The New Kahnawake

2010 - Film & Video (Film & Video)

42 min

Olive Martin and Patrick Bernier


The Mohawk, the emblematic Frontier river in the period of American colonisation, is here a cable of data transmission, and the 7 Sultans Casino is a virtual destination, one of the three hundred online casinos hosted by the servers located in Kahnawake, a small native american indian reserve to the south of Montreal. Incorporating poker, challenges to the law, a struggle for the control of a new territory where the stakes are high, our film ‘La Nouvelle Kahnawake’, between fiction and documentary, pushes these analogies with the Western to explore both our relationship to the figure of the ‘Indian’ and the confusion of our perception of space that new information technology has brought about. As the artists state: “We are neither anthropologists nor journalists. We didn’t want to make a documentary on the Mohawks; we’ll leave that to the Mohawks themselves who haven’t waited for us to develop operational systems for their cinematic and audiovisual productions. Describing our last film, Manmuswak, we say that it is at once a fiction about the life of ‘invisible’ immigrants and a documentary about our way of perceiving them: this is the viewpoint that we would like to keep in this new film. If this is a documentary then the subject is us. We are documenting ourselves, in an ‘extrospective’ rather than introspective way. We are a multitude of things: a man and a woman, a heterosexual couple, the mother and the father of a little girl; we are the descendants of the working class and of the bourgeoisie, of white colonialists and black slaves, we are consumers, creators of cultural wealth, polluters, militants, internet users; we are French, we are European, we are westerners… So, in some respects we are similar to those who appear in the film, to the Mohawks, to the Quebecois, and to the gamblers, and we differ in others. Our film is a way of posing ourselves certain questions. In what way does this story interest us? That is, in what way does it involve us and concern us? In what way can it inform us? That is to say, teach us about ourselves and our place in the world process of globalisation.”


Patrick Bernier and Olive Martin are a duo of artists collaborating since 1999. Their shared practice is mainly research-oriented and project based. It spans across video, photography, performance, installation and sound. Concerned with questions related to identity, migration and belonging, Bernier and Martin produce works that stem from their immersion in specific contexts and their collaboration with professionals from various fields outside of contemporary art. They address the tight but often obscure connection between contemporary images and cultural practices, as widely as cruise travelling ( Je suis du bord , 2016) or traditional Senegalese knitting technique ( Le Rêve du Paquebot , 2020), with broader contemporary or historical narratives. Their installations and films, which they qualify as “monsters”, investigate and highlight historical or personal counter or sub-narratives that help understanding the social, cultural and political structures of our societies. The duo were artists in residence at Kadist San Francisco in 2010.


Colors:



Related works sharing similar palette

Make Down
© » KADIST

Dennis Adams

2004

The video Make down is a 34 minute sequence shot that shows the artist removing make-up in front of a mirror...

Rolex, by Elfo
© » BROOKLYN STREET ART

Rolex, by Elfo | Brooklyn Street Art BROOKLYN STREET ART LOVES YOU MORE EVERY DAY photo © Elfo Just like Chanel taking over an old ugly building in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and slapping their logo on it, perhaps thinking it was suddenly transformed, we see street artist Elfo sloppily sloshing the letters ROLEX on this abandoned spot in Italy...

‘I thought I was god’s gift to China’: art gallery owner Pearl Lam on her ‘colonial attitude’ and embracing her ethnicity
© » SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST

‘I thought I was god’s gift to China’: art gallery owner Pearl Lam on her ‘colonial attitude’ and embracing her ethnicity | South China Morning Post ‘I thought I was god’s gift to China’: art gallery owner Pearl Lam on her ‘colonial attitude’ and embracing her ethnicity Profile Art gallery owner Pearl Lam on growing up as the daughter of property tycoon Lim Por-yen, losing her colonial mindset and celebrating diversity Kate Whitehead + FOLLOW Published: 7:45am, 3 Dec, 2023 Why you can trust SCMP I was born in Hong Kong and lived in Jardine’s Lookout...

Lifesize Draft
© » KADIST

Szabolcs Kisspál

2009

Lifesize Draft is the second of two sculptures on a similar theme, the first one being Utopia Battery, (2008)...

Caroline Monnet, Mobilize
© » KADIST

Caroline Monnet, Mobilize A screening program followed by the artist in with conversation with Adam Piron, Assistant Curator for Film at LACMA Montreal-based artist Caroline Monnet explores Indigenous identity, bicultural living, and complex cultural histories through photography, sculpture, film, video, and installation...

Summer of '19
© » KADIST

Summer of ’19 An Online Video Exhibition curated by Marina Reyes Franco...

When Forms Come Alive: 5 Must-See Sculptures
© » AESTHETICA

Aesthetica Magazine - When Forms Come Alive: 5 Must-See Sculptures When Forms Come Alive: 5 Must-See Sculptures Hayward Gallery’s When Forms Come Alive is a lively and playful exhibition that presents different facets of sculptures...

How would you fare in the afterlife? Haw Par Villa: ArtsEquator Edition
© » ARTS EQUATOR

How would you fare in the afterlife? Haw Par Villa: ArtsEquator Edition | ArtsEquator Thinking and Talking about Arts and Culture in Southeast Asia ArtsEquator Viewpoints Adeeb Fazah October 29, 2019 Scenario: You are visiting the Ten Courts of Hell in Haw Par Villa...

Asian Restored Classics 2018: Revisiting the Past In New Light
© » ARTS EQUATOR

Asian Restored Classics 2018: Revisiting the Past In New Light | ArtsEquator Thinking and Talking about Arts and Culture in Southeast Asia Articles Made in Hong Kong (1997, dir...

Screening of "Fast Trip, Long Drop", a film by Gregg Bordowitz
© » KADIST

Saturday, June 14 at 1pm: Screening of the film “Fast Trip, Long Drop” (1994) by Gregg Bordowitz with an introduction by the artist...

“A Dream Under the Southern Bough: Reverie”: Down the Ant Hole
© » ARTS EQUATOR

“A Dream Under the Southern Bough: Reverie”: Down the Ant Hole | ArtsEquator Thinking and Talking about Arts and Culture in Southeast Asia Articles Courtesy of Toy Factory June 6, 2019 By Jocelyn Chng (1,138 words, five-minute read) My strongest memory from the first instalment of this three-year series by Toy Factory, A Dream Under the Southern Bough: The Beginning , was its dramatic cliffhanger of an ending...

Weekly Southeast Asia Radar: Protests over Marcos-sponsored play; the Spaniard in Singapore films
© » ARTS EQUATOR

Weekly Southeast Asia Radar: Protests over Marcos-sponsored play; the Spaniard in Singapore films | ArtsEquator Thinking and Talking about Arts and Culture in Southeast Asia ArtsEquator Radar The Star/Azhar Mahfof September 11, 2019 ArtsEquator’s Southeast Asia Radar features articles and posts about arts and culture in Southeast Asia, drawn from local and regional websites and publications – aggregated content from outside sources, so we are exposed to a multitude of voices in the region...

Aquaphobia
© » KADIST

Jakob Kudsk Steensen

2018

The virtual reality work Aquaphobia by Jakob Kudsk Steensen examines it’s title subject matter – the fear of water...

Choke
© » KADIST

Jennifer Locke

2005

Choke documents the artist filming a wrestler “choking out” his teammate until he is unconscious...

Trayvon #2
© » KADIST

Mona Marzouk

2014

Trayvon is a series of acrylic paintings by Mona Marzouk that engages the courtroom as its points of departure...

Screening of "Fast Trip, Long Drop", a film by Gregg Bordowitz
© » KADIST

Saturday, June 14 at 1pm: Screening of the film “Fast Trip, Long Drop” (1994) by Gregg Bordowitz with an introduction by the artist...

It rains, Paris, 1st July 2000
© » KADIST

Jean-Luc Moulène

2004

It rains, Paris, 1st July 2000 , which could be the refrain of a song, is the title of a photograph of a minimal moment, the vision of a Parisian pedestrian, a cut flower lying on the pavement covered in rain drops...

Photography Festival - Planches Contact 2024, The Public Programme
© » EYE OF PHOTOGRAPHY

© 2023 All rights reserved - The Eye of Photography Olivier Culmann, URSSAF Normandie, site du Havre @ Olivier Culmann Le Havre, Seine-Maritime, Normandie, France 10/05/2023 © Olivier Culmann / Tendance Floue @ Thomas Jorion @ Sidonie Van Den @ Isabelle Scotta @ Carlo Lombardi S From October 21st to January 7th, 2024, for its 14th edition, 25 international photographers, both established and emerging, can be discovered in an open-air exhibition tour throughout the city, on the beach, and indoors at Point de Vue and Les Franciscaines...

I Can Only Dance to One Song
© » KADIST

Arash Fayez

2021

The short film I Can Only Dance to One Song by Arash Fayez features a series of people from the migrant community in Barcelona singing along or dancing to songs of their choosing...

Adelita Husni-Bey: Movement Break
© » KADIST

The first solo exhibition in the United States by KADIST Artist in Residence Adelita Husni-Bey , Movement Break addresses how capitalist imperatives condition us to perform unsustainably as individual subjects...