the wolves who did not perish went to other lands
the wolves who did not perish went to other lands, an AR (augmented reality) project created through the use of an AI (artificial intelligence) paint application, that, in its creation (the app), presents a highly problematic premise, due to its inherent racist, patriarchal, and settler-colonialist data set. The user-generated images are referenced from a database using visuals and information that center white supremacy which produces outcomes that favor; light skin, and skinny bodies, and when not, it produces deformities. When it imagines landscapes or renders land it has trouble distinguishing cattle from free-ranging animals such as bighorn sheep and defaults to making everything “cattle. It imagines all open space as filled with mono-crop agriculture, or apocalyptic realities, because anything that isn’t white cis-hetero patriarchal capitalist settler colonialist, must be apocalyptic, just like every disaster movie out there.
As Indigenous Peoples, we are not disconnected from the land. We are the land and the land is us. This isn’t meant to be symbolic, but literal and true, for our ancestors are buried in our homelands. When solar farms are planned for the open space of the desert, they disrupt the ancestors resting below the surface. When development occurs in downtown areas, they exhume the bodies of loved ones to erect buildings. When lands are “domesticated” and commodified for “preservation”, such as State and National Parks, Indigenous peoples are removed from the land.
This project proposes a landscape returned to the original stewards: the Serrano and Tataviam constellation of tribal communities and villages. Land restoration should include restoring its people, and the stewardship practices informed by thousands of years of knowledge-building.
To create these renderings, I had to teach and prompt the program to source ideas like decolonization, reclaiming, and indigenous stewardship, in order to imagine the return of wildflowers to open spaces, and the removal of mono-crop farming and cattle from all open space. Or what an elevated water table in an area like Lancaster can do to reverse trophic cascades as was the case when wolves were reintroduced to Yellowstone National Park. Saving the environment and bringing balance to a quickly deteriorating ecosystem.
The wolves came home…
VIEWING DETAILS
AIR 2022 – AR | AIR is curated by @nancybakercahill for @art_in_residence and is available for viewing from Aug - Sep ‘22 on @4thwallapp
For more info visit artinresidence.gallery