Industrial designer Pablo Muñoz wants Vancouverites to listen with more empathy to the voices of black, Indigenous and people of colour, and he wants them to have fun at the same time.
That’s the message of his latest art installation, Let it Reign, which features an adult-sized swing beneath an artificial cloud, displayed in the West End’s Jim Deva Plaza until Aug 6.
“At a time when we are having so much trouble listening to one another, the piece uses play as a tool for empathy,” he says.
Members of the public are invited to come swing on the purpose-built standalone structure and listen to the recordings coming from the speakers hidden in the cloud-shaped sculpture above the swing.
The art piece, which Muñoz says was built with funding from the Vancouver Pride Society and the City of Vancouver, comes at a time when Vancouver’s LGBTQ+ community is experiencing internal divisions over whether the police should be allowed to march in the Pride Parade.
Designed and created over a period of six weeks, the responsive swing plays audio recordings when a person swings. The tracks include sounds of thunder, lighting and rain, as well as speeches from LGBTQ+ activists.
Users will hear “important speeches from the queer liberation movement, some voices from prominent activists right now – two-spirit land-defenders, voices from folks from Black Lives Matter Toronto – as well as just stories and poetry from immigrants and refugees,” says Muñoz, adding that, as a designer, he doesn't want to impose his personal political opinion. Thus, the recordings represent a wide range of voices and experiences. “We see different conversations that are going on around who's marching and who's not marching in the parade. And this is a pretty global thing that's going on. … The voices [coming from the cloud] are not exclusive to one particular stream of thought.”
Amongst the differing opinions, Muñoz hopes his piece will help people listen with more empathy.
“At a time when there are so many conversations going on within the queer community, and so many opposing views, perhaps while we are playing – while our feet are off the ground, and we're swinging and our heartbeat is perhaps a little bit higher – … [perhaps] listening to different people's experiences when we're in that moment, it would allow us to listen with more empathy and to listen to those ideas a bit more closely,” he says.
Note: this story has been updated since originally posted.
