Robin Brass doesn't call herself a performance artist. She lets the content (what she wants to say) determine both the media and the form of a work.She began working with text in 1999, creating a highway sign in Cree syllabics in the Qu'appelle Valley In Saskatchewan. She later employed the syllabics of her own language, Soto, in 4 photo-based works superimposing images of text written on the body with traditional medicinal plants.
Her performance work started integrating spoken language in 2005. Two things came together at that point: frustration with the arrogance and ignorance with which Native culture was being tidily packaged (reduced) and a longing to hear her own language out loud. As she says, "I got sick of speaking English, my only language. I got very quiet." She asked herself what was needed, what was necessary, and concluded, "Our own language, spoken from the heart."
Robin's piece last night involved, "A simultaneous cleaning up and making meaning using an age-old female gesture," (and here I quote the brilliantly succinct words of my roommate, Margaret Dragu). With pucks of red paint and water, Robin scrubbed the floor and wrote upon it (syllabics again). Verbally Robin asked us in Soto, "Do you understand?" and told us (among other things), "You are standing in my way." And we were! The creation of a spiral on the floor moved us away from the walls into the centre of the room. ("Ahh, that's nice," I thought, "she wants us all together!") But as the spiral twisted inwards, it was clear that we were in the way and needed to step aside. Two Aboriginal women in the room, MJ and Robyn, often nodded in agreement, moved their lips, and vocalized an echoed response. The rest of us could only "read" the emotional content of the text. Like David Khang's piece, Robin's use of Soto raised questions of power: Who is included? Who is excluded?
After the performance, Robin provided a translation of the Soto text. As well as the perviously cited phrases, her words repeatedly spoke of reconciliation: "the root of love...", "I am grateful in the biggest way", "restore this" and "come back". Robin works with more than polarized positions, exploring inter-Aboriginal schisms as well as relationships between Native and non-Native peoples. Most importantly, her gestures, text and images suggest that deep respect and understanding are not easy, but necessary. Her phrase,"Do you understand?" asks about more than linguistic facility. Over breakfast this morning she talked about other embedded questions, like, "Do you understand the complexity? The beauty? The stakes?"
Her spiral made me think of traditional winter count hides and land art of the 1970s. She said she was referencing the prevalence of the shape in nature (the way our hair grows, the way water drains, shells, the galaxy).
I wished that the pigment she had used was deeper, more vibrant, more present. And I wondered about the emotional tremor in voice. Robin explained this morning that she prefers to reach an emotional pitch and pull back, to control it, to ride that edge. Last night that didn't happen. It was a day of tears all around. Such is the nature of the medium. What we intend doesn't always happen thanks to the collision of our ever-changing hearts, bodies and audience. But what happens, IS. And what WAS (Robin's piece) was a powerful, graphic and meditative experience, raising essential questions we all need to grapple with as the evils of colonization continue to unfold.
I asked Robin what's next. This was her third performance on her knees. She says she wants to get up off the ground!
P.S. I write this post on my father's 89th birthday, which seems fitting as I consider Robin's performance last night. My father taught me the language of my ancestors (and so much more). I thank him.
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