Virtual Colloquium: Skawennati – “More Like Worldbuilding”

We are joined by Skawennati on this Thursday, Jan 22 at 12 pm EST / 18h CET for a presentation titled “More Like Worldbuilding” as part of the Virtual Colloquium at the Berlin University of the Arts. Since the turn of the millennium, Skawennati has been envisioning Indigenous people in the future, in part to combat the stereotype that they only belong in the past and in part to bring about the future reality she’d like to see. In this talk, Skawennati will discuss several works that imagine an Indigenous future, including Imagining Indians in the 25th Century, TimeTraveller™ and They Sustain Us.

Skawennati investigates history, the future, and change from her perspective as an urban Kanien’kehá:ka woman and as a cyberpunk avatar. Her artistic practice questions our relationships with technology and highlights Indigenous people in the future. Her machinimas and machinimagraphs (movies and still images made in virtual environments), textiles and sculpture have been presented internationally and collected by the National Gallery of Canada, the Musée d’art contemporain de Montreal and the Thoma Foundation, among others.

Recipient of a 2022 Hewlett 50 Arts Commissions Grant and an Honorary Doctorate from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, she is also a founding board member of daphne, Montreal’s first Indigenous artist-run centre. She co-founded and co-directs Aboriginal Territories in Cyberspace (AbTeC), a research-creation studio-lab based at Concordia University, where she received her BFA. Originally from Kahnawà:ke Mohawk Territory, Skawennati resides in Montreal. She is represented by ELLEPHANT.

Please find below the Zoom link to join, which will be the same for all online sessions this semester:

https://us06web.zoom.us/j/82954605489?pwd=VP3XBDzVogeuQtLWaXbWEFpm9ObxiQ.1

Meeting-ID: 829 5460 5489
Kenncode: 079532