Redalyc. Performing Aboriginality at the Venice Biennale: The

Revista Mexicana de Estudios Canadienses (nueva época) Asociación Mexicana de Estudios sobre Canadá, A.C. [email protected] ISSN (Versión impresa): 1405-8251 MÉXICO

2007 Carla Taunton PERFORMING ABORIGINALITY AT THE VENICE BIENNALE: THE PERFORMANCE ART OF REBECA BELMORE AND JAMES LUNA Revista Mexicana de Estudios Canadienses (nueva época), primavera-verano, número 013 Asociación Mexicana de Estudios sobre Canadá, A.C. Culiacán, México pp. 55-68

Red de Revistas Científicas de América Latina y el Caribe, España y Portugal

Universidad Autónoma del Estado de México

http://redalyc.uaemex.mx PERFORMING ABORIGINALITY AT THE VENICE BIENNALE: THE PERFORMANCE ART OF REBECA BELMORE AND JAMES LUNA1

CARLA TAUNTON

Abstract This paper explores the performative art indigenous artists James Luna and Rebecca Belmore. In 2005, Rebecca Belmore was selected as Canada’s representative at the venerable international art exhibition, the Venice Biennale. Concurrently, James Luna represented the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian. Belmore’s Fountain and Luna’s Emendatio biennale specific performances will be the starting point for this discussion. The site of performance is examined as a space for indigenous intervention. Belmore and Luna’s performance art is examined as a contribution to the discourse of Aboriginal sovereignty. I will examine their performance practices as high-tech storytelling, illustrating the fusion of traditions of Aboriginal storytelling with practices of mainstream performance art. Their performances will be explored as a decolonizing artistic practice, staging sites for cultural resistance. Key words: Performance, art history, Venice biennale, Canadian art.

y discussion today is an exploration of the performance art of Rebecca MBelmore and James Luna. It centers on a discussion of storytelling, sug- gesting that the act of telling a story or rather the story itself as a possible theo- retical framework in which to navigate some of the performances and other aesthetic expressions of contemporary Aboriginal artists. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the complexities of Aboriginal performance art and its relationship to high-tech storytelling. By ‘high-tech,’ I do not mean to associate the practice with the ‘high tech industry,’ but to show the impact contemporary society has had on the storytelling practice of Belmore and Luna. High-tech storytelling incorporates additional props, such as audio recordings and visual

RMEC / núm. 13 / primavera-verano / 2007 REVISTA MEXICANA DE ESTUDIOS CANADIENSES

projections, which are not used in traditional storytelling practices. I argue that their role as high-tech storyteller pushes the boundaries of oratory traditions, not only through the content of their narratives, but also in the use of multiple props to articulate their story. Through this, Belmore and Luna both affirm the significance of Aboriginal oral traditions, all the while challenging the absence of recognition of storytelling as a legitimate his story. It is important to recognize that in Aboriginal communities the story has long been a vehicle for resistance, employed as a strategy for cultural survival. This suggests that storytelling is a method of intervention. The relationships between storytelling and performance art will be discussed to create a foundation for navigation of the performance practice of James Luna and Rebecca Belmore, thereby supporting my argument that they use the story for political intervention and protest. Their storytelling practices participate in a larger discourse of traditions of Aboriginal oratory. The site of performance will be examined as a space for indigenous intervention, elucidating these artists’ roles as social activists who employ performance art and storytelling to reclaim and re-envision silenced histories and the identities of indigenous peoples in North America. Although these two artists, Luna a Luiseño Native American and Belmore an Anishinabe 56 First Nations of Canada come from very different cultural traditions they are connected by their use of performance art to vocalize Aboriginal lived experience. Recently, in 2005, Rebecca Belmore became the first Aboriginal woman to be selected as Canada’s representative at the venerable international art exhibition, the Venice Biennale. Concurrently, James Luna represented the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian at the same event. Are these selec- tions by national arts organizations and institutions a catalyst for more develop- ment and change within the climate of Aboriginal political and cultural dis- courses? Belmore and Luna’s presence at Venice raises many questions about the socio-political history of Aboriginal culture in the Canadian and American con- texts. Whether these events are a catalyst for change or political tokenism, the performances Belmore and Luna contributed reflect their personal artistic practices and their use of performance art as a platform to articulate indigenous histories. Belmore and Luna’s performance art is examined as a contribution to the discourse of Aboriginal sovereignty, reclaiming Aboriginal identities from Eurocentric colonial representations and popular culture’s stereotypes. Their performances share Aboriginal stories and colonial histories to negotiate an indigenized space for discussion of indigenous perspectives; examined to show how their work negotiates decolonized spaces for the continuation of indigenous PERFORMING ABORIGINALITY AT THE VENICE BIENNALE... stories. Their performances will be explored as a decolonizing artistic practice, staging sites for cultural resistance. Belmore’s Fountain and Luna’s Emendatio will be the starting point for my discussion today. To set the stage Rebecca Belmore’s Fountain is a video-based performance that was projected onto a screen of falling water. Belmore performance site is an island hundreds of meters from Vancouver’s International Airport and across the river from the Musqueam First Nations reserve. It is also the site of a sewer treatment centre. The site, as in most of Belmore’s performances, plays an important element as meaning maker. The Fraser River separates her performance site (Sea Island) and the Musqueam reserve which is continuously used by the First Nations for fishing. The site is Aboriginal land–now being used for the treatment of sewage and local, national, and international travel. As a site of travel, it signifies European ‘discovery’ and tourist expeditions, colonial expansion, as well as the increase of connectivity through technology and the impact of globalization. I read her position as an Aboriginal woman at this site as an intervention and her performance as the vehicle for reclaiming but also for expressing indigenous experience. Perhaps she is re-mapping the traditional lands of the Musqueam–most of which are now part of the city landscape of Vancouver. In this performance, Belmore’s actions and site create the narratives of her 57 story. She struggles to emerge from the cold water of the Pacific Ocean with a metal bucket in hand. She walks up the beach away from the tide and throws the bucket of water which turns to blood. The sequence of physical actions con- cludes with the viewer witnessing Belmore standing with eyes fixed through a film of blood. Fountain tells many stories–stories of aboriginality, colonialism and the ambiguities of the post-colonial. This piece reflects Belmore’s larger body of work which comments on both her local and Aboriginal communities, such as her recent Vancouver based performance and video-based Vigil: The Named and the Unnamed (2002). Both of these performances give voice to the silenced experiences of Aboriginal peoples. An additional similarity to Fountain is how this performance was recorded and projected onto a large screen; creating an installation out of a performance. Drawing on Belmore’s inclusion of fire and candles in Vigil she attaches light-bulbs on the screen arguably signify acts of mourning, giving light, healing, exposure and the impact of European so-called progressive modern developments (in this case being the light bulb). Here, she is telling a contemporary story, expressing the harsh urban realities of Aboriginal women. This performance honours the women who have disappeared from the downtown Eastside of Vancouver, a large number of whom were Aboriginal sex trade workers (Townsend-Gault, 2002). On the streets of east Vancouver Belmore yelled out the names of the missing women. She created a vigil-like scene. Her inclusion of oratory reinforces her intention to give voice to the silenced and REVISTA MEXICANA DE ESTUDIOS CANADIENSES

to give recognition to oral stories–in doing so she created a record of this contemporary history. In this work, Belmore is explicitly vocalizing a ‘public secret,’ forcing recognition of the missing women (Townsend-Gault, 2002). The record is in the memories of all who witnessed her performance and installation. It articulates an aspect of the urban Aboriginal women’s experience, re- asserting their identities and voices. Rebecca Belmore is among the first Cana- dian Aboriginal performance artists to receive extensive attention in the late 1980s–for her politically vocal performance practice–Fountain is a continuum of her practice of performative oratory as a vehicle for indigenous resistance and intervention. James Luna’s Venice Biennale performance, Emandatio (2005), was com- posed of one performance and two installations. The Chapel for Pablo Tac and Apparitions: Past and Present are the titles of his installation spaces, however for the purpose of this discussion I will focus on Luna’s performance. Luna’s performance is a pseudo-ceremony where he ‘dresses up’ and ‘plays Indian’ to confront Eurocentric and now global notions of Aboriginality. This was a new work created specifically for the Biennale and arguably describes Luna’s larger artistic project of high-tech storytelling for indigenous social change. 58 The performance of satirical pseudo-ceremony presented in Emandatio is also characteristic of Luna’s Shameman. Luna’s Shameman performances sati- rize the non-Aboriginal concept of ‘going native’ while criticizing Aboriginal people who exploit sacred ceremony for the gazing eyes of non-Aboriginals and for economic profit. Luna opens his performance with a series of pseudo rituals including the spiritual offering of an air-freshener can, rather than a smudge of sweet grass and tobacco. Luna’s created environments function “as both aesthetic and political statements, addressing the mythology of what it means to be ‘Indian’ in contemporary North American society and exposing the hypocrisy of the dominant society, which trivializes First Nations people as romantic stereotypes” (INDIAN ACTS, 2002). James Luna is a high-tech storyteller, incorporating his lived experiences into his performance narratives and installation spaces. Luna shares his stories using new technology, material culture, and humorous inventions such as a ‘high-tech peace pipe’. His performances transform gallery spaces into what Luna describes as battlefields, where the audience is confronted with the nature of cultural identity, the tensions generated by cultural isolation, and the dangers of cultural misinterpretation (INDIAN ACTS, 2002). He is aware of the biased space of galleries and museums. Luna confronts the coded colonial space, with the intention of generating conflict and opposition against colonial systems of control, with the understanding that a neutral space will almost certainly never exist. This is exemplified in his performative interventions: Artifact Piece (1987), where Luna PERFORMING ABORIGINALITY AT THE VENICE BIENNALE... places his body and objects of his material life as pseudo artifacts of a museum collection. Luna’s work challenges viewers to examine their own prejudices, as it is provocative, often dealing with difficult issues, such as poverty and alcohol abuse. His work addresses ignorance and the dangers of typecasting and stereo- typing while creating new ways of understanding the complexities of Aboriginal socio-cultural and political histories (Townsend-Gault, 1999). Playing with history and Aboriginal knowledge is a strategic practice utilized by Luna and Belmore, offering new representations for their Aboriginal audiences, and new understandings for their non-Aboriginal audiences. Their em- ployment of performative storytelling is successfully unsettling, and is a politi- cized force. Belmore and Luna re-negotiate spaces in order to take control over their representation, while also giving vision to their once ‘invisible’ position as Aboriginal people in Euro-American society. Their performances destabilize multiple European constructions of ‘Indianness,’ by disclosing the ways in which these Eurocentrisms have been created as well as resisted. Drawing upon Luna’s understanding of body politics, we can see the human body as a ‘social instru- ment’ to articulate critical discourse. This means that both Luna and Belmore intertwine their stories with colonial histories and their legacies to create a counter-narrative. Their incorporation of cultural knowledge acts symbolically 59 as currency gifted in the form of a story within the open parameters of performance art. The act of gifting in the form of new knowledge and representations can result in a political shifting of power and is arguably a method for empow- ering subjected peoples. Belmore and Luna reclaim the voice and the stories of their communities, thereby shifting colonial dimensions of domination and power. The concept of storytelling for social action is discussed by Edward Said in Culture and Resistance, where he talks about the significance of using storytelling as a vehicle in which to navigate a counterpoint to official public memory. Said argues, “One has to keep telling the story in as many new ways as possible, as insistently as possible, and in as compelling a way as possible, to keep attention on it” (Barsamian and Said, 2003). Belmore and Luna practice this strategy of continued and repetitive telling and re-telling of indigenous lived experiences: through the sharing of stories performatively. In order to support my argument that Belmore’s and Luna’s fusion of Ab- original storytelling and performance art is a method of cultural resistance, I will now briefly outline the traditions of indigenous oratory. According to Susan Brill de Ramirez, what gives the oral narrative its power is the immediate and intimate nature of the spoken word (Brill de Ramirez, 1999). Within the ‘ritual’ of the storytelling practice, the audience, or rather the listener, is an active par- ticipant in a reciprocal relationship with the orator, revealing the inherently dialogic nature of storytelling ( Brill de Ramirez, 1999). Audience politics play a REVISTA MEXICANA DE ESTUDIOS CANADIENSES

significant role in performance art’s reception. Belmore and Luna’s performances offer multiple stories and histories to their audience; meaning is negotiated between the subjects and across language and cross-culturally. The interpretations made by audience members differ based on the individual, and the nature of performance art as an ephemeral artistic practice. In this way, Luna and Belmore’s gallery spaces become public sites of learning, creating interactive and reciprocal learning environments; at the same time, they create a site of public memory. In Belmore and Luna’s performance practice, the audience bears witness, participating in the decolonization of Aboriginal identities and stories. They witness stripping of histories from the colonial texts like a palimpsest while also revealing traces of indigenous knowledge. For example, in Belmore’s Fountain performance she reveals the multifaceted significance of water for indigenous communities, such as, the Atlantic Ocean in which European crossed to arrive in the Americas, the socio-cultural connection of the Pacific Ocean for First Nations on the Northwest coast, and/or the loss of indigenous fishing rights due to Government legislations. Whereas, Luna reveals the concept of the Imaginary Indian, a construct created by Eurocentric notions of Indianness and discussed by Marcia Crosby as part of the hegemony of the European ‘master narrative’. 60 Crosby argues that the construction of the imaginary Indian is an “interest ex- tended to dominating and colonizing First Nations people, our cultural images, and our land, as well as salvaging, preserving and reinterpreting material frag- ments of a supposedly dying native culture for Western ‘art and culture’ collec- tions” (Crosby, 1991). In this sense both Luna and Belmore are contributing to an indigenized narrative to counter the Euro-American production of national narratives and representations of Aboriginal history. The work of bearing witness, noted by Edward Said, is a powerful historical practice (Said, 2002). Bearing witness is an act of acknowledgement and recognition, which engenders understanding and, potentially, intervention. It is a ‘powerful historical practice’ because it offers the potential for social change and preventing the repetition of past atrocities. As Homi Bhabha states, “Remember- ing is never a quiet act of introspection. It is a painful re-membering, a putting together of disembodied past to make sense of the trauma of the present” (Bhabha, 2004). Drawing on Bhabha’s argument elucidates the interconnected relationship of memory, bearing witness, and history to the staging of acts of political intervention. The stories in Belmore’s and Luna’s performance spaces act as the agent of social change in the storyteller–listener relationship; the audience recip- rocates by bearing witness to the knowledge and stories gifted to them. Native resistance is cultural persistence; its strategies are stories. Belmore and Luna’s use of the story in her performances is a continuum of the process of storytelling as a form of social and cultural resistance. Jean Fisher argues that the PERFORMING ABORIGINALITY AT THE VENICE BIENNALE... act of positioning art work within a tradition is not a form of silent protest but rather a form of intervention (Fisher, 1987/88). Craig Womack remarks that stories not only preserve Aboriginal communities, but “acknowledge that our cultures are largely intact because our stories tell us how we are adapting to the challenges we are continually encountering in our communities” (Womack, 1999). In this sense, the act of telling stories contributes not only to the process of resistance and survivance, but in the post-colonial context, the story offers sovereignty and empowerment. Furthermore, storytelling is a communal act of resistance, representing the ongoing creation of world views. Kim Anderson, in A Recognition of Being: Reconstructing Native Womanhood, discusses how the act of storytelling preserves language and the power of the spoken word. She ob- serves that “indigenous stories are significant because they are anchors of resistance” (Anderson, 2000). Prior to contact with Europeans, Aboriginal peoples relied on stories to connect communities and maintain strong tribal cohesion. The story was a means for cultural continuance, and can account for its survival (Einhorn, 2000). This system of inter-Nation communication continued throughout the period of colonial expansion, and persists today. The multiple roles the contemporary storyteller assumes are significant in terms of cultural survival and empowerment. Anishinabe cultural theorist Gerald Vizenor has argued that 61 Aboriginal stories bear witness and give presence to ‘survivance’ which as Vizenor argues is “a state in which we are moving beyond our basic survival in the face of overwhelming cultural genocide to created spaces of synthesis and renewal” (Vizenor, 1994). I would argue that performance art offers Aboriginal artists, such as Belmore and Luna, a vehicle to physically make space for themselves and their stories in places once segregated, and controlled by, Euro-American society. This intervention in gallery/museum spaces and/or international biennales is arguably a decolonizing act. Marie Battiste discusses the significant impact indigenous scholars have had on the processes of decolonization. I argue that the contemporary work of many indigenous artists participates in the same process, which Battiste claims urges their communities to exercise their inherent rights in order to determine political status and pursue their cultural identity (Battiste, 2000). Furthermore, stories in Aboriginal communities are the lifeline of knowledge, linking the generations by sharing spiritual, historical, and cultural knowledge. As Cherokee scholar Thomas King argues, “The truth about stories is that’s all we are” (King, 2003). Drawing on King, the fundamental role stories and storytellers play within Aboriginal communities is elucidated. Belmore and Luna participate in the continuation of sharing indigenous knowledge, revealing traces of Aboriginal cultural, historical and social knowledge which were over- laid by colonial histories of domination and subordination, thereby sharing a REVISTA MEXICANA DE ESTUDIOS CANADIENSES

rewriting of histories from an Aboriginal perspective. From this view point, the reception of performances can instigate new ways of understanding, making the gallery a site for social activism. Recalling Mohawk scholar Gail Guthrie Valaskakis’ discussion of the interconnected relationships between indigenous identity and story, aesthetic expressions and identity, community and stories (Valaskakis, 2003), I suggest that Belmore’s and Luna’s performative acts of storytelling reclaim a space for the continuation of indigenous stories thereby contributing to an empowered vision of Aboriginality. Aboriginal performance art continues the tradition of self-determined voicing and expressing of political statements by means of the story. Luna’s and Belmore’s artistic practice is story- bound, telling numerous stories at once and enabling interplay between performance art and storytelling. Through performance, the artist controls the story she wishes to tell. In other words, Luna and Belmore’s act of performing the story is a means for disruption. It is also an intervention utilized as a strategy of cultural survival. The presence of Belmore and Luna at the 2005 Venice Biennale is a significant event in the history of Aboriginality in North America. This event raises many questions about the socio-political history of Aboriginal culture. Does this 62 event symbolize the current or future relationship between indigenous peoples and government? Does it reflect institutional shiftings whereby contemporary Aboriginal art is no longer marginalized? Or is it the result of a successful and well-written grant proposal? Then again, perhaps we are witnessing yet another token gesture whereby Belmore and Luna represents nothing more than a public relations triumph, showing the global artistic and political communities Canada’s and the United States’ so called commitment to the improvement of its relationship to its indigenous peoples. In the future, Belmore’s video-based performance Fountain, created for the Venice Biennale, will undoubtedly be considered a pivotal piece and moment in Canadian Aboriginal art. As the second Aboriginal to represent Canada and the first Aboriginal woman, Belmore’s performance/ installation at Venice coupled with her being the subject of a 2005 cover story in Canadian Art Magazine–she is among a handful of indigenous artists to claim this page–may generate or lend the necessary momentum for galleries and cultural institutions across Canada to step up and recognize contemporary Aborigi- nal art as a significant body of work. Regardless of the intentions of national arts funding organizations in Canada and United States, Luna’s and Belmore’s performances presented Aboriginality to a global audience. Archer Pechawis argues:

In that space that the stories are re-told, re-interpreting-the performance space becomes part of the moccasin telegraph: a gathering place, a communal council PERFORMING ABORIGINALITY AT THE VENICE BIENNALE...

fire. Grievances are aired. Relations are shown. News of the community isexamined, the larger community of Indianness considered (Pechawis, 2000).

Their performances claimed spaces in the European and global landscape for the discussion of indigenous issues; transcending national borders and contributing to the discourse of indigenous decolonization. In other words, Luna and Belmore performance practice of retelling and re-voicing Aboriginal histories are catalysts for claiming a decolonized-indigenized space. James Luna’s Venice Biennale performance Emandatio is an example of high- tech storytelling, which I suggest fosters greater understanding of contemporary Aboriginal issues. I first began drawing these conclusions when I read Luna’s argument that “performance and installation offers an opportunity like no other for Native People to express themselves.” Luna’s biennale performance acted as an intervention. This is overtly elucidated by his chosen title Emandatio, which is a Latin word that translates as emendation, and is defined as the act of altering for the better, or correcting what is erroneous or faulty; improvement; removal of errors or corruption (Canadian Dictionary, 1998). Arguably, Luna is satiri- cally commenting on notions of Euro-American colonial improvements, devel- opment and progress on North American indigenous culture, which is of course a faulty, erroneous and problematical history. It also alludes to the processes of 63 decolonization whereby indigenous peoples are attempting to remove the layers of hegemonic and colonial domination from their histories and identities. Luna’s performance re-negotiated the multifaceted implications of colonization. Simi- lar in form to other works in his extensive performance/installation portfolio, Emandatio was a presentation comprised of audio recordings, found objects, dance and audience participation (Smithsonian, 2005). This work honoured a Roman Catholic Luiseno, Pablo Tac, who in 1832 set sail to join the priesthood and learn missionary skills in Rome. Luna’s performance stage was a pseudo- ceremonial stone circle. The performance was created to allude to Catholic ceremonial rituals, which was meant to be familiar to his European-majority audience thereby seeking cross-cultural engagement. During Luna’s pseudo-ceremony the performed rituals were also alluding in some form or variation to various global indigenous cultures ceremonial rituals that ensure health, well- being, and regeneration of culture. His performance took place during the opening days of the Biennale. It took the form of a staged ceremony. After blessing and laying a ritualistic circle of stones, low-income processed foods, such as spam and sugar packets as well medical vials, and syringes–symbolically referencing the current physical and mental health plight of many indigenous nations—Luna began to dance. With a stereotypical ‘Indian’ prop in hand, either a feather, a rattle sometime or a riffle he continuously danced for 4 hours. He repeated this performance four times on REVISTA MEXICANA DE ESTUDIOS CANADIENSES

four different days; this emphasis on the number 4 is significant cross-culturally signifying the four cardinal directions, recognized as sacred. This repetition also alludes to permanence and survivance. Arguably Luna’s strenuous performance serves as a metaphor for the cultural, spiritual and physical endurance and resistance that has been required for indigenous survivance throughout colonization and now into the twenty-first century era of decolonization. Luna has noted that this pseudo-ceremony takes on many forms and is multilayered, as it also serves as a physical gesture of healing and renewal. Emandatio offers respect to the global community as a whole and furthermore honours traditions of indigenous cultural knowledge. Luna’s choice of dress is a significant element in his pseudo-ceremonial performance. He dressed in a series of costumes representing the clichés of Indianness. He incorporated objects that interplay with the sign of the ‘Indian’, such as, moccasins, a loincloth, an eagle feather, a war shirt, and a Winchester rifle. Luna is equipped for battle, and his post-colonial weapons of choice are humour, subversion and stereotypical objects of ‘Indianness’. Luna utilizes humour as a strategy to “win over audiences and lure them into listening to more challenging material” (Torres Tama, 2001). Laughter allows for the confrontation of 64 painful truths and attitudes, which in turn enables a rejuvenation of relationships and perspectives (Torres Tama, 2001). Furthermore, I would argue that the relationship between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people can be renegotiated by generating a greater cross-cultural understanding through multiple medias of communication. Both Luna and Belmore share common methods of storytelling, and both include hard stories in their performances, which Luna argues makes battlefields of gallery spaces, in order to communicate silenced historical events endured by Aboriginal peoples. Luna’s chosen objects challenged notions held by Western society of authentic Aboriginal culture. Furthermore, most of the material culture incorporated into Luna’s performance is not from his own cultural heritage. His loincloth was a blue thong with leopard print spots, and his war shirt had sports webbing up the sides. Blake Gopnik’s observation from witnessing Luna’s performance was that it seemed that Luna was “trying to inhabit everything an Indian is supposed to be, has been, or could be” (Gopnik, 2005). In an interview Luna acknowledges the misunderstandings his performances generate. When asked “Did anyone read your performance as a traditional folk form of Indian Culture?” Luna replied: They always do. Because even though it’s tongue in cheek, part of the attrac- tion is that I take my structure from a ceremony. But [my work] is not a ceremony, it’s a performance. There are moments when I catch the audience out of the corner of my eye, and see them tear up: “Oh my God, it’s an Indian” (Gopnik, 2005). PERFORMING ABORIGINALITY AT THE VENICE BIENNALE...

Luna’s political negotiations, which confront his presumably detached and passive viewers, consequently highlighting the instability of individual and col- lective identity and the consequences of the romanticization of Aboriginal culture (Fernandez-Sacco, 2001). This is what makes performance art so powerful; the artist and his/her actions confront the prejudices people hold towards others. Luna’s performance art tackles contemporary and historical issues by employing humour and parody to take, as he describes, “the first step to recovery” (Townsend- Gault, 1992). Rebecca Belmore is one of Canada’s leading installation/performance artists. Like Luna, she is a high-tech storyteller who utilizes technology and other props to tell her story. From her Vigil: Named and Unnamed to her Biennial video- performance Fountain (2005), Belmore includes personal, familial, community, and national stories to share Aboriginal histories. In her Biennale catalogue the following passage introduces her:

Belmore’s art has its basis in performance, which she, in turn, sees as a medium shared by old traditions and modern expression–a medium both indigenous and international. As a vehicle for polemics, Belmore’s performance art almost always features her body. Her physical presence in the work calls forth a sense of loss for something absent, while creating an energy of resistance¼ In addition to lost battles 65 and the scourge of racism, there is a loss of cosmology and nature, a remapping and reimagination of the inhabited world ( Bailey and Watson, 2005).

This is evident in Fountain which was conceived for the Canada Pavilion in Venice. The video-performance is projected through falling water. Fountain is quintessential Belmore. Her reputation, across Canada and internationally, has been earned with performances and installations that reveal sensitivities to concepts of history and place, memory and absence (Martin, 2005). Belmore’s “ability to manipulate materials and concepts into innovative special environments” (Martin, 2005), arguably generates commentary and testimony to colonial history. Fountain is set on Iona Beach, south of Vancouver, where the city’s sewage is dumped into the ocean, only kilometres from the Vancouver International Airport. The performance is presented in five scenes and is videotaped on a typical, cold January day. It starts with a panoramic view of the grey ocean and sky, moves quickly along a sandy beach littered with logs from the forest industry salvaged by the ocean’s tide. Suddenly, fire explodes on the beach. Belmore walks away from the explosion. The next scene shows Belmore in the ocean, struggling to fill a bucket with water. She continues to struggle, but repeatedly falls. This cycle of struggle then shifts, showing Belmore walking towards the camera, holding a bucket, struggling forward with ‘great resolve’ (Martin, 2005). Belmore ‘heaves’ the bucket, imagined as water, at the viewer. The water has REVISTA MEXICANA DE ESTUDIOS CANADIENSES

transformed into blood, flowing down the screen, leaving the viewer with an image of Belmore staring through the bloodied screen. Belmore “confronts the camera with a somber, resilient look. It is the expression of someone ready to move forward, with nothing but fear and, sadly, nothing more to lose” (Martin, 2005). She stands staring at her multicultural audience–perhaps demanding recognition of Aboriginal socio-political realities. She is reclaiming an empowered space, an indigenized space for the continuation of Aboriginal stories. Belmore’s performance offers multiple meanings specific to Vancouver, the Pacific Northwest, and Canada, but also to Europe and Venice. She intricately weaves layers of meaning into her performance offering multiple stories for her viewer to unravel and reflect upon. For example, fountains are common to Euro- pean cities as large and opulent civic installations, arguably representing the Renaissance of European culture and the birth place of imperialism. However rather than a fountain in the European sense, Belmore creates a screen of falling water—denoting an indigenized fountain from an Aboriginal point of view. For an aboriginal viewer, fountains could represent the colonization of indigenous culture by European invasion. Water is the common thread which is woven through each scene of this performance. Perhaps commenting on the Pacific Ocean and the reliance and relationship of the Northwest coast peoples on this 66 resource, or perhaps it represent the waters European settlers travelled across to arrive in North America and later exploited for resources. Fountain is a performative commentary on the impact of colonization on Aboriginal communities in North America like the ocean’s tidal rhythms it came in waves of domination and brutality. Paradoxically, this performance also references the struggle for indigenous self-representation, self-determination and self-governance in the Canadian context. It tells several stories. Belmore uses her body as a site to illustrate indigenous resistance and survivance; telling stories of the Aborigi- nal experience, thereby, demanding her audience to take notice of contemporary indigenous issues. In conclusion, utilizing storytelling for social change, the performance practice of Luna and Belmore participates in the decolonization of Aboriginal histories, identities, and lands. Their inclusions of harsh historical testimony clearly articulate their intentions to educate through storytelling. These high-tech storytellers use the practice of performance to engage their audiences to bear witness to colonial histories; their oratory is a testimony to indigenous resistance and survivance. Rebecca Belmore and James Luna assume the role of meaning maker: their performative storytelling draws upon memory and inserts indigenous perspectives, histories and stories into the official narrative, thus participating in the process of decolonization. PERFORMING ABORIGINALITY AT THE VENICE BIENNALE...

NOTAS

1 This paper is a revised version of a presentation given at the conference “Territory and Society in the Americas” Asociación Mexicana de Estudios Sobre Canadá, Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, Mexico City, Mexico. On February 14, 2007.

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Fecha de recepción: 13 de marzo 2007 Fecha de aceptación: 27 de mayo 2007