In Untunnelling Vision<\/em> (2020), a photography and video installation, viewers are immersed in an apocalyptic landscape. The Canadian Armed Forces leased some of the land of the Tsuut\u2019ina Nation and contaminated it while conducting \u201cwar games\u201d over a ninety-year period. This same land was later used as the backdrop for the Canadian war film Passchendaele<\/em> (2008). The movie\u2019s producer hoped to turn the movie set\u200a\u2014\u200aan eclectic set of ruins\u200a\u2014\u200ainto a tourist destination, which never materialized. In a restorative gesture, the Korea-born and Vancouver-based artist Jin-me Yoon returns to this eerie site and performs with it. Alternately mourning, walking, and dancing, Yoon\u200a\u2014\u200adressed as the trickster figure Rubble\u200a\u2014\u200ahaunts the site, casting light on the absurdity of the destruction and non-respect of Indigenous lands by uninvited settler guests.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Designed to recognize the logics of colonial dispossession, land acknowledgments have become a common ground in cultural and academic events. In her photographic diptych, Attunement Above and Below (Listening in Place) 1 <\/em>and 2<\/em> (2022), Yoon wonders how we can go beyond merely reciting land acknowledgments. In one photograph, a microphone is strategically placed in front of a Weeping Beech, a non-Indigenous tree imported from Europe, known for its deep root network: an evocative metaphor for colonialism. In the other photograph, Yoon crouches under the Weeping Beech with two prosthetic props held to her ears and directed at the ground. Both photographs were taken in a former Royal Canadian Air Force station in Vancouver now known as Vanier Park, a site of brutal violence. The provincial government laid claim to Squamish land by burning it to the ground, forcing Sen\u00e1kw families to relocate outside of their homeland.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In each of those artworks\u200a\u2014\u200abut also throughout her body of work\u200a\u2014\u200aYoon wrestles with the irresolvable tensions that animate guest\u200a\/host and self\u200a\/\u200aOther relationships, which are very much inscribed in the landscapes. She looks at tourism through the prism of militarism and colonialism, offering alternatives for relating better to places, spaces, and lands, while being attuned to the complexity of their geopolitical histories.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Currently pursuing a PhD inhumanities at Concordia University, Jo\u00eblle Dub\u00e9 is researching the intersectional temporalities of intergenerational (in)justices and contemporary art. Positing relationality at the centre of her theoretical preoccupations, she investigates ways of rearticulating the relationship between the living and life-to-come.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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