“no history”
Performed at Skylight Gallery on April 10th 2015 in Vancouver, on the unceded Indigenous territory of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Skxwú7mesh-ulh Úxwumixw, Stó:lo and Tsleil-Waututh nations.
As a gesture of bearing witness to ongoing colonial violence, I wrote this piece and sampled Stephen Harper’s 2008 “apology” for the Indian Residential School system, his G20 speech only a year later (where he stated in candid denial that Canada has “no history of colonialism”), and time-stretched excerpts from Tanya Tagaq’s “Ancestors” (who is a throat-singer from Ikaluktuutiak and one of approximately 150,000 Indigenous children who attended a residential school).
My idea was to create a piece in ‘time-stretched witnessing’, where sounds from a colonial reality are extended so that we can hear them more deeply and clearly. As a means of retracing memory, the moment of bearing witness is also longer, more moving and more meaningful.
Stefana Fratila, one of the featured artists in this year’s Art Waste Group Show
Stefana Fratila, one of the featured artists in this year’s Art Waste Group Show