Canadian Spotlight: Skawennati
April 17 – 6:30PM
Live Stream
TimeTraveller™ follows Hunter, a Mohawk man living in the future. Bored by his day job as a bounty hunter, he acquires a pair of TimeTravellers—a simulation- immersion program that allows him to tour and participate in key historical moments. Across 9 episodes, TimeTraveller™ presents Indigenous life across different timelines.
At first, Hunter just wants to animate his free time, but as he navigates the past, he is exposed to Mohawk languages and learns to participate in armed resistance and blockades; he describes his time logged into the Oka Crisis as “summer school behind the barricades.” On a visit to the 1969 Alcatraz occupation, Hunter is introduced to Karahkwenhawi from the year 2011.
Skawennati doesn’t sugarcoat history. Without shying away from portraying the literally dated gender dynamics between men and women and state-sponsored dispossession of land, she provokes us to stretch our imaginations by showing a 2112 pow wow/punk concert/fashion show taking place at the Winnipeg Olympic Stadium.
Like many works of science fiction, TimeTraveller™ carves a pathway to take stock of the violence, survival, resistance of the past to project play, experimentation, and gathering in a future that is still, ultimately, informed by our perplexing political present.
Q&A moderated by Adam Piron.
This program contains graphic violence, coarse language, nudity.
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CANADIAN SPOTLIGHT TALK
Wednesday, April 18, 1:30PM
More Info
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TimeTraveller™
CANADA, 2008/13, DIGITAL, 75 MIN, ENGLISH
FOLLOWED BY
The Peacemaker Returns
CANADA, 2018, DIGITAL, 19 MIN, ENGLISH
The Peacemaker Returns takes place in the far future, when the entire Earth has become a confederation of countries who truly recognize that we share one planet; that one person’s religion, language, and sexuality need not interfere with another’s; and that peace is not just the absence of war but the full eradication of injustice. Now Earth has a new challenge, and Iotetshèn:’en, a young Mohawk woman, is travelling through space along with four other diplomats to a momentous rendezvous.
textiles + materiality research cluster 