Inappropriator
Inappropriater is a work reflecting upon my purchase and use of a native american war bonnet from a native craftsperson. This piece is suspended from above and consists of the war bonnet with a tablet computer and web camera floating in the space where a head should be. The web camera scans the room for faces and will center and enlarge them to fit the screen when found.
6 audio tracks of people discussing appropriation from varied political, economic and artistic perspectives, which were culled from the internet, play in continuous loop on the 6 dangling speakers. On a set of stereo headphones I discuss my history with this particular war bonnet, its use and the evolution of my thoughts and feelings about it.
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The combination of mundane modern electronics with the natural elements that comprise the war bonnet creates a cognitive dissonance. The viewer must sense these are incompatible realities, representative of deeply different cultural paradigms. Questions about appropriation in real space are carried into the virtual space of the screen and the network.
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