Radio as Social Sculpture Live in Sydney: “We’ve Always Been Modern” — on Indigenous Ways of Seeing and Visual knowledge. An interview with Gerald McMaster

Welcome to the second iteration of "Memories of an Unsettled Present," live from Gadigal Land (Sydney). This segment explores how present actions may affect the meaningful restoration of the past’s presence. The radio broadcast format serves not only to amplify but also to reflect the transmission of signals between different places and (post)colonial settings across continents: the airwaves mirror the flow of philosophical and artistic ideas across time and space, bridging the gap between past and present.

Before I continue I want to recognise that this program is taking place on Stolen Land. I want to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land on which this broadcast is taking place, the Gadigal People of the Eora nation, and their continued connection to the Gadigal Land and waters. I pay my respects to Elders past, present, and emerging. I extend that respect to all First Nations people whose land was stolen and who never ceded sovereignty. This always was and always will be Aboriginal land.

Today, I feel privileged and excited to be airing a conversation with Professor Gerland McMaster that we recorded on zoom yesterday. Gerald McMaster – curator, artist, author, and professor – is Tier 1 Canada Research of Indigenous Visual Culture and Curatorial Practice and director of the Wapatah: Centre for Indigenous Visual Knowledge at OCAD University, Toronto. Dr. McMaster has 40 years of international work and expertise in contemporary art, critical theory, museology, and indigenous aesthetics, working at such institutions as the Art Gallery of Ontario, Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, and the Canadian Museum of History. Chosen as Canadian curator to the 1995 Venice Biennale, and 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale; he was Canadian Commissioner to 2010 Biennale of Sydney; and Artistic Director to the 18th Biennale of Sydney in 2012. His most recent books are Iljuwas Bill Reid: Life & Work for Art Canada Institute (2020); Postcommodity: Time Holds All The Answers for Remai Modern (2022); and Arctic/Amazon: Networks of Global Indigeneity (2023). McMaster is a nêhiyaw (Plains Cree) and a citizen of the Siksika Nation.

In Professor McMaster, I found an incredibly generous, immensely knowledgeable, and witty interlocutor who offered his perspectives on subjects that hold great importance to me, and I believe could be relevant for some others who want the world to be seen from many perspectives: possibilities and necessities of global indigeneity, indigenous ways of seeing, and indigenous visual knowledge. To give one glimpse: when asked how to situate indigenous visions within global modernity and capital, and salvage it from being seen either as archival or archaic, McMaster replied: “we have always been modern”. This playful inversion of a Western intellectual’s caprice gave the conversation its title and can perhaps offer its listeners an insight into the themes we tried to touch and explore. I’m very grateful to Gerald for this warm and inspiring conversation and can only hope my constant mispronunciations would not stand in the way for the audience to have a similar impression.

—

Gerald McMaster – curator, artist, author, and professor – is Tier 1 Canada Research of Indigenous Visual Culture and Curatorial Practice and director of the Wapatah: Centre for Indigenous Visual Knowledge at OCAD University, Toronto. Dr. McMaster has 40 years of international work and expertise in contemporary art, critical theory, museology, and indigenous aesthetics, working at such institutions as the Art Gallery of Ontario, Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, and the Canadian Museum of History. Chosen as Canadian curator to the 1995 Venice Biennale, and 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale; he was Canadian Commissioner to 2010 Biennale of Sydney; and Artistic Director to the 18th Biennale of Sydney in 2012. His most recent books are Iljuwas Bill Reid: Life & Work for Art Canada Institute (2020); Postcommodity: Time Holds All The Answers for Remai Modern (2022); and Arctic/Amazon: Networks of Global Indigeneity (2023). McMaster is a nêhiyaw (Plains Cree) and a citizen of the Siksika Nation.

Amir Saifullin is a Tatar researcher from Russia, based between Rome and Berlin. He is working at the intersection of anthropology and histories of art, science, and philosophy, with a particular interest in how different visual forms of translation and mediation communicate and shape human cosmologies, politics, and communities. Amir is now pursuing these interests while writing his PhD dissertation on Projectionism at the University of Zurich.

—

Links

The Wāpātah Centre for Indigenous Visual Knowledge

The Wāpātah Centre for Indigenous Visual Knowledge is dedicated to the documentation, communication and interpretation of Indigenous ways of seeing.

—

Literature

Arctic Amazon: Networks of Global Indigeneity. Edited by Gerald McMaster and Nina Vincent. Frederickton, NB, and Toronto: Goose Lane Editions and Waptatah Centre for Indigenous Visual Knowledge, 2023.

Gerald McMaster, “Introduction.”In The Entangled Gaze: Indigenous and European views of each other, edited by Gerald McMaster and Julia Lum. Special issue of ab-Original: Journal of Indigenous Studies and First Nations’ and First Peoples’ Cultures. The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2019.

Emma I Hansen, Memory and Vision: Arts, Cultures, and Lives of Plains Indian People. Cody, WY: Buffalo Bill Historical Center, 2007

Nastya Dmitrievskaya, “Gouging out the State’s Eyes: Geology and Settler Colonialism in Russia and the Soviet Union,” in Berliner Gazette, 20.12.2023