The Sculpture | Roots/Routes

“To be rooted is perhaps the most important and least recognized need of the human soul.”

(Simone Weil)

Just as tree roots reach out from their trunk in search of water, communication and community, so do we humans reach out to each other for these same things. Roots/Routes is a large, steel trunk and root system fabricated on a trailer that is a visual reminder of our connection to each other and to the land and waters that sustain us.  Roots/Routes is created by the collective Be.Trit comprised of Bryan Faubert and Nicole Tritter. Their innovative sculpture will move along the route of the Bow River, inviting interaction with the public on the River’s banks. The artists will share conversations and stories about what “roots” them and by what “routes” they found themselves in Mohkinstsis/Calgary. In turn, the public will be encouraged to submit their own thoughts and stories on these themes. The stories will be collected and compiled into a Zine entitled “Roots/Routes Vol. 1”.

Where are your roots?

What communities are you rooted to?

What routes did your family follow to get to Mohkinstsis/Calgary?

What draws you to the Bow and Elbow Rivers that are the water routes through our city?

The Duo | Be.Trit

Be. – Bryan Faubert’s pseudonym and a portion of his surname and used for his streetart/urban- interventions. Faubert’s latest public artwork utilizes a Calgary C-Train transformed into an artwork and late-night projection device. He performs his research, studio practice and public engagement workshops, lectures, and urban-intervention experiments from its downtown Calgary location.

Trit  – A portion of Nicole Korenda-Tritter’s last name. An interdisciplinary artist with a contemporary dance background. She has both Indigenous and settler heritage but is also the daughter of a refugee. This unique perspective impacts the way she walks in the world and the art she creates. She is focused on publicly accessible artwork/experiences that are inspired by the natural world.

Delayed repairs to a freight elevator at the University of Calgary led Nicole Tritter and Bryan Faubert to meet by happenstance in the art building’s metal shop. Their mutual love of steel, ability to get lost in flow, trust in their materials, line and the artmaking process has quickly solidified a collaborative relationship worth pursuing. In their collaborative steel fabrication method, the pair work in unison as they respond to one another in an intuitive manner through the process of cold and hot forging techniques with a variety of jigs, and an oxygen acetylene torch outfitted with a rosebud tip for decisive manipulation of their arduous medium. They respond to one another like capering dancers performing upon their artwork, and this is not surprising with Tritter’s background in contemporary dance and Faubert’s street training in breakdancing.

Urban and Natural landscapes | Be.Trit

Be.Trit’s love of line has led their explorations to focus on trees, root systems and how things are connected. Tritter’s large swooping lines flow into Faubert’s 3-dimensional drawings to create new hybrid creations that the viewer can explore and immerse themselves in.

Be.Trit shares much common ground as both of their practices rely heaving on notions of Placemaking, which for them is the creation of a special intervention to affirm specific meanings, always leaving room for further critique and confirmation as the context shifts. It is embedded in the process of doing and is driven by what impresses, excites, saddens, fulfills, or otherwise provokes them. It is about the critical capacity of this process to confirm and interrogate the place-becoming. Most importantly for their practice, placemaking is a dialogic space where the people-in-place construct meaning. The flow which occurs between the two results in a final synthesis which ignites curiosity, flares insight and sparks criticality offering reflection on the place created building on its character and constructing a new identity. It is a place of transition where usual boundaries of thought, self-understanding, and behaviour shift, opening the way to something new.