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Heng: Welcome to Work In Progress, a podcast hosted by the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria,

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also known as the AGGV, where you will hear from artists,
curators, gallery staff, collaborators and even different hosts
as you listen to each episode.

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This series is generously supported by a Canada Council
for the Arts Digital Now grant.

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My name is Heng Wu, Curator of Asian Art at the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria and I’m your host for today.

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This episode was recorded and produced
on the traditional lands of the lək̓ʷəŋən speaking people,

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also known as the Songhees and Esquimalt Nations. In this episode, we are joined by Canadian composer
Anna Höstman to discuss the intersections

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between curating and composing that surfaced
when Anna first began collaborating with the AGGV

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on the 2022 Reverberations exhibition. It aims to bring fresh eyes and minds
to reflect on works from the AGGV’s permanent collection

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through an intergenerational,
cross-disciplinary and cross-cultural project.

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Artists, makers and creators were invited to select works from our collection that
they felt a resonance to and in turn

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share their own work, bringing to conversation
a diverse range of expressions.

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This project is an opportunity to present
and share our collection in meaningful ways

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and to create new relationships
while maintaining existing ones with folks in our community.

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We hope to offer our collections as a resource,
as a means of bringing voices and interpretations

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from a range of perspectives, disciplines,
and generations into the exhibition space.

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So among the invited artists features Anna Höstman our guest for today.

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Anna composed a musical piece titled For Elaza in response to Elza Mayhew’s bronze sculpture from our permanent collection

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titled Board of Ten. Good morning Anna. Thank you for joining me. Perhaps you would like to start us off
by introducing yourself?

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Anna: Good morning Heng. Thank you. I’m really happy to be here
and talking more to you about this project.

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Yes. My name is Anna Höstman. I actually am from the West Coast originally.

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I was born in Port Hardy and grew up in a little town
called Bella Coola on the mainland.

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Recently, I’ve come back from living for ten years in Toronto
and really happy to be back

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on this beautiful West Coast island
and in our city of Victoria.

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Thank you for that introduction Anna. It’s so great that you’re here in Victoria. Reverberations has just recently opened at the AGGV,

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and I know you’ve already had a chance to walk through the gallery spaces and see all of the work in person, but for listeners who are tuning

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this podcast, and who might not be able to see the work in person, I thought we would start off by playing a one minute excerpt from your

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For Elza composition. [Music with subtle sounds from voice, viola, piano, electric guitar, electronics, musical saw and cornet]

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That was stunning! Thank you for allowing us to share it Anna. Perhaps you’d like to share a little bit about what it was like to experience the work

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in person in the gallery. For me it was beautiful. I have let myself in that exhibition space several times after the opening, and every time, I got

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such a great enjoyment. It was just beautiful: Mayhew’s sculpture was right in the middle of the room, and your music was filling the room

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almost seamlessly, weaving itself between the space surrounding the sculpture. It was such a great beautiful harmony.

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So I’d like to know how you felt, how did you like it?

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Anna: Yes, I love it. I was there the day it opened, which was really nice and very exciting to

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see everything come to fruition after so much planning
through weeks and weeks going back and forth.

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And I found it a really moving exhibition. I love how it opens up into the community and invites

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people to come in and give their impressions
and how it builds relationships

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with artists that are outside the art gallery. Yes, I was just really touched
and honored to be a part of this project, and

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I hope to go back again soon and see how,
see how things are doing.

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Heng: Great, I’m so happy to hear you say that. Yeah, for the Reverberations project

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you have chosen Elza Mayhew’s Board of Ten
and composed a piece for it.

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So first of all, maybe could you tell us a bit
about your consideration behind this choice?

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Like the AGGV holds a collection of over 20,000 pieces. So why Elza Mayhew?

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Yeah, I mean it’s, it’s kind of an interesting question
because when we were first talking about this project,

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you invited me to have a look at the collection and I thought,
okay, you know, I’ll sort of leaf through it
and something will jump out at me.

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And I had no idea the collection was so big. And so

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so I was a bit overwhelmed. And I just kept sort of circling back through different things
and in fact,

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Elza Mayhew did jump out at me,
and there were a couple of reasons why.

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Firstly, I really resonated with her love for the West Coast and that’s really apparent in how she talked about the West Coast

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and her sculptures themselves, although a lot of them are quite large and totemic in stature.

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Like, for example,
I’ve seen a couple at the university having been a student there, and I’ve walked by her Coast Spirit,
which is in front of the library

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as well as Bronze Priestess. And they’re, you know, they’re very solid and

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quite beautiful. It’s almost like they look over the university in a way.

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But when I saw these little sculptures of hers,
I just thought, oh, these are

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these are so warm and they’re so playful. And it’s almost as though they’re speaking to each other
like a little conversation, almost like a little opera.

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Like you immediately start to imagine this kind of dialog
they might be having with each other.

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And I found that very beautiful. So it kind of stimulated my imagination.

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And I thought this
might be something that I could respond to. Heng: Yeah, that’s very interesting to know,
because the AGGV also holds some other pieces

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from Elza Mayhew, which are quite big in size and yeah,

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I mean, we are very interesting to hear
you talk about like why exactly this piece “Board of Ten”

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I like what you have said like “they’re in conversation, dialog, they’re
talking to each other.”

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It’s just like music. So yeah. Anna: Yes, it’s interesting because I guess… and I don’t know
that I was actually thinking about this ahead of time

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but in creating a relationship with another work,

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sometimes the work is so complete that as a musician, for instance,

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as a composer, I might not be able to find a way into it. Whereas with the “Board of Ten” I suppose because

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the elements of it, these figures, there’s
so much space in between them.

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I felt like it was a very active, a very textural work already, and I felt that the music had a space

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that could respond to it and it could be…

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there could
be ways that I could find my own voice within it. And so that was,
I think part of being drawn to this particular piece

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because of course music is also created from elements
that form relationships.

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And so it had a sort of connection there. Heng: I like it. You have said it in like a very beautiful way.

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Like when you are talking about that I have this whole picture of “Board of Ten” in my mind
and that’s right,

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like it leaves so much space for you, probably, to compose, to create. Anna: Yes, yes.

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Heng: Okay, so like once you have chosen this piece,
you have decided to make music for this piece

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we are curious to know, like, what are the following steps?
Could you also share with us the whole…

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should I say, composing process, you have worked through to make this piece?

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Anna: So I think that primarily spending time with it.

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So having it in my space here.
I came to see it at the gallery and took some video of it

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and so then I had a kind of visual sense of it

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and had that in my space as I was writing and a kinesthetic sense of it as well
because it’s very physical

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and the pieces themselves
have a kind of rougher texture on the outside.

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But they are very dense. And so to me that has a kind of kinesthetic presence.

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And so as I started composing, I was looking for ways to kind of build it up,
build up the composition in layers.

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So I began with viola and voice and
piano, and this was primarily

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because I thought these all worked together very well. The viola and the voice are very similar.

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The viola is kind of a deeper and richer sounding violin.

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And the voice is wordless. So it’s not superimposing
any kind of layer of narrative over it.

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It’s acting as an instrument as well. And then the piano is a kind of

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continuous repetition, like footsteps,
perhaps going through time. So I worked with these three primary instruments.
And then I wanted to…

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because Elza, when I was reading more and research
and more about her philosophy and how she thought about things,
she talked a lot about the human experience

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and her pieces as being openings into a human. Humans
entering and exiting.

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I loved this idea, and I wondered how I could do that in music, more so than I was already
working with in terms of the layering.

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And so what I thought I would do is invite further musicians to comment on what I had already created and recorded.

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So I sent this recording around to various musicians and they just sort of improvised their own response,
their own reverberation, if you will.

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And then they sent me back their recorded responses. And then I kind of

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chose from this little sort of catalog of improvizations
and filled in a few gaps.

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And some of them are mostly like echoes. And so they were just kind of a further layer.

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So I really loved this way of opening it up to a broader community and being content with the response,
but also using that material

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as a way to form another relationship in the work. So yeah, that was sort of my approach to creating the piece.

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Heng: Yeah, thank you so much for sharing this working process, but I’m just like so glad to hear
you talking about your process,

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which is also involving connection with people, with you, the other musicians and actually it’s really like

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echoing the working process of this whole Reverberations project. Like we are connecting with different communities, different people through the whole working process.

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So, I mean, I’m so glad that you point this out. Anna: Yes it was a really fun way to work
and it’s actually not a way that I have worked before.

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And so this was a kind of new way of exploring composition

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in this particular piece,
which came directly because of the idea of Reverberations.

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So that was kind of a fun little new direction
that I had taken in this work.

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Heng: It’s kind of a reverberation, right? The whole process is a reverberation. Yes.

14:31

Heng: Okay, so I’m also curious to know, like for this composition,
for this piece you have composed,

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like can I say it’s more concept oriented? Like, did you already had a concept in your mind
when you were composing?

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Anna: Well, I think it’s fair to say that it is kind of conceptual work,

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although it’s also very much a foray into sound

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and into my response to her sculpture. So it’s not a piece that I would say,

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you know, I created a score as a concept,
and then it’s just a kind of performance of that score.

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I think that the sounds themselves that I chose
and that I worked with and how I put the sounds together
were very much informed by the sculpture.

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And that’s more on a sensory level. So perhaps it’s fair to say that in the end

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I can sort of look back at it and think of it conceptually. But the music itself
was composed from a place of response to sound.

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Heng: Okay, oh, that’s good to know. But can you also talk a bit like…

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has your perception about Elza’s work changed? Like after your composition,
after you composed this piece? What do you think about…?

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Anna: That’s an interesting question. Has my understanding of Elza changed
because of the process of writing this piece?

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Yeah, absolutely. And I suppose creating an artwork

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is a process of spending time considering somebody or something else, an object,
perhaps, or a person or

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an experience or a place, a landscape. And so you spend time considering and

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holding that object within your sights and

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reflecting on it. And so that is very much

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something that stays with you afterwards. So I do feel that,

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you know, I really loved the experience
of being able to get to know her work,

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but it’s not like I was just… it would be different
if I was just sort of reading and researching about her.

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But when you create a work,
you actually feel like you’ve been very attentive

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in your own way because of course, I know very little about Elza Mayhew, but I know a little bit more than I did before.

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And I feel very enriched through knowing more about her. Heng: Oh, great. Thank you.

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Okay, so next question. Probably it’s a layman’s question
because I don’t really know a lot about music,

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but can I ask, is music narrative? Like for me, I would guess so, but I would like to hear from professionals like you.

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Do you include narrative in your composition? With your composition, are you telling stories, or sending messages to the listeners or just aiming at providing some beautiful treats to their ears?

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Anna: Hmm. So, tell me more about what you believe
narrative to be for you.

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Heng: Yeah. Like, for me, I’m a curator in all kinds of museums. So when I’m making an exhibition, I always try to

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not just put artifacts or artworks there for the audience to comprehend by themselves.

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I’m always having… for each exhibition I’m making, I’m always having something to tell the audience.

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There will be a big idea behind the whole curating process.

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Okay, for example, the Blue and White exhibition that is still on at the gallery

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I’m trying to use that exhibition
to tell a global story of blue and white porcelain.

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So this narrative aspect,
is always in my curatorial thought or practice.

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So I’m interested to know for your composition,

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when you are composing some music,
are you trying also to have some this

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storytelling aspect in your creation?

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Anna: As a composer, I’m really interested in particular themes and they come back again and again in my work. And one of those is nature and landscape, but

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the sort of psychological dissonance
within landscape and nature.

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It’s just, there’s sometimes
disquieting aspects of our natural world.

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So for example, I created a string quartet called Moths Drink the Tears of Sleeping Birds,

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which is this phenomenon
that scientists discovered in Madagascar where there would be

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as birds sleep at night,
these giant moths would settle on their eyes and they would insert little proboscis into their eyes
and drink their tears

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and you know, like this kind of an image is very…
it’s like this kind of micro horror that goes on in nature,

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but it shows also how these different elements of nature work
together to be able to survive.

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And so I’m often drawn to these kind of little places of dissonance in the natural world.

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And another piece that I wrote was called Skins Dissolving, and this was a site specific piece for Amplified Flute Choir.

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And it was done within the Beaty Biodiversity Museum,
which is in Vancouver.

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And they were having an exhibit called Skin and Bones and it was looking at our complicated relationship
with the animal world.

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So I find this a really interesting place. And it often informs the kinds of pieces

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that I’ll write and the kinds of material
that I’ll work with in composition. So I suppose in a way that is my own personal narrative

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that then comes into my work,
into the things I’m interested in.

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And so I would in that way, I would definitely say that’s where I find meaning within
my own work is through research and these types of things.

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Heng: Okay, yeah. That’s interesting to know. Yeah, like because I’m… Okay my next question… maybe it’s also related to the previous one.

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But like in the museum field
when we are making exhibitions or developing programs

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audience is always in the center of our minds. So I’m also curious to know,

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do you have a target audience in your mind
when you are composing? Or should I say, like,
is it more like you are telling something

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and sending a message to the audience
or is it more about expressing yourself in your music?

22:06

Anna: I guess in a way I feel that if I am interested in something,

22:12

other people might be interested in it as well,
and I don’t target things

22:18

to specific audiences. So I suppose it’s more that I allow myself to

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follow my interests
in what I want to compose and audiences are very…

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I feel that audiences are very intelligent
and well sort of educated and

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if they don’t like the music, they might still be interested
in the idea behind the music. Or if they do like the music,
then that’s wonderful.

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But like, I’m not trying to write something
that people would specifically like, so to speak.

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So I think in that way there’s a kind of freedom to write in a direction
that I feel is interesting from for myself.

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Yeah, if that makes sense? Heng: Yeah it does, because like, I think I totally agree, like

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even for us, when we are making exhibitions,
we’re not trying to really to just think,

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to see something that people really want. But, I guess still there are some serious knowledge on scholarship aspects associated with the exhibitions.

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So yeah, I think what we… Okay, I’m speaking from the museum field,
from the curating side,

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like what we are trying to do is just try to provide, should I say, provide the facilities for the audience to best enjoy or appreciate

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the final work, either
the exhibition or the presentation of the works of art.

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So yeah, I totally agree with you what you have just said. Oh yes.

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But then I also want to know
specifically for this time’s composition

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what is your expectation for the, again, audience? What is your exact expectation for the audience
who comes to the gallery

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to listen to your music while viewing the Board of Ten? Do you have any expectations for them
or do you totally leave it open to them to…?

24:33

Anna: Well, I love that it is in the Lab [Gallery] because I think it’s a beautiful space
and it is very evocative.

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The color is very evocative within that space. I love how you come up the little walkway
and then you can peer into the room to the clear glass.

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And you look at this, in a certain way, it almost reminds me of a chess game or something, you know? Like is it a game?

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You know, it kind of has that sort of quality,
that game, like quality. And then I hope that people will come in and engage
and with the sculptures and try to

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feel what they’re feeling when they see them. And as they’re hearing the music.

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And that it’ll be an experience that is unique for them,
that they might not be able to connect anything else that they’ve ever seen or heard before.

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Or maybe they will make connections with something. I hope that they’ll discover more of Elza’s work as a result.

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Yeah, just enjoy it. Heng: Yeah that’s very… Yeah, speaking of that,

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because this piece and your music
is presented in our Lab [Gallery]…

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We called it a lab like a small exhibition space. But we did have

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to take off the vinyl on the gate. So like you said, when the audience came to stand outside of the gallery

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they can see through the clear glass door to see the piece. Yes. This is a way we have made to invite the audience in.

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Anna: Yes, it’s very nice. It’s like this little box that you’re looking into, like a

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little theater or something,
and you’re just peering through into the theater

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Heng: Okay, so how do you think about this collaboration with the AGGV?

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Do you think, through this collaboration… how should I say… Do you think this collaboration with the AGGV this time will impose any influence

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on your future composition practice? Anna: Oh. My goodness [laughter]. Do you mean will it influence the next pieces that I write, in some sort of way?

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Heng: Yeah, I mean, like basically… normally you are working on this… like music is like an art for the ear, right?

27:06

But this time you are collaborating with the Art Gallery
and you are more into this visual side.

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So I would guess, like you probably all also have work included in this visual aspect in your work
when you are composing.

27:23

So I’m just curious to know,
would this type of work have any influence or any…

27:33

anything in your future composition practice? Anna: Well, I’d definitely love to work again with visual art in some way.

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I created an orchestra piece based on Emily Carr’s paintings. Four of Emily Carr’s paintings: Spring, Pine Trees and Blue Sky.

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Scorned as Timber, Beloved of the Sky, and Untitled (Seascape). The last two are from 1935.

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And I loved that process as well. It was very similar where I was just trying to kind of

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resonate with the work and then come up
with a kind of musical corollary or relationship

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or just explore my feelings in having those paintings
and seeing those paintings and experiencing those paintings.

28:24

And so that piece and this, this process are sort of similar and it would be interesting

28:33

to go forward and work that way again. I find it very enriching.

28:38

And it also… Every time something new is brought into the composition
process, it changes you.

28:46

It changes sort of, you know, it asks questions, it creates a little challenge,
it creates a little problem.

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And your process is finding the answer to that challenge
or that problem

29:00

And so you develop a new set of skills to try to kind of

29:06

solve that and create something meaningful. So yeah, I look forward to pieces that kind of are like that.

29:14

That kind of create that set of relationships
that ask new questions, basically.

29:21

Heng: Right. Thank you. So then… So what works have you been working on recently?

29:29

I think our audience would probably want to know more about your compositions.

29:34

Anna: Sure. Yeah. So one piece that I’m really excited about is…
this has been a piece

29:40

I’ve been working on for several years, actually, all through COVID,
it is an opera called Cells of Wind

29:47

And this is finally coming to its workshop stage this July in Toronto.

29:52

It’s just an hour long piece,
but it’s based on a theater artist

29:58

by the name of Lena Constante,
who was a Romanian theater artist. And she lived in the 20th century as well.

30:05

She was unfortunately confined to prison because she went through some puppet trials of Stalin.

30:17

Basically,
she hadn’t done anything wrong, but she still knew somebody who was on the wrong side of the political community.

30:25

And so she was confined to prison
and was in solitary confinement for nearly a decade.

30:32

And so I created this opera with FAWN Chamber Collective,
which is an experimental opera group in Toronto.

30:41

It’s for six instrumentalists and eight singers. And talking about a piece that sort of stimulates…

30:48

that creates a problem
and then stimulates you to do a new kind of form of,

30:54

I guess, score, in this case, the whole score is graphically notated,
so there’s no actual specific pitches.

31:04

But I used this idea of her as a theater artist
and her delight in creating set design and in creating tapestries.

31:12

And so the score basically is a grid and then across it are all of these different sort
of visual designs that come out of her tapestry work.

31:24

And so that will be a really neat project
to kind of hear eventually and see how it sounds.

31:30

Heng: Yeah, we look forward to it. Anna: Yeah. So that’s… I’m just working on parts for that right
now, it’s taking a very long time.

31:40

Yeah, exactly. Heng: Okay. I think I also want to hear from you like… before you joined… before you…

31:53

Oh sorry… before this collaboration did you know a lot about the AGGV?

32:00

Like what is your idea, should I say, about the AGGV?

32:05

Anna: Yeah, I mean, I have had a growing

32:12

I suppose interest in the AGGV in the last little while
because of this project.

32:18

And I really, I had visited there a couple of times. Okay.

32:23

Well I had been there to see the Emily Carr collection and then a few exhibits that came through that
I thought were really interesting.

32:31

But in the last… of course
I’ve only been back in Victoria for the last three and a half years
and not much was happening because of COVID 19.

32:39

And so I haven’t really been there at all.

32:45

But yeah, I’m really excited by this exhibit and also by the podcast and by different community endeavors

32:56

that the AGGV seems to be involved with. So yeah, I think it’s really exciting.

33:04

Heng: Thank you. For those who want to learn more about Anna’s work,
head over to annahostman.net

33:14

And for more information on the AGGV’s Reverberations exhibition, please visit aggv.ca. Thank you all for listening.

33:22

Thank you Anna. Bye.

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