Round Up @ the Museum of Contemporary Native Art & Santa Fe

So, Saturday came and went, quickly. My artist talk went well, though nervous and worried, it went well. Two new pieces were added to the exhibition, which were initially lost to the hard drive crash, but they were resurrected from memory, maybe not 100% of what they once were, but none-the-less they were resurrected! Seven of my friends from the Boulder community attended, they all now live in the Albuquerque/Santa Fe area, except one who had flown in for another event, but Nicole made it in time to catch the tail end of the talk and view my work in the gallery. My young friend (cousin) Sylv works in Santa Fe and I had him as my guest at the hotel since he's been couch surfin' in Albuquerque, somewhat without a home, so we hung out and caught up, which was nice to have company. The food was great, you can never beat authentic southwest cuisine and New Mexican green chili, which I am already missing the morning I left it began.

The exhibition looks great and is running with four other exhibitions that are wonderful. The museum is beautiful, right there on Cathedral Place.

Next up another talk about a PBS series from the 70's at ArtRage this Friday evening.

Round Up - Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, Santa Fe, NM

Tonto Revisited @ ArtRage Gallery, Syracuse, NY

Come check out the Tonto Revisited exhibit, which will coincide with a few events that I am involved with. My own exhibit Round Up (curators: Jenny Western & Ryan Rice), all single channel videos, will be screening one night only, November 21st, 4pm-6pm with an artist talk. For more event information check the ArtRage Gallery Events Schedule.

RoundUP, NAISA, NAICA, FLAB MAG, Athens International Film + Video Festival, and Terrance Houle

As any day starts out this one has been no exception. The click of my dog's nails on the hardwood floors woke me from sleep. My dog likes to sneak in my bedroom and check to see if I'm awake. Sometimes, I greet him and welcome the day, other times I just cringe to know it's time to wake up. Thankfully, I knew a fresh pot of coffee was just minutes away from being brewed. That would definitely lessen the impact of an early rise on Sunday morning.

So the near future has been plaguing most of my waking minutes. The uncertainty of it mostly, and the somewhat seemingly directionless wandering of my days. I have the Native American Indigenous Studies Conference (NAISA) to attend in Tucson at the end of May, which I recently found out I was presented to NAISA as an affiliate of Native American Indigenous Cinema and Arts Organization (NAICA), which I am, but NAICA has somewhat shape-shifted into the more encompassing FLAB MAG and now I see my future assignment for FLAB being coverage of NAISA. Too much usage of acronyms in one paragraph, time to move on. Needless to say, I am excited for this opportunity.

At the end of April, I am fortunate to have been accepted into the 2010 Athens International Film and Video Festival, which is 37+ years old. This festival is in Athens, OH a sleepy, quaint, little town snug in the hills of south-central Ohio. It is also home to Ohio University. I am ecstatic to attend this festival, and to be honest, I usually don't get excited, but I am feeling a little excitement already. I normally reserve my excitement a couples days prior to an event. I have three short pieces in the festival: The Mechanics of Being NDN, The Ecstasy of Indigeneity Or the Passion of Billy Jack, and Technical Difficulties: a Fraud and a Fake. The last two pieces subvert famous "representations" on Un-Indians in American media, whereas the first piece comments on the objectified Native, literally. These three pieces originated from a past exhibit entitled, Round-Up, at the Urban Shaman Gallery in Winnipeg, MB Canada in October 2009. Round-Up is traveling to Santa Fe, NM August 1st, 2010 - January 1st, 2011 at the Museum of Contemporary Native Arts thanks to curator, Ryan Rice. I am already excited for this too.

Lately life has taken on the quiet hum of the mundane. Somewhere the routine infiltrated my life and pushed out creativity. It seems to have been a silent coup, no warning, no stirrings of unrest just the slow realization that something different is at the helm. Fortunately, friend and fellow artist, Terrance Houle has been able to talk me down from the ledges I find myself climbing, even as he himself has been enduring a change in his life. I am fortunate to have been asked to take part in one of his upcoming exhibits. In the fall, Terrance and I will be heading to Germany to collaborate on a video piece together and currently I am in pre-production on a feature length documentary that will utilize Terrance as the interviewer. Stay tuned.

Critiquing 101: a Poorly Written Bad Critique is Worse Than a Bad Critique

http://www.uptownmag.com/2009-10-22/page4737.aspx

The above link is from Uptown Magazine Online - Winnipeg's Online Source for Arts Entertainment & News (10/22/09), an e-zine in Winnipeg, Manitoba Canada. It is within that URL where I received an extremely anemic and poorly written, bad review of my solo art video exhibition, RoundUP by self-proclaimed "inter-media artist" & critic, Sandee Moore.

I'm not one to hold grudges against someone critiquing my work. But, when that critique suffers from possessing any critical analysis of the available work, I tend to feel slighted that my name is even mentioned, in this case almost as an afterthought—the proof is in the pudding here—not even one title of my works were mentioned in her so called "critique," of which four sentences were devoted to my exhibit. It's apparent that Ms. Moore lacks any understanding of intertextuality or semiotics, but this is not to blame Ms. Moore for her shortcomings, only to warn others when critiquing work make sure you understand and analyze that work before you attempt to write about it. Where Ms. Moore is anemic in analyzing my work is in her lack or inability to negotiate notions of stereotypes, power structures and how representations work within notions of power. Supposedly in Ms. Moore's world, everyone knows about these stereotypes and her analysis of my work consists of "his seizure-inducing, rapid editing does little, if anything, to provide a new context for his source material." The editing is only the re-presentation of the "stereotypes." It is within the juxtapositions of the imagery, their relationships and the "re-presentations" where the context exists, intertextuality; not to mention only three of my works include rapid editing.

This particular blog is not to slander Ms. Moore, only heed warning to individuals who proclaim they are "critiquing" art when in fact, they have only offered an opinion (obviously Ms. Moore was capable of critiquing David Garneau's work in the text above the four sentences she proffered her opinion where she scrutinized my works). Without sufficient analysis a critique is simply an opinion. So, Ms. Moore and any other self-proclaimed, critic out there, when dealing with imagery be sure you fully comprehend how images work when placed or inserted next to another image, also know the original context of that imagery before you attempt to criticize it.

I have no problem accepting a bad critique/review, that is well-written, which didn't seem to exist as an after-thought or because my exhibit was one of two showing concurrently.

So having said all that, here is an example of an analytically written critique of Kemosabe version 1.0 one of my "seizure-inducing" pieces (which can be found at the—Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival website):

Kemosabe version 1.0 disrupts the colonial racial logic of the "American Frontier" by recalibrating the relationship between Tonto and the Lone Ranger. Through syncopated beats of dialogue and music, Mendoza reworks an offensive stereotype for Native Americans whose history in U.S. cultural production begins with the dime novels of Zane Grey and continues through radio shows, comic books, serial movies, and television series, where the characters were portrayed by actors Jay Silverheels and Clayton Moore. Here, the ambiguous meaning of "kemosabe," Tonto’s name for the Lone Ranger, foregrounds the productive possibilities for repurposing the toxins of cultural artefacts.

—curators’ essay by Dale Hudson and Sharon Lin Tay

AN UPDATE to the traveling and vastly growing Round-UP (Santa Fe) exhibit, another view from an academic's perspective: Blog Review of Round-UP Santa Fe, by Bill Adams.