If you are ever in Phoenix a very cool thing you should do is go to the @heardmuseum and stop by their new exhibition space “Substance of Stars”. It is a 360 degree immersive experience that I was chosen to edit a 15 minute loop of commissioned footage from Indigenous filmmakers, artists and photographers as they relate to 4 selected tribes and where they live on Earth:
Steven Yazzie - Diné
Kiliii Yuyan - Yupik
Gila River TV - O’odham
Ansley Jemison - Seneca
The space
Substance of Stars contains a unique video installation called the Sky-Dome. Visitors enter an immersive environment in which they are surrounded by images and sounds from the natural landscape. Visitors virtually enter the land of each community: the southwest desert, the arctic seascape, the woodlands, mountains and hills, at different seasons and times of day. Indigenous photographers and videographers were commissioned to create the images and decide what features and locations within their homelands are presented.
The process
Six months of work, meetings with architects, weeks of projector calibrations, 3 trips to the desert and countless tacos later, the space is meditative, stunning, grounding and expansive. I am forever grateful and changed by the opportunity to contribute to an exhibition that reminds us this beautiful planet belongs to stars in the sky from which everything we know was made.
Make it
REFLECTION
I will hold this project and it’s meaning in my heart forever and ever.
Greatest thank you goes to the indigenous artists listed above for their willful collaboration and incredible ability to capture our natural world.
Thank you to curator extraordinaire Sean Mooney for trusting me with your life! Thank you to the Heard Museum staff for always making new space for indigenous art and expression. And thank you to my partner Chris Aniftos for the emotional support along the way.
