21 Mar 2023

New Season/New Work – Spring 2023

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Midwinter Tour Recap

The midwinter, Midwest performance tour for “My Electric Genealogy” is in the books. It was an amazing run of eight shows in venues ranging from a tiny storefront gallery in Winona, MN to a gorgeous, avocado green midcentury lecture hall – complete with a fossilized dinosaur – in Carbondale, IL. Fall dates on the East Coast coming soon! In the meantime, check out the beautiful photographs taken by Justin Barbin at the Northwestern University show below.

Artist Sarah Kanouse sits in a men's dress shirt and red tie on a dramatically lit stage. Behind her is a freestanding stage with a blurry photograph of a family celebration projected on it.
The artist Sarah Kanouse speaks and gestures on a dramatically lit stage with a freestanding screen containing the projected image of a female-presenting person from the 1930s and a corona discharge.
Artist Sarah Kanouse craises her arms at the shoulder with hands facing upwards to the sky beside a freestanding screen showing an image of hands holding a photograph of two men standing by a transmission tower beside a snow capped mountain in a moment from "My Electric Genealogy"
Artist Sarah Kanouse stands on stage with a projected image of Chris Burden's Urban Light and raises one hand above her hand to theatrically press a button in a moment from "My Electric Genealogy"
Artist Sarah Kanouse lifts her arms from the shoulder with the hands limp at the elbow in a moment from the performance "My Electric Genealogy"
Artist Sarah Kanouse crouches with her head facing down in a moment from "My Electric Genealogy"
Artist Sarah Kanouse raises her hand with an open palm beside a projected image of an African American man in a 19th century suit in a moment from the performance "My Electric Genealogy"
The artist Sarah Kanouse holds arms wide and gazes in wonder at the sky in a moment from the performance "My Electric Genealogy"
The artist Sarah Kanouse its on a chair and speaks with one arm in her lap and one outstretched in a scene from "My Electric Genealogy"
Three screens on a stage show various images: a projected image of a white, 1950s family, a white, female-presenting person at a podium, and a TV screen with a transcript of police conduct from the Rodney King beating video.
Artist Sarah Kanouse puts on glasses to signal a character transformation in "My Electric Genealogy"
The artist Sarah Kanouse reaches for a chair while wearing a red tie and floral apron during a scene from "My Electric Genealogy." A projection of hands holding a photo of the artist's grandmother displays on stage.

Upcoming Talks

A People’s Atlas of Nuclear Colorado continues making the rounds this spring. It’s always a pleasure to represent this 40+ collaborator project with the brilliant Shiloh Krupar.

CU Boulder
March 16, 2 PM MT
Register for Zoom

Penn State
April 19, 3:30 PM ET
Email for details

Oxford-Georgetown
April 25, 11 AM ET
Email for details

In the Archives and the Studio

Two new projects – too early to share now – address the place where I live: Massachusett territory, at the moment it came into being the “property” of non-Native invaders (including my ancestors).  Mindful of Pierre Bélanger’s warning that recognition without reckoning functions as an “alibi” for continued investment in racial capitalism and settler colonialism, I’m going deep into the colonial archive to find the bloodless documents by which the bloody work of dispossession was accomplished. 

Pale fingers opens reference cards in a card catalog. The card reads "Weld, Joseph A. grantee, farms between Dedham, Sudbury, etc. 1643"

The archival materials are incredibly interesting, and I’m exploring ways to make them speak their own subtext: the flimsiness and anxiety of white possession, rather than proof of legitimate ownership. Land records in the 1600s were haphazard, handwritten, descriptive, and rarely mapped, but what they lack in precision they make up for in narrative embellishment. Rather than reassuring that everything was above-board, lengthy proclamations of the “free will” and “eternal friendship” with which land was transferred from Native to English hands suggest instead that coercion and animosity were the norm. It can be difficult to ascertain which parts of often extensive colonial estates were linked to a specific atrocity, and my attempt to do so should not suggest that other properties are somehow untainted by the violence that suffused the entire colonial enterprise.

A card in a card catalog reads "Pequot Lands allowed to person who served in the Pequot War 1667"

I’m also very mindful that my own experience of these deeds is remediated. I know them as scans of nineteenth century transcripts or digitized microfilm of handwritten original documents. This work is an act of revisiting, remembering, and, hopefully, repairing – in the constructive, future-oriented sense promoted by Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò.  I look forward to the next phase of these projects: conversations with Indigenous holders of the lands, non-Native managers, and scholars of the colonial enterprise on what these violent legacies call on us to do in the present.