being displayed tonight.”
Commuters from Halifax had a chance to get in on the fun early by singing their favourite song during a ferry crossing. Ferry-Oke, a Nocturne tradition, returned for the night and gave Halifax’s best (and worst) amateur singers the chance to rock the harbour with a live performance in front of a captive audience.
Fire pits were visible from the ferry spread over the parking lot at Alderney Landing, drawing audiences, like moths, to listen to artists perform by the water.
“The same sacred fire exists in all of us,” said Gary Joseph, who told stories beside a teepee he helped to erect for the cultural festival. “It’s in our spirit. So that’s the connection.”
The setting and themes were reflected in the cultures represented, said Joseph, a campus elder at Nova Scotia Community College. Originally from Saskatchewan, Joseph, who’s Plains Cree, said he took over the teepee raising about 10 years ago after he moved to Nova Scotia with his wife from Sipekne’katik. He was joined at Fire and Water by a drum group and dancers who performed “honour songs from many tribes and nations.” He said people from the east experience the sacred fire through “first light.”
“I try to raise awareness that you have this gift of the first light because the sacred light travels from east-west,” Joseph said. “You’re able to share that with everybody else.”
The Fire and Water festival’s mainstage featured dancers next to Halifax Harbour throughout the evening until the “grand fire finale,” a pyrotechnic display to cap the evening.
A few hundred metres away, artist Rena Anakwe examined similar elemental themes with a dramatic installation titled “Red Earth/Black Sea” at the World Peace Pavilion in Ferry Terminal Park.
“There’s a type of performance ritual that I like to have as part of my practice,” Anakwe said. “I like to connect to nature and the land and the people to understand the histories that are lying in the soil and the water and the air all around us.”
Anakwe, who was born in Halifax, returned for the first time in years to produce her exhibit.
“My piece is inspired by the community of Africville, as well as all the Black communities that have unfortunately been disenfranchised, or disappeared,” she said.
“Red Earth/Black Sea” blends a 1967 recording of an Africville congregation with found poems from historical documents, Anakwe’s own vocal performance and other archival sounds. It was broadcast live on CKDU, Dalhousie University’s campus radio station, during the Nocturne festival.
“I wanted to bring their spirits, which is also creating this kind of ethereal, almost ghostly feel that we’re sitting with them and their souls,” Anakwe said.
Another haunting installation, “Eroding Natures,” at Renegade Records on Portland Street featured Dartmouth artist Moss Harvest, who performed his blend of ambient sounds piped out to the street for a truly one-of-a-kind performance.
“He’s playing many different loops… of nature, and there’s some synthesizer music in there as well,” said Tom Spence, owner of Renegade Records. “It’s sort of layered on top of each other and as one tape degrades or breaks, it’s removed, and then another one is randomly added, so even the artist doesn’t know how it’s going to play out.”
Nocturne draws more than 65,000 people to the city, according to Tourism Nova Scotia. With 79 projects in HRM, it is “the largest art festival in Atlantic Canada,” according to its website.
Nocturne’s Dartmouth zone had seven projects including:
- “Red Earth/Black Sea” (anchor project) by Rena Anakwe
- “Waterfront Explorations” by The Craig Gallery
- 28th Annual “Mosaic for Mental Health” by CMHA Halifax-Dartmouth
- “Layers” by Dartmouth Adult Services Centre (DASC) artists
- Eroding Natures by Moss Harvest with Renegade Records
- “Paying Attention to What Grows” by youth at the MacPhee Centre for Creative Learning
- “Noticing” by The Trainyard and Erin Ferguson
The annual Fire and Water Cultural Festival is a free event that “celebrates Nova Scotia’s rich cultural diversity through the elements that unite us: fire and water,” according to the Alderney Landing Community Cultural Centre.