Critical Writing Index

Of the Moment / In the Moment

by Lisa Myers

Toronto: V tape, 2014

ISBN 978-0-9867810-3-2

An introduction by Vtape Creative Director Lisa Steele contextualizes the video program "Following That Moment" as a critical look at experimental videos by Indigenous artists predating the founding of imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival in 1999. She introduces curator Lisa Myer’s research and scholarship, and discusses the significance of this retrospective gesture as a marker of imagineNATIVE’s 15th anniversary.

Lisa Myers' essay "Of the Moment, In the Moment" discusses the founding of imagineNative Film + Media Arts Festival as emergent from video and media practices of Indigenous artists during the 1990s. She describes these practices as questioning the representation of Indigenous people on television while also reckoning with the specific interpellative function of the medium and its influence on the perspectives and opinions of its viewers. She makes reference to television news coverage of the Oka Crisis in 1990, which criminalized the Mohawk land defenders.

Myer's essay examines the five videos included in "Following That Moment", all dating from the 1990s. These works focus on personal histories and lived experiences in relation to legacies and ongoing forces of settler-colonialism. Myers identifies a shared theme of tension between opposing forces, as well as a self-reflexive questioning of the conventions of video and TV which "pushes video's visual and material parameters". The videos by Mike MacDonald, Joane Cardinal-Schubert, Dana Claxton, Zachery Longboy, and Thirza Cuthand subvert both stereotypical misrepresentations of Indigenous people and the visual conventions of the television medium.

ITEM 2014.061 – available for viewing in the Research Centre

Videos, Artworks and Artists Cited

Introduction: What happened in the moment before the moment?Lisa Steele

Of the Moment, In the MomentLisa Myers

Rat ArtMike MacDonald

Aboriginal Film & Video Alliance, Self Government: Let's Talk About It: Turtle Island... Take 'Em AllJoane Cardinal-Schuber

I Want to Know WhyDana Claxton

From Another Time Comes One... (Into a new time becomes a brother)Zachery Longboy

Through the Looking GlassTheo J. Cuthand