Lisa Jackson’s multimedia installation, Transmissions, is a three-part world which invites guests to be submerged in two places and two times. With the use of film, sound, language, and translucent structures, visitors enter the first space and “wander through windy coastal forests, by hauntingly empty glass towers, into soundscapes of ancient languages, and more” (Smith, 2019). The second space is a video image of a women, digging into the hard soil as the rain pounds down on her. She only comes to a pause when a moonbeam hovers over her. In the last world, language plays a role and is emphasized as Jackson’s main theme. Jackson believes Indigenous languages “continue to be threatened. What I am particularly concerned with is what is contained within them” (Jackson qtd. in Smith, 2019). Visitors sit on tree stumps as voices speak in Indigenous languages.
The is very intriguing about the installation is how it aims to teach or show the way Indigenous knowledge is so different from the Western way of thinking. Jackson claims Western ways of thinking are linear and her installation aims to distort this reality, to really make the visitors experience a new way of thinking and knowing. She wants “the audience to have a physical response and an emotional response. To [her], that gets closer to the Indigenous understanding”. (Smith, 2019).
I really wish I had the opportunity to see this work!
To connect back to my final paper, I believe this multimedia installation would connect with Howe’s discussion around the experimental dimension. Howe (1998) “recognizes that sacred ceremony performances reestablish environments wherein tribal communities perpetuate ongoing relationships with their higher spiritual dimension” (p.24). Although Jackson’s installation might not be a sacred ceremony, her work knits together how “from an Indigenous point of view, it’s all connected.” (Jackson, qtd. in Smith, 2019). I would connect this video with a Geography SS9 key skill (it would have made for a great field trip!).
Did anyone see the exhibit?
References and other links:
Smith Janet. (201).With sprawling Transmissions, Lisa Jackson creates a new film language from Indigenous roots. The Georgia Straight Retrieved from https://www.straight.com/arts/1292826/sprawling-transmissions-lisa-jackson-creates-new-film-language-indigenous-roots
Woodend, D. (2019). Transmissions: Listening — to Languages, Trees and Time. The Tyee, Retrieved from https://thetyee.ca/Culture/2019/09/19/Transmissions-Listening-Languages/
What a powerful short film by Lisa Jackson…it portrays just how powerful words and language are and how society and nature all interconnect, in order for all of us to connect with our cultural identities and our self identity.
Thank you for sharing this Mandy.