With Only glaciers know, Yanran Bi discusses the complicated interconnections between human beings and the landscape of Iceland through a sonic documentary and poetic fiction.

This work is one of the shortlisted pieces for the Sound Walk September Awards 2024. 
Below, Yanran considers the process that lead to the creation of the work.

The Beginning

In early 2023, I came across the story of Ok (Jökull), the first glacier to “die” in Iceland. It was located northeast of Reykjavík, atop the Ok volcano, and was declared dead in 2014, as it was no longer large enough to sustain itself or move. A funeral was held for it a year later. Perhaps it was the use of the word “die” or the funeral dedicated to it that made me say to myself, “I have to see Ok in person.”

With a limited budget, I reached out to the Icelandic non-profit organization Worldwide Friends, who generously offered to host me at their various camp locations for research. In early June, I packed my sound recording equipment and arrived in Iceland.

Walking

I don’t drive, so I mostly relied on my feet and the bus service that tours around the country. The sense of walking was intensified, accompanied by the feeling of my tiny human presence in the vast, by the overwhelming landscape of Iceland. A few minutes by car could take nearly an hour to walk from the organization’s campsite just to reach the nearest bus station. On several occasions, I passed too close to arctic tern nesting grounds and was attacked by the birds twice. Eventually, I got used to holding my mic stand high in the air while walking, so the birds would be confused about where to attack.

I hiked and adventured whenever possible, deliberately allowing myself to fully open up to all encounters. Everything felt more present when it was just me walking within my surroundings. I became more aware of the difference in my footsteps’ sounds on various surfaces, and the subtle changes in wind direction. I felt lonely yet deeply connected to the landscape, almost to a pious extent, as I measured it with my walking.

I like what Judy Watson says: “Stories allow me to learn from the ground up, to feel the power of the land under my feet which resonates through my body and connects me to the Country.”

I wrote a lot of diaries during the time, including about my encounter with a dead whale on the shallow beach, the constant dripping of water from the glacier cave ceiling that felt like heavy rain, and the sense of truly being alive while running on the edge of a cliff during the midnight sunset. Part of those diaries later became the narrative for my project, an intimate description of my experience in Iceland.

…He drove me up a mountain and pointed to the mountain top where OK was. What I saw was a gray mountain covered with scattered patches of white.

Somehow I thought of the dead whale lying on a shallow beach that I encountered in northern Iceland.

Its dark gray skin, exposed above the water, was worn, reminding me of volcanic rock.

It looked like a tiny island from afar…

– quotes from “Only Glaciers Know”

A story about …

Not long after arriving here, I knew I wanted to create a piece about water. Not only because it holds the traces of the now-vanished Ok glacier, but also because it’s impossible to ignore, present everywhere: in rain, tides, hot springs, rivers, ice… Each offers a completely distinctive listening experience though all are interconnected.

The air and water frozen in OK over the span of more than 700 years, gradually, and irreversibly return to the atmosphere and the oceans.

So does this heavy rain inside the glacier cave on Longjokull,

it is the rain of the past falling into the present.

– quotes from “Only Glaciers Know“

I would describe the soundscape of the island as less crowded rather than quiet. One night, I stayed up alone. When the rain suddenly arrived, I was amazed to find that I could vividly perceive the shape of the house through the varying distances of raindrops striking the roof. It just felt so magical. 

I am drawn to the idea that no sound exists outside of its environment. When you are listening to a sound, you are also perceiving the space it goes within. I feel a definition of sound recording should be: a portal to travel back to a specific time and location.

I brought a hydrophone to record underwater sounds. When I lowered it into the ocean at a harbor to capture the waves, I instead heard the faint clicking of a distant boat as it gradually departed. I thought to myself: “Aha, this is how human beings were heard by the ocean!” In that moment, it became strikingly clear to me that we, as humans, are part of the environment for others. This thought gave me a reassuring sense of belonging, but also left me wondering what the story is truly about.

Melting glaciers create all the main rivers and waterfalls in this country, like a heart pumping blood into blood vessels, giving life to all cells along the way.

Speaking of blood,

I once read a quote by Teresia Teaiwa, saying “We sweat and cry salt water, so that we know the ocean is really in our blood”.

It is, ultimately, one body of water. ”

– quotes from “Only Glaciers Know”

I later named the five sections of the final soundwalk piece: WATER, HEARTS, PAST RAIN, THE ISLAND, and THIS WALK. So instead of “a story about water”, let’s say, it is a story about “us”.

Some Notes on The Piece

I spent a little over a month touring Iceland, recording various water systems as I traveled. After returning to the U.S., I spent the next six months creating Only Glaciers Know, named after the plaque in memory of Ok, which goes:

A letter to the future

Ok is the first Icelandic glacier to lose its status as a glacier.

In the next 200 years all our glaciers are expected to follow the same path.

This monument is to acknowledge that we know

what is happening and what needs to be done.

Only you know if we did it.

The editing process felt almost like a playful collage of time and space. A great deal of attention was given to positioning each recording within the auditory space, attempting to connect the far and the near, the past and the present. There is no specific route required to experience the piece; any coastline in Iceland (preferably a non-touristy one) will work. From time to time, the narrative includes instructions to engage the listeners. A website was created for easier access.

It is difficult to define whether the piece is a sonic documentation or a poetic fiction of Iceland. At the very least, I hope it is a sincere one.

The winner and honourable mention of the SWS Awards 2024 will be announced around the start of 2025.