Ablakela invokes calm and innovation

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How much can be said through a pair of hands? A whole lot, if those hands belong to Lakota film-maker and media artist Dana Claxton. In her recently released CD/CD ROM Ablakela, Claxton takes an innovative approach to present her art far beyond the live theatre experience, stringing together video, music and the written word in a eclectic reincarnation of her 1999 performance in Vancouver.

Ablakela, which means calm in Lakota language, was named Best Multimedia work at the imagineNATIVE Media Arts Festival last December for its clever use of various mediums to present the notions of ritual and sacredness. With songs of prayer by Peyote singers Verdell Primeaux and Johnny Mike, Claxton sits in front of a giant video projection of her hands braiding bear grass and making offerings of small stones and baskets.

Claxton says the juxtaposition of the medium-video monitor-and message-images of worship-conveys the close relationship between the media and modern people, and how watching television has become a ritual in itself.

"It's about how we worship the media, how we're all sort of glued to the TV," said Claxton.

Immersed in the sounds of water drums, gourds and rattles, the image of a basket appears at the very end of the performance, representing all of the First Nations craft that has survived colonialism, said Glenn Alteen, director of the grunt gallery, which produced both the original performance and the CD-ROM.

"Across North America these skills continue to be passed on generation to generation and adapted to remain current within the lives First Nations now live," Alteen added. "This performance [is] a celebration of survival of these cultures and recognition of their continuing vitality."

Similarly, Claxton's own craft has been well-received around the world. Her media art installations are held and exhibited in prestigious venues such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Walker Art Centre in Minneapolis and the Vancouver Art Gallery. As a film-maker, her movies have been screened in more than 15 countries and her latest film, The People Dance is part of this year's Native Forum at the Sundance Festival in Utah.

"It was really wonderful to see the support the festival has for Native American stories," said Claxton. The 24-minute short drama is a fractured narrative of a mystic man and woman in Prada outfits describing their relationship with the universe through the traditional Lokota worldview.

"[We believe] the universe has many languages," Claxton explained. "The wind has a voice you can hear, so do birds, and the sky mirrors the earth, and so on. The point of the film is for people to consider the various voices that's out there."

Claxton also wants to show the glamorous side of the community, something rarely seen in Aboriginal films.

"The images weren't stereotypical Indian images," said Claxton. "I was working on the basis of a black and white advertising campaign, very slick and ultra stylish. We don't really see Indian people in this image... sort of an idealized beauty without being too romantic."

Ablakela features video clips, soundtracks, photographs, an essays by Lakota anthropologist Dr. Bea Medicine, and a TV interview with Claxton and her audience. The CD/CD ROM is available through the grunt gallery at 604-875-9516 or grunt@telus.net for $20 plus $2 s&h.