Curated by Lindsay Nixon and Adrienne Huard for gijiit. gijiit is a curatorial collective based in Tio’tia:ke and Tkaronto, concentrated on community-engaged Indigenous art dealing with themes of gender, sex, and sexuality.
Facebook event: https://www.facebook.com/events/720243518373526/.
It was apparently Derrida (but a Black woman probably said it better first) who described archive fever as the môniyâw-iyinak obsessive compulsive death drive, found “in” this ethos so lovingly called The Archive (“in” being the operative term). Derrida was concerned with the Latin origins of the word archive—archivum or archium—derived from the Greek arkheion meaning a house, a domicile, an address, or the residence of the superior magistrates. The archons were those given powers and command over the archivum or archium. The archive is the movement of bodies, objects, and ideas from the public into private, authoritative ownership. Archive fever is the deadening of, the never-ceasing death drive inflicted upon, all that, those, contained within its hallowed walls. What would it mean to take our bodies, our ways of loving, fucking, and being, out of the archive; to set ourselves aflame with an orgasmic fever, instead? To spark new life. To release Indigenous desire from its confines. Acknowledgments: conceptual credit goes to Léuli Eshraghi who helped work through some of the themes for this program. kinanâskomitin kîtisân.
ARTICULE EXHIBIT: Creative Kinship and Other Survivalist Tendencies
Featuring new artworks from Jonas Arahkwente Gilbert, Dayna Danger, Stacy Lee, Moe Clark, and Beric Manywounds
May 11 – June 9, 2019 * Opening: May 10, 2019 – 5 PM * Articule (262 Avenue Fairmount O)
For its first mentorship project, gijiit brings together pockets and constellations of creative kinships in Tio’tia:ke/Mooniyaang (Montreal). Whether it’s sneaking one another into studio spaces to share access to resources, making one another food, or spending hours at the hot springs to heal thine own holy temple(s) of creative labor, NDN and Black kin have been helping one another survive creative industries for a minute.
NDN and Black folx know all about this so-called non-apocalypse trending on the lips of the hipster arts anthropocene folx, who keep telling us it’s sooooo problematic when I call it an apocalypse (probably because they’ve never experienced one). Colonialism is such a gaslight. Listen: NDN and Black peoples have seen the end of their known ways and the implementation of a sick, extractive alien order that destroyed our intimacy with all Creation. Possibility narratives have been increasingly taken up in academic, lit, and art spaces, but NDN and Black peoples, creators, are the O.G. post-apocalyptic warriors, developing survivalist tendencies of care since the first môniyâw-iyin tried to snuff out our medicines.
Creative kinship encapsulates the intimacy, solidarity, and mutual survivance creators find through various forms of collaboration. Groups of artists with connections to Tio’tia:ke/Mooniyaang and Kahnawake will participate in a month-long collaborative residency period at articule. The residency period will then culminate in a final exhibition of the work completed. In recognition of lateral and non-hierarchical practices of mentorship, there is no power differentiation between the artists in collaboration—no western art administrative model that puts the administration and the faculty above, and in control of, the artists producing for said institution.
SBC / ARTEXTE PERFORMANCE: Cumming Commons
May 11, 2019 – 2 PM * SBC Gallery (372 Saint-Catherine, 507)
Featuring Arielle Twist, Léuli Eshraghi, and Kite.
By putting our freaky kin and ancestors in the closet (perhaps more aptly described as the archive drawer), the môniyâw-iyinak were willing us to die. We aren’t interested in The Archive, an ethos within which our dykey, fairy bodies have always been unintelligible. We are interested in the idea of many archives. What would, could, an anti-archons archive, a living archive, an Indigenous (orgasmic) archive, be? To this end, we know that queer and/or trans folks and erotics have always existed here. How can we pervert The Archive to find what Anne Stoler has termed minor histories: in search of beautiful, Indigenous life, reading between the lines, seeing beyond the veneer, of those cultural objects about us, so dear to those who will us to die? Drawing from the Artexte archive and Indigenous art criticism from the 1980s onward, we will pose an intergenerational conversation by animating the texts in conversation. With our olders, Elders, mentors, ancestors, and all those who paved the way for us ever in our hearts and minds, we will locate the “queer,” “trans,” and “sexy” in the Indigenous art archive.
ARTICULE PROGRAMMING: Bead and Bitch with Nico Williams, Dayna Danger, and guests. May 12 – 1 PM * Articule (262 Avenue Fairmount O).
Join Nico Williams, Dayna Danger, and guests for an afternoon of beading, tea, snacks, and auntie gossip. Everyone is welcome, from beginners to kookums. Beading supplies will be provided by gijiit.
FUNDRAISER: Ziegfeld Nü Metal Frolic
May 10, 2019
Featuring performances from Adrienne Huard, Dayna Danger, Arielle Twist, and surprise guests. DJ set by Frankie Teardrop.
A night of sexy, Indigenous Nü Metal performances and dancing to queer-pray in the memory of Princess White Deer and all the Indigifemmes who exercise(d) their sovereignty on the pole, the strip, or Instagram. A “ziegfeld frolic,” to honour the burlesque style Princess White Deer would perform on Broadway.
This is an invite only fundraiser. In the week prior to the event, a select number of tickets will be available for purchase. Keep and eye on the Facebook event for details.
Jas M. Morgan 