Reservoir
Artist Talk

Date: March 3, 2018

Exhibition Dates: January 20, 2018 - March 3, 2018

Please join us for an artist talk with Peter von Tiesenhausen and Magnus Tiesenhausen on March 3, 2018 / 3:00 pm in the TRUCK Contemporary Art Main Space. Presented in collaboration with The City of Calgary Public Art Program, RESERVOIR runs January 20 - March 3 / 2018 in the TRUCK Contemporary Art Parkade.

In the spring of 2017, the Saddleridge reservoir in northeast Calgary was drained and dried for scheduled maintenance. The immense subterranean chamber, which is one of many reservoirs that supplies Calgary with filtered water originating from the Bow Glacier, had been sealed for forty years. For four decades its full volume— thirty-eight million litres of water—lay still, in complete darkness below two soccer fields. It is part of a largely invisible, complex infrastructure that variously and usually unfailingly shuttles clean water to, and ushers dirty water from, Calgary’s 1.24 million inhabitants.

The Saddleridge reservoir, emptied, is a colossal and alien space. A slight sound within the massive chamber can reverberate for up to 25 seconds, and certain frequencies compound upon themselves, intensifying in resonance. In late May of 2017, Peter von Tiesenhausen commissioned sound artists Jen Reimer and Magnus Tiesenhausen to record an improvised collaborative work within the reservoir, and cinematographer Dave McGregor to capture the visual space. The resulting fleeting images and sounds comprise RESERVOIR.

Upon completion of the maintenance, the Saddleridge reservoir was resealed and filled, returning to silence for the next anticipated forty years.

RESERVOIR was commissioned by The City of Calgary as part of the Watershed+ Dynamic Environment Lab.

Magnus Tiesenhausen

Magnus Tiesenhausen is an interdisciplinary artist based in southern Alberta. Tiesenhausen’s work operates within productive disagreements between magic and materiality; structure and indeterminacy; and reverence and punk energy. tunnel is a collaborative singing practice he shares with Montréal-based sound artist Jen Reimer.

Peter von Tiesenhausen

Peter von Tiesenhausen is a multi-media Canadian artist whose work has lead him through journeys both real and imagined.  Based in the Alberta Peace country, Demmitt specifically, he has exhibited across Canada, in Europe and the United States in public galleries and throughout the landscape.  His practice has grown from landscape painting to installation, sculpture, performance and from simple media to complex combinations of media and multifaceted collaborations.  He claims copyright on his land as an artwork. His work often deals with the ideas of time, life, voyage, death, spirit, nature and humanity.  There is a strong pursuit of sustainability often evident in the work and an attempt to understand time and substance from a variety of perspectives.