Abstract Title:
Intangible evidence: The artistic performance of place and memory in Rebecca Belmore's March 5, 1819
is part of the Paper Session:
Landscape: Heuristic tool, Cultural Artifact, Ecological Concept, or Political Entity?
scheduled on Thursday, 3/26/09 at 13:00 PM.
Author(s):
Shauna McCabe, Canada Research Chair* - Mount Allison University
Abstract:
We want our landscapes to be "eventful," and the expression of the past is as much a symbolic process as it is a material one. This paper will address the potential of art practice as "portable monument," exploring the nature of its commemoration. The discussion will be framed in relation to the production and presentation of a recent media art project by Canadian aboriginal artist Rebecca Belmore titled "March 5, 1819." Addressing a key narrative within the identity of the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador and within aboriginal history of the country more broadly, the art work considers the moments that Demasduit, a young Beothuk woman, was captured by English colonialists and her husband was killed during his attempt to save her. Although there are several archival accounts of the capture, Belmore uses creative practice to build a sense of absence - that of the perspective of the main figures in the narrative themselves. This presentation will explore how art practice may be a means to articulate that which is intangible and beyond representation. Throughout her work, Belmore contends with questions of time and history, with memory, place, culture, and gender and the inadequacy of representation. This paper considers implications of Belmore's work for the representation of "events," and suggests that in the absence of physical monuments, creative practice may be part of the complex performance of what Pierre Nora refers to as "lieux de mémoire."
Keywords:
art, memory, cultural landscape, non-representational theory
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