Trust Fall

Abstract

A gloomy landscape frames a worn yet charismatic stone, carried to the Alberta foothills centuries ago by receding glaciers. Around the rock is a trampled path of dirt and plants that was imprinted onto the land by bison who rubbed against the rock to shed their winter coats. Hidden off to the side is an artist, patiently gathering video footage of this rock and its material history. Thus begins a relationship between a migrant stone, a herd of prairie animals, and an artistic intuition about the importance of watching and listening to the environment around us. Rubbing Rock, 2016. Photo © Moria Whiteman A video of this stone is the centrepiece of a recent project by Maria Whiteman that examines questions of geological time and tells (or re-tells) the stories of the lands she encounters. In Whiteman’s work, the stone is juxtaposed with videos of bison, of other environmental sites, and of close shots of grass, ice and water. One might read in this another form of rubbing – not this time the desire to remove a winter coat but rather to contrast the speed of various environmental vitalities. In Whiteman's work the stone is not just a stone but a metaphor – a ‘rubbing rock’ that is also about reconsidering our tactile and kinaesthetic relationships with the landscape. At the same time, the stone is not a metaphor at all – it is actually a stone, and to put poetic elaborations aside is ultimately what grounds the very gaze the poetic intervention seeks to raise. This essay meditates on the use of the rubbing rock in and around Whiteman's work, as a method for thinking about the meeting points of artistic and environmental complexity.