The Affect of Absence: Rebecca Belmore and the Aesthetico-politics of “Unnameable Affects” For almost three decades, Anishinaabe artist Elisabeth Otto is currently a Ph.D. candidate at the Rebecca Belmore has addressed in various media the Université de Montréal where she is completing a thesis politics of Indigenous1 representation, voice, and iden- on Art Histories of Unlearning: Emily Carr (1871-1945) tity, and advanced the discussion of political identity and Gabriele Münter (1877-1962). In 2013 she had been in Canadian Art. Since 1987 Belmore has shown her Research Fellow in Canadian Art at the National Gal- installations and performances in numerous group and lery of Canada working on Emily Carr’s early artistic solo exhibitions all over Canada as well as internation- production. After having worked as a research assistant ally. She represented Canada at the Havana Biennial, and scientific coordinator of diverse research projects, Cuba (1991), at the Sydney Biennale, Australia (1998), she is currently course lecturer at the Department of Art and most prominently at the 2005 Venice Biennale History at the Université de Montréal.Her main interest (Townsend-Gault 2014; Hill et al. 2013; O’Brian and lies at the intersection of the fields of aesthetics, femi- White 2007; Mars and Householder 2004; Nemiroff et nist theory and gender studies as well as anthropology, al. 1992). In art historical writing Belmore is foremost here especially with regards to modernist Primitivism. known as a performance artist. By discussing her work in the context of a special journal issue on affect and Abstract feminism, I do not seek to write her into a feminist art This essay discusses Rebecca Belmore’s work as a form history. Instead, this article looks at how Belmore’s art of protest against violence and a memorial for native sheds some light on performances and installations cultures and compares her performances and their that deal with the violence against and murder of In- documentation with later installations in galleries. Her digenous women. Belmore would not consider herself work overcomes the dichotomies of presence and ab- a feminist artist, but as she admitted in a talk she gave sence, of speaking out and silence, and that of image in 2007 at the symposium in conjunction with the ex- and language with affect that transgresses genres, me- hibition Global Feminisms, she identifies as an artist, dia, and material. as a human being, and as a woman. As a “woman of her people,” the Anishininaabe—her artistic practice Résumé is deeply rooted in the Anishinaabe legacy she inher- Cet essai traite de l’œuvre de Rebecca Belmore ited from her grandmother. Born and raised to speak comme une forme de protestation contre la violence English, her mother prepared her for a life in modern et un mémorial aux cultures indigènes et compare Canada, where her Anishinaabe language (Anishin- ses performances et leur documentation avec des aabemowin) and culture would be constantly under installations ultérieures dans des galeries. Son œuvre threat; the loss of her mother language became the surmonte les dichotomies de la présence et de l’absence, source force of many pieces. Rebecca Belmore’s early de la parole et du silence, de l’image et du langage et est work gave visibility to the “destructive forces of col- chargée d’un affect qui transgresse les genres, les médias onialism” (Corntassel 2012, 88), and commemorated et le matériel. acts of violence against and resistance of Indigenous people, especially women. Her 2002 performance Vigil, for example, commemorates dozens of women who went missing in downtown Vancouver. This essay comparesVigil and its video instal- lation The Named and the Unnamed (2002) with the Atlantis 38.2, 2017 92 www.msvu.ca/atlantis more recent video piece Apparition (2013) and the turn an aesthetic image not only into an ethics, but into 2015 re-installation of Vigil in the video installation a political entity. By comparing the performance Vigil Somewhere Else (2015). While The Named and the Un- with its documentation and latter video installation, we named gave witness to Belmore’s shouting out of the are able to understand that Belmore’s work overcomes names of disappeared Indigenous women from Van- the dichotomies of presence and absence, of speaking couver’s Downtown Eastside, with Apparition, she re- out and silence, and even that of image and language flects on the loss of language brought by the role resi- with affect. And she does that transgressing genres, dential schools played in the silencing of Indigenous media, and material—and “does not require a distinct- languages. By refusing to express that loss in the lan- ly human body in order to pass and register” (Black- guage of its exterminator, Belmore’s video performance man 2012, 13). becomes a powerful medium for the intergenerational, Different authors have already alluded to the intercorporeal transmission of “unhappy affects.” In metonymic and metaphoric qualities of the different the theoretical context of Lisa Blackman’s (2011) argu- elements of Belmore’s performances. In this article, I ment, those “unhappy affects” such as trauma, shame, do not question their symbolic power, but I want to put isolation, and loneliness have been associated with forward that the aesthetic images created exceed what queer lives (185). In “Affect, Performance, and Queer can be captured by the symbolic because they exist only Subjectivities,” Blackman contends that “communities in and as an interchange with the viewer. By using her of affect” like the queer community could be explored body to address the viewer’s body, Belmore can affect with a practice such as performance, “which can hold the recipient in ways that resist interpretation. As the tension between happiness and unhappiness…in soon as the viewer gets engaged in the performance, close proximity” (196-197) where the transmission of the conventionalized roles of artist and recipient break affect is key. up. Performances can create unexpected moments and Central to Belmore’s practice is the way she an intensity that tops mere empathy. Then, I argue, affect mediates not only between mind and body, uses her body to invoke presence, but also absence.2 but also between the aesthetic and the ethical. In this The video installations of the documented perform- constellation, the aesthetic is neither the visual by- ances function here as a form of memorial-turn-pro- product of an artist’s political agenda nor a specific test by forcing the viewer into a conscious act of wit- form of representation, but the inherent force that nessing. Belmore’s speaking out—with or without carries the affect. words—changes from an acclamation of the absent to a provocation of the present by activating the body of Rebecca Belmore’s Performance Vigil (2002) and its the viewer through affect. It is the way affect works that Installation in The Named and the Unnamed (2002) moves the spectator, making the created aesthetic im- In 2013, The Canada Council for the Arts con- age ethical and her art political. This art, as she shows ferred the Governor General’s Award in Visual and in the exhibition “Somewhere Else,” does not even need Media Arts to Rebecca Belmore. On this special oc- the body of the artist anymore. What Florence Belmore casion, the National Gallery of Canada put Belmore’s (2015) called the “endurance of the image over action” 2002 installation The Named and the Unnamed4 on dis- in the essay to the exhibition hints on the videos and play. It was there and then where I was confronted with other forms of documentation that outlive the actual the work Vigil for the first time. The installation con- performances. By the “performative power of material- sisted of a 50-minute video loop, which was projected ity” (Bolt 2013, 7), even the documents of a perform- on an eight-by-nine foot screen in an otherwise empty ance can evoke “unnameable affects”—those affects room. [Figure 1] that, according to Julia Kristeva (2002), are too painful to express in words (23). In her reading of Kristeva, Es- telle Barrett (2013) claims that only a combination of material processes, affect, and feeling can create em- bodied knowledge (64-65).3 Understood as a materi- al process, as I will show, artistic production is able to Atlantis 38.2, 2017 93 www.msvu.ca/atlantis I think that with my body I can address history, the immediate and political issues. For me performance is deeply personal, because it’s my way of speaking out.” Belmore not only addresses the politics of Indigenous representation, voice, and identity in different media, but also gives visibility to physical violence, particular- ly violence against women, by invoking presence and absence with the body, with hers and others. Belmore’s feminist agenda is grounded in her being a cis woman, and that of her people, as she explained in 2007. Even if Belmore’s pieces are recognized and discussed by feminist art history, she is not producing feminist art in the art historical sense. Her work, however, joins feminist discourse, since it addresses the discrimina- tion of Indigenous women from the perspective of an Figure 1: Rebecca Belmore, The Named and the Unnamed (2013, Indigenous woman who experienced discrimination video installation). Collection of the Morris and Helen Belkin Art and loss of language herself.5 Gallery, UBC. Purchased with the support of the Canada Council for the Arts Acquisition Assistance program and the Morris and Helen Belkin Foundation. Photo: Howard Ursuliak. The Performance as Vigil Vigil is a performance piece that took place Taking a seat in front of the screen, I got mes- in the same year as rural settler Canadian pig farmer merized by the forty-eight light bulbs that pierced the Robert Pickton was charged with the murder of twenty- screen and sometimes the projected image of candles six women.