In reckoning with performance as an art-form, I have have come to a point of clarity in my practice to assert that the land, the water and the sky are the primary audience. I reformat the mechanisms of spectatorship by humans to be invited to witness merely the ripple of the initial action. In this way, I protect my experience as an Indigenous body and allow those viewing the work to be more immersive, more empowered, more connective. If audiences can be invited to experience a performance in their own time, they might find inspiration to activate change in response to the work.
My performances priortize intimacy over spectacle by making the human audience secondary. I make work for land and water; I make regalia and create movement and perform for places that have been devastated by extraction, or worse, because I believe that if it’s done with reverence, this work can heal. I understand that there is a value in sharing this experience with others. I document the action and I make its memory available to witness.
My performance work is intentionally viewed primarily through video installation. This format allows the container I require for full presence with the land during an action. By sharing contemporary Indigenous ideas through performance on the land, without an audience presence, I hope to upset the expectations, categorizations, and power dynamics that characterize western colonial paradigms.
As an Indigenous artist, I am constantly confronting the systemic stereotyping of my culture, and because of this, I feel an inauthentic exchange when making work primarily for an audience’s entertainment. It gives the passive onlooker far too much power over the most precious elements, while depriving the audience of a more engaged experience. I do not want my stories turned into attractions, transactions, or commodities. I do not make work for external approval. Rather, I want audiences to know that they are not being given access to the work’s sacred action and primary experience with the land and that an opportunity to encounter the byproduct of that primary experience is, in itself an action.
Reimagining how performance can be engaged from an Indigenous perspective can help us develop respect for things that are not ours to control; for me, decolonizing performance means creating moments to respectfully and reverently be in relationship to the land first. After this understanding, only then may we know how to be in relationship to each other.
Centering Indigenous thought in this way upends western cultural norms, which can be threatening to those averse to change. In a world where capitalism still reins, this work asserts the value of slow, earth based thinking — in concept and in practice and in ways that subvert societal expectations.
We must do everything in our power to help 21st century humans develop global accountability and earthly belonging; Indigenous wisdom can help. Whether you call my work theater, performance, or something else, I’m doing what I can to enact a better future.
-Cannupa Hanska Luger