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Welcome

This is the blog for BC Time-Slip (The Empire Never Ended), the first phase of a larger trans-disciplinary arts research project called The Skullcracker Suite. Drawing on the mythology, dances and art of the Kwakwaka’wakw peoples of British Columbia, the project’s title is a reference to Hox’hok, one of three giant cannibal birds of Kwakwaka’wakw legend. Hox’hok’s skull-cracking and brain-eating powers are imagined as a dramatic theatrical allegory for the interwoven process of colonial violence, indigenous resistance and the metaphysics of predation that bind human and non-human beings in a system of mutual, ecological and entangled co-dependency. The project is underpinned by a metaphysical world-view, drawn from Amerindian ethnology, that recognises non-human beings as persons rather than things, one in which humans have kinship with non-human beings with whom they share environmental and co-operative intelligences. From this perspective, man may be a wolf to man, but a wolf is a person to a wolf. And like Hox’hok, all beings, supernatural or otherwise, compelled to eat their other-kin, are of the cannibal kind.

Conceived as a suite of movements culminating in a multi-media arts event, The Skullcracker Suite appeals to the possibility of collectively and co-operatively imagining ‘otherwise’ modes of existence-in-common that are reconciliatory and transformative of the traumagenic effects of colonial dominion, territorial dispossession and forced assimilation to Western modes of being, behaving and thinking. Using the Brazilian anthropologist Viveiros de Castro’s concepts of ‘cannibal metaphysics’, ‘multi-species perspectivism’ and his call for the permanent decolonization of thought, the project works through the theoretical and pragmatic overlaps between models of decolonization motivated by the critical deconstruction of Euro-centric ethnography and those emerging directly from Indigenous knowledge, anti-colonial resistance and non-Western modes of living, thinking and being.  Continue reading “Welcome”

Origin of the The Skullcracker Suite

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The first plan for The Skullcracker Suite drawn in August 2015 on our return to the UK from British Columbia.

The Skullcracker Suite was conceived during a visit with my friend Steve Calvert in Powell River in the summer of 2015. Steve, whom I had not seen since 2002, had been living for several years in Alert Bay, home of the ‘Namgis First Nation, documenting their potlatch ceremonies, and accompanying the Kwakwaka’wakw artist, hereditary chief, and indigenous activist Beau Dick* on his journey to the legislature of British Columbia to symbolically break a traditional copper and call The Crown by its true name, Raven.

Beau Dick at the BC Legislature, March 2013. Courtesy Steve Calvert

During our few days together Steve told me many stories about his time in Alert Bay, about the genocidal policies of the Canadian government, still at work today in regions far from the metropolitan centres, and the politics of indigenous resurgence associated with Idle No More. He also told us about the vibrant culture of the Kwakwaka’wakw peoples of the region, their legends, theatre, music and the incredible stage-craft of the ceremonies he had attended.

Continue reading “Origin of the The Skullcracker Suite”

Opening of the Special Investigations Room (August 13th 2016)

BC Time-Slip (The Empire Never Ended) began at Dynamo Arts Association in Vancouver, British Columbia in August 2016. For the duration of the one month residency I set up a special investigations bureau in the gallery, using it as the operational base for an inquiry into the story of the science fiction writer Philip K. Dick’s visit to Vancouver in 1972 to speak at a Science Fiction Convention, and his stay, after an attempted suicide, at the X-Kalay Foundation, a First Nations ex-con and addiction rehabilitation centre established by the inimitable raconteur, broadcaster and steadfast advocate of abstinence-based recovery, David Berner.

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Passing for Human: PKD in Vancouver

The Biltmore Motor Hotel in Vancouver, site of the 2nd Vancouver Science Fiction Convention

Philip K. Dick arrived in Canada on February 16th, 1972, as guest of honour for the 2nd Vancouver Science Fiction Convention (VCON-2), an all-expenses-paid invitation, jointly sponsored by the science fiction societies of Simon Frazer University and the University of British Columbia. He was 43 years old, the author of 36 novels, and his life was in a mess. His fourth wife Nancy had recently left him, along with his second daughter Isa; his bungalow in Santa Venetia had become a half-way house for street kids, felons and junkies whom he had invited home; he had recently fallen in love with a street-smart “Dark Haired Girl” called Kathy; he had a serious amphetamine addiction; and four months before his trip to Canada the safe in which he kept his most valuable papers and collections of sci-fi magazines had been mysteriously “blown up” in what seemed like a botched burglary attempt. Given the deepening dysfunction of his life in California, the invitation  arrived like a message from heaven.

Spurred by his love for Kathy and the promise of respectable literary recognition at last, he dived into writing for the first time in months. To Mike Bailey, the main organiser of VCON, Phil contributed a  personal profile in advance. Written in the third person, it concluded: “He is currently working day and night on his new novel simply called Kathy, named after the girl he is bringing with him to the Vancouver Science Fiction Convention. He had meant to bring with him someone representing the youth of America, but Kathy, he feels, represents more; all youth, all life to come in later time. The novel really does not exist as yet, except in his head, but Kathy does, and he hopes the people at the convention will welcome her and like her.” But Kathy had other ideas. At the last minute she traded her tickets for cash. Phil, dejected once again, took the plane to Vancouver alone, wearing an old raincoat and carrying only a battered suitcase and a bible.

Continue reading “Passing for Human: PKD in Vancouver”

Photospheres

During the Dynamo residency Grégoire Dupond, Stephanie Moran and myself shot a series of 360° videos based on Philip K. Dick’s time in Vancouver. We also documented some of the conversations about decolonisation in 360. A grid of photospheres can be seen here. All the spheres are manipulable and interactive. Please wait for all the spheres to load. This may take some time. A computer with a good GPU is recommended. Double click on a sphere to open and use the mouse-trackpad to manipulate. Double click to return to the grid.

360 Test Edits

Here are two tests of Greg’s editing software for 360 videos. The software allows one to control the rotation, scale and path through the spheres.

The first video documents a conversation with Scott Inniss at The Foundation restaurant, Mount Pleasant, Vancouver in August 2016. Scott discusses different First Nations approach the realities of capitalist economics in the region and the extent to which they perpetuate colonial models of governance. The Foundation is famous for its fusion vegetarian food and for playing exclusively hip hop music at very high volumes. The background track is Young Thug’s ‘Special’ which was being played at the time. Sadly, due to spiralling rent increases in the city, the restaurant has now had to close it’s doors after fifteen years in business.

The second photosphere  documents a conversation between myself, Steve Calvert and Stephanie Moran about the colonisation the landscape in the Pacific Northwest. The conversation took place on the shores of  Roberts Lake, Vancouver Island, British Columbia, September 2016 when we were on our way to Chief Alan Hunt’s potlatch in Fort Rupert.

Images and Video from Chief Alan Hunt’s Potlatch Ceremony

On September 3rd, 2016 the Skullcracker team were invited, through Steve and Beau, to attend the potlatch ceremony of Kwakwaka’wakw Chief Alan Hunt at the Tsaxis Big House, Fort Rupert. Alan, like Beau, is a master carver, dancer and singer whose work is represented by the Fazakas Gallery in Vancouver. He is of Kwakwaka’wakw and Tlingit ancestry and comes from a long line of great chiefs who fought to preserve their people’s customs and traditions. Like his mentors Wayne Alfred, Marcus Alfred, Bruce Alfred and Beau Dick, Alans work is dedicated to the promotion of Kwakwaka’wakw culture. Alan undertook an apprenticeship  with Beau between 2011 and 2017 and worked closely with Beau during Beau’s Artist-in-Residency at the UBC Department of Art History, Visual Art and Theory in his studio in the Audain Art Centre. Alan assisted Beau in the creation of his exhibition for documenta 14 (2017), which took place in Athens, Greece and Kassel, Germany. Alan is a descendant of George Hunt, Franz Boas’s advisor and lead research assistant in his ethnographic studies in the region. George Hunt’s father, Robert Hunt had worked for the Hudson Bay Company, whose main trading post was in Fort Rupert.

Steve Calvert, Gregoire Dupond, Stephanie Moran and myself were graciously allowed to document much of the 14 hour ceremony, which included the dance of the giant cannibal birds, the initiation of Chief Hunt’s brother Jaden into the Hamatsa secret society, and the dancing of several new masks recently created by Beau and Alan. This was an incredible honour for us all, to which we offer our sincerest thanks to Alan, Beau and Steve. I have recently completed an edit of the ceremony which has been passed on to Alan to use for educational purposes in the Alert Bay and Fort Rupert communities.

Below are some images and three video sequences from that day. The video sequences show the Hamsamala Dance (Dance of the Hamatsa Masks) which represents the three giant “cannibal” birds, the assistants of Baxwbakwalanuksiwé, Man-Eater-At-The-North-End-Of-The-World. They are Qoaxpoaxualanuxsiwae (Raven-of-the-North-End-of-the-World), Gelogudzayae (Crooked-Beak-of-the-Sky) and Hoxhogwaxtiwae (Hoxhok-of-the-Sky). This dance is performed at the culmination of the Hamatsa initiation ceremony. The second is a short 360° video of the opening of one of the women’s dance sequences (Alan enters the video in his regalia around 1:18). The third video is the Raven Transformation Mask Dance. This beautiful mask was created by Beau and his apprentice carvers especially for Alan’s potlatch.

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Beau Dick Mask 2016-09-03

Interview with David Berner

How Philip K. Dick ended up at X-Kalay is unclear. In an interview for Vertex magazine in 1974, he claimed to have been told about the centre by the  councillor he spoke to over the phone during his suicide attempt. After talking for over an hour he was finally told: “Here’s what’s the matter. You have nothing to do; you have no purpose; you came up here and you gave your speeches and now you’re sitting in your apartment. You don’t need psychotherapy. You need purposeful work.”

It is likely, given the circles Phil had been moving in, that he would have heard about X-Kalay which at that time was well-known on the counter-cultural scene. Founded in 1967 by David Berner, X-Kalay had begun as a half-way house for First Nations ex-cons called The Indian Post Release Society. Within a year, inspired by the examples of therapeutic communities like Daytop in New York and Synanon in California, the organization was re-named The X-Kalay Foundation  (or Unknown Path) combining the Kwak’wala word for “path” or “way” with the sign for an unknown quantity. Using an extreme form of daily psycho-dramatic group therapy known as The Game, X-Kalay began to stage 48 hour open house sessions at its club house in Mount Pleasant, where its house band would play, its live-in community growing rapidly to include families and its self-reliant business operations expanding to include a pizza restaurant, beauty parlour, stationary business and a hotel on Salt Spring Island. David Berner explains how the foundation moved from working primarily with First Nations ex-cons, to working primarily with anyone with significant substance abuse issues.

In this clip David tells the story of how he encountered Lawrence Sutin’s biography of Philip K. Dick, Divine Invasions by chance at a book store in Toronto, and how it gave him renewed faith in what he had achieved at X-Kalay.

Continue reading “Interview with David Berner”