House | Hall
2022, 48min

a film by Neven Lochhead and Dylan Robinson
with Agnes Etherington Art Centre and Isabel Bader Centre for the Performing Arts

Indigenous artists and performers are increasingly approached to contribute to the work of institutional decolonization, as arts institutions recognize the need (or feel pressure) to make their spaces more welcoming and hospitable for Indigenous audiences and community engagement. Within this work, it is sometimes assumed that the more Indigenous artwork/performance that enters a space, the more that space will re-emerge as decolonized. And yet, to program Indigenous work, as important as this shift in representation is, leaves institutional infrastructure intact. Moreover, even in the large-scale projects to rebuild institutions, we may find that infrastructure remains guided by normative values that do not at their foundation (their walls, ceilings, windows and stairs) prompt decolonial and non-normative forms of perception. This video work, a collaboration between Dylan Robinson and Neven Lochhead, improvises around the recurrent demand to “decolonize this space”; it seeks a form through which the institution might be turned toward and away from; it plays with a process for institutional avowal and derangement. It is offered as a prelude for renewed conversation about how Indigenous and allied artistic practices might take (a)part in institutional abolition and structural change without falling into the trap of mere visibility and representation.

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