Hemispheric Dialogues
In this course, we will learn from the films and artworks of Indigenous artists and media makers across the hemisphere with a focus on Canada and Brazil. We will investigate how specific artists, activists, and filmmakers oppose, resist, and denounce the defuturing projects of powerful and oppressive forces in their respective nations. Transcending national boundaries, we will consider how these artists/ filmmakers offer critical, visionary, sustainable, and modern cosmovisions for the future of our planet. Lectures, field trips, selected films, artworks, and discussions will help frame our hemispheric focus. What strategies do Indigenous artists use to critique and denounce the colonial nation state? How are expressive forms (film and art) used to critique the nation state and represent Indigenous contemporary cultures, cosmologies, and stories? What is our role as inhabitants of these nations in learning and examining these stories? We will be guided by the artists and their works, media theory, and decolonial thought from Turtle Island to Abya Yala to gain insights into these questions.
Keywords: Turtle Island, Abya Yala, Indigenous Media Art, Brazil, Canada, Decolonial, Pluriversal
- Teacher: Sarah Shamash