Steven Loft at the IARC Speaker SeriesSteven Loft at the IARC Speaker Series

Indians in Space: Curating Media Art by Indigenous Artists

Steven Loft, Aboriginal Curator-in-Residence, National Gallery of Canada; Former Director, Urban Shaman Gallery

IARC Speaker Series, SAR Boardroom

October 29, 2009, 5:30–6:30 pm

The development of an artistic discipline based on electronic technologies is an articulation of creative and cultural space foregoing the territorialized domains of cultural and artistic canons. We get beyond the notion of simple mediation and enter the realm of translation, exploring how media refashions the logic of communication strategies to encompass a broader understanding of contemporary cultural phenomena. As curator Catherine Mattes has noted, “translation can loosely be defined as the act of expressing the sense of one language into another parlance or form of representation. When applied to visual languages, translation can transcend the boundaries of specific movements and discourses and does not bind artists by locating them in (or up against) a particular realm.” I interpret this to define a certain absolute and contiguous relationship to the technology available, and to its ability to transform our perception, existing as shape shifter, neither inherently benign nor malevolent, but always acting and active, changing, transformative, giving effect to and affecting the world. The term “language of intercession,” coined by Victor Masayesva, refers to this idea. In his essay “Indigenous Experimentalism,” Masayesva writes, “the Indigenous aesthetic, like each tribal language, is not a profane practice, a basic human protocol, or merely a polite form of etiquette and transaction, but rather, it is the way in which we are heard and commune with the Ancients.”    (From http://sarweb.org/index.php?iarc_lecture_steven_loft-p:2009_2010_iarc_speaker_series)

Listen to the talk at http://sarweb.org/index.php?iarc_lecture_steven_loft-p:2009_2010_iarc_speaker_series