Pitchpole
2023
Mixed media installation: video, sound, sculpture
Variable dimension
Saint Mary's University Art Gallery
October 22—December 17, 2023
Video (black-and-white & colour, sound):
43 min 30 sec
Music composed & performed by:
Nick Veltmeyer & Ryan Veltmeyer
Vocal performances:
Aureas Voces, soloists | Peter Dietz & Janelle Lucyk
Aureas Voces, singers | Hilary Allister, Simon Blake, Rebecca Genge, Martin Gomes, Jen Hall, Martha Kelly, Anna Lewton-Brain, Jennifer MacDonald, Ryan MacDonald, Gabriel O'Brien, Jeremy Rhizor, Leo Timmins, Nick Veltmeyer, Jamie Whitley
Sound design:
Joel Waddell
Broad collars:
Shaya Ishaq
Poetry:
Erinn Beth Langille
Video production:
Director, camera operator, editing, design | William Robinson
Audio engineering (onset & post) | Joel Waddell
Director of photography & gaffer | Darcy Fraser
Camera assistant, gaffer, stills | Aaron McKenzie Fraser
Camera & production assistant | Ali Dixon
Production assistant | Spencer Clerk
Electronics technician | B. Mosher
Ceramics | Jessie Wright
Tailoring | Ellie Rideout
Performers | Adam Myatt, Erinn Beth Langille, Magnus Langille Nervig. Gina Patterson. William Robinson. Mitchell Wiebe, Jessie Wright
Locations | Cathedral Church of All Saints (Halifax, NS), Saint Mary's University Art Gallery (Halifax, NS), William Robinson Studio (Halifax, NS), Langille Nervig Residence (Truro, NS)
Artwork & music in video | credits:
Shaya Ishaq, Broad Collars, 2019, Ceramic, rope, thread
Erinn Beth Langille, The Shore, 2023, Poem
William Robinson, moiety moon, 2023, Mirrors, plywood, backpack straps
Nick Veltmeyer & Ryan Veltmeyer, Pitchpole, 2019, Vocal composition
Nick Veltmeyer, Untitled, 2023, Piano composition
We acknowledge the support of:
Saint Mary's University Art Gallery
Halifax Regional Municipality
Arts Nova Scotia
Canada Council for the Arts
—
Pitchpole is a meditation on the nautically-themed lyrical works associated with Bas Jan Ader's 1975 iconic artwork and tragic transatlantic voyage, In Search of the Miraculous. As a film and mixed media installation, Pitchpole musically and cinematically transforms Henry Russell's vocal composition A Life On The Ocean Wave and Johanna Adriana Ader-Appels' poem of memoriam From the Deep Waters of Sleep.
Henry Russell's 1838 musical composition A Life On The Ocean Wave was incorporated by Bas Jan Ader into In Search of the Miraculous. Ader presented and documented a choir performance of Russell's composition as one of the several components of his multilayered and ever-evolving artwork. Ader's incorporation and use of A Life On The Ocean Wave established a conceptual foreshadowing for his eventual sailing voyage across the Atlantic. Ader and his sailboat, Ocean Wave, tragically did not complete the voyage. Ader's uncrewed boat was found on July 9, 1975, approximately ten months after he departed North America. It was discovered off the Irish coast by a Spanish fishing vessel. Bas Jan Ader's mother, Johanna Adriana Ader-Appels, wrote the poem From the Deep Waters of Sleep on October 12, 1975, after having what she described as a premonition of her son's death.
For Pitchpole a distinctive choral composition adapting Russell and Ader-Appels' work was written and scored in collaboration with composers Nick Veltmeyer and Ryan Veltmeyer. Inspired by attending choir concerts at Cathedral Church of All Saints in Halifax, NS, the vocal performances for Pitchpole were recorded at Cathedral Church of All Saints and Saint Mary's University Art Gallery.
The proposed ideas, methods, and mediums that Pitchpole contains are a natural progression from those used in my previous new media and audio installation works. Pitchpole employs choral monody as the central device of a film and installation. Ader's opus is used as a narrative vessel to examine maternal bond and the poetics of grief—in lineage with other stories about the ocean as an entity of transgression and transformation.