![\"\"](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/95-DO-IM_Dezember_cindy14_CMYK-C-EXTRA-scaled.jpeg\")
Mother Drum<\/em>, video still, 2016.
Photo: courtesy of the artist & Gavin\u2019s Brown enterprise,
New York\/Rome<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
Experiencing this work for the first time was surprising. I calibrated the expectations that I had brought into the gallery against the full sensorial experience that transpired in the moment. Because I work at the Aspen Art Museum (Colorado), which recently presented this work, my considerations of Mother Drum<\/em> up to that point were practical. How did the German-American artist relate to the Indigenous subjects that she filmed? How would visitors respond to this work, especially in light of recent protests around the responsibility of museums to appropriately represent Indigenous peoples?1<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 1 <\/a> - In 2017, an exhibition of Jimmie Durham\u2019s work that travelled to the Hammer Museum, the Walker Art Center, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and Remai Modern sparked controversy due to doubts over the artist\u2019s self-identification as Cherokee, and Sam Durant\u2019s sculpture Scaffold (2012) was dismantled from the Walker Art Center and transferred to the Dakota people in response to outcry over the work\u2019s perceived trivialization of Dakota history and genocide.<\/span> Although these questions were important to prepare, they were not what I was moved to ask when experiencing the work firsthand. I was confronted with my physical experience of the work and how it resisted my being immediately able to know what was happening. This form of not knowing is what I argue allows the viewer (and the institution) to step outside of the dominant, often reductive lens that frames artists and subjects of colour, and into a space of forging new connections and meaning rooted in lived experience. This logic relies on author Amy Lonetree\u2019s work Decolonizing Museums: Representing Native America in National and Tribal Museums, in which she supports a call for museums to move towards \u201cthe enrichment, rather than authorization of [Indigenous] collections.\u201d This requires museums to let go and accept that they are in service far beyond their knowledge and control.2<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 2 <\/a> - Robin Boast, quoted in Amy Lonetree, Decolonizing Museums: Representing Native America in National and Tribal Museums, e-reader version (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012), 19.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n As a museum educator, I often spend time thinking about future programming: Who are the right people to convene? Which conversations should we instigate? What is the most important knowledge to share? By contrast, Mother Drum demanded that I be in my body. My desire to figure things out\u200a\u2014\u200ato know\u200a\u2014\u200awas replaced with: How do I feel? What is happening? This interruption of a pattern of needing to know led to a consideration of the pitfalls that a mind focused on programming faces. Also, in a larger sense, it revealed how our \u201cprogrammed\u201d brains are shaped by historical determinism. <\/p>\n\n\n\n How can a mental framework that is driven to classify knowledge inhibit being and experiencing with others? To become what cultural critic Ta-Nehisi Coates, in his appeal to more deeply examine the constructs of racial difference, terms \u201ca muscular empathy rooted in curiosity,\u201d rather than \u201ca soft, flattering, hand-holding empathy.\u201d3<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 3 <\/a> - Ta-Nehisi Coates, \u201cA Muscular Empathy,\u201d The Atlantic, December 14, 2011, www.theatlantic.com\/national\/archive\/2011\/12\/a-muscular-empathy\/249984\/.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n Many art museums are now dedicating themselves to this work. Most noticeably, the Minneapolis Institute of Art, which recently established its Center for Empathy and the Visual Arts, has declared that \u201cempathy is not passive.\u201d4<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 4 <\/a> - Minneapolis Institute of Art, \u201cCenter for Empathy and the Visual Arts,\u201d White Paper, September 17, 2017, 2, https:\/\/staging.artsmia.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/Center-for-Empathy-and-the-Visual-Arts_9-12-2017.pdf.<\/span> Although economies of knowledge dominate institutions of education such as museums, the most active form of experiencing and learning from contemporary art happens when we centre our perspective on not knowing. Therefore, in this article I argue for the importance of not knowing in the pursuit of \u201cmuscular empathy\u201d by tracing two frameworks\u200a\u2014\u200aabstraction and kinesthetic empathy\u200a\u2014\u200aover an examination of the creation and presentation of Friedman\u2019s Mother Drum.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n In Mother Drum, described as providing an unexpectedly decolonizing presentation of Indigenous performers and subjects by a non-Indigenous artist, Friedman insists on sound and movement over exoticized storytelling.5 In the process of creating the work, she collaborated with people from three separate reservations and cultures. However, she does not provide descriptions in the video or accompanying materials about the performed traditions. Because she avoids a didactic explanation, the work instead takes a non-\u00adnarrative, circuitous path that abstracts the original acts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Post-production work creates effects across the three-channel video such as mirroring, looping, overlapping, and playing in and out of sync with itself. This abstraction creates an instability that allows for dynamic exchange rather than a consumptive gaze in which the viewer reduces knowledge to categorical, objective facts. This impulse to divide and classify knowledge is often associated with (white) European languages. Museum educators Wendy Ng (Manager of Learning) and J\u2019net AyAyQwaYakSheelth (Indigenous Outreach and Learning Coordinator) at the Royal Ontario Museum describe their commitment to centring Indigenous voices and culture in the museum by opening up to living, embodied knowledge. \u201cWestern European languages are hinged on binary\/split relationships of power\/powerlessness, civilized\/uncivilized, human\/animal, etc.,\u201d say Ng and AyAyQwaYakSheelth, whereas Indigenous languages \u201care verb-based, and are taught through a learn-by-doing experiential approach.\u201d5<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 5 <\/a> - Wendy Ng and J\u2019net AyAyQwaYakSheelth, \u201cDecolonize and Indigenize: A Reflective Dialogue,\u201d Viewfinder: Reflecting on Museum Education, no. 7, June 12, 2018, https:\/\/medium.com\/viewfinder-reflecting-on-museum-education\/decolonize-and-indigenize-a-reflective-\u00addialogue-3de78fa76442.<\/span> The authors describe the value of the latter, as it requires individuals to take responsibility for their actions and to emphasize points of connection and harmony. Furthermore, the centring of this Indigenous approach allows for a pluralization of identities, interpretations, and experiences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Abstraction is a form of resistance against the observed world. It can be a means to engage with the familiar while creating enough distance for unexpected (and marginalized) possibilities to emerge.<\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n Indeed, the ability to abstract from reality can offer a possible means for opening new pathways to empathetic engagement with that very reality. This is exemplified in Friedman\u2019s treatment of potentially loaded content. In a context of civil unrest and concern around the engagement and representation of people of colour within the art world (and within museums specifically), the disorienting elements of Mother Drum <\/em>provide reconfigured terms between performer and observer that arrest predetermination and what is assumed to be known. In its place, artists provide a space in which we can push ourselves to a deepened state of attentiveness to and reflection on what can be learned.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It is difficult to grasp the full scope of Mother Drum<\/em> through written descriptions. Although images and documentation always fall short of the personal experience of a work, what makes this work particularly visceral is Friedman\u2019s use of sound. In Aspen, she installed twelve speakers across the space and into the gallery seating. The result was thunderous. Recordings of hand drums and larger drum circles, jingles on regalia, a heartbeat, splashes of waters, and flaps of birds\u2019 wings are among the rhythmic sounds of performed and organic movements carefully edited and choreographed to dance throughout the space. Because of the amplified force and nuanced movement of sound across speakers, the sound is felt in two ways. It can be physically felt vibrating within the skin and organs. It is also emotionally felt through the installation design, which creates a sonic architecture within the space that produces the sensation that viewers aren\u2019t watching the artwork\u200a\u2014\u200athey are in it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Empathy is potent when it is embodied. Although museums have given primacy to the visual, our emotions and our ability to share them with others are perhaps most palpable through engagement with multiple senses. Experiences with art create learning in the body beyond the limits of textual or spoken forms of knowing. This sensorial experience can be defined as \u201ckinesthetic empathy,\u201d an interdisciplinary concept influenced by dance and performance theory that defies a singular definition. It can be broadly described as the exchange of perceptive sensations between two subjects instigated by movement. Dee Reynolds and Matthew Reason, editors of Kinesthetic Empathy in Creative and Cultural Practices<\/em>, recognize the value of this approach when considering voices that are not heard often within mainstream discourse, which in this case includes Indigenous peoples. Kinesthetic empathy recognizes how static knowledge can be fractured into fluid, living expressions. Although Reynolds and Reason caution that this performative display can be instrumentalized to reinforce stereotypes, \u201cit can also activate embodied connections with others, which break down monolithic identities by raising awareness of differences within the self.\u201d6<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 6 <\/a> - Dee Reynolds and Matthew Reason, Kinesthetic Empathy in Creative and Cultural Practices<\/em> (Chicago: Intellect, 2012), 319.<\/span> In order for this to happen, empathy necessitates a crossing over from what we know about our own lives into the outer limits of what is unknown about other people. Film and video work is uniquely positioned to coax the viewer past the screen into the experience of the \u201cactors\u201d (or performers), causing emotional and physical responses such as gasps, tears, or laughter, regardless of whether we share the same identity or experience with what is on screen. Crucially, empathy depends on whether the viewer pays attention or not. In the case of Mother Drum<\/em>, visitors might notice the nuanced sound design only if they take the time to observe and adjust to the initial disorientation of the space. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Comfort in not knowing is needed to access kinesthetic empathy, in order to expand.<\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n In preparation for the public presentation of Mother Drum<\/em>, I conducted an interview with Shuel-let-qua Q:olosoet, also known as Cynthia Jim, one of the dancers featured in the work. Q:olosoet is from Edmonton, and is of Salishan descent from the Kwekwenaque (Whonnock) and Stl\u2019atl\u2019imx Nations. When asked about her experience of collaborating with Friedman and then viewing the finished work, she responded that it \u201cprovided a form of reconciliation\u201d because \u201cit\u2019s up to the individual to be aware and focus their intention to undertake active application through their being. This would further induce intentional energy transactions. Sometimes evasive, the connection of intention, body, and energy become the director\u2019s interactive goal.\u201d7<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 7 <\/a> - Interview with Shuel-let-qua Q:olosoet, January 2018.<\/span> Q:olosoet allowed us to share these words with museum educators, local teachers, and the general public so that visitors and students might be encouraged to embrace the \u201cevasive\u201d quality of locating the physicality and emotionality of the work described in this interview. A visitor evaluation study found that eighty percent of respondents had a strong recall of Mother Drum. This could suggest that the emphasis on multi-sensorial and multiple perspectives in the exhibition provided a greater ability for connection and empathy. When asked about the role of empathy in her process, Friedman responded, \u201cIt\u2019s not about being right or wrong; it\u2019s about ending up where you want to go. Oftentimes, other people can help you go there. They can have a real economy you hadn\u2019t thought of.\u201d8<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 8 <\/a> - Monica Uszerowicz, \u201cBodies and Emotions Collide in Dara Friedman\u2019s Miami Survey,\u201d Vice, November 13, 2017, https:\/\/garage.vice.com\/en_us\/article\/pa3v79\/dara-friedman-pamm.<\/span> It is clear that the things \u201cyou hadn\u2019t thought of\u201d are often what lead to meaningful, generative work and experiences with contemporary art. In Mother Drum, Friedman employs a strategic use of manipulation of her source material: moving images of Indigenous people. This content would have a very different meaning if observed in a history museum or at an anthropological site. Within the context of an art gallery, abstraction serves to loosen our grip on what we think we know about Indigenous peoples so that more ample, non-linear narratives can survive. In this way, curiosity drives a form of empathy that thrives in the New Age term of \u201cbeing present,\u201d of being in the body, here and now. This kinesthetic empathy, however, can happen only when we are paying attention. By no means does every visitor to Mother Drum<\/em> have a transformative, empathetic experience. Empathy is not a given. But this work\u200a\u2014\u200ahow it was created and the very real space that it engenders\u200a\u2014\u200aoffers conditions in which we might begin to ask the right questions about what we know about other people and ourselves<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/95-DO-IM_Dezember_Friedman_P1140803_CMYK-C-scaled.jpeg\")
<\/strong>Mother Drum<\/em>, installation view, Aspen Art Museum, Aspen, 2017.
Photo: courtesy of Aspen Art Museum<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\nAbstraction<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Kinesthetic Empathy<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/95-DO-IM_Dezember_JordynNomee_CMYK.jpeg\")
Mother Drum<\/em>, video still, 2016.
Photo: courtesy of the artist & Gavin\u2019s Brown enterprise,
New York\/Rome<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\nLoosening the Grip<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Traduit de l\u2019anglais par Margot Lacroix<\/p>\n\n\n