Art Metropole

#13205

in memoriam...: Mary Cecil, Victoria Callihoo (nee Belcourt), and Eleanor (Helene) Thomas Garneau

Artists

Postcommodity, Alex Waterman, and Ociciwan Contemporary Art Collective

Date

2017

Publisher

uh books

Format

Artists' Books

Size

23 × 29 × 0.5 cm

Length

80 pp

Genre

Music, Indigenous Art & Artists

Description

…in memoriam Mary Cecil, Victoria Callihoo (nee Belcourt), and Eleanor (Helene) Thomas Garneau adds a new score and production by Postcommodity and Alex Waterman to a suite of four early scores by the American composer Robert Ashley. The fifth score honours the lives of Mary Cecil, Victoria Callihoo (nee Belcourt), and Eleanor (Helene) Thomas Garneau, three Indigenous women from territory at the turn of the Century as it became the province of Alberta. This significant addition continues Ashley’s project investigating the connections between musical forms and constructs of historicization, opening a conversation regarding whom and how we memorialize individuals and inscribe their legacies.

Postcommodity, Alex Waterman and Ociciwan Contemporary Art Collective collaborated with writer and publisher Will Holder to publish the book In Memoriam . . . Mary Cecil, Victoria Callihoo (Née Belcourt), and Eleanor (Helene) Thomas Garneau.

In early 2018 a limited edition vinyl pressed album of all five compositions recorded with and performed by Postcommodity, Alex Waterman, Ociciwan Contmeporary Art Collective and Indigenous musicians throughout Alberta, Malaya Bishop, seth cardinal, Curtis Lefthand, Jaynine Lena McCrae, nêhiyawak (Kris Harper, Matthew Cardinal and Marek Tyler) and Jared Tailfeathers.will be released to the public. The album was recorded at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, Banff, Alberta in July 2017.

Bios

Postcommodity
Postcommodity is an interdisciplinary arts collective comprised of Raven Chacon, Cristóbal Martínez, and Kade L. Twist. Postcommodity’s art functions as a shared Indigenous lens and voice to engage the assaultive manifestations of the global market and its supporting institutions, public perceptions, beliefs, and individual actions that comprise the ever-expanding, multinational, multiracial and multiethnic colonizing force that is defining the 21st Century through ever increasing velocities and complex forms of violence. Postcommodity works to forge new metaphors capable of rationalizing our shared experiences within this increasingly challenging contemporary environment; promote a constructive discourse that challenges the social, political and economic processes that are destabilizing communities and geographies; and connect Indigenous narratives of cultural self-determination with the broader public sphere. Postcommodity are the recipients of grants from the Joan Mitchell Foundation (2010), Creative Capital (2012), Art Matters (2013), Native Arts and Cultures Foundation (2014), and the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation (2017). The collective has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including: Contour the 5th Biennial of the Moving Image in Mechelen, BE; Nuit Blanche, Toronto, CA; 18th Biennale of Sydney in Sydney, AUS; Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art in Scottsdale, AZ; 2017 Whitney Biennial, New York, NY; Art in General, New York, NY; documenta14, Athens, GR and Kassel, DE; and their historic land art installation Repellent Fence at the U.S./Mexico border near Douglas, AZ and Agua Prieta, SON.

Alex Waterman
Alex Waterman is a composer, performer, and scholar based in New York. He holds a Masters in Composition and Performance from the Institute for Sonology and a PhD in musicology from NewYork University. He studied cello with Andor Toth, Catherina Meints, George Neikrug, and Frances Marie Uitti. His installation works have been exhibited at the ICA London, Stonescape, Vilma Gold, Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, and the Bonnefantenmuseum Maastricht. His book on Robert Ashley, written and edited by Waterman and Will Holder, was released by New Documents in September 2014. He has produced two other books with Will Holder: Agape and Between Thought and Sound. Waterman was an artist in the 2014 Whitney Biennial where he built a television studio, and installation space inside the museum in order to produce 3 operas by Robert Ashley. He has taught at Bard College (MFA program), NYU, Bloomfield College, and the Banff Centre for the Arts. He is currently Visiting Assistant Professor of Music at Wesleyan University. His writings appear in Dot Dot Dot, Artforum, Brooklyn Rail, BOMB, and The Third Rail.

Ociciwan Contemporary Art Collective
Ociciwan Contemporary Art Collective, based in Edmonton, Alberta, supports Indigenous contemporary art and advocates for innovative, experimental creative practices, and research.

Ociciwan is an inanimate Plains Cree noun relating to current or river, translated to mean the current comes from there.The name references the North Saskatchewan River that has brought many people over time to the region. It conveys an energy of engagement with Indigenous contemporary culture, linking present with the past and the future.

Core Collective members: Jade Nasogaluak Carpenter, Tiffany Shaw-Collinge, Erin
Sutherland, Becca Taylor and Kristy Trinier

Project Coordinators: Missy Leblanc and Jessie Short

Softcover, perfect-bound, b/w

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