O kanata remix
25 minute live video remix (VJ performance) on turntables, using digitally encoded vinyl records, laptop and video projector.
The O’ Kanata Remix is a performance that explores Native Stereotypes in popular culture; reflecting on issues of contemporary indigenous identity in a media saturated world that has a history of distributing discriminatory and racist misrepresentations of First Nations people. Kanata is the Mohawk word for Canada. . .
Consisting of the live manipulation of video and audio using digital-encoded vinyl in conjunction with specialized software developed by the artist, the O’ Kanata Remix performance uses the form of the remix and the mash-up as tools for cultural critique. On stage samples are taken from film, television, the news and advertising and are cut-up, looped, and scratched to the rhythmic patterns of hips-hop breaks and drum n’ bass sequences.
O’ Kanata Remix performance seeks to re-initiate a dialogue in the contemporary mind, and re-addresses that which has had such a destructive effect on Indigenous people in North American culture; it is a resistance strategy against a long history of extirpative and racist misrepresentations that suffuse in our society, demoralize Indigenous people, and haunt our present day existence: the drunken Indian; the noble savage; the blood-thirsty Warrior; the Imaginary Redskin. . . .