An A/r/tographic Inquiry of a Silenced First Nation Ancestry, Hauntology, G(hosts) and Art(works): An Exhibition Catalogue.

Abstract

As a hauntological artist, I deconstruct my silenced First Nation Wolastoqiyik (Maliseet) ancestry and look towards the intergenerational narratives of my grandmother, mother, and I. Employing the methodology of a/r/tography, the intersection of autobiography and art-making, I utilize diverse art forms to find that g(hosts) reside amongst spaces of liminality. Supported by the methodology of a/r/tography and drawing upon works, which blur the boundary between past and present, self and other, I deconstruct the silencing of my First Nation lineage by creating three art(works). These art(works) are placed within an exhibition catalogue and inquire into 1) the specters that loom between the evocative objects of our narratives, 2) how script-writing and the script’s performance can reveal ghosts in IJEA Vol. 17 No. 30 http://www.ijea.org/v17n30/ 2 spaces of liminality, and 3) how sculptures facilitate spectral movement. Each individual art(work) plays a role in breaking the silence. A(wake), specters arise. When I was a child, people often asked me if I was First Nation or “an Indian”. I suppose it was because my skin was darker. I practically lived outside. Sun drenched, my hair was long, going down to my elbows, at times. In response though, I always told them that there was no relation. When I was ten years old, a neighbour brought me to the Odawa Pow Wow. I remember dancing in the circle with everyone. I remember flowing bodies, the trees, the campsite around us, the feathers, the beading–the sense that people were coming together to experience this relationality as drumming and dancing filled the space with colour and movement. The circle was alive with the dynamic motion that everybody brought forth. I thought about the experience a lot afterwards, and grew up to have an expanding interest in Aboriginal knowledge and education. Then, in 2007 as I was making a film with my grandmother and mother, I learned that my grandmother’s grandfather was First Nation. I learned that my grandmother only found out when she was thirty years old, that the ancestry was silenced by the family. I knew a lot about First Nations history, the historical Cloutier: An A/r/tographic Inquiry 3 trauma that comes with it, but I was not prepared to be so close to that history. How was I to proceed? My great great grandfather was born of the Wolastoqiyik (Maliseet) Peoples. As an a/r/tographer (Irwin, 2004; Irwin & de Cosson, 2004; Springgay, Irwin, & Kind, 2005; Springgay, Irwin, Leggo, & Gouzouasis, 2008), I am struck by a destabilizing hauntology, a haunted (non)presence whereupon the past permeates the present (Derrida, 1994). Workingtowards breaking the silence through art, I consider what is outside language and objects to find that ghosts reside amongst spaces of liminality. Intergenerational narratives concerning a silenced First Nation ancestry are deconstructed within a continuum of time that connects the past with the present, and into the future. A silencing stirs. Towards a Theoretical Blueprint for Living in My Haunted House While supported by a/r/tography, I dedicate myself to an emergent journey through art and text, and look towards creating a theoretical blueprint for living in my haunted house. Considering how the intergenerational narratives of my silenced Wolastoqiyik lineage affect me as an a/r/tographer, I am drawn towards a ghostly relationality. I place myself amongst the movement that I experience as I break the silence of my First Nations ancestry. This spectral movement occurs through art and is beyond the self; it is a hauntology, a haunted ontology, a displaced voice. Through a/r/tography, I work towards including “voices in research that may not otherwise be heard (Sinner, Leggo, Irwin, Gouzouasis, & Grauer, 2006, p. 1249), and consider how inquiring into the intergenerational narratives have emphasized a multiplicity of subjectivities, emerging, still. Through a/r/tography, with the many voices around me, I draw on works which blur the boundaries of self and other, past and present (Bhabha, 1994; Chambers, 1994; Derrida, 1994, 1997; Aoki, 1993, 2003), because within the scope of narratives, “disjunctive temporalities” (Bhabha, 1994, p. 254) remind us that we are always being haunted by the past – with that, I reflect on how I do not want to privilege presence over absence (Aoki, 2003, p. 3). Drawing from these philosophical notions, and supported by the methodology of a/r/tography, I deconstruct the silencing of my First Nation lineage at sites of liminality. Liminality, while blurring presence and absence, resides amongst intertextual spaces of ambiguity (Hurren, 2003). I think about how “artists, researchers, and teachers can linger in the liminal spaces of unknowing/knowing” through their art practices (Leggo, Sinner, Irwin, Pantaleo, Gouzouasis & Grauer, 2011, pp. 239–240). Through the layered, interwoven, and at times fragmented identities of artist/researcher/teacher, I experience liminality–between these blurred identities. Through intertextual spaces, and experiencing movement through artmaking, I think about the liminal space of being dislocated while “maintaining a spectral IJEA Vol. 17 No. 30 http://www.ijea.org/v17n30/ 4 presence” (Palulis, 2003, p. 269). I think about how the specter, too, resonates with and blurs the distinction between presence and absence, because the spectre is neither present nor absent– “the specter is the future, it is always to come, it presents itself only as that which could come or come back; in the future” (Derrida, 1994, p. 48). The specter is not present, and “this non-presence of the specter demands that one take its times and its history into consideration” (Ibid, p. 126). In this way, the specter of my silenced First Nation lineage is one of my hauntologies–haunting me, still. I work through this haunting via “the methodological concepts of contiguity, living inquiry, openings, metaphor/metonymy, reverberations and excess” (Irwin & Sinner, 2013, p. ii). Through a/r/tography, I present and perform my experiences of liminality and spectrality as I displace meaning through art-making. There is a blurring of presence and absence– through metonymic moments: a “tensioned space of ambiguity, ambivalence, and uncertainty” (Aoki, 1999, p. 181). This is reflected photographically in my work, in the conflation of the dream catcher, rosary and the Eiffel Tower, hence alluding to our nation’s troubled colonial history. Like de Cosson (2008), “I choose these symbols to wrestle with, to play with, in a tangled dance of metaphor and metonymic spaces to crack some new space of seeing, of learning” (p. 285). My (death)less silenced First Nation lineage haunts me, and makes me aware that “the dead can often be more powerful than the living” (Derrida, 1994, p. 48). Reflecting on the historical trauma that Canada has experienced, I look towards Dalene Swanson (2008), and I too believe that “we need to seek out the phantoms of the other that haunts us, and that a passion for justice means interlocuting with ghosts” (p. 185). Moreover, I consider haunting as a metaphor as it “can be an empowering literary and artistic trope that can evoke trauma, loss, rupture, recovery, healing and wisdom. It is also, at its core, political. It provokes (and insists upon) questions about ownership, entitlement, dispossession, and voice” (Goldman & Saul, 2006, p. 44). In this way, as the tension between presence and absence is explored, the notion of hauntological relationships, framed by a/r/tography, is understood via lived experience and political manifestations affected by real work conditions and struggles over knowledge and resources, as you shall see through my art practice. A/r/tography as an emergent method Through art-making, I “remain flexible and open to modifications” (Hesse-Biber & Leavy, 2008, p. 3). I let the material and the ghosts speak to me. Artistic processes are emergent by nature, after all. Like Indigenous artist and activist Jimmie Durham (1993), I believe that the “visual arts are complex and sociable, not controllable” (p. 251). My art, my research, is emergent by nature. Emerging, still: I think about how “the researcher and the research are part of an intricate dance that is always evolving” (Sinner, Leggo, Irwin, Gouzouasis, & Cloutier: An A/r/tographic Inquiry 5 Grauer, 2006, p. 1242). Supported by the methodology of a/r/tography, the intersection of autobiographical writing and art-making (Irwin & de Cosson, 2004), I draw on theory as a/r/tography as métissage (Irwin, 2004), a method of “relational aesthetic inquiry” (Leggo, Sinner, Irwin, Pantaleo, Gouzouasis, & Grauer, 2011, p. 239). This allows me to inquire into how contemporary art practices can go beyond cultural capital (Bourdieu, 1991), beyond art for art’s sake– in the way that “arts-based researchers often explain their work and offer cues as to how to read their representations in relationship to social science” (Cahnmann-Taylor & Siegesmund, 2008, p. 234). Self reflection occurs under a larger system of exchange. It involves “a relationship with the other; at the same time, it constitutes a relationship with the world” (Bourriaud, 2002, p. 53). Alongside my mother and grandmother’s stories, an inquiry into art’s transformative power unfolds. I look towards the arts-based research methodology of a/r/tography, because as an interdisciplinary artist/researcher/teacher, relational social practices can be inquired into via a wide variety of material, including “narrative writing, autobiography, dance and movement, readers theatre, multi-media, hypertext, visual arts, photography, music, poetry, and creative non-fiction (among others)” (Sinner, Leggo, Irwin, Gouzouasis, & Grauer, 2006, p. 1248). Employing diverse art forms to work through and deconstruct my silenced lineage, I ask: How does “the process of my own doing” (De Cosson, 2004, p. 132) allow voices and specters to appear? The Studio and an Art Exhibit