ARTIST COLLECTIVE: Postcommodity
AWARD: 2021 SHIFT – Transformative Change and Indigenous Arts
CO-LEAD ARTIST: Kade Twist
NATIVE HERITAGE: Citizen of the Cherokee Nation
LOCATION: Bakersfield, CA
CO-LEAD ARTIST: Cristóbal Martínez
NATIVE HERITAGE: Mestizo of the Genizaro, Pueblo, Manito, and Chicano heritages of Northern New Mexico
LOCATION: Alcalde, NM
ABOUT
Postcommodity is an interdisciplinary arts collective comprised of Kade Twist (Cherokee Nation), an interdisciplinary artist working with video, sound, interactive media, text and installation environments, and who is Associate Professor of Arts and Social Practice at Otis College of Art and Design; and Cristóbal Martínez, PhD, an artist, publishing scholar, and Chair and Associate Professor of Art and Technology at the San Francisco Art Institute. 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. They work 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 is the recipient of grants from the Joan Mitchell Foundation (2010), Creative Capital (2012), Art Matters (2013), Native Arts and Cultures Foundation (2014), Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation (2017), Ford Foundation Art of Change Fellowship (2017-2018), and Harker Fund of the San Francisco Foundation (2018-2019). The collective has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including: Contour the 5th Biennial of the Moving Image in Mechelen, BE; Nuit Blanche, Toronto, CA; 18th Biennale of Sydney in Sydney, AUS; Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art in Scottsdale, AZ; 2017 Whitney Biennial, New York, NY; Art in General, New York, NY; documenta14, Athens, GR and Kassel, DE; the 57th Carnegie International in Pittsburgh, PA; Desert X, Coachella Valley, CA; Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL; and their historic land art installation Repellent Fence at the U.S./Mexico border near Douglas, AZ and Agua Prieta, SON. The collective was awarded the Fine Prize for their contribution to the Carnegie International, 2018 titled From Smoke and Tangled Waters, They Carried Fire Home.
PROJECT
Postcommodity’s SHIFT project Cosmovisión is built around a musical instrument performed by four people simultaneously using joystick controllers, interactive video, and sound for co-determining relationships between land, community, and worldview; sonifying these relationships as a practice of Indigenous self-determination and meaning-making; and an Indigenous-led effort to advance Indigenous consciousness, diplomacy, and dialogue. To achieve this, players make recordings of sounds representing land, community, and worldview. They then work together to harmonize this shared sonic media during the performance. The project will partner with the University of Arkansas School of Art for studio, research, and academic publishing support.
PARTNER ORGANIZATION
University of Arkansas School of Art offers graduate and undergraduate degrees in art education, art history, graphic design, and studio art. It seeks to recruit and retain a diverse, academically productive, and intellectually ambitious community of students, faculty, and staff to participate in these programs that focus on the Arts of the Americas.
