Reparative interpellation: public art’s Indigenous and non-human publics
22nd Mar 2023 5:00pm-7:30pm
Reparative interpellation: public art’s Indigenous and non-human publics
A seminar with Dylan Robinson
22 March 2023, 17:00-19:30 BST
Online via Zoom with live captioning by Screen Language
Optional follow up peer study/reflection session for attendees: Listening and listening to listening, in and as research
29 March 2023, 17:00-19:00 BST
Online via Zoom with auto captioning
Dylan Robinson will present and share about his current research and creative work in a seminar format. The session will focus particularly on his work on the multiple ways in which public art interpellates viewers as settlers, Indigenous and non-human subjects, and consider how the reparative potential of public art might be re-envisioned through a consideration of Indigenous and non-human publics. The session is also grounded in Dylan’s research on listening positionality.
In the area of Indigenous sonic culture, Dylan’s research centers the epistemological stakes of listening positionality. Much of his research has examined the appropriation of Indigenous song in contemporary classical music, and artistic practices of repatriation and redress. Continuing this work, he leads the Indigenous Advisory Council of the Canadian Music Centre as co-chair with Marion Newman, to redress the appropriation of Indigenous song and mis-reperesentation of Indigenous culture in Canadian compositions. Another project, Xóxelhmetset te Syewá:l | Caring for Our Ancestors, involves Indigenous-led processes for re-connecting kinship between Indigenous songs and material culture—variously understood as loved ones, ancestors, life—and the communities that they come from. The project also takes as a central objective an examination of the carceral logics of museums as spaces that confine Indigenous life.
Dylan’s research on Indigenous public art is characterized by a focus on inter-arts forms (text-based art, sound art and devised performance) that engage multiple senses. This work questions how Indigenous rights and settler colonialism are embodied and spatialized in public space. His most recent work in this area examines public art and civic beautification initiatives in Canada that interpellate settler subjectivity by re-materializing colonial history. Doing so enacts violence toward Indigenous lands as a non-human relation that such work is situated upon.
In all these areas Dylan’s aim is to prioritize Indigenous resurgence and to re-envision dominant scholarly modes of dissemination (writing, gathering, festival and exhibition curation), working toward forms of expression that convey the sensory experience of Indigenous life, and address Indigenous publics.
A second (optional) session will offer participants further space to reflect on the seminar and connect its materials to their practices in a peer study/reflection session facilitated by Techne students.
Who is this event for?:
This event is open to all students, researchers, artists, musicians, and anyone else with an interest in art and its audiences, relations between humans and land, and listening otherwise. We understand listening as a more-than-sonic experience. This event is suitable for people with diverse embodied experiences of hearing and listening, including people who identify as D/deaf, hard of hearing, neurodiverse, or who have sensitivities around auditory processing.
Registration:
Register to receive the link, a reflective prompt, and two texts to explore before the session. There is a maximum capacity of 25 participants for the event, of which 10 places are reserved for Techne students. When registering, please indicate whether you are a Techne student (full member or associated).
Access information:
The seminar session will take place online, on Zoom. Live captioning will be provided by two captioners from Screen Language. The event will consist of a presentation and a discussion. If you require descriptions or visual or sonic materials shared in the presentation, please let us know when you register and we can supply them ahead of time, as well as sharing them live during the event.
The optional follow up study session will take place online, on Zoom. This session will have auto captioning and the group will organise and negotiate methods for sharing materials and conversation according to the access needs present.
The intention of this seminar and study session is to create a supportive and exploratory atmosphere with plenty of room for discussion. If you have any particular access needs you’d like to discuss before participating in the session, or things you’d like to know before registering, please email cannach@posteo.net
About the speaker:
Dylan Robinson is a xwélmexw (Stó:lō/Skwah) artist, curator and writer. He serves as Associate Professor at the University of British Columbia in the School of Music, and Advisor to the Dean on Indigenous Arts in lhq’a:lets / Vancouver. From 2015-2022 he was the Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Arts at Queen’s University on Haudenosaunee and Anishinaabe lands.
Dylan’s work takes various forms including writing (from event scores to autotheory), gatherings, curatorial practice and interarts creation. This range of forms offers a space to integrate the sonic, visual, poetic and material that are inseparable in Stó:lō culture. Across these forms, he identifies as a scholar of sound studies and visual studies, as a collaborator on interdisciplinary research-creation, and as a facilitator (curator/dramaturge) of art and gathering.
Dylan’s curatorial work includes the international touring exhibition Soundings (2019-2025) co-curated with Candice Hopkins. His book, Hungry Listening (University Minnesota Press, 2020), examines Indigenous and settler colonial practices of listening, and was awarded best first book for the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association, Canadian Association for Theatre Research, and the Labriola Centre American Indian National Book Award. The edited volume Music and Modernity Among Indigenous Peoples of North America (Wesleyan University Press, 2019) was awarded the American Musicological Society’s Ruth Solie Award, and the Society for Ethnomusicology’s Ellen Koskoff Prize. He has also published Arts of Engagement: Taking Aesthetic Action in and Beyond the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2016).
As a Halq’emeylem language learner, Dylan seeks to engage the vibrancy of shxwélmexw concepts and to foster the emergence of a future public of Halq’eméylem speakers.
Funding:
This event is financially supported by Techne AHRC Doctoral Training Partnership.