2008
video
running time: 6:53
camera: Erika MacPherson
sound: Mike Germain
(clip)
Imprint is a performance video underpinned by personal and national narratives – stories of relief from displacement sought in a country itself founded on colonial processes of Indigenous dispossession. With the land/scape performing crucial aspects of the narrative, the performance plays in a quintessentially Canadian winter setting where a figure performs a ritual in two parts. One is a contest between footsteps and the blowing snow and the other is a deliberate activation of remembering, an echo of the Jewish custom of leaving pebbles on a grave to mark one’s visit. Drawing on notions of agency, memory and loss and accountability, Imprint speaks to stories of the movement of people in which location and dislocation are inextricably intertwined. It was through the development of the interations of this piece, beginning in 2006, that I came to the imperative of addressing the implications and accountablities of my presence as a white settler in Indigenous lands that are invaded and unceded.
For further discussion of Imprint see:
Decter, L. “Dis/locating Preferential Memory Within Settler Colonial Landscapes: A forward-looking backward glance at memoration’s per/formation” Performance Matters Vol 7:2.
Created with support from WInnipeg and Manitoba Arts Councils and Video Pool Media Arts.
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