Postcommodity (22/11/13)

Four men stand in a desert in front of a wire fence, the horizon goes on forever. The first has a large beard, a jean jacket and dark sunglasses, the second has long hair and stands in a black t-shirt with arms crossed, the third has a slouchy sweater and running shoes and the fourth wears a trilby, square glasses, and a pointy beard.

Image courtesy of Postcommodity

Postcommodity uses video, sound, video game design, and installation to talk about how people create and understand a sense of place. The collective was in Guelph in September participating in the Musagetes Guelph Café. Postcommodity returned to Guelph to present their practice, which began in 2006. During the Café they shared insights on the kinds of communities that can be built with art and how those communities overlap. At the Café they also developed Game Remains: Golden Horseshoe, an artistic multi-player video game designed to be used as a sound and visual instrument. The collective worked closely with a group of eight local collaborators, who contributed to the game protocols through group discussion and testing. The project allows some of the thoughts and concepts within a community of people to take shape through light and sound. More…

The collective discussed their forthcoming conceptual installation, Repellent Fence, which will take place on a two-mile stretch of the Tohono O’odham Nation’s homeland, currently divided by the Mexican/American border. Postcommodity will create a fence of large vinyl “scare eye” balloons (often used by farmers to frighten off birds) along the border. A series of community-driven events will coincide with the installation, inviting dialogues between Tohono O’odham, American, and Mexican publics to re-build trans-border knowledge and stories about the movement of people, cultures, ideologies, and capital.

Postcommodity is an interdisciplinary arts collective comprised of Raven Chacon, Cristóbal Martínez, Kade L. Twist, and Nathan Young. Postcommodity’s art functions as a shared Indigenous lens and voice to engage the assaultive manifestations of the global market and its supporting institutions, public perceptions, beliefs, and individual actions that comprise the ever-expanding, multinational, multiracial and multiethnic colonizing force that is defining the 21st century through ever-increasing velocities and complex forms of violence. Postcommodity works to forge new metaphors capable of rationalizing our shared experiences within this increasingly challenging contemporary environment; promote a constructive discourse that challenges the social, political and economic processes that are destabilizing communities and geographies; and connect Indigenous narratives of cultural self-determination with the broader public sphere. Postcommodity has received grants from the Telluride Institute (2007), American Composers Forum (2008), Arizona Commission on the Arts (2009), Elly Kay Fund (2010), Joan Mitchell Foundation (2010), Creative Capital (2012), and Art Matters (2013). The collective’s installation Do You Remember When? was featured in the 18th Biennale of Sydney (2012).