awa ka-amaciwet piwapisko waciya/climbing the iron mountains
| commentary | in february of 2002 i had an invitation to visit bristol, uk where i had the honour of wandering about bristol with net.artist heath bunting and his colleagues. they are involved with (among many things) physical performance activities including wall, tree and fence climbing. i wasnt very good at it initially, having been afraid of heights as a child, and coming from the flat plains where trees are not generally huge, fences made of wood (and unsturdy) and stone walls non-existant. | ||||||||
| my main reason for the visit was to get hands on experience and become more familiar with the many philosophies and pov's behind linux development and usage at cube cinema, an artist-run cinema and media lab committed to utilising redundant technologies and linux os. one thing that was impressed upon me was that by using linux, one was *decorporatising* how they interacted with computers. this, coupled with the random wandering expeditions got me to thinking about how, as an aboriginal person, could i de-program my many modes of contemporary existance. | |||||||||
| once back in canada, i was frustrated that i had no place to practise my re-discovered climbing skills, due to the long, snowy and cold northern winters. one day, while in a building i frequented regularly, i went to use the stairwell and realised that this would be an obvious place to begin my experiment. this particular stairwell offered at least 3 different routes to transverse its space (handrails, bannisters, stair). i also observed that while in a stairwell, one is existing *between the worlds* never being on an *authorised* floor, but simply moving through time and space, ascending and descending. the route i preferred was climbing the bannisters and iron girders (that supports the concrete and wood stairs). this meant climbing up the centre of this space, and in doing so enacting a sort of spiral dance as i would ascend and descend. | |||||||||
| during these initial practise climbs i realised this new activity contained elements from my recent intervention work cistemaw iyiniw ohci, both conteptually and in modus operandi, namely physical endurance and random audience factor. as i was also consciously challenging myself to experience a sense of de-programming i became increasingly pre-occupied with just how much everything in these constructed environments attempts to manipulate our free movement and expression. these climbing expeditions then also became process time for me to contemplate current projects, looking for connections and to sort out problem areas. from this, i was enabled to clearly see conceptual through lines to ongoing work. as i climbed and became more familiar with travelling through space in alt. ways i also pondered the arrogance of governments and municipalities and their control of even airspace by zoning air for building height and licencing frequencies for radio transmissions. all these musings seemed to channel quite freely into the eventual formalised intervention awa ka-amaciwet piwapisko waciya has become. | |||||||||
| as i climbed, some of my initial socially driven concepts were dealing with indian treaties, (mostly due to problem solving for a current net.art intervention entitled treatycard), a project that attempts to scramble government surveillance of ndn people by creating a level playing field by providing all people living within landbase treaty areas an official looking treaty or status card. but i realised my arrogance, and that of all humans who want to claim/own/control as i quickly i realised the fact that the air is not the domain of humans - ndn or otherwise, but that of birds. so similar to *cistemaw...* i decided that this activity would be similar homage/intervention on behalf of these winged creatures. i wanted to use some of the same elements from *cistemaw...*, namely the use of chalk tags, cree sylabics and radio transmissions, the random audience/vidience factor and performative physical endurance. | |||||||||
| thanks to my friend garnet hertz, i also became aware of the presence of infiltration magazine, (distributed in canada by my friends at marginal distribution). i was excited with the notion of making my findings available and part of an international ring of adventurers. it also connected with earlier work by making the documentation of the activity on the internet an important facet to the actual physical performance. | |||||||||
| part of my findings would be to infiltrate buildings and find stairwells that led to rooftops, and source out electrical outlets to enable me to broadcast low watt radio transmissions without having to also carry a heavy battery to the sites of broadcast. this information being of use to others needing to get a message out, sans interference of obstructions. this was inpart again inspired by another one of heath's colleagues. in doing so, i would find another random audience (by leaving more chalk tags announcing the call number, date and time outside of the selected site of transmission a few days prior to the climb). during these transmissions i would feature music, audio samples and other sounds from any interested musicians, audio artists and orators interested in supporting my activities. the activity would also allow me to create some re-mixes further enhancing the technological learning curve i have set out on by my desire to work in new media/audio. | |||||||||
| niya[at]ndnnrkey.net | |||||||||
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