benesiinaabandan:projects

cloth, quill, ghost worlds consists of nine photographs and a sound work.

installation details: installed photographs are 60”x60” or larger
audio media: 2.1 stereo

media: photograph, 3d print, aluminum, cloth, porcupine quill

Both the images and sound work exist synergistically, centred on ideas of intra-actions, entanglements, enfoldings and assemblies. The image informs the language and language is built from the image. Each image was constructed based on the conceptual framework of the Anishinaabe language itself. Anishinaabemowin, being an agglutinative language, is built upon the fragments of other words or morphemes. This lends itself to an incredibly rich framework from which the speaker can precisely and eloquently express and manifest a complexity of worlds.

The fluidity inherent in the language forms a critical method from which to consider the cyclical process of assemblies/[dis]assemblies and [dis]memberments/ remembrances. That is, the space and movement between these spectra are the generative spaces that inform this work.

Colours. It is hard to avoid a long explanation about how important specific arrangements of colours are for the Anishinaabe. It is a critical aspect of Anishinaabe onto-epistemology . Specific and critical colour arrangements accompany specific ceremonies including the naming ceremony. Each name is also given a series of colours that provide additional meanings to the name.Though precise meanings might vary from name to name, each colour is attached to the light at certain times of the year, times of day or certain orientations within the Universe. Each name and its colour sequence is tied together by a story given to you at the naming-ceremony. Each colour sequence serves as an intimate portrait of you and one Midewiwin elder told me at my naming ceremony, "Without names and colours, the spirits cannot see or hear you". Even here we find fluidity and flux. Each of our names has the possibility and probability of change over the course of our lives. As we grow so does how we appear to both the human and spirit worlds.

It is with this background that the assemblages of cloth, colour and language all provide a fluid matrix useful for examining ontological engagements. This attempt to engage and incorporate ideas from a more personal perspective sets this work apart from previous series and forms a new praxis from which to consider future works.
Beneath the conceptual work, the topographic image work began as a notable accident.

Last year I was learning how to do some porcupine quill | gaaway work at home. I dropped a red quill on my bed and did not notice. Some time later I noticed it had embedded itself through multiple layers of dark grey sheets. It was a simple yet beautiful found sculpture. Taking a photo of it, I recalled a time when I was sixteen and initially attempted to learn quill work and, again, dropped a quill onto my bed. That quill ended up stuck in my arm. The wicked design of porcupine quills is that the harder you try to pull it out, the more it works its way into flesh (or cloth). I never got the quill out of my arm, that quill worked its way into my arm and became part of me, in a literal way.

Taking the photograph of the red quill/grey cloth made a powerful physical connection between decades. This moment of recollection prompted a consideration of the ideas presented by Karen Barad, namely ideas of entanglements, enfolgings, intra-actions and agential realities, and decoupling the linearity of historical time though the performative action of the photograph and spontaneity of remembrance.

Commissioned for the Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival 2018.

“Monuments often function as a way of validating and reinforcing the stories we tell about a particular group or community. Montreal-based artist Scott Benesiinaabandan (Obishikokaang Anishinabe First Nation) explores the historical complexities that are often buried under the metaphorical weight of memorials, statuary and other structures that commemorate colonial stories.

His practice is informed by Indigenous belief systems that suggest that the land itself retains and communicates fragmented layers of past events, and his methods are derived from what he calls “an intuitive psycho-geography that re ects notions of the subconscious effects and stories of monuments, histories, and spaces.”

Egerton Ryerson held beliefs that influenced the establishment of the Indian Residential School system that has had a devastating impact on First Nations, Metis’ and Inuit people across Canada; and the two-billion-year-old boulders were displaced and “imported” from the Canadian Shield to the man-made pond.

Benesiinaabandan’s abstractions offer new material interpretations of a metaphysical perspective, enacted through contemporary transformations of this historically charged site. By reimagining the land through counter-narratives, his installation is a gesture toward acknowledging these histories and reclaiming Indigenous legacies—thereby framing powerful and imaginative trajectories for a possible future.”

~Bonnie Rubenstein, Artistic Director

“miini-baashkiminasigani-biitoosijigani-bakwezhigan anaamayi'ii mayagi-akiiyaang geshig”

Blueberry Pie Under a Martian Sky is a virtual reality (VR) artwork that will take place seven generations in the future, when human beings are able to travel through wormholes. It will follow that young boy as he journeys back to his people’s place of origin.

​The background for the piece comes from the artist reflecting on the idea that the Anishnabemowin term for “blueberry pie” did not exist until relatively recently (blueberries having been around since time immemorial, but not pie). Benesiinaabandan wondered what other words will need to be created over the next seven generations to describe yet newer technologies, environments and our relations to and between them. He has also been exploring how Anishinabe stories resonate with recent scientific theories that suggest that time, rather than being like an arrow or a river, is actually more like a blanket: it can fold, and two points can even touch, connecting two points in time via wormholes.

Blueberry Pie Under a Martian Sky was produced in conjunction with the Initiative for Indigenous Futures (IIF) and the 2167 project. IIF conducts research and creation aimed at encouraging Indigenous people to imagine our lives seven generations from now. 2167 is an immersive media series that commissioned Indigenous filmmakers and artists to create VR projects set 150 years in the future. These works serve as a counterpoint to the 150 years of Canadian confederation celebrations that took place throughout 2017. Scott’s residency, from April 1, 2016 to March 30, 2017, was supported by the Canada Council for the Arts.

“All cities are geological. You can’t take three steps without encountering ghosts bearing all the prestige of their legends. We move within a closed landscape whose landmarks constantly draw us toward the past. Certain shifting angles, certain receding perspectives, allow us to glimpse original conceptions of space, but this vision remains fragmentary. ”~Formulary for a New Urbanism, Ivan Chtchglov-1953

This work continues my investigations into monuments and the psychic/subconscious landscapes they inhabit and histories they inform. This photo and VR based work is an investigation into providing interventions and counter-narratives to contested spaces, in this case using ideas of a parallel imaginary.

This landscape was re-created out of 600 photographs of two monument locations, The Jacque Cartier monument in St.Henri and the Chomedey-Maisonneuve monument in Old Montreal. Both sites contain problematic elements about the colonial stories they represent and the histories they submerge. The (vr)landscape the viewer inhabits, the abstract geometries, the places where the regular meets irregular is all based on the information present in the photographic data. Digital noise makes crests and granulations, bokeh creates smooth fields. The resulting aesthetic is an intuitive psychogeography that reflects the notions of the subconscious effects and stories of monuments, histories and spaces.

The installation is an investigation into (de-re)construction of these spaces, meant to serve as a bridge or a portal into and from newlandia. Small 3D rendered sculptures are re-manifestations of the virtual constructions. The three large photographs are a gradiated disassemblage of the two monument spaces, an exuviated map of the the images and the symbologies that clothe these spaces..

little resistances is new work by Benesiinaabandan that investigates the relationship between the geneses of an individual’s personal, daily acts of resistance and the incidents, stand-offs, and crises that typify the monumental, historic ones. He begins with family snapshots of seemingly personal memories, pairing them with journalistic shots of well-known Indigenous resistances. However, the location of the personal and the historic in these couplings is flipped, illustrating the fundamental connection between the two; showing how one can inform, instigate and ignite the other.

Once paired and printed, the images are crumpled and creased, calling to mind gestures of violence, but just as easily implying empowerment. The personal and the historical meet, collapse and reconfigure.  Now objects, they are placed on a scanner, whose unique image-making qualities reconvert them from three-dimensional forms back into two-dimensional pictures.  The result is a map, or mapping, of the memories and meanings coded in each image to the stories and histories of Indigenous struggle. And vice versa.  

"Blood Memories: Psychic Histories layers data in a computing logic that visually mimics the psychic tangents of blood memory, wherein Indigenous histories and  meanings are physically imprinted in a complex transindividual consciousness." -Jessica Jacobson-Konefall

Psychic Histories/Blood Memories is a result of a year long New Media residency made possible by Canada Council for the Arts, through OBX Labs/AbTeC/Hexagram Concordia.

Exhibition work made possible with the generous support of  Canada Council for the Arts, through OBX Labs/AbTeC/Hexagram Concordia.

Blood Memories is experimental work that was exhibited at the Project Space at Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, June/July 2013. This work was a result of the investigation and research into new media technologies during a year long residency with OBX Labs/Ab-Tec at Concordia University.

The images are the result of a Processing based program adapted and developed  to use cameras to create a hybrid of still image, video and scan. Light, time and motion become interpreted in new ways in the resulting video and image making.

This series was created during a 2014 residency in Parramatta, AUS. I was spending a lot of time thinking of  ideas of land, migration and translocation and how these inform  and shape ideas of Indigeniety  from a global perspective.

mii omaa ayaad/oshkii  enendemowin( someone lives hereénew thoughts)

This work was created during a residency at Parramatta Artist Studios in Sydney, AUS for the Canada Council-Parramatta Urban Indigenous Artist Exchange.

The work is centered around global Indigenous concerns of colonial History, Land and Language and the points of contact between.

Some of the video and print work was created from a collaborative approach with Indigenous artists in Gerladton, Western Australia. Using the symbolical and politically heavy dot paintings as a visual basis for a discussion of our shared issues, we created atypical dot-paintings on top of earliest colonial maps as a form of political protest and action. 

“unSacred explores liminality through an investigation of the Windigokaan, a contrary figure in traditional Anishinabe society. Operating on the fringe of traditional Anishinabe culture, the Windigokaan represents the opposite of accepted norms. Benesiinaabandan contends that, like clowns, misfits and outliers in other cultures, Windigokaan use their perceived backwardness to teach others and that their contrary nature represents a powerful symbol that has received little attention to date, both within and outside of Anishinabe society. The landscape studies suggest the imagined physical and psychological spaces from which contrariness might originate and the depictions of material manifestations of the Windigokaan will open discussion about the ideas of the contrary, the sacred and the psychological implications within the broader contemporary society.”

Work made possible by generous funding of Canada Council for the Arts.

2-State Solution is an ongoing work that suggests possible histories and futures that might have happen or might still happen. Specifically located in relation to Indigenous sovereignty and Canada but also any State/Indigenous relationship in the world. 2-State Solution develops works of a suggested or alternative histories in a struggle that has continued since Contact, though through certain histories and timing might have turned out very differently.

Using propaganda style posters both in the exhibition and in accompanying public arenas 2-State suggests current political situations and very real undercurrents.

The works also make use of subversive video and audio elements, using frequency modulation and tones to reference "direct-action re-learning" technologies such as the MK-Ultra programs of the 60's. The idea is mass-psychological reprogramming of dominant societies to undo years of creeping ignorance around Indigenous rights, sovereignty and location within nations states. The insidious and stark technologies serve to highlight the serous nature of the issues and problems from Indigenous perspectives.

Ak-Sunrise 8m 07s(2012)

AK-Sunrise is a video animated piece that was created during a residency in Parramatta Artist studios in Syndey Australia.

The work was created and designed as a large scale projection piece for public spaces.

Ak Sunrise deals with the complexities of land, history and  language and intersection with sjared colonial histories. Benesiinaabandan create this piece as a element in the exhibition titled mii omaa ayaad/oshkii enedamowin ( someone lives here/new thought). The show and the work emerging from the residency dealt with issues that overlap both Indigenous Canadian and Indigenous Australian communities. The same policies that inform the current cultural, political and social situations in the respective communities are found in a shared history of terra nulluis and the imperialist mindset of the colonial powers.

The true  history goes unnoticed in the respective mainstream societies, with educational systes failing to inform and contextualize the true history of their states and the original people of that land.Ak-Sunrise seeks to occupy public space, being hard to go unnoticed as a counter strategy  to the current situations.The slow hypnotic rotation referencing the hypnotic nature of our acceptance of the status quo and the ways we both are hindered by the low level drone of educational  apathy in our relationship to the state and the stark potential of a subconscious reprogramming and suggestive methods to further counter and reverse this apathy. AK-Sunrise seeks to place the idea of a multi-level strategy of resistance through self-education and individual resistances alongside of  and in conjunction with more direct actions. The presence of the AK-47 ( the people’s weapon, known as such for its easy access, cheap price tag and ease of care) has made itself it’s own symbol of guerrilla resistance across the globe, from the Zapatista Movement, the Mujahideen in Afghanistan vs the Russians and then USA and the OKA Crisis to name only a few.

A collaborative project with Kerri-Lynn Reeves, originally conceived for Prefix Mag in which it was published, then executed for a show at Martha Street Studios. Winnipeg, MB (2012).