“It Wasn’t the Dream of Golden Cities” by
Postcommodity
Blood is leaking from the mouth of a dead mule deer. The arts collective Postcommodity calls this Indian Time.
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| P’oe iwe navi ûnp’oe dînmuu (My Blood is in the Water) |
In Santa Fe, it’s Indian Market, and it’s also the 400th anniversary of the city’s settlement by the Spanish. Right now, Santa Fe is doubled in size as older, tanned tourists in shorts and couture cowboy hats throng the mazes of Native American vendors selling pottery, silver, and turquoise. This year’s arts fair is expected to draw 80,000 visitors and generate $100 million in sales.
Meanwhile, behind the high walls of the
IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts courtyard, the deer carcass dangles by its hind legs from a high, rough-hewn, four post tower. The structure marks the time with blood that wells at the tip of the deer’s tongue and falls, in steady intervals, onto a drum. The echo of each drop is enhanced into stereo thunder.
“It’s important that the materials are from the spot and that the instrument can sound like what it is,” says Postcommodity artist
Raven Chacon (Navajo), a composer and experimental noise musician in Albuquerque, New Mexico. “We use it to find meaning in the history of the spot it’s directly over.”
