How Can We Remember – Lecture
February 1, 2010
Thursday, February 4th, 2010 – 6pm – 20 Cooper Square, 5th Floor, New York, NY
In the Nation’s Capital: Residential School Exhibit
June 7, 2009
I was recently in Ottawa for the annual Canadian Communication Association’s (CCA) Conference where I presented a short paper entitled: Before Truth: Contextualizing History, Memory and Nation in the Age of Truth and Reconciliation. In the paper, I briefly explored the international context of Truth and Reconciliation Commissions (TRCs) and drew comparisons between the fledgling Canadian Commission and the completed South African TRC. Given the challenges the Canadian Commission has faced in its first year, one of my main arguments in the paper was to highlight the need for multiple, local approaches to reconciliation.
While in Ottawa, I had the pleasure of visiting the National Archives where they are currently showing an exhibit entitled “‘We were so far away…’ The Inuit Experience of Residential Schools.” The small exhibit focuses on the recollections of eight Inuit students who attended various residential schools. Organized by the Legacy of Hope Foundation, the exhibit includes photographs, video, sound, and large-scale posters in English, French and Inuktitut.
The exhibit displays old photos provided by the students through a slide projector. Connected to a motion sensor, the slides automatically start to change as one steps towards the exhibit. The soft clicking of the changing slides creates a rhythmic melody for the images. Largely in black and white, the photographs projected onto the white walls of the exhibition space are beautiful in their ability to capture the everyday experiences at the schools. The images of students at their desks, in uniform, in some cases smiling into the camera both conceal and reveal the difficult experiences of the students, which are elaborated in the surrounding posters. The exhibit is on at the National Archives in Ottawa until September 7th, 2009.
Visual Culture and the Politics of Reconciliation
May 23, 2009
One of the issues I’ve been exploring in my recent research involves the ways in which cultural memory is represented through visual culture. How is history communicated through art, architecture, museums and/or memorials to future generations? In the case of traumatic memory, what are the particular challenges involved in this communication? And how can artistic representation also incorporate issues of survival and resilience as well?
In the case of the IRS TRC in Canada, Coast Salish artist Luke Marsten created the “TRC Bentwood Box,” a box made from a continuous piece of red cedar bark. Marsten’s work incorporates both personal and collective narratives. The artwork carved into the wood pays respect to Marsten’s grandmother’s experiences as a student of the IRS and also represents different aspects from First Nations, Inuit and Métis students who survived of fell victim to the schools.
Once the Commission is re-established and begins to fulfill its mandate, the box will travel with the IRS TRC across the nation.
Image from the TRC website.
In Media Res – Indigenous Media Week
May 4, 2009
“In Media Res” is dedicated to experimenting with collaborative, multi-modal forms of online scholarship. Each day, a different scholar will curate a 30-second to 3-minute video clip/visual image slideshow accompanied by a 300-350-word impressionistic response.
May 4th – 9th, 2009 is dedicated to Indigenous Media. One of my favorite professors, Dr. Faye Ginsburg, is the first scholar in the series. She writes on Isuma Igloolik and their efforts to use new media to disseminate indigenous media and create community. Check out In Media Res here.
Update: Michelle Raheja contributed to in media res’ indigenous media week with a post entitled “Not Ready to Make Nice”: Indigenous Music Video and Lessons of History” which focuses on the work of hip hop artists Wahwahtay Benais and his music video called “Indigenous Holocaust.” It focuses on the legacies of the Indian boarding schools and is worth checking out. Click here.
Public School 1
March 26, 2009
Here are a few pics from a recent visit to PS1. The contemporary art center was founded in 1971 as the Institute for Art and Urban Resources Inc., an organization devoted to organizing exhibitions in underutilized and abandoned spaces across New York City.
The space is amazing. Converted from an old public school, the building retains its institutional feel while the artwork – painted on the walls, embedded in the floor, placed in darkened rooms – makes striking use of the space.
Click on the thumbnails to enlarge the images.
Upcoming Event: Truth-Tellers
February 22, 2009
“When the smoke clears, can we handle the truth?”
Full Spectrum and New York Theatre Workshop present THE TRUTH-TELLERS, a free panel discussion with five creators who dig beneath the official story to the complex, gritty underside. On February 26th, from 6:30-9:30, panelists Milagros de la Torre [artist/photographer], Alberto Ferreras [author/filmmaker/ performance artist], David Henderson [poet/author/activist], Meg McLagan [filmmaker/cultural anthropologist] and Liza Jessie Peterson [actress/poet/playwright] will discuss the ideas and experiences behind their work, and explore the larger question to us as a society, “When the smoke clears, can we handle the truth?”. The panel will be moderated by K. Neycha Herford [musician/transformational counselor/new media journalist].
This free event will begin with a screening of excerpts of The Peculiar Patriot by Liza Jessie Peterson; and Lioness by Meg McLagan and Daria Sommers.
NEW YORK THEATRE WORKSHOP - www.nytw.org
Native Identity in the 21st Century – Conference
February 6, 2009
CONFERENCE
Native Identity in the 21st Century
Saturday, February 7, 2009
1–5:15 p.m.
Diker Pavilion, George Gustav Heye Center
National Museum of the American Indian, New York
Topics include New Definitions of Indianness and Urban Calling–Where Art and Native Identity Meet.
Keynote address by award-winning author David Treuer (Ojibwa), University of Minnesota. Participants include Cara Cowan Watts (Cherokee), Cherokee Tribal Council of Oklahoma; Randy Reinholz (Choctaw), San Diego State University and the Autry Museum; artist, Jeffrey Gibson (Mississippi Band Choctaw/Cherokee); Charlene Teters (Spokane), activist and professor at the Institute of American Indian Arts; and a dramatic monologue from Tales of an Urban Indian by author/actor Darrell Dennis (Shuswap Nation). Moderators: NYU Silver Professor Karen Kupperman and NYU Asst. Professor Noelle Stout (Cherokee).
Presented in collaboration with the Native People’s Forum at New York University and The Public Theater.
For more information, check out the National Museum of the American Indian.
Above image: Fritz Scholder
Recently Read: History After Apartheid
January 17, 2009
In History After Apartheid: Visual Culture and Public Memory in a Democratic South Africa, Annie Coombs explores several specific sites of memorial in South Africa, highlighting the ways in which drastic political and social changes call for a re-negotiation of important historical sites. For example, Coombs explores the symbolic importance of Robben Island, as embodying both the troubled history of South Africa and the promise of a new future. Because of the central role it played in the discourse of political resistance under apartheid, the fate of the island during the shift to a post-apartheid society was hotly debated. It was eventually decided that the island should become open to the public as a tourist site. Former guardsbecame tour leaders on the grounds of their past incarceration. The site becomes a “living memorial,” where narratives continue to evolve.
Her comparison of the Robben Island Museum with the District Six Museum allows her to contrast the ways in which other categories of identity, including gender, enter the discourses of oppression, loss and memorialization. The discrepancy she notes between the two museums is indicative of the importance placed on the struggles of the prisoners at Robben Island (including Nelson Mandela) as opposed to the families displaced by the forced relocation of District Six residents. Written before the completion of the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg, Coombs can only speculate about the way in which the narratives understood through an examination of The District Six Museum and Robben Island are voiced in the new museum space.
Coombs’ work on contextualizing the implications of a changing history on the physical representations of these histories is interesting in the Canadian context. The Canadian TRC, in other words, is only one way in which this neglected history will be explored. By the end of the TRC’s five year mandate, museums, public spaces and existing and new artwork will have to be reinterpreted.
Dark Tourism and the Power of the Image
September 10, 2008
I attended a talk tonight at the Center for Architecture in New York called Memorial and Meaning. The panelists, Michael Arad (who designed the World Trade Center Memorial), Frederic Schwartz (architect of several 9/11 memorials including the Westchester Memorial), and Louis Nelson (architect of the Korean War Memorial in Washington, D.C), spoke eloquently and often emotionally about their work. But the highlight of the show came in the form of a photography exhibition that lined walls of the Centre for Architecture. The the work of Julie Dermansky, a photographer who has traveled around the world capturing images of memorials built to remember genocide and massacre in many different contexts, is both fascinating and unsettling.
The exhibit, entitled “Memorial Sites: New York to Nairobi,” contains an array of images that pointedly recount the story of atrocities committed by humankind around the world. Dermansky’s photos are often jarring: stacks of skulls in Cambodia and bloody clothes hanging on a wire in Rwanda. Others show more abstract images of human-caused tragedy: structures of steel or stone that represent loss and absence, that portray sadness and pain in conceptual form.
In her artist statement, she mentioned that there is now a term for this type of travel, for trips that take people to visit these memorial sites. “Dark tourism,” she explains, is becoming more prevalent.” A walk around the World Trade Center in New York can attest to this.
After the talk, I stayed behind to ask Dermansky a question. I thought her photos were amazing: simple in style yet burdened by the weight of their meaning. “How do these photos speak to the atrocities occurring now?” I asked. I suppose I was afraid that her project would perhaps be primarily about the past in a way that didn’t engage with the present or the future. She smiled and said, “Oh, it’s all about now. It’s about the Sudan; it’s about China.”
She explained further that current atrocities must be brought to the public eyes in different ways. People often feel overwhelmed, guilty, or don’t know what to do when faced with the enormity of international conflict and destruction. But the images she takes are a way to reference the present without pointing a finger. They allow people to ask how this violence can be prevented or stopped. It enables them to raise these questions themselves. No preaching, no blame, and perhaps a new awareness.
To see Julie Dermansky’s photos and read more about her work, visit: www.jsdart.com.
