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ConunDrum Online Volume One Editorial
Tānisi and Welcome
"The development of digital networks and
new media production has been accompanied by the sometimes
controversial, divisive and often globalizing dominance of
contemporary culture. But their openness and flexibility has also
encouraged autonomous spaces and recognition for self-determined,
culturally distinct and diverse sources of creativity, exchange
and community building. Indigenous artists and communities are
transforming these networks and digital spaces. They are
participating-from a position of self-determined, collaborative
reflection on their unique world views-in the international
definition of a new set of cultural practices: those evolving
within digital art and creative electronic networking. For some,
this is the first time since contact and submergence within
dominant, pre-existing European cultural practices that their
voices and images are being heard, seen, respected and celebrated
outside of their own communities. Significantly, it is also the
return of creative cultural voices to communities that have
experienced the incarceration, starvation or murder of their
creative leaders. Networked art practice is becoming a crucial
framework for the emerging recognition and empowerment of
Indigenous cultures around the globe." Drumbeats
to Drumbytes - Globalizing Networked Aboriginal Art
It is a site for creative inquiry into the rich
and evolving relationship between the animist traditions of
Aboriginal cultures and the realm of online art and critical theory
- a site for approaching significant questions about the value of
key Aboriginal concepts to the hope for a future of the world in
general.
This
premiere issue of ConunDrum Online covers the range from the specific to
the general in regard to Aboriginal online art. Cheryl L'Hirondelle
confronts some of the difficult issues Aboriginal artists face in
creating online art while at the same time producing a section for
her piece artinjun.ca. Mike MacDonald presents an introduction to
the broad range of Aboriginal online artworks, and Mike Patterson's
excerpt from his thesis delves deep into the dynamic relationship
between Aboriginal prophesy and online culture. Each of these works
offer different points-of-view - close-up, medium, and aerial - that
illustrate the space of ConunDrum Online. It is a site for creative inquiry
into the rich and evolving relationship between the animist
traditions of Aboriginal cultures and the realm of online art and
critical theory - a site for approaching significant questions about
the value of key Aboriginal concepts to the hope for a future of the
world in general. These key concepts include humour and parody that
also drive both the creative play and pointed irony of Aboriginal
artists. The drum asks big questions and ConunDrum Online is an
invitation to explore them.
Cheryl examines the cultural concept of adapting tools
to the Aboriginal world view:
"artinjun ... is also a commentary on our
continued relationship with the fort - or mistahźy waskahikan (big
house). Since the arrival of Europeans, many of our ancestors
chose to have a relationship with those who dwelt in the fort. I
don't think the exchange was all one sided or colonizing - there
have always been survival techniques, materials and ideas that
have been stolen, shared, bartered and/or purchased. If one can
see things and experience outside of the jurisdiction of imposed
and limiting rules, then we can imagine new possibilities and
innovation - and hence new, enhanced and even remembered ways of
relating."
She also inverts the thorny issue of appropriation -
where previously our works and cultures were stolen, L'Hirondelle
seeks to reclaim and refocus appropriation toward acts of
recognition, sharing and dialogue.
Mike MacDonald looks at the diversity of Aboriginal
online art practice over the past ten years - a transformative
decade where artists, collectives and institutions broke many new
trails for Aboriginal culture. He catalogues the wide divergence in
methodology among Aboriginal online artists, but also brings them
together to demonstrate some of the underlying commonalities that
Aboriginal cultures share. He presents this within a wiley (a la
coyote) critique of the over-hyped promise of the utopian web -
bringing us up against the realization that it is our creative
communal expression that offers this hope much more than any single
tool we may take up.
The ancient process of successfully adapting to
their worlds' shifting threats and opportunities - innovating the
application of best practices to suit complex and shifting flows -
from a position of equality and autonomy within them, is the macro
and micro cosmos of contemporary Indigenous cultures: a truly
networked way of being.
Mike Patterson's work is a rich repository of research
that examines how the prophesies of the seventh fire and the seventh
generation inhabit and guide online Aboriginal culture. He also
examines the issue of tool adoption and intercultural fertilization
within the context of the fiddle and the drum. Patterson lays out
the menace and the promise of media networks - determining how the
prophesies are presenting a map for navigating new territories in
Aboriginal online culture.
"Indigenous digital artists around the
world are deeply engaged with, and provide important contributions
to interdisciplinary and cross-community dialogues about cultural
self-determination. Their works explore and bear witness to the
contemporary relevance of the histories of Indigenous oral
cultures and profound connections to their widely varying lands.
They also reveal the creative drive that is at the heart of
Indigenous survival. The cultures of animist peoples require a
continual sensitivity to, and negotiation with the cultures of all
of the beings and forces of their interconnected worlds. The
ancient process of successfully adapting to their worlds' shifting
threats and opportunities - innovating the application of best
practices to suit complex and shifting flows - from a position of
equality and autonomy within them, is the macro and micro cosmos
of contemporary Indigenous cultures: a truly networked way of
being." Drumbeats
to Drumbytes - Globalizing Networked Aboriginal Art
Ahasiw Maskegon-Iskwew, April
2005
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