A Travelling Exhibition

Peter Morin, Curator in Residence

Oilspill: the Inevitability of Enbridge
Marianne Nicolson Kwakwaka'wakw First Nations
Acrylic on wood, 2011

what if the gallery becomes the land?

what if the land becomes a gallery?

we walk on the land

indigenous methods, indigenous systems of knowledge, are connected to the act of walking on the land

the walking is the writing of our books

(or this is what i'm told)

(but maybe this act of walking is a mere construction, an inter-face, of the colonial machine and these indigenous methods of knowing)

knowledge, and knowing, have to come from somewhere

developed on this land

or, perhaps, developed in the bowels of the island like the 'Dharma Initiative' on LOST

another good question is when does knowing become entrenched in the colonial?

but that is a story for another time

i've been given space at OPEN SPACE to investigate indigenous methods and hows these methods interface with the western gallery.

i've been given a space to set-up a research laboratory to articulate Tahltan Nation methods (structures) of knowing and implement them into the gallery proper.

my first initiative is to create an exhibition scenario which utilizes a distinct idea of time (outside of the western clock)

DiDene Dada (or Tahltan TIme) Exhibition

If you want to see (and experience ) this exhibition then you will have to make a commitment to investigating and paying to your contributions to the process

a exhibition is usually three weeks to a couple months (depending on where the exhibition is and how the exhibition has been programmed into the exhibition schedule)

i want to take this idea of 'exhibition time' and stretch it to 11 months... almost an entire year

a year to experience the art

i was thinking about the land

how the land shifts and changes

and this experience is documented by indigenous community members

through

story

song

art

when you move on the land

you move on the land - through time and space

experience is inherently tied to these specific interstitial locations

(we should graph this) (we could graph this)

i am posing that this exhibition is taking place on the land

the gallery becomes the land

you become a traveler on the land

this art becomes what you encounter

on your journey