PECHAWIS, Archer

Performance Art Daily (artist panel)
Friday October 11, 12 pm
Tangled Art + Disability, 401 Richmond Street West, Suite 124

In partnership with Hemispheric Encounters and Tangled Art + Disability
Special thanks to Laura Levin and Tracy Tidgwell

A conversation between Archer Pechawis, Theo Jean Cuthand, and Juma Pariri, whose works highlight diverse contemporary Indigenous experiences through mixed media, performance, pedagogy, and environmental justice. Together, they will explore how performance can serve as a powerful tool for decolonization, healing, and community-building across the Americas

Theo Jean Cuthand (b. 1978 Regina SK) is an experimental/narrative filmmaker, performance artist, and indie game developer working with sexuality, madness, Indigiqueer/2S identity and Indigeneity, which have screened in festivals and galleries internationally. He is Plains Cree/Scots, a member of Little Pine First Nation, residing in Toronto, Canada.

Juma Pariri  is a artivist based in Abya Yala (colonially known as Latin America, more specifically in Brazil) that seeks to listen and learn from forest secrets. They move in the friction between the arts of the body, undisciplined pedagogy, and the Indigenous struggle for environmental justice. Among others, they activate the performance platform AGITPORN! – NO to inequality, for social decolonization!, to learn (and create) from Indigenous ancestors about anti-monocultural processes around sexualities, foods, crops,”cannibalism”, menstruation and rituals and are part of the collective United against colonization: many eyes, one heart: an audiovisual platform for Indigenous self-representation.

Archer Pechawis is a performance, theatre and new media artist, filmmaker, writer, curator and educator. Of Cree and European ancestry, he is a member of Mistawasis First Nation, Saskatchewan. Born in Alert Bay, BC, Pechawis has been a practicing artist since 1984. Archer has worked extensively with Native youth since the start of his art practice, originally teaching juggling and theatre, and now digital media and performance. He is currently a member of the Indigenous Routes collective (www.indigenousroutes.ca), teaching video game development to Native girls.

nōhtāwiy awa
[this is my father]
Friday September 9 8 pm
Theatre Centre, 1115 Queen Street West
(Pay-What-You-Can)

Archer Pechawis has a particular interest in the intersection of Plains Cree culture and digital technology, merging “traditional” objects such as hand drums with digital video and audio sampling.

Archer Pechawis is a performance, theatre and new media artist, filmmaker, writer, curator and educator. Of Cree and European ancestry, he is a member of Mistawasis First Nation, Saskatchewan. Born in Alert Bay, BC, Pechawis has been a practicing artist since 1984. His work has been exhibited across Canada, internationally in Paris and Moscow,  and featured in publications such as Fuse Magazine and Canadian Theatre Review. Archer has been the recipient of many Canada Council, British Columbia and Ontario Arts Council awards, and won the Best New Media Award at the 2007 imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival and Best Experimental Short at imagineNATIVE in 2009.

Archer has worked extensively with Native youth since the start of his art practice, originally teaching juggling and theatre, and now digital media and performance. He is currently a member of the Indigenous Routes collective (www.indigenousroutes.ca), teaching video game development to Native girls.

See some of Henry Chan’s photos documenting this performance, as selected by James Knott, on Instagram or Facebook.

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