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This is a copy of Nancy Bleck's MFA thesis which is about the Witness Uts'am project that I will be presenting on in Newcastle.
Citation preview
Becoming witnessEcology, embodied ethics and artistic practice
Thesis for Master’s of Fine Art 2005
by
Nancy Bleck, Slànay Sp’ákw’us
Hogeschool voor de Kunsten, Utrecht, The Netherlands
Open Learning University, London, England
1
In loving memory of friend, mountaineer, conservationist, wilderness educator, photographer, and the funniest man I ever met.
Xwexwsélken, John Clarke
Who showed me a home called wilderness.
Contents
Prelude
One I Situating espistemology and artistic practice
Two I Interview with Chief Bill Williams
Three I Art Context
Four I Summary
Bibliography
End Notes
Prelude
I was stirred by a desire to ‘do something’ about what was happening
to the land in a rainforest I had in recent years come to know as nexw-
ayantsut (Sims Creek / place of transformation) and Nsllwx-nitem tl’asutich
(Elaho Valley), located in southwestern British Columbia, three hours north
of downtown Vancouver. It’s environs smelled and tasted nothing like the
suburban sprawl of Mississauga, Ontario, where I once called home, with
it’s shrinking agricultural pastures, increasing highways, and massive
new housing developments, but even more frighteningly closer to what
an ‘environmental holocaust’ may actually imply. Thousands of hectors
of clear felling of an ancient ecology, wiped out over a corporate five-year
plan, displacing grizzly bears, moose, spotted owls, and numerous other
species which depend on the rich valley bottom forests for survival. These
include millions of Douglas-fir, Hemlock and Cedar trees, that can be
witnessed carted down the G-main logging road for shipment to foreign
waters, and all at a high ticket cost for the irreparable loss of life, and
damage left for local communities to reconcile and grapple over.
As a starting point, asking myself ‘what is to be done’ about the erasure
of old growth rainforests, my inquiry led me to seek out non-dominating
ways of producing different forms of knowledge, and of visualizing the
alternatives. I swerved into unexpected collaboration upon chance meeting
with famous mountaineer John Clarke in 1995 in the Elaho Valley, and
then one year later, with hereditary Chief Bill Williams, on a sandbar in
Sims Creek. I did not originally seek out the communities in which I am
now implicated; seamless flows between the arts, first nation’s culture,
ecology, and science, have arrived as an unexpected surprise to me. I
am deeply grateful, indebted and honoured for the genuine friendships
and new knowledge’s that have resulted from a shared commitment to
the land.
This in turn brought me to an artistic practice involving documentation as
art, community and public engagement, cross-cultural and interdisciplinary
collaboration, and to women studies, whose epistemologies provide a
critique of Western science and development, wherein the root of the
problem resides. To become responsible at a local level among multiple
communities, and therefore ‘together’ answerable to the eco-crisis, is
where I locate my art practice and citizenship.
Introduction
What is the reposition of the artist as a ‘witness’?
My research reflects the form of an embodied and engaged artistic journey;
mapping a specific political terrain of the temperate rainforest in West Coast
Canada, located in the northern part of the Squamish Nation traditional
lands. As a co-founder and artist inside the project of Uts’am / Witness,
having spent ten summers of fieldwork in the rainforest: that is engaging the
public to physically ‘witness’ it, while producing documentation as artwork,
my subject position therefore becomes intrinsically embedded within this
research. I will call up memory, story, photography, conversation, as well
as philosophy and cultural theory, as referents and guides traversing
and informing this exceptional landscape under siege. ‘Ecological ethics’
and ‘politics of location’ play a discursive role within my artistic research
navigation.
I am motivated to highlight that the artist has particular and responsive
ways of perceiving the world, that are indeed different from say a social
scientist, mountaineer, environmentalist, feminist, politician, academic, or
cultural theorist. However, I consider carefully how the artist may become
an active player in the political status of contemporary society in midst
of experiencing a long-lasting eco-crisis. In this sense, I encourage and
endorse art that carries the capacity to empower us to constructively act in
the world; art that ‘has the power to position itself politically, determinedly
and critically in the world, but also to be celebratory’.1 It is my objective
as a cultural activist. Antithetical to this belief, I play devil’s advocate, and
contradict these ideals by also defending an artistic potential which does
not subscribe to the expectations of art to ‘change society’ per se, and the
limited role and instrumentalization of art to serve a specific function or
political cause. Instead I will argue for art which is transformative, both for
nature and the human.
New and novel transformations among traditionally distinct disciplinary fields
are favouring more interdisciplinary approaches to knowledge production.
Rosi Braidotti writes, ‘concepts are nomadic because they have acquired
the capacity to transfer from one scientific discourse to another.’2 One of
my wishes as an artist is to find a place of graceful discourse between
ecology, citizenship and participation. Donna Haraway uses the term
‘worldly practice’, as a way to ‘start talking about any dimension of what
it means to be worldly – the commercial, the physiological, the genetic,
the political, [the organic]’3 It is about paying attention to power relations
and flow of capital, which tempers the arts, the environment, gender,
race, politics and almost everything one can think of. A closer look into
how gendered power relations operate in Western rationale, spins some
interesting discoveries where the environment is concerned, as discussed
in chapter one with Haraway’s figuration of the ‘modest witness’.
I will turn to a key player within Uts’am - Witness. One early morning by
the beachside, I engage in a video dialogue with Chief Bill Williams, which
makes up chapter two, offering insights into the Squamish traditional
practice of calling ‘witnesses’ when there is important ‘work to be done’.
My own stories are expressed through looking back at my photography,
as I offer an exchange of ideas, reflecting with a personal narrative on the
praxis of my work in chapter three. I cannot explain this process outside of my
embedded experience. My voice will shift from the academic, to the personal, as a
way to position and submerge my fleshy subjectivity into the conversation between
culture and nature. Gilles Delueze, Felix Guattari, Boris Groys, Sarat Maharaj,
Amir Ali Alibhai, Donna Haraway, and Rosi Braidotti, provide the philosophical
bones and cultural theory for offering more insight into the inquiry.
Two recent conferences in 2005 have provided insight into this conversation and
research of becoming witness. The first one in January in Berlin, Germany titled
KLARTEXT, ‘Artist as political subject’ and the second in April, ‘Arts and Ecology’
in London, England. I attended the first conference, while researching the second,
with regard to how these translate to the notion of the ‘witness’ rethinking artistic
practice in times of eco-crisis. There is so much that could be discussed from
these conferences, but for space consideration, I keep my observations to a bare
and crude minimum. For future research and inquiry, I am keen to participate in the
international debate on the artist’s role to the eco-crisis, and have signed up to the
RSA (Royal Society of Arts) for future involvement.
This investigation serves as a mapping exercise. It is a methodological reflexion
that searches out my own arts practice over the course of the Uts’am - Witness
project, which I will discuss is not about objectivity, representation and presentation
in the traditional ‘high art’ sense, but a socially active / animated implicated practice
– a course of intensive interconnected activities and unpredictabilities.
~~~>>>><<<<<~~~
One I Situating Epistemology & Practice
Witnessing is seeing; attesting; standing publicly accountable for
and psychically vulnerable to, ones visions and representations.
–Donna Haraway, modest_witness@second_millennium…,
My personal involvement as a witness within the Uts’am - Witness project,
and my own story, which is also my testimony of being called to witness
in the Coast Salish tradition, requires some understanding of specific
situated knowledge’s informing my art practice and actions in collaboration
with the Squamish Nation community. There is a need here to highlight
the personal within the political and vice versa, and to disclose my subject
position determined by my experiences and identity as a woman of white,
Euro-Canadian, middle-class / working-class, nomadic artist working
alongside cross-cultural alliances, producing documentation as art, while
deconstructing the grand narratives that philosophical knowledge claims
of Western power dominations have produced. I do so to expose my bias
informing my knowledge, which does not claim objective truths per se, but
highlights a few useful findings for transformation and change. In order
to make myself accountable, I call up what Donna Haraway describes
as ‘situated methodologies’ / ‘situated knowledges’, positioning oneself,
calling for a critical genealogy of subjectivity. This embodied ethical
standpoint forms the frame of my artistic practice and post-modern political
condition.
Throughout my art inquiry, I have acknowledged a decisive need to
investigate new perspectives on Western dominate rationality, and neo-
liberal globalization, not as a rehearsal for a regime of (un)fashionable
political correctness, but to expose and open up inherent misunderstandings
about what is meant by the political, the ecological, of power relations,
and opening up of the imagination in regards to these, which often gets
in the way of effecting real change within the real world. The whole point
is to attempt to re-imagine the world differently, beyond a ‘colonized
imagination’, through the re-construction of socially creative assemblages,
placing emphasis on respect for the differences of our multi-specied world.
My desire and hope is an ethical one, which is to ‘care’ ‘fully’ attempt a few
non-linear pathways, globulocalar steps, towards the goal of sustainable
futures.
~~~>>>><<<<<~~~
Modest Witness
Anti-racist feminist scholar of science, Donna Haraway, in her important
book, Modest_Witness@Second_Millennium.FemaleMan©_Meets_
OncoMouse™, explores the figuration of the modest witness, that in
theory is close in practice to the 2000+ year tradition of calling witnesses
to events of significant meaning in Coast Salish culture. I borrow from
Haraway the modest witness figuration as one of the main points of entry
into the complex discussion of what it means to be a witness in times of
standardized brutality of nature.
From the perspective of the Squamish Nation, calling witnesses in an oral
tradition is a form of law and governance and is a legitimate and legal
‘document’ in the eyes of the Supreme Court of Canada, which functions
as the cornerstone of history keeping and making of contemporary
indigenous cultural practices. I will not speak on behalf of this strong and
rich community. However, I will speak from my own subject position within
the project of Uts’am / Witness; what it informs and what it contributes and
continues to aspire to as ‘value added’ nature–culture integrated system’s
that celebrate diversity and difference, while forging genuine connection.
Haraway has identified what Squamish people have rigorously practiced
through the very survival of their culture, in the aftermath of genocide of
the previous century that ‘the important practice of credible witnessing
is still at stake’4.
What counts as credible witnessing in times of eco-crisis?
There are two points I would like to acknowledge in discussing Haraway’s
term ‘modest witness’ (borrowed from Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer),
with reference to the environment, and that is the problem of invisibility
and transparency, and what counts as ‘credible witnessing’ as a source
of vision5. The second is the tension between these privileged forms of
witnessing, with that of identifying a critique of ‘objectivity’. Shifting the role
of witnessing away from knowledge-claims, and toward a collective, public
and mixed act of witnessing, where all the players, (especially those whose
visibility have marked them biased and therefore ‘unreliable sources of
important things’6), precisely means cultural intervention into mainstream
modernity’s social power.
This self-invisibility is the specifically modern, European, masculine,
scientific form of virtue of modesty…This kind of modesty is one of
the founding virtues of what we call modernity. This is the virtue that
guarantees that the modest witness is the legitimate and authorized
ventriloquist for the object world, adding nothing from his mere
opinions, from his biasing embodiment. And so he is endowed with the
remarkable power to establish facts.7
Haraway spins the modernist notion of the modest witness, ‘queering’ the
modest in the witness, so as to diffract, displace and problematize this
silent self-invisibility, but notes that ‘reflexivity is not enough to produce
self-visibility’8.
Valid witness depends not only on modesty, but also on nurturing and
acknowledging alliances with a lively array of others, who are like and
unlike, human and not, inside and outside what have been the defended
boundaries of hegemonic selves and powerful places. 9
To address the violence inherent in a Western prevailing style of
development, calls for a closer look at how dualisms function in the
imagination, which Val Plumwood describes in her book, Feminism and the
Mastery of Nature, as ‘the instrumentalization of nature, where culture is
always the privileged rank in the hierarchy’.10 In Women, the Environment
and Sustainable Development, four feminist writers explain that, “the
embodiment of the subject is the political standpoint which allows for a
critique of dualism as a form of violence, that is to say, an oppositional
form of thought which has the effect of psychic warfare” 11
This calls for a critique of the style of conservation that enforces homogeneity
of language in the media, absolutism’s, dualisms and dichotomies of
‘us and them’ rationale, and the feeling of exclusion that comes with it.
Polarization of the different positions is necessary in the maintenance of
keeping those players ineffective.12 As John Clarke used to point out, ‘the
days are over when environmentalists can do no harm.’ And so we think
not to become clever, but because thinking transforms life. In a project to
do away with the foundation of ‘being’, binary and opposition, Deleuze
insists there exists nothing more than the flow of becoming, ‘all beings are
just relatively stable moments in a flow of becoming-life’. (Colebrook; 2002)
*excerpted from the website below
WE HAVE TO LEARN TO MAKE OUR THOUGHT TRAVERSE THE
INTERRELATIONS AND MUTUAL INFLUENCES BETWEEN ECO-
SYSTEMS, THE MATERIAL WORLD, SOCIAL AND INDIVIDUAL
RELATIONS.” Guattari, The Three Ecologies, p35
“In The Three Ecologies Felix Guattari extended his definition of ecology
to encompass social relations and human subjectivity as well as
environmental concerns, developing the concept *ecosophy as a catalyst
for change with the potential for collective and social reinvention. This
broadened concept provides a useful starting point for a conference
that brought together numerous perspectives on the ways in which
contemporary artists are confronting ecological issues and on the
relationship of the individual to their cultural, social, economic and natural
environments”. Emily Pethick
http://www.thersa.org/arts/conferences/conference1/visitorResponse.asp
~~~>>>><<<<<~~~
Art that engages critical thinking alongside community participation may
do so at a cost to its autonomy, but may also provide a leap forward in what
many groups and communities in the *ecosophy 13 field are grappling with.
Rethinking a relationship with the human and nature is not accessible, or
even possible, without the hard work of melting down stereotypes, forming
alliance by way of dialogue, and intensive interaction as a methodology for
sustainable, intelligent practice of radical human care.14
In a yearning to search out for those ‘unlikely others’, ‘human and not’,
‘inside and outside’ of the environmental discussion, I find myself in line
with the philosophy of Delueze and Guattari, curious about ecosophy,
becoming-multiple, contradictions, complexities, and the rhizome, just
to scratch the surface. To search for the positive ‘others’ who were not
part of the dialogue; those who were different from the media constructed
stereotype of a ‘warrior in the woods’, and whose voices were urgently
needed, became my primary focus in 1995. What this actually means is
getting down to a grass-roots level of non-violent environmental practice
and cultural activism, and a look at how ‘globalization is produced
locally’15.
Becoming is about repetition, but also about memories of the non-
dominant kind.…it is about the capacity to sustain and generate inter-
connectedness. - Rosi Braidotti, Metamorphoses, p.8
Recognizing the importance of strategic alliance, while never losing site
of her primary objective, the difference women can make, Braidotti allows
for an unleashing of the imagination to tackle the very core of the problem
of modernity - gender. In my work with the environment and the multiple
communities within Witness, I apply nomadic philosophy and hybrid
strategies of resistance, for entering into a dialogic relationship; and of
becoming-multiple, and becoming witness within my artwork.
What attracted me so much to Braidotti’s way of nomadic thought is its
willingness to reinvent itself, and to embrace self-criticism, which warns
against the ‘complete and unconditional alliance with any philosophy’. (1995:
25) In her own words, ‘nomadism is the actualization of multiple differencesʼ
(2002: and, ʻnomadic becoming is neither reproduction nor just imitation, but
rather emphatic proximity, intensive interconnectedness’17. In this way I am
searching through the question of how and where lie the possibilities for
ecosophic transformation in the context of Witness, and I cannot imagine
this without assertion for the positivity of difference that women offer.
Thus, becoming witness is about embracing the messy act of what
democracy could look like in a current history struggling toward ‘post-
coloniality’. The ‘becoming’ in my ‘witness’ may derive from French
philosophers, and Italian-Austrailan-Dutch inspired nomadic theorist, while
the ‘modest’ in the ‘witness’ from California anti-racist feminist of science,
it is the ‘witness’ in my ‘witness’ that I will appeal to and acknowledge in
a dialogue with the rainforest, and in an interview with one of the sixteen
hereditary chief’s of the Squamish Nation, telàlsemkin/ siyam. This mixing
together of a 2000 year traditional practice of witnessing, combined with
a critical analysis of artist as social agent, forms the embodiment of my
subjectivity as an artist.
~~~>>>><<<<<~~~
Two I Interlocutors: Dialogue with community
[Place of transformation] nexw- ‘ayantsut
i) Earth / trees / water / non-human world / wild spirit places / conversation with the biological soup of the temperate rainforest
[Protocol] Chicayx
ii) Squamish people and protocols, Chee-ach , oral history and law / interview with Chief Bill Williams
Community Arts Practice
iii) Roundhouse arts residency, involvement with local artists and cultural workers, community art, artist as political subject*
Conservation, Mountaineering and Science Community
iv) Ecologists, biologists, geographers, mountaineers and environmentalists on a ‘walk in the woods’
For space restrictions, I will address ii) from the list of my Interlocutors: Dialogue with Community
Uts’am - Witness Synopsis
Witness is a cross-cultural collaboration in partnership with the
Roundhouse Community Arts Centre and the Squamish Nation.
Founded by John Clarke, Nancy Bleck and Chief Bill Williams, it
became the first arts residency to the opening of the Roundhouse in
downtown Vancouver, BC. This community-based project was hugely
attended in its first year (nominated for the ‘Ethics in Action’, Award
in 1998, and national winner for ‘Best Cultural Event’ from Tourism
Canada in 2002). It culminated in BC’s largest-ever exhibition involving
175 artists, professional and not, on issues of environmental practice,
first nations culture, and political engagement. It has remained a
stable residency project ever since its inception in 1997. Each year
several hundred people participate in Witness through a mix of
cross-cultural dialogue, ceremony, non-violent practice, wilderness
camping, art exhibitions, workshops, forums and/ or media events.
Over 40 different volunteers run the project each summer through the
Roundhouse. Celebrating diversity and difference, Witness connects
urban city dwellers to their rainforest backyards three hours north, to
learn more about Squamish traditional lands, and ecological issues
that affect us all. The project shrinks and expands, depending on the
year and events taking place, political circumstance, and / or needs
and desires of the multiple communities involved.
Conversation with Telàlsemkin/ siyam, Hereditary Chief
Bill Williams
FIG. 1 Reportage photo from the ‘verification ceremony’ of calling back witnesses, Sims Creek, April 2001
The Squamish peoples have gone from a population of approximately 80, 000
people, down to 150 upon contact with settler societies, nearing the edge of
extinction. Today there are 3 300 Squamish members, and 15 fluent speakers
of the traditional language, which is actively being taught in elementary and
secondary schools, and practiced during the witness ceremonies. While they have
never ‘ceded or surrendered rights to our traditional territory or the power to make
decisions within our territory’ (Squamish Nation Assertion of Title), they retain only
0.03% of their original ‘house of land’ at the moment.
We are shadows in our own land. Anyone can come here and not know
who we are. At a minimum, we have to share who we are and our
culture. - Chief Bill Williams
Being called to witness in the Coast Salish tradition is a sacred honour.
FIG. 2, Telàlsemkin/ siyam, dyptch, C-prints, 2004
Entangled as I am between an artistic researcher in love with ‘rhizome
rainforests’ and Squamish Nation culture that frames Uts’am-Witness, it
is my Euro-Canadian rooted subjectivity that prevents me from voicing
a simplistic score here. I am a daughter of immigrants who was born to
this land via the gateways of colonization. I have no authority to speak
‘culturally’ on behalf of an indigenous subjectivity, even as Slanay
Sp’ak’wus, my adopted Squamish ‘ninahalahin’ name. Nor do I even
wish to, unlike the anthropological practice of speaking on behalf of
‘Others’, often in distorted scholastic scores, or over idealized tones.
That is the farthest of my intentions, as I firmly believe that voice is
best coming from its own authenticity and aliveness; its own cultural
survival, beauty and wealth of traditions. Let the conversation begin.
Nancy Bleck: August 7th, 2005. I am speaking with Telàlsemkin/ siyam, one of sixteen hereditary chiefs of the Squamish Nation, (and elected chairman of council). Maybe you can state your name and explain your hereditary chieftainship?
C.B: My hereditary Chieftainship is Telàlsemkin/ siyam, as given to me
by my family and recognized by the community. My driver’s license name
is Bill Williams, and my baptismal name is Billy, George, Mario, Joesph
Williams, (chuckles) I don’t say that very often, (more chuckles)… …
yeah, that’s who I am.
N: I will be asking a few questions in regards to the research work that I have been doing in the Netherlands, with my artistic practice, and also with the Utsʼam – Witness project. To begin, I would like to ask you what your motivation is for getting people out to witness the land.
My objective is setting them on a journey.
I’ve met people this summer who came to Witness for the very first time,
and again this summer I’ve met people who I met 8 yrs ago, and this is
their 8th year of a 9 year journey that they’ve continued coming back. So
what it’s all about is planting that seed to get out there. Change is slow,
people do not like change…people do not like to change their routine. In
order for people to accept something new, and even with Squamish people,
going out to the land is very new to a lot of them. They grew up in an urban setting - they grew up beside the second largest drug market in Canada, in North America, in terms of heroin coming into the land. So being a person who would walk out into the Mother Nature setting is terrifying for them because they have never experienced anything so close. They think that a bear is going out jump out behind a tree and consume them, when in reality itʼs actually going to be the tree that is going to consume them, by the beauty of the tree and the wholeness of the tree. And for
the tree just being there and putting out the beautiful feelings of all the
trees that are out in Mother Nature and it’s not the animal that is going to
kill them. And so the change is actually going backwards, the change is
going back to Mother Earth; the change is getting out of the urban setting,
getting out of the feeling of convenience, getting out of the ability to want
immediate gratification. But to actually physically work for something,
take two / four hours to walk along a trail and finally see something, and
then realize that as they are walking back from their journey that they are
in fact slowing down and being able to see what is all around them, the
grandeur and splendor that Mother Nature offers.
And so for us as Squamish people, because we are so urbanized, just like
the rest of Canadian society, it’s hard for them to get out of their feeling of
comfort, their comfort zone and getting into a new area of something that
they’ve never experienced and that’s the wilderness, the real wilderness
that we do have in our lifesblood as people, because all races have that, itʼs just a matter of generations of loss. If your mother and father, or your grandmother and grandfather were not a part of Mother Nature, or part of the surroundings around you in terms of a natural state, and you always grew up in cities, then thatʼs all theyʼll talk about, thatʼs their history, thatʼs their stories. But if you show them as to things beyond that, in terms of
connecting to the land, then a little spark will jump out in front of them
and something will say, ‘I have to go there’, or its been something I heard
about and I want to be part of, and thatʼs what I was talking about earlier, that seed that we want to germinate to entice people, because getting out to the land – once they connect, is fabulous, theyʼll want to go back and back again, but if they donʼt give themselves that chance to connect, then itʼs harder for us to connect with their children because they canʼt pass on the stories.
FIG. 3, Untitled, C-print, canvas heat transfer, 1998
N: Now in getting to the simple, but complex question of the notion of witnessing. One of the things that I am researching involves what is means to be a witness, or to become a witness. It is a word that gets used in contemporary society often –but what it means to become a witness in Coast Salish culture is different from my experience, and requires a different level of responsibility. And in the Coast Salish tradition when witnesses are called, is when there is important ̒ work ̓to be done. I wonder how that ʻwork ̓has changed or been modified over generations. And how do you see ʻwhat is important work to be done today ̓- how do you see the importance of how witnesses play a role?
C.B: To be called a witness in a Coast Salish form, has been modified
to take into account today’s culture. People want to get to the ‘ah, ha’
but they don’t want to spend four days to get to that ‘ah, ha’, they want
to have that realization in 30min. To call a Witness event in the Coast
Salish way has been modified lots, and they way it’s been modified is
the method of calling witnesses, and how we wrap up the witness event,
has changed dramatically. In the old way of calling witnesses, we call the witness the same in that we call many people, but in the old days, we would call the mature men of each community that is attending the event, and no women were called. Today, such as the memorial yesterday, a lot of women were called, so that changed the male and female role in that event. And the other way it’s changed is getting to that 3min ‘ah, ha’, as opposed
to the five hour journey, we only allow a certain amount of witnesses to
be called. In some instances, to glorify the watch, we would only call four
people to speak at the end of the witness event, even though we might
have called 400 witnesses, so what we are doing is putting tape over the
mouths of those 400 people who were called, and only allowing 4 people
to speak, thinking that these four people can actually speak on behalf of
the 400 people who were there, but in reality I might have an idea what
your thinking is, but I can’t speak for you, and I know the general concept
of where you might be coming from, but again, because each individual
is so unique and different, how you or another person would phrase their
words, especially using the English language, it dramatically effects what
is being said and how people hear it, and so our calling of witnesses with
people in the Sims, it changes the reality of witnessing – it’s modified, its
shortened, the reality is not even the same in its true feeling of a Coast
Salish event, we use some terminology that is similar, for instance when
we call witnesses now – thankfully its called ‘work’. And the reason why
it’s called work, is in normal events in Coast Salish it generally takes a
year, or four years to prepare, and again the preparation of having the
event, whether it’s a memorial, a wedding, a naming, whatever, is the four
year journey of getting there, its not the actual memorial, its not actual the
wedding, it’s going out and getting the food, and going out and getting
the wood, its sitting down and weaving the blankets, it sitting down and
weaving the hanker chiefs, its sitting down and practicing the songs; itʼs the journey, and to call witnesses is the end result. So the modification I guess is that everything is shortened, thereʼs lots of immediate goals of wanting a 5 min gratification, a 3min ʻah, haʼ, than really looking at the journey itself.
FIG. 4, Detail from ‘Witness’ Photo-canvas mural, heat transfer, 3’ x 37’, 1997
N: One of the things I was reflecting on from Donna Harawayʼs book, Modest Witness, is that the credible act of witnessing is still at stake. I am interested is what counts as credible witnessing? In the practice of witnessing, how does one become ̒ credibleʼ? To be the eyes and ears of an event, or the eyes and ears of what is happening, how would a Coast Salish person be trained over a lifetime to be that credible witness?
C.B: It is fairly simple – its wanting to be recognized, just like any other
community. In the Coast Salish ways they’ve always tried to include
everybody when you go to an event. In today’s society, if there is 400
people, then they’ll call 400 witnesses, and in the old days they would only
call a very specific few, and especially of you have ancestral name, you
are very happy to be called and recognized on the floor by a Speaker in
front of 200 or 400 people, for the very first time, and you know because
your name is called is something very special because it is an obligation
that you are now given, and it isn’t an obligation that’s given to you, it’s a
recognition by other people that you have the ability, the wits around you
to know that being to called as a witness you have that responsibility and
because you are being called, other people know that ‘yes, that person
has that responsibility and can act accordingly and can do the job that
we are asking of that person to be the eyes and the ears and remember
this forever and a day’. It is that recognition of people who are outside
of yourself who would call your ancestral name to verify that you are
responsible and you can remember and echo things in a way that will not
vary from the real work that is taking place in that particular instance. It
is that recognition and is that time in having people know that you can
handle that responsibility.
N: Prior to collaborating with the Squamish Nation, I never thought of the ʻact of witnessing ̓ as a form of governance. What is witness in a ceremonial practice, in the Coast Salish tradition?
C.B: To be called to witness is the actual cornerstone of our Longhouse tradition of what we call Chicayx [chee – ach], chicayx is our foundation of our law, of how things get done. And in order to verify our law, we
need people not just within our family, our community, but people from
outside our community to come in and to verify that the event that is taking
place is something that they will bring back to their community to their
family, eventually, that says yes this event did happen, and yes they did
call witnesses, they did have a Speaker, yes they did have a doorman , yes
they did have someone looking after the fires, and yes they did feed us,
so that everything that they did was is in the same way fashion and form
as in our community, and that there was no conflicts - nobody standing up
and saying that they have a problem with this event, and because of the
people that were there 200, 500, 1000, and that there was no issue taken,
then it is all a good qualified event that is part of the chicayax, part of the culture, that is handed down orally through our aunts and uncles, through our grandmothers, grandfathers, that gratifies our chicayax, our history, of how things should be done.
N: It is the closest thing to what I understand what democracy could actually look like. (chuckles) You talked before about naming and the recognition of witnesses being called in an ancestral name, and we witnessed Drew Leathemʼs naming ceremony a few weeks at the closing event for Witness this summer. I have a few questions around the naming process, particularly the difference between a ʻninahalayan ̓name and an ancestral name. What
has changed in giving a name to a person that isn’t of First Nations
heritage? John Clarke, myself, Finn Donnely, Princess of Lichenstein, and Drew, those are the people that I know that have adopted Squamish
names, there could be others that I donʼt know. What has changed in the culture to recognize people outside of the culture to give them a little name (ninahaylahin)?
C.B: Ummm, absolutely nothing (laughs). The only thing that has changed
is that those people that you mentioned are now aware of Squamish. They
never knew anything about Squamish, and all these peoples have attributes
that mirrors Squamish thinking in some respects, and mirror things that a
Squamish person should carry, and these people that you mention have
sediments of things in their heart and their mind that they do on a day to
day basis that mirror the Squamish culture and because of that members
of our community have said, ‘well let’s do something about that’. It shows
that you can be recognized by our Squamish siyam’s (chief’s) and have the
ability to be adopted and carry a Squamish title. What you’ve witnessed
in the names of the people you know who are outside of the Squamish
is within your generation. There are generations before that I know that
people who carry names of distinction, like Senator Austin, and he worked
with the late Percy Paul, in that age group, to do things that benefited
Squamish, and that time in the 1950’s and 60’s, they gave out names in
just the same way that Sekyu siyam and myself and other members in our
community are doing, in recognizing peoples attributes, and showing how their true spirit of the heart is, and because of that we have to continue looking not only inside our community, but outside our community to benefit our community in ways that our members canʼt. And look at people
who do show a personal level of commitment that we know that in 50
years from now, if they are still living, those attributes still will be strong,
they are not going change and that the generations of youth will benefit
over that time period, so it is just an extension of the Squamish culture and
an extension of today’s thinking, but still mirroring some of the thinking
of our membership. Squamish is unique in accepting people, I think, only
because I know the history of Squamish, and back in 1880, members of the
siyam’s (chiefs) of the day, they adopted people into the Squamish culture and
allowed them to marry inside the culture and allowed them to be members
inside the community. (end of tape)
In the way of giving names - there are two ways of giving names, one way is
giving an ancestral name, and that one is fairly simple, in that it’s the name
of one of your ancestors, so the connection is immediate. The other way is to
give a name such as the name you have, and if we give out a name that is not
an ancestral name, then what we have to do is sit down and talk about it. And
talk about an individual’s strength, and to come up with words that would
encompass those strengths in a way that can be seen. The name that you have Slànay Spʼákwʼus, [female eagle] or eagle woman, is a name that directly reflects the work that you do, through the eagleʼs eye, we were looking at that meaning. We all know that an eagle can see very far and very detailed what
is all around, but an eagle can also from far distance zero in and see very
specifically that little field mouse in the whole field and be able to go down and
pluck it out, or just watch it, and that is a reflection of what we think that you
have, in being able to take a look at a bush in a forest and be able to single out
one aspect of the forest that you feel is important, and through that ability…
because not a lot of people can do that, they’ll always see two million bushes
there, or two million trees, and not be able to see the old red cedar there, or
see the yellow cedar, or see the blueberry bush, it’s just a whole bunch of
green to them. So that’s the thinking behind giving the names that are not
ancestral names, names that would fulfill the attributes of the individual that
they’ve already developed, that they’ve already been using in their life and
nothing will change from that, so what we have to do is be able to recognize
that attributes that they posses, and in the case with Xwexwsélken (mountain goat), John Clarke, it was immediate, bang it was there, he lived that for 25
+years before I even met him, and upon recognition of what his history was it
was very easy to identify the name for the late John Clarke. Other people
it takes a bit more to bring out, or to recognize the attributes that person is
utilizing, especially if they are younger, because they still haven’t really
developed their own thinking and their own patterns of life to an extent
where a name can be brought out very easy, so it takes a bit longer to
recognize those attributes that something in fact is going to be life-long.
N: Part of the work that I am now doing which is a reflexion on work that I have done before. I am looking at some of my photographs again and how it informs my process, looking at a visual image as a form of intelligence and how it starts to talk back. It often takes a long time in order to know what is being investigated, or the inquiry, or the curiosity and sometimes it takes awhile to actually hear what the images have to say. Can you comment on an image that I have done that for you started to talk back?
C.B: There are a number of images that have helped…the capturing of moments in time has always been hard to do with indigenous cultures, because what is happening is there is a capturing of time or image through eyes that are not of the same culture, and what is seen is some of the
images that you have taken are getting close or right bang on, in terms of
wanting to capture an image of time of our cultural events that need to be
captured through our eyes. Because the medium that you use, the camera
is so relatively new even though that they’ve had cameras in 1880’s or
90’s or whenever they had them, the first images, it’s still something that
our culture hadn’t taken on in the same perspective of ‘recording the day’.
If you look back to the images that we have, of the early images of the
Squamish peoples, we have dozens of nice images of St. Paul’s church,
but we don’t have pictures of our events, we don’t have pictures of our
children, other than the residential schools when they are all lined up
really nice in their uniforms, we don’t have them playing at the beachside
with the canoes (..) we don’t have them intermingling in a natural setting,
up until recently we didn’t have our Speakers in the middle of the ‘work’
being recorded, those are the things that in my mind should be brought
back to the community, these things should be done in a way that reflects
what they’re doing in the truest sense of the work that they do, is to bring
out the culture, while bringing out the culture capturing them in that time
capsule of that film. And that work that you have been doing recently
captures that. Not the film of those nice burning bushes or the film of the
clear-cuts, but more of the people, of the ways of capturing who we are
and where we come from
FIG. 5, Untitled, Duratrans, Light Box, 12” x 30”, 1995
N: I read a book in Holland during the Masters course called ̒ Understanding Media Theory ̓ and it goes right from describing the first media of spoken language, to our hyper-mediated world today, and how with each transformation of media ,how it is built upon the previous media, whether that was the spoken, the written, the printed, etc, and itʼs a very delicate thing because it informs differently, a different kind of intelligence happening through the media, whatever is being mediated, and maybe you could say something about how that change has happened so quickly from an oral traditional culture, which is still being practice today, alongside living in a hyper-mediated world, and still working with those forms of technology also.
a zone of urgency, and now itʼs different, its gone deeper, and Iʼd like to hear your thoughts on what that place of transformation [nexw- ‘ayantsut], what that actually involves, what that means.
C.B: What that means is a two step process, maybe even three. What that
means is that first of all, you recognize who you are first, and in recognizing
who you are you recognize your values, and your foundation, and once
you recognize who you are what your values are, then you can go out
and explore to see where your values fit, who do your values fit with.
And to get an understanding of other people and whether or not your are
really way off the wall, or whether your values are so attuned with the
culture of today, then your values are of common interest to a lot of people,
or are your values off to the left or off to the right of what mainstream
society thinks? It really doesn’t matter, but what matters is the change of
being able to accept the things that come into your life that you’ve never
experienced before. And these changes will ultimately always benefit you
and they will always make your foundation stronger, because you have a
bigger thicker base to build yourself on, and if you have a bigger, thicker
base then the more you’ll be able to accept, because you are already
comfortable with your foundation, and how you’ve gotten to where you
are. The more you are able to reach out and feel what that part of the
envelope you are pushing will feel, because you know that even if you
break and open that part of the envelope and you didn’t want to, you can
still draw yourself back to the foundation of who you are, and where you
come from. And that change, that transformation, if you don’t break that
envelope what you do is you build yourself a higher level of foundation, so
you can push yourself even more in different areas. So that transformation and that change is within everybody, but not everybody is willing to take those chances, willing to say that ʻyes, itʼs a beautiful day out today, but there are a lot of children crying in the world, and I want to help that. I
C.B: Well what is happening today is that our teachings, our chicayx is still the same, they havenʼt changed, what has changed is todayʼs culture on how that information is recorded, and how immediate that information can be transferred from that event to the rest of the world, and Chief Xalek / Sekyu siyam always says that, ʻTransformation and change is needed, itʼs requiredʼ. The evolving culture of today had to take into account our
culture, and in order for us to make those changes we have to go back
to the foundation of our chicayx, to make sure that it still in tact, that
the foundation layer is there, but the modification of that culture is the
transformation of who we are today, and we only can do that successfully
in order for tomorrow’s children to recognize who were are today, is to be
able to make that change. If we don’t make that change then we are trying
to freeze ourselves in time, and in an ever-evolving world that we live in
today and if we try to do that, we will marginalize ourselves, because we
would never be able to keep up with how information is being exchanged
today. Ten years ago we would never thought of carrying our pictures on
a CD, and be able to transform those pictures digitally around the world
instantly. If we always tried to keep things in our comfort level, then
change would never happen, and again we get back to that discussion in
order for us to change successfully, we have to adapt, and recognize how
the foundation of our culture can remain the same yet still be able to take
up these new tools to evolve our culture, to explain who we are and where
we come from yet once again, but through a different medium.
N: On the understanding of what is a transformative process, when we are up in the Elaho, the name of that area is called, nexw- ‘ayantsut [place of transformation], and it interests me a great deal – change and transformation, its one of the things I am most interested in. I see art as a transformative process. I used to see it in different ways. I think through the course of working on Witness in the last ten years, has very much transformed me personally. I started to come at it in the beginning more as
donʼt feel comfortable with me just sitting here where I am - I want to do something about it. Or yes, the forest is beautiful and we are growing new
trees around us, but there is something about an old-growth forest that will
always remain unique and different and maybe we should not log it, or not
put roads into those areas but just leave it alone and let Mother Earth take
care of that area’, and every once in awhile bless ourselves to be able to go
into that area and really feel what an old-growth setting is all about, and
go in and feel the oneness with Mother Earth. Knowing that where you
are going now, if its put aside, or not being developed, is something that is so unique it ultimately becomes like our ancestors, or becomes what our elders are all about, who are in fact the jewels of our community, because they are so unique and so different and carry so much wealth in terms of information of what happened to them during their lifetime, and how their life changed, and yet still remained the same, because we as Squamish
people live in this area and this is our home, and other people who come
here they feel for the first time the newness of an old-growth forest, they
feel the freshness of a glacial spring, that they have never even considered
before in their lives, and they all of a sudden realize that they are walking
in to something that to us as Squamish people is old-school, to them their
bursting their envelope, their bursting their feeling of comfort, their in an
area that they’ve never experienced before, but our elders just shrug their
shoulders and say ‘it always been there’. And the same with what we’re
trying to tell our youth, to our children, it’s always been there, it’s only
up to them as individuals to experience, and to get comfortable with their
foundation of who they are and where they come from, and once they are
comfortable, then they will go out into the land, and go do the baths [early
morning glacial river baths], and they will find out more of who they are
and where they come from in a positive way that will not only benefit them
as members of our community, but it will benefit our community because
it will make our community stronger.
N: Do you think because the old-growth forest is so ʻnew ̓ to settler-societies, that it makes it that much easier to exploit?
C.B: well, what makes it easy for exploitation is the get rich quick
mentality, of a majority of our culture today, where they can see that rather
than waiting one-hundred and twenty years for a tree to grow, they would
rather go cut a tree that presently exists that might be one-thousand years
old to fifteen-hundred years old, and they don’t have to do nothing about it,
they just have to cut it and not wait like they have to with a majority of the
wood today. So it’s more of a get rich quick mentality and not committing
themselves to sitting there and manicuring the forest over a hundred and
twenty years to let it to grow in a way that it should grow and putting in
the time to really appreciate the wood.
N: With your experience and time put into Witness as a project, through the Roundhouse Community arts centre, how have you changed through that process yourself personally?
C.B: I’ve had to change to put myself out in the limelight, I’ve never
seen myself as a person who is there leading people and pointing in a
direction of where we should be going and what we should be doing. I’ve
always seen myself as a leader who leads without doing those kinds of
activities, who would sit down and do all the background work and make
sure something gets pulled off and in a successful way, and not necessarily
standing there and being the person who is pulling things together to be
the focal point of the event, and that’s changed, because in order to have
work being done, to hire a Speaker, and call witnesses, you need a family,
you need a group or an individual to create the reason for the event, create
the reason to call witnesses. Because our culture has not been put out in the limelight the way that we put our culture out in the witness project
itself, it has forced me to be that focal point, to be that person of calling witnesses and hiring the Speakers, and making me more vocal than I ever wanted to be.
N: Do you see your role changing in the future with that?
C.B: I see it changing in very positive way, and it’s changing today with
the introduction of the ambassadors in the last two years, the ambassadors are a group of young people [majority of young women] in our community who are going out in the land, who are putting themselves forward in front of the mainstream society and putting themselves out and saying who they are and where they come from, and its beautiful because they are taking
over my role as being the person to call the witnesses, to hire the Speakers,
they taking over that role because they themselves are being the Speakers,
they themselves are the family who is calling the gathering together to
call witnesses, so hopefully in the next three to five years, they themselves
will take over completely all the roles and responsibilities that I have been
carrying in the last nine years of pushing the Squamish culture forward
and that they, all 14 or 16 will then be carrying that role and responsibility
in their day to day activities. Then I can step back and maybe focus on
other segments of our traditional land holdings that need to be highlighted
or further light shed upon those issues.
N: yes, we were in email conversation about some of the things that Interfor (multinational forest company) was negotiating with the Squamish Nation, and that is the buying back of the TFL 38 [tree farm license 38 – meaning 38 thousand hectares of land] in which these old-growth forests reside in, how is that process going?
C.B: That process is still on track, it has slowed down a lot only because of
what’s called ‘due diligence’ meaning that they have stated that they have
a certain value, in Interfor’s mind, that what the TFL 38’s net worth is, and
we have to go in a sound out whether or not that value has any credibility
to those numbers. I thought it would be a quick process of two months, and
it looks like it will be more of a process of 8 months to a year, before things
resolve. But buying timber forest license is one half of the equation. Even though Interfor has a right to log in TFL 38, which is the majority of our traditional territory, they have to follow the provincial guidelines, and the provincial guidelines say that their annual allowable cut is still 240, 000 cubic meters a year, which hasn’t changed, which also includes the cutting of all the old-growth in our traditional territory, and until we change that number, our Wild Spirit places are in jeopardy, and those negotiations are
going on simultaneously with the buying of the TFL 38 license is going
on, so we won’t know until January ’06 whether or not we can take the
Wild Spirit places out of the annual allowable cut. If we can’t it would be
a great benefit to Squamish to buy the TFL 38 and not log, and just take the
penalty of not logging, and look at other people to help us pay that penalty,
because ultimately the provincial government wants money for the old-
growth forest, so if we give them money and not log, then my thinking is
that provincial government wouldn’t really care, as long as they get their
money. So we have to look at other groups and organizations to help us,
with that, but if we can negotiate the Wild Spirit places out of the annual
allowable cut, then that’s the best world we would be in, because then we
wouldn’t have to worry about the cutting of the old-growth forests ever
again. What we could do then is focus not on the fight of trying to keep the old-growth forests, but focus on the fight of introducing the old-growth forest to our children.
~~~>>>><<<<<~~~
Three I Art Context
Art has deep and difficult eyes and for many, the gaze is too insistent.
Better to pretend that art is dumb, or at least has nothing to say that makes
any sense to us. - Jeanette Winterson, Art Objects
We have turned ‘art’ into ‘pictures’ in effort to mask its potency.
- Beth Carruthers, p.23
The artist becomes a compassionate activist, collaborator, listener,
celebrator and educator. In the context of community, art is no longer
dead; it is reborn. - Amir Ali Alibhai, p. 42
How does this impact on my art practice?
Until recently I have understood my artistic practice as straightforward as a
‘contemporary photo-based arts practice’, which in the context of Witness,
displaces my community cultural work as simply another extension of my
commitment to the eco-crisis, falling into the old hierarchal trap which
always privilege’s culture over nature. Not surprising, considering my
training at the Emily Carr Institute in Vancouver, BC, where I was inspired
first-hand by the Jeff Wall’s, Ian Wallace’s, Stan Douglas’s, Ken Lum’s, and
Jin Me-Yoon’s. Since Documental XI, however, my practice can be better
understood as ‘art documentation’ where the ‘artwork’ itself is located
elsewhere, that is, intangible outside of ‘experiencing it’. The essay by
Boris Groys, in Documenta XI, ‘Art in the age of Biopolitics: From Artwork
to Art Documentation’, questions the very distinction between art and life,
and argues that ‘today’s art is to become life itself’.
The changing role of contemporary art to find reconnection back to life-
issues, (which contradicts my love for the those luscious, over-sized,
modernist, all-encompassing photo-based ‘high-art’ works), has actually
been the privileged rank in the binary for most of my work in the development
of Witness. Desire to place myself in the context of the gallery-museum
conformity of the high-art world, took a back seat, (but remains a desire
none-the-less), which complicates and confuses my ethics in practice.
In light of recent shifts in the art world, using the example of Documenta
XI, curator Sarat Maharaj bravely sidesteps ‘art in terms of the gallery-
museum system’. Maharaj posits the Duchampian paradoxical question,
“Can one make a work of art that is not ‘Art’?” I have personally struggled
with the question of such ‘art today’, well before reading his text, ‘Xeno-
Epistemics: makeshift kit for sounding visual art as knowledge production
and the retinal regimes’. My bewilderment is reflected in so much as I
grapple constantly between the prospect of ‘producing’ tangible artworks
in a gallery-museum style approach, with that of actually ‘becoming’ a
work in and of itself in relation to a larger community.
They whip us up to see-think-feel weather fronts-new affects, subjectivities,
feelings, emotional eddies and tidals – that trigger transformative thought,
action and behaviour. Let’s look at them as art-ethical processing plants
churning out options and potentials for chipping in, action and involvement
in the world.
The difficulty within a process-oriented possibility or ‘art-ethical processing
plants’ lies in overcoming traditional notions of producing a singular work
of art. That is to say free-association to create irregular, odd, eccentric,
idiosyncratic imaginings. Art to most people, especially within a ‘community
context’, must be ‘understood’ to be recognized as art. There is a judgement
value placed upon a work immediately, which can also shut down a more
experimental, unregimented attempt.
Jan Verwoert, professor of Contemporary Art at the Academy of Umea,
points out that art has an ‘implicit critical potential’ which is different from
an ‘explicit political effect’. The ‘implicit potential is the artist’s ability to
un-frame existing definitions of art and artistic competence. Placing the
artist in the social context defines the criteria of competence for the artist
as negotiator, visionary, communicator, which limits this potential18’. If
artist’s are those working from the ‘inside-looking out’, whereas of neo-
liberal globalization from the ‘outside-looking in’, then what Robert C.
Morgan suggests to artists, is for an awareness of the limitations of his /
her involvement, and to ‘think inwardly in terms of what we can transmit
to the outside.19”
Amir Ali Alibhai, artist, curator and arts programmer at the Roundhouse
Community Centre, who has written about Witness on several occasions,
takes a different spin on the artist as ‘compassionate activist’ and community
animator, which I have shared upon multiple occasions. ‘Community
is not a static entity ‘out there’, but is manifested through action – it is
practiced’.20
Witness fulfills the roles described as the ‘territory’ of community art
practice, depending on who you ask. Witness is Public Art, Activism,
Empowerment, Education, Collaboration, Celebration and Community
Development, simultaneously... Perhaps the simplest explanation
for why community art practice has emerged recently is the need to
contemporary society for us to find a space to speak – to participate
in the public sphere in critical dialogue, and not in a manner that is
bureaucratized, surveillanced, not about consuming products, and not
removed from our embodied realities. – Amir Ali Alibhai, p.35
Former director of the Songbird project, artist and friend, Beth Carruthers,
writes in an unpublished essay titled, “Returning the Radiant Gaze”, that
“we have outlawed art, burned art and glorified art...not because art is
a mirror, a narrative, or a representation, but because art is something
more”. It is this ‘something more’ that I am always trying to touch with the
art process. I become irked when art is downsized to a ‘task’, assigned a
‘mission’, or reduced to grand-scale ‘propaganda’ for a political message.
It is insulting to the art practitioner. This was the case in many of the
artistic presentations at the KLARTEXT conference in Berlin of this year.
It is not the elitist commercial criteria for ‘high art’ that I argue for, but
the transformative repositioning of the creative process to have effect in
society, beginning with the plane of community.
Community art practice emerges at a time when globalization and the
dominant culture of consumption threatens the diversity and integrity
of distinct cultural communities and our traditional mechanisms for
community-building and maintenance (ie: the ‘public sphere’), and
indeed our sense of being active agents in society.
– Amir Ali Alibhai, p 39
For me personally, art is not an easily understood relationship. Perhaps it
is one part of my jobs as an artist and cultural worker – to assist people in
feeling comfortable with not understanding. What differs between cultural
practice and artistic practice is that to be considered ‘culture’ is to already
operate from an accepted canon, or a tradition drawing from its own rich
historical reclaimed roots. Whereas according to Mika Hannula ‘artistic
research is a new area a field within university studies that deserves to be
called social innovation21’. Such artistic practice carries that very difficult
task of reinventing culture or social innovation, in the here and now, and
therefore becomes ‘both a possibility and a risk’ (Hannula; 2004: 70). It
does not have the stability that ‘culture’ carries. Borrowing heavily from the
cultural past, but far from being traditional, artistic research is about creating
new situations and new knowledge’s from a self-critical and self-reflexive
framework, combining theory, practice with anarchistic experimentation
(Hannula; 2004), and thus offering new ways of negotiating the world. It
is a risky business. And because of this high risk factor, there also exists
a great potential for failure, which is also part of the inherent process of
community intensities and reinventing a whole other social imaginary.
There have been thousands of pictures taken. I rummage through a pile
of contact sheets from the panorama camera, searching for images I have
over-looked in previous years; images which through time and distance,
begin to speak to me again. Years of collecting now become a recollection.
The photographic paper onto which the integral tri-packs and dye-couplers
have adhered themselves to, are metaphorically symbolic of the residue
of an ancient ecology and lumberyard of ghosts. It almost stopped me
once from making more images, upon the realization of the absurdity of
it all. ‘Ha la, Nancy, I mean that civilization is a nonsense you know’... I
hear Vera’s heavy Czech accent sounding in my memory, laughing as she
speaks with alarm. I continue sifting through the piles.
Two trees stop my search.
‘WildLife Tree’ and ’98.8’, (FIG 7 & 8), both of them neatly labeled with blue
spray paint as if done so onto a chalkboard inside a giant classroom. One
of them was photographed in the time-span of a weeklong solo trip I made
into the ‘rock shelter’ area of the Elaho Valley back in the summer of 1999.
The whole area of forest was taped off by Interfor as ‘special management
zone’. I was asked by telalsemkin to photograph the area shortly after it
was discovered, and archeologist Yumks, Rudy Reimer, declared the area
as a Squamish sacred site. Before I entered the rock shelter area, Splash,
Aaron Nelson-Moody prepared the songs and tumulth for the ancestors,
acknowledging to them of my presence in the forest with the camera. I
was told that this neighbourhood of the mountain was used for people
who would leave their village sites and spend anywhere from 4 months, to
4 years, and even up to 16 years alone in the forest, conversing with the
natural world, learning how to become more human.
I formed alliance with the trees.
FIG.7, Cedar 98.8, C-print, 3’ x 8’, 1998
FIG.8, “Wild Life Tree”, C-print, 3’ x 8’, 2001
Ten thousand years since the last ice age, the temperate rainforest is an
ancient ecology that has been evolving since time immemorial. ‘Rhizome
rainforest’ inspired by Deleuze, metaphorically mirrors a delightful ecosystem
as a living, breathing meme spreading beneath the forest floor, and springing
up back onto itself, as a ‘thinking agency’, alive and teeming with memory,
non-hierarchy and fusion. Which is closer to the way nature actually works
– a highly sophisticated process of ‘becoming-other’ than what is not itself;
a hybrid course of action. “Have Fun!” mimics the blue spray paint markings
on the cedar tree scheduled for clear-felling, and logger culture of Squamish.
FIG. 9, Have Fun! Photo-canvas heat transfer, 4’ x 5’, 2000
My referral to this image (FIG. 10) is two-fold: on the one hand I reflected
on Emily Carr’s “Scorn be timber: beloved as the Sky”, a painting that
the well-known BC artist produced in the 1950’s, as a critical comment
on the logging industry and practices at that time. I climbed on top of the
cabin of the truck for a better perspective, of the view down the Elaho
Valley, at mile 60, when I saw her painting in my imagination. It was as
if nothing really changed in the forest management practices code in
the course of fifty years. A lone cedar tree stands isolated among a bare
ruin of newly erased land. With the next lightening storm, this cedar tree
wouldn’t stand a chance of not being blown down, lacking shelter and
foundational support from a larger ecosystem. Inferfor has support of the
law, when conducting forestry in this way. Unfortunately, what happened
the following week of taking this photograph was that the entire cut-
block ignited into a blazing inferno initially caused by a storm, and the
gasoline cans that were carelessly left on site. All the trees that had been
felled in the cut-block were left lying on the ground for more than half
a year. When the storm hit, and the fire started, everything, including
Interfor’s invested profits of horizontal timber, became a massive pit of
black ash.
FIG.10, Cedar Elder as witnessed by daughter of immigrants, photo-canvas, 3’ x 8’, 2000
FIG.11, Daughter of immigrants as witnessed by cedar elder, photo-canvas, 3’ x 8’, 2000
Secondly, what became clear to me after my week of solo time in the
rainforest was that I was actually never ‘alone’. There was a constant
hum of activity going on all around that I was not accustomed to noticing
living in the city. I had instruction to photograph the site for the Squamish
Nation. Soon I became aware that I was not the only ‘modest witness’
to this place and time, but that in my brief presence of being there, I too
was being witnessed and recorded in the memory of the land and those
species living there. What I was witness to was not simply a motionless
cedar tree rooted there in the nutrient-rich soil for the last 1500 years,
but a cedar tree endowed with a memory, history, agency, interdependent
relationships, all in a course of continuous unstable events in constant
processes of becoming change and transformation. The life-span of this
cedar tree was close to, or more than a millennia in age when the storm
struck, and lacking the support of a neighboring infrastructure, fell prey to
the expansiveness of wind and open air.
There becomes a different intelligence being included in the whole
process, where the visuals start to talk back.
- Katherine Dodds, notes from conversation, 2005
FIG.12, Untitled, Photo-canvas heat transfer, 6.5’ x 5.5’, 2000
I started with packing a 4x5 inch, 35mm and 6x6 medium format cameras,
along with a good supply of film. Walking alone for hours through cedar
groves, douglas firs and hemlocks forests and back into the clear-cut
where a base-camp had been set by the Western Canada Wilderness
Committee. My main concern was how this was being reported in the
media - the language that was being used and constructed, who was
doing the talking, and as a result - what social groups did that privilege or
silence?
FIG.13, Kal’kalhil wild woman of the woods eating her children, Photo-canvas B&W portraitof
mask and colour panorama landscape, 3’ x 10’, 2000
FIG.14, Breach of protocol, Photo-canvas B&W portrait of William Nahannee and colour
panorama landscape, 3’ x 10’, 2000
In light of the injustices of cultural genocide in Canadian history with
regards to indigenous peoples, I think about how Squamish people are
so receptive to sharing the oral traditions of their history, land and culture.
In what ways are those duties and responsibilities brought to the public
sphere, to encompass a shared history, and understanding of the land in
contemporary times? If history itself is a story of the winners, how then
is it possible to (re)write the script of the past, (re)invent the present,
and to (re)imagine a future? Not separate from one another, but rather
simultaneously, as if a triple person in a triple time, beginning with a past,
a future and a present (Homi Bhaba). We are responsible for our bodies,
our race and our ancestors – which include the stories of those that have
been marginalized, silenced and made irrelevant. If art and culture have
any impact, how then can artists trained in traditional schools (as practiced
in Squamish culture, based on tradition, practice and apprenticeship) and
contemporary schools (based on praxis [theory / practice], and artistic
research) collaborate to find effective ways of communicating a new social
reality? A shared reality, which includes a shared responsibility?
Strange plant becomings, becoming tree. This is not the transformation
of one into the other, but something passing from one to the other. This
something can be specified only as a sensation.
-Gilles Deleuze, A Thousand Plateaus, p. 173
The artist is a seer, a becomer. How else would he recount what
happened to him, or what he imagines, since he is a shadow? He has
seen something in life that is too great, too unbearable also, and the
mutual embrace of life that threatens it.
-Gilles Deleuze, A Thousand Plateaus, p. 171
FIG.15, Untitled, photo-canvas heat transfer, 3’ x 10’, 2000
FIG.16, Love, loss and permutation, Photo-canvas transfer, 3’ x 8’, 2005
Four I Summary
...constant interaction with what used to be called nature, what used to be
called culture, through the mediating factor which is universal technology
that we are moving in and consequently drawing into the environmental
issues, drawing on the political question of new technologies, drawing
on the kind of spirituality and issues of spirituality that are so important if
we are going to make sense of this real cultural upheaval we are going
through. And keeping in mind, basically and most naively, the importance
to reassert the difference woman can make. This, for me, is the central
issue: to go on reasserting a sexual difference as a positive factor of
dissymmetry between men and women. We have got something else
to offer and it may not sound very post-structuralist, but I could care
less because it is ultimately that political passion that is going to carry
through.
- Rosi Braidotti,Metamorphoses, p.
The artist is a translator; one who has learned to pass into her own
language the languages gathered from stones, from birds, from dreams,
from the body, from the material world, from the invisible world, from sex,
from death, from love.
- Jeannette Winterson, Art Objects, p 146
Summary
Each chapter re-instates the question for investigation, from another
angle, from another locality, what is the repositioning of the artist as a
‘witness’? My thesis does not attempt to provide concrete, fixed answers
as such, but operates instead toward highlighting a direction and way of
thinking of art today that is spreading the world over. Stemming from local
modest initiatives, with project-based works, such as Uts’am-Witness,
its emphasis is clearly placed upon comprehension toward the intention
of a political, environmental and artistic work in process, instead of the
presentation or representation of a work in relation to the commercial art
market and gallery-museum conformity, and instead of a quick-fix solution
to the many and multiple socio-ecological problems we face on a daily
basis.
I remain unfixed between the different worlds; straddling them, holding on,
letting go at times, and whirling around the philosophical terrains between
‘old worlds’ and ‘new’, of artistic practice, ecology and citizenship. I am
wary of ‘art with a mission’, yet at the same time, my desires to create
sustainable futures become political by default.
Intuition and rigorous ideals have guided my actions and energy leading to
a community, grass-roots project that has enormously enlarged over the
years, with its humble beginnings rooted in the simple form of a creative
response to the eco-crisis. Mistakes were made along the way; too many
to mention them all. Getting people ‘out there’ to witness for themselves
was tiresome work. Failures in fundraising and communication resulted
in canceling a scheduled international exhibition in Prague in 2004. Or
the burn-out that comes from long-standing, fast-growing community
‘work’, with promises of forever taking the breath out of you; both in the
exasperating sense, and in the most positive, transforming and inspiring
sense imaginable.
All the above mentioned challenges and struggles dim by comparison
to the positive rewards of genuine human-nature connections made,
strengthened by a renewed relationship to the land, and by the different
forms of knowledge’s that have surfaced from dialogue across cultures,
and across species. The re-positioning my ‘artwork’ as a ‘witness’ is in
relation to a larger community, that stretches beyond the art world,
where the visual outcomes have a real affect in the way that the critical
engagement of community is practiced. And the political enactments
via the exhibition space to enlarge the scope for a thinking audience, is
also encouraging. (Witness Arts Exhibition, curated by Amir Ali Alibhai,
Roundhouse Community Arts Centre 1998; 2001)
Chief Bill Williams is unique in the community from which he comes from.
Trained in both spiritual values and political negotiation, and a leader for
a community undergoing massive health transformations, he was the first
to ‘bravely side-step’ his own comfort zone, and form alliance with a lively
array of ‘Others’, we the ‘newcomers’. As a leader, both elected chairman
of the Squamish Nation Band Office and hereditary chief, I observe his
how strength of skills traverse the different worlds in a seamless way. He
is a political force that ‘moves across established categories and levels of
experience: blurring boundaries without burning bridges’. (Braidotti.1994:
4) while opening up new possibilities for emergence and change.
This understanding is so critical for awareness of how to move from one
experience to another, from one category of social group to another, in an
active way. Which is to be at once a guest, and at home, among multiple
levels of experience, communities and subcultures; and to mobilze groups
of people to dialogue with one another, who don’t normally get together,
on issues concerning the land. (ie: Scientists, Loggers, CEO’s of multi-
national corporations, Native Chiefs, environmentalists, housewives, artists,
legendary mountaineers, intellectuals, homeless, drug addicts, geologists,
biologists, media press, spiritual leaders of the Longhouse, urban native
youth, medicine people, lawyers, schoolchildren, community organizers,
volunteers, tourists, etc.) This nomadic risk taking and community undertaking
is what I have been busy with in my practice for ten years, which has
taught me that the singularity of art, coupled with social responsibility, and
combined with Chicayx / protocols and nomadic becoming, can transmutate
to become more fluid, multiple, more lively.
And it is essential to situating the Uts’am - Witness project, how it formed
during its infant stages through an environmental crisis, then to a watchful
awareness of wilderness ethics, First Nations protocols, and artistic
methodologies. I say this as a means to locate a path-finding, so as to insert
a new methodological map and fresh route, that in the future for Uts’am -
Witness will be made by entirely new-sprung subjects.
Further research, participation and involvement is underway to access
the international debate on the changing role of the artist in times of eco-
crisis. One of my long-term goals is to connect these issues into a broader
international scope. I plan to respond to future symposiums organized
through the RSA, Arts & Ecology in London, and submit our project online
to link with other projects.
To navigate the world in such weird and wonderful times, artists are
becoming even more flexible and alert, and finding home in ‘places, spaces
and scales’ that multiply their role. This means acknowledging complexities
and contradictions; acting upon a critical awareness of inconsistencies to
form alliance and interconnection with different cultures, and to transform
ourselves ethically. This opens a space to give consideration for artistic
practice that embraces a radical renewal of our sense of responsibility. Art
that contributes to the circumstances allowing for unique and unexpected
properties to emerge; which is to say, art that loosens up the binary knot
between nature and culture, community art and high art, sexual difference
and power relations, development and sustainability, spiritual and
intellectual, fuels my hopes, and expands my creative journey.
Nancy Bleck,
Vancouver, BC, Canada, August, 2005
Bibliography
Primary Sources
nexw-ayantsut (Sims Creek)
Conversation with Telàlsemkin/ siyam, Hereditary Chief Bill Williams, August 7th, 2005
Scale, Place and Space, workshop with Joanna Regulaska, University of Utrecht, June, 2005
Secondary Sources
Alibhai, Amir Ali, “Locating Community Art Practice”, unpublished essay, Vancouver, Canada, 2001
Braidotti, Rosi, 1995. “Feminism and Modernity”, Free Inquiry, Spring Issue, (1995)
Braidotti, Rosi, 1994. Nomadic Subjects: Embodiment and Sexual Difference in Contemporary Feminst Theory. New York: Columbia University Press
Braidotti, Rosi, 2002: Metamorphoses: Towards a Materialist Theory of Becoming, Cambridge, UK, Oxford: Polity Press
Braidotti, Rosi, 1994. Women, the Environment and Sustainable Development: Towards a Theoretical Synthesis. Zed Books Ltd, London
Carruthers, Beth, “Returning the Radiant Gaze”, unpublished essay, Lancaster, England, 2003
Colebrook, Claire. 2002. Gilles Delueze, London and New York: Routledge
Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F. 1987, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, Trans. B. Massumi, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press
EastLink Symposium, “The Third Space in the Fourth World”, Eastlink Gallery, 2002, p 48
Groys, Boris, “Art in the Age of Bio-Politics” Documenta XI
Hannula, Mika, “River Low, Mountain High, Contextualizing Artistic Research”,
Leir en Boog, Henk Slager and Annette W. Balkema, Eds., Series of Philosophy of Art and Theory, Artistic Research, Volume 18, 2004, p. 70
Haraway, J. Donna, 2000. How Like a Leaf: An Interview with Thyrza Nichols Goodeve, London and New York: Routledge
Haraway, J. Donna, 1997. Modest_Witness@Second_Millennium.FemaleMan©_Meets_OncoMouse, London and New York: Routledge
Heim, Wallace, “Locating Change, ecologising art, but nature overlooked: a commentary on the launch of ARTS & ECOLOGY”, 2005, published on the internet view downloadhttp://www.thersa.org/arts/conferences/conference1/visitorResponse.asp
Maharaj, Sarat, “Xeno-Epistemics: makeshift kit for sounding visual art as knowledge production and the retinal regimes”, Documenta XI
Mulder, Arjen, 2004.Understanding Media Theory, Language, Images, Sound, Behaviour, V2_Publishers/NAi Publishers, Rotterdam
Plumwood, Val. 1993: Feminism and the Mastery of Nature. London and New York: Routledge
Winterson, Jeannette, 1995. Art Objects: essays on ecstasy and effrontery, London: Jonathan Cape
Conferences & Websites
Uts’am-Witness Project, 1997-2005 (ongoing)http://www.uts’am-witness.ca
KLAREXT! Artist as political subject, Curators Marina Sorbello and Antje Weitzel, Berlin, Germany, January, 2005
Arts and Ecology, RSA London, England, April, 2005
http://www.thersa.org/arts/conferences/conference1/visitorResponse.aspResponses by: Jan Verwoert and Emily PethickEnd Notes
End notes
1 If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be part of your revolution, Press Release, e-flux, August 1st, 2005
2 Braidotti, Rosi, 1994. Nomadic Subjects: Embodiment and Sexual Difference in Contemporary Feminist Theory. New York: Columbia University Press
3 Haraway, J. Donna., 2000. How Like a Leaf, Routledge, New York, London, p. 10
4 Haraway, Donna. 1997: Modest_Witness@Second_Millennium.FemaleMan©_Meets_OncoMouse London and New York: Routledge
5 Ibid
6 Ibid
7 Haraway, Donna. 1997: Modest_Witness@Second_Millennium.FemaleMan©_Meets_OncoMouse London and New York: Routledge. p. 24
8 Ibid. p. 268
9 Ibid. p. 269
10 Plumwood, Val. 1993: Feminism and the Mastery of Nature. London and New York: Routledge
11 Braidotti, Rosi, 1989: Women, the Environment and Sustainable Development. p. 174
12 Ibid.p. 4
13 Guattari, Felix: The Three Ecologies, p. 35
14 Braidotti, Rosi, 1989: Women, the Environment and Sustainable Development. p. 5
15 During a workshop at the University of Utrecht, Joanna Regulaska introduced me to the concepts of scale / place / space; concepts I had been busy with in my practice throughout the early years of Witness, of forming the very difficult interconnections across multiple-communities, bridging people who didn’t normally talk, yet alone get together. Building connections across scale, breaking boundaries of the ‘fixity’ of community – the ‘jumping scale’ of bridge building and of ‘local embeddedness’, and shifting the focus of ‘global’ to ‘specific’ through social / cultural dynamics and flows of ideas across scale.
16 Braidotti, Rosi, 1994. Nomadic Subjects: Embodiment and Sexual Difference in Contemporary Feminst Theory. New York: Columbia University Press. p.5
17 Heim, Wallace,“Locating Change, ecologising art, but nature overlooked: a commentary on the launch of ARTS & ECOLOGY”, 2005, p. 4
18 EastLink Symposium, The Third Space in the Fourth World, Eastlink Gallery, 2002, p 48
19 Alibhai, Amir Ali, “Locating Community Art Practice”, unpublished essay, Vancouver, Canada, 2001, p. 39
20 Hannula, Mika, “River Low, Mountain High, Contextualizing Artistic Research”, Leir en Boog, Series of Philosophy of Art and Theory, Eds. Annette Balkema, Henk Slager, Artistic Research,Volume 18, 2004, p. 70