For the remainder of 2020, we decided to hand the curatorial duties to a handful of friends we’ve worked with previously. These programs will highlight the people working in the time-based arts in their community. This is an idea we’ve been kicking around for a long time with it initially being a fest that would explore different regions of the US and now felt like a good moment to explore it further. If 2020 has shown us anything it’s that our community is the only thing we can actually rely on.
November 20th, 2020
8:15PM (not punk time)
Friends of Friends Community Series: Decay/Delay
Curated by: Raven Chacon
The screening is suggested donation of $10 or pay what you can.
All money collected goes to the artists in the screening equally. Always have. Always will. Please donate.
Send donations to (venmo *preferred*) @Adan-DeLaGarza
(paypal - *can charge a fee to transfer*) adanschool86@hotmail.com
scan code with paypal app! won’t work with camera phone.
About the curator: Raven Chacon is a composer, performer and installation artist from Fort Defiance, Navajo Nation. As a solo artist, collaborator, or with Postcommodity, Chacon has exhibited or performed at Whitney Biennial, documenta 14, REDCAT, Musée d’art Contemporain de Montréal, San Francisco Electronic Music Festival, Chaco Canyon, Ende Tymes Festival, 18th Biennale of Sydney, and The Kennedy Center. Every year, he teaches 20 students to write string quartets for the Native American Composer Apprenticeship Project (NACAP). He is the recipient of the United States Artists fellowship in Music, The Creative Capital award in Visual Arts, The Native Arts and Cultures Foundation artist fellowship, and the American Academy’s Berlin Prize for Music Composition. He lives in Albuquerque, NM.
Statement for the program: Decay/Delay - Five films from New Mexico-based artists and collaborators about encounters and encroachments across an ever-changing landscape.
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Artist: Marya Errin Jones
Title: Dixie Standard
Statement: This short film tracks memories sold by the acre, through the plantation belt, from Georgia to Florida. Recollections of growing up and passing through stolen souls on stolen land.
Year: 2020
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Artist: Raven Chacon, Mely Mitchell, Rob Valdez
Title: Be’eldiildaahsinil (Abduction Song)
Statement: An oral account, relayed by my grandfather, Frank Dineyazhe, telling a family story in the Navajo language. As a teenaged girl, my great-great-grandmother was kidnapped by a Mexican man and taken from her home at Dinetah (Navajo homelands) to what is now Albuquerque, NM (Bee’eldiildaahsinil). While filming in restricted areas of Albuquerque International Airport, the camera moves as though it is surveilling the site, creating a disjuncture in time, relaying to a generations old story of abduction while capturing the transit of people in present-day Albuquerque.
Year: 2001
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Artists: Blackhorse Lowe, Nathan Young, and Sterlin Harjo
Title: Nahasdzaan bil hadilyaa / Made with the Earth
Statement: Nahasdzaan bil hadilyaa / Made with the Earth is a video installation created by Blackhorse Lowe, Nathan Young and Sterlin Harjo. Nahasdzaan bil hadilyaa / Made with the Earth is a site-specific reimagining of indigenous cosmologies that uses the four primary elements (water, fire, earth, air) to explore the themes of power and transformation. The video uses visually rich and psychedelic imagery to form a complex visual language or codex signifying a cosmology of hyperobjects or "things that are massively distributed in time and space relative to humans''
Year: 2019
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Artist: Erik Sanchez
Title: They Came On Ships!
Statement: During the naming ceremony for his grandchild, an elder tells a traditional oral story of when the Earth was invaded by Lizard People.
Year: 2020
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Artist: Raven Chacon & Cristobal Martinez
Title: A Song Often Played On The Radio
Statement: In a search for the mythological Cities of Cibola, a horseman finds himself in a race against another rogue seeking the valuable metals of the New Mexican desert. Spurred by the justification of moralistic 'dichos', the rival explorers come to learn about what truly brought them to this land, understanding their true identities, and finding that they were only stealing from themselves.
Year: 2019