- [Announcer] Welcome everyone to the P (bright music) (audience applauds) - Welcome to the Penny Stamps Distinguished Speaker series.

My name is Kristen Hass, I'm a professor in the American here at the University of Michigan, and I have the great pleasure this semester of teaching a first year seminar that is based on the work that you're gonna hear about to So first order of business is a shout out to the American Culture 103 students in the room.

Thank you.

I'm delighted to have the opportunity to introduce you to sculptor and monumental installation artist Channup As we begin, I'd like to take a moment to acknowledge that we are on Anishnabe land.

The Ann Arbor Campus currently resides on land seated through the Treaty of Detroit in 1806.

Additionally, in 1817, the Ojibwe Odawa and Bawa nations made the largest single land transfer to the University of Michigan, seeded through the Treaty of Fort Meigs with the hope that their children could get educated.

We acknowledged the sovereignty of tribal lands and the painful history of genocide, forced assimilation and displacement of native th at facilitated the establishment of the university.

We affirm contemporary and ancestral and inishinovic ties to this land.

The profound contributions to this institution, and the university's commitment to educa the children of native ancestors.

That acknowledgement has become a part of the rhythm of life at the university and at places beyond universities.

The work that you're gonna hear about today is gonna ask you to hear it in a different way, to feel it in a different way and to think through that acknowle in a different way.

Tonight's event is presented in partnership with the University of Michigan Museum of Art, our beloved UMA.

The Arts and Resistance Theme Semester, the UFM Arts Initiative, and Series Partners, Detroit Public Television, PBS books and Michigan Radio.

The event will begin with a video segment, then Channupa Hanska Luger and Paul Farber, who is the director and co-founder of the Monument Lab, will take the stage for a conversation.

And I should add, Paul Farber is not only a University of Michigan PhD, but a Department of American Culture PhD and very proud to say my former student.

There will be a Q&A after the conversation and you will find microphones here at the front.

After their conversation you can line up at tho to a ask your questions.

It's my pleasure to share a little background and to introduce our guests as I said, Paul is the co-founder of Monument Lab and an AC PhD, Channupa Hanska Luger is an enrolled enrolled member of the three affiliated tribes of Fort Berthold, and he is also Lakota.

He is a sculptor and a multidisciplinary artist through monumental installations and social collaborations that reflect a deep engagement and respect for materials, the environment and community.

Channupa activates speculative fiction and communicates story about stories about 21st century indigeneity.

He is the recipient of lots of awards, he is a 2022 Guggenheim fellow, a recipient of the 2021 United States Artists Fellow Awards for craft, and he was named a Grist 50 Fixer for 2021.

A list, this list of fixers that includes emerging leaders in climate, sustainability and equity from across the For the past two years, the staff at UMA and Paul Farber and the folks at Monument Lab have worked closely with Ch to realize the commissioned project now installed at titled "Your Welcome."

And that's what they're gonna ta "Your Welcome" response to the central question, how do we remember.

"Your Welcome" examines the foundational narratives of the land occupied by the University of Michigan and both national and global discourse on nationalism, land sovereignty, militarism, colonialism, and sites of memory.

The exhibit centers on gift, an experimental time-based work that reimagines the facade of alumni Memorial Hall, the UMA Building.

Just last month, during the week of September 18th, Channupa used watery Kalen clay slip normally used for joining glazing, decorating pottery to paint the word gift across the columns on the front of the building.

Importantly, there was an ellipse both the word suggesting past, present, and future considerations of what the word might mean in that context.

If you visited UMA recently, you have seen that the neoclassical of alumni Memorial Hall, and it was the UMA Building, was built as a memorial to U of M students who died fighting in the Civil War and the Spanish American War.

That structure is now covered in white as a result of the work of the team who extended Channupa word gift to whitewash the whole building.

You may have thought it was always w and of course metaphorically, it alway Through this intervention Channupa is challe and asking us to think about the whitewashing of history.

Gift is accompanied by two gallery installations.

The first is Meat for the Beast, which includes two pieces, this is not a snake and the one who checks and the one who balances.

These are integrated with the selection of objects from UMA's collection.

Channupa artistic practice and the relationship expresses the relationship between the museum's collections, and resource extraction.

The second piece, gallery installation is the Monument Lab public classroom where I am having the great pleasure of teaching my class this semester, it's fun to be in the muse This works examines formal and informal modes of memory and memorial making on the The entire commission was prompted by larger questions about what is a monument, who is it for?

U of M has partnered with the Arts initiative and Monuments Lab to engage the campus with these questions in a moment when monuments are coming down and monuments are going up.

This talk tonight kicks off a weekend of memory and monuments programming, including a big open house on Saturday at UMA.

This Saturday from 12 to four, there will be an open house celebrating this work, and across the weekend there are gonna be a lot of events and if you go to the UMA w you will find all the informatio So please join me, first, we're gonna see a little video and then Paul and Channupa are coming up here.

So let's give them a round of applause as a welcome as the video starts.

Thank you.

(audience applauds) Channupa Hanska Luger, thank yo Channupa Hanska Luger, thank you so much for talking to us toda The show "You're Welcome," is going to be up at UMA throug We really appreciate your time.

- You're (audience member laughing) - I should include the laugh, I guess.

(bright music) - All of the unseen efforts to write the letters, G-I-F-T, gift, being a highlighted word in the Treaty of Fort Meigs, gift, of word that put in motion the land that the school was originally built on.

Gift, something that you can be grateful for and appreciate.

Gift, something that can be overlooked because you didn't have to pay for it.

There are so many implications of this word.

(bright music) - My gallery space over there was a distraction, something that we could of me coming here and receiving the, the opportunity to work with UMA and Monument Lab.

And so that ex the magicians kind of like wavering hand as they're like, oh, you know, so this is the turn.

It is a provocation, it's a provocation into a story that we're also familiar with, a story of Whitewashing and re a story of invisibility, a story of extraction and celebration.

(bright music) (audience applauds) - Hello, (announcer speaks in a foreign language) - Good evening everybody.

- Hi, thank you all for coming.

We get this rare opportunity to converse with one another.

I truly enjoy talking with people r but I do talk quite a bit.

So we decided the best way to do this is to change the format a little bit.

My dear friend here, he would maybe perhaps like to introduce himself after me, but I am Channupa Hanska Luger.

I'm (indistinct) dripping earth clan from the Mandan Hidatza and Ikara tribes.

I am also, I was born in Standing Rock, My father is a Lakota among many other things.

And I'm a visual artist.

I have a background in ceramics, but I am comfortable and happy to work with whatever material is necessary to convey ideas and working here at the University of Michigan on this project, gimme a whole new medium to work with.

And I think I could thank you for that, I could thank my ancestors for that.

I can thank the original inhabitants of the land here and the wind and the water and the earth.

I think the depth and the scale of our gratitude should expand beyond this moment.

And so with that being said, I would just like to say (Channupa speaks in a foreign language) - Thank you Channupa.

Thank you everyone for being here I'm Paul Farber, I'm director and co and I'm also curator in residence here at the univer And it's really a treat and honor to be up here with my dear friend and collaborator, Channupa Hanska Luger, and then also to give the co-curator on the project Ozzy Udma, who is not here with us tonight, who is at graduate school right now, but whose presence is felt, and of course all of the tea and all of the peopl So we have seen a brief video about this project, and I wanted to start with you kind of taking us back, you know, you got an invitation from us that had a question, how do we remember on this campus?

And your response was in part to paint the word gift on the front of alumni Memorial Hall.

Can you take us back to kind of your initial thoughts when you received the invitation?

- Yeah, initially, I suppose where I came to, like, there was the moment of the invitation, you know, and there was a photograph of the there was context kind of embedded in, how we control and take images and what's presented forward.

Seeing the building and the question, how do we remember?

For me, like growing up and perhaps any other indigenous members in the audience here can, can confirm this for me at some po But growing up as a native person in the United States, there is a strange dissonance around history, and like your social studies classes from this moment of going through an education system that reinforces a very specific narrative.

And that question, how do we remember?

The first thing that sparked in my head was like, w Like, I'm pretty sure I memorized a lot of stuff, I don't know if I recollect or remember it, you know, and everything that I was kind of encouraged to learn about, it had an angle, And that angle was only a portion of the conversation and a portion of the story.

And that doesn't feel like memory, you that's feels like something else.

So the first question I had was, who is we?

And how do we remember?

And then that was multiplied by the architect of the museum, the Alumni Memorial Hall.

And I was like, this is a perfect example of how we remember, because I don't remember Greece being her You know, it's like there's a strange subconscious thing that, you know, growing up, I don't think most of us rea the dept hand the nefarious of embedding this sort of architecture on our psychology.

And as we move through the world, the built world presently, this is a forced recollection of a deep time relationship to place.

The column becomes, you know, and this kind of Greco-Roman architecture is all over America, like everywhere.

And it takes up a lot of space in the realms of education.

And I'm like, that's not coincidental, the kind of subconscious thing that is received by seeing this, because it's been a few th at we've seen this arch And we just accept it for what it's, you know, this is, it's a building, whatever.

But it's also modeled after a temple, like it's modeled after a space in which you humble yourself in order to enter.

And in there is an access point to God's creation itself.

You have to come here in order to speak.

That's so contrary to what this land's original inhabitants have in their relationship to the capacity to speak to creation itself.

The most profound structure you can enter is a cave in a mountain, you know, is the hollow of a tree.

You know, these are places that are actually an anchor point for a deep time relationship to place.

And seeing architecture like this reinforces a false narrative.

And that false narrative is that America and it has been here all the way back to the beginning of the western imag of written ideas.

And to prove that come come to the still preserved.

That's the thing that's fascinating to me too.

I'm like going sideways on it, but like, these in Like they're in ruin, you know?

And so for me as a native person, I'm like, I kind of like 'em like that, You know, and that's, that is the inevitable trajectory of the empire, you k is its dilapidation.

- We forget the level of maintenance it to preserve this structure in our place.

And we reinforce it every day, and our lack of a conscious awaren It allows that space in our heads.

- I want to of course ask you about the, you know, why write gift, but I actually wanna first talk about the act of writing.

I think we've said that it took two years to write four letters on one building.

- Yeah.

- And just like, in your experience, what was it like fo to write on these pillars, on this neoclassical facade?

The word gift.

- It was, it's like the simplest thing there is, I used to get in trouble for doing things like this, you know, and it- - And, and now you're honored here at the University of Michigan.

- Yeah, There was a lot of effort to even keep it quiet so that it felt a little bit more dangerous than it actually was.

And actually play with Because I'm a sculptor.

I make objects that exist in space, they tell a story, but on a kind of more interior level, from my perspective, I like the idea of a sculpture in space, like a sculpture in space.

It's complicated, it's a place that you can't go.

Like once this thing is in, and putting it in museums and like that is the most expensive real estate there is on the planet presently is like in somebody's home, in a museum.

These are the spaces tha you know, down to the millimeter, you know.

I tend to do things like that, I like to work wit all materials I really enjoy and the materials that I cho have to make sense to me.

Writing on the building, it seemed so sim it seemed like the easiest thing.

I wanted to use clay, I thought, this is g Let's use, let's use slip from here, from the United States.

Let's put earth back on this earth to expose an idea or a question, or really even highlight architecture in the world that we just kind of move through generally.

The piece was actually, it means less to me than what I think i But what I think it means to you is insignificant because what you think it means is probably the most important pa But for me, I was like, this museum is a white space.

All museums are white spaces, I don't feel comfortable entering museums, museums, house and hoard the world's cultures.

And when the culture is not a thing, but a relative, a relation, then what's in there, you know, it becomes a tomb.

It becomes a sca And I think about that psychologically entering into any museum ever.

And I'm looking at the facade of the building and I'm like, well, technically it's not white.

And I'm like, I actually don't know what white means, like what is white?

And I think about that a lot because I think the inception of white as a race was developed here in the US.

And the sad part of it, or the point at which I can symp you didn't get to be white in America until you severed your relationship to the place that you're from.

Once you are no longer belonging to a country, a people or a culture, only at And it felt empty and it felt sad, and it felt as though we had to reinforce this notion in order to justify the trauma that is experienced through that severing.

And this relationship and this of a deep time to architecture is to soften the burden of displacement And I think everybody in this room has felt displacement.

I feel like that is one of the driving forces of the American myth is displacement.

And I don't think we're addressing it directly, I think we are addressing the byproduct of displacem And separating in all these different ways, and for me, I was like, I wanna make this building white by a definition I can truly understand.

And that is through the color, you know, and the color I knew could be found in clay, and I knew that that clay could be found on this land, and that it could cover the surface of the building, and I knew that slip will wash away in the weather, in the rain, in the environment.

So I thought I was doing the building a favor of being like, will you slip?

Like I'm not gonna you know, it'll come off lik You know, I was wrong.

- I mean, I think about this process and there's always, when you do public art and work in monuments there's stakeholders and you're thinking about, you know, in this project, there's the university, there's the museum, there are, you know, the Native American Students Association, I think of Ether and Andrea and other indigenous staff Th ere's the permissions people, I'll say.

- Yeah.

- But you also insisted that the weather, the environmen from this project or backdrop.

You said, this is an active participant, the weather should determine the way the artwork will which is like cuts against the idea f who understand galleries and museums of climate control, it's ultimately to keep nature out.

And it seems like for you that was an important part.

I wanna ask you kind of a two part question.

- Okay.

- Which is, you know, wh why did you paint it?

But I wanna also ask why did you cover - Yeah.

Gift was a wor like ask on how do we remember, I was also informed about the Treaty of Fort M and the word gift.

And the word gift was capi quotations in this iteration.

And I'm sure it wasn't in the original, you know, I'm sure it, you know, fell into place just r But I think with our, as we're being kind of engaging with one another and asking deeper who each one of us are, there's more information, there's new information, and that new information makes our existing information sometime And the word gift clearly popped out as a problem, you know, this is something we need to address.

This word gift in the context of a legal bon has different context for the people writing it and the people agreeing to it, and the people signing to it.

And then the cultures in which they come from that define i the langua These all matter, and when I saw a gift capitalized and in quotes, I could see its potential omission from future discussions around the state's relationship to its and the university's relationship to the indigenous population.

And I know that when you teach one perspective as history, and encourage us to remember that, I know how America is like an amnesiac.

It's so quick to forget everything.

And it's not even the fault of the present for that forgetting because it was our anc that put in motion the omission of certain aspects, so it's not even forgetting it's misremembering, you know?

And I wanted to make sure that this word gift was large and prominent on a building that was designed for the memory of lives lost at this school.

Because we know the value of things, but we can't comprehend the cost.

And the word gift is a, there's a high cost on that word.

And the value of it was the original gifted land.

They understood the value, like the original folks were like, all r let's sell it now that it's been gifted to u and then build the school where it is presently using the funds from this exchange.

Like, when did we talk about that?

When did we agree to do that?

How is that in the contract?

Why is it still represented?

And so I thought this word gift was really strong There's also, from an indigenous perspective, we talk about the value and wealth, not in the sense of how much you have, but how much you can give.

And this like hardwired generosity, you weren't considered wealthy if you kept everything.

If that was your mode, the mode that we celebrate presently, the celebrity of wealth.

This is a model that's around possessions, what I have.

But what you could give was actually the source of your generosity was proof of your wealth.

Like, you could have all of this stuff and if you didn't give it away, you were not And we know what that is.

We built an entire society around and it's killing us for what that is.

So when you shift that perspective around the word gift, and this is the ellipses, right?

When you shift that perspective around the word, like I would love to live in a world where wealth is based on generosity.

If we could celebrate those people because of what they have given rather than what the it changes the entire system completely.

And so gift being exhibited in English, written on these pillars is a provocation to consider what that mea and what does gift mean to every person who could read it, you know, what's their experience, how are they reinterpreting all of this?

So it was important to me to kind of like use that word as an anchor point.

And then the obscuring, I was like, we could pressure wash the word off and then the building is just the building.

Or we can do what I learned through assimilation, which is whitewash it, whitewash the whole thing, cover it with the very material that it is and obscure this actual word and language, not by its removal but by its covering up.

And in doing so the entire facade becomes a white building.

And then that highlights it on the landscape.

Does that suddenly, does it catch the eye of the audie that's walking by it every single day over and over and over?

Does it change the way you see the building And then moreover, back to the weather, when it washes it all away, is it a white building s Like, is this building white?

Is this an opportunity to actually pay close to what the material is made of?

Which has been here for time in memorial?

It actually has a deep time relationship to this place that is sandstone.

You know, and sandstone is a because it's not the original stone that the material was made from.

It was something else before.

And it changed, and then it, th rough a deep time story, sat long enough to become something else.

And that something else sat long enough to be and that thing sat long enough to be turned into a building.

And simultaneously, like, I'm interested in the weather w the white slip off the surface of the building and finding its way back into the river, back into the earth, back into the land.

But I am interested in the entire building doing that.

Like I am interested in the inevitable and slow process of erosion that has been taking place since the building was built, and since, you know, before the sandstone was sandstone.

It's inevitable.

And I think seeing those processes, by watching the white erode away from it, you'll suddenly begi is also falling apart.

- You're saying the building's not supposed to be there forever, it hasn't alwa - Nothing, nothing, nothin (both chuckles) But it's hard to understand that, right?

- Like, - It hits you deep.

It's, even if you don't put or in your mind, it's communicating a symbol, an aura of permanence, even if when you walk up to the building, you can touch it and pieces of the sandstone come off in your hand.

- Oh yeah, don't touch it, do Yeah, yeah.

No, but into play some of the other things that were interesting through doing this process.

Like, th for me as an artist, this was that I'm not comfortable with or didn't fully comprehend, which is like highly conceptual work.

You know, I had like, I had to provide drawings of what it was gonna There was like a little animation of how i And I barely touched it, like all I got to do was write the word gift.

So it felt really person 'cause I was like, now I'm participating in it, it's gone from theory and now it's become practi And I like practice, I like touching things, I like getting my hands and working because as much as I move and shape the material, it also moves and shapes me.

Like this is the actual exchange that is the highest value to me as an artist is becoming better.

Like, it's so simple, but it's true, you know?

And that interaction is what, what does that.

Now to do a project like this, I'm still, I'm like, I work with clay, I make clay sculptures, I'm a ceramici And I'm like, I'm still doing that.

The sculpture is a thin layer of clay on the surface of this building, and I'm not gonn I'm gonna allow it to remain clay, allow it to remain itself.

And so there was a lot of build and a lot of effort to get to the point to write the four letters.

But that doesn't feel like there, it was like the, the least climactic arc piece I've ever done.

You know, where it an d I can't complete it.

And this is something I re I don't get to finish this work.

Like the weather finishes this work, your perspective finishes this work.

Like, so it's strange for me to be sitting in a positio on a stage in front of everybody talking about what I have done.

And I'm like, I'm not done yet, you And, and I'm not doing it like other, there are other components that are doing the and it's on architecture, an architecture that's a hundred years old and has a whole steeped history and everything embedded in it here.

And for me, I'm like, I think truly the art actually happened in the two years leading up to the moment to present this.

Like the art took place and you all didn't get to see it, hopefully you benefit from it, but it took place in the silos of power that sit at universities.

This piece is not in the museum.

And I was like, where is in the museum?

Like where does the museum end and the campus begins and it's at the surface of the building, but not anything on it, like it's outside of the museum.

And so that means we h a whole variety of teams to agree to work on this project.

And one thing that I had seen work, you know, engaging with the university is that these silos of do not communicate well with one another.

Yeah, I know.

I didn't go to somebody said, you don't sa I'm like, you all know better than me.

I didn't go to a graduate program.

I went to school at the Institute of American Indian Arts.

And it was a great school.

It's small and y and you eventually know everybody, the scale of this place is so profound that you can move through it for years and never even get close to understanding it in its totality.

But I feel as though if we are going to be engaging, and especially at the museum level, and I think this is the pr is that it is very dependent on its public, you know, and you are its public.

And it's very dependent on its community and it recognizes that it's not reaching you know, and that community is oftentimes held in quotation marks, you know.

And I'm like, well, don't make it a temple and see what happens, you know?

- Yeah.

- And then they're, and they're like, yes, we've So we bu crawling off the side of it.

And that is not also a Li ke, this is something you see all over the country, like a weird modern building straddling an ancient building.

And I'm like, what is the psychological narrative that that's telling me, you know, that progress and industry is greater than where we come from.

Like, what are these cues t is subconsciously, you know, informing us.

But it's also a reinforcement of like, okay, you had one architect and then you had another, you have silos of power and they're trying to be in communication with one another, but we don't communicate well, you know.

And so for me, the art was really about findi and routes of communication and reinforcing them and encouraging them to communicate across these strange silos and engage with things that we didn't the grounds, the facilities, you know, there were so many different components that came into play that was the You know, it happened- - Institutional time.

- Yeah, yeah.

And institutional structure.

- Yeah.

- You know, and syst because we don't see it all the time, we accept it for what it is.

Like we accept this building for what it is, and we don't questio we just allow it to subconsciously affect us, And those silos of power don't end in the institution.

You will see them when you leave here and you enter into the world wi th all of these different things.

And I'm like, surpri it's been there the whole time as a secret informer subc what we will tolerate and what we'll accept, - And what we think is possible.

- And what we think is possible, for su - You know, you're talking about architecture and I think one of the most powerful parts of but also your influence on me and the work of Monument Lab is about deep time and rethinking origins.

And this was an image that came to our research was the cornerstone layi which is often thought of in very traditional western terms as a beginning step.

And I think one of the powerful prompts that you gave us back as a part of the breaking down thos and working across them was where does the rock and the stone that's being laid come from?

And just getting a hint here, we look at this cornerstone being laid at a space that would become alumni, Memorial Hall and UMA.

And we see the sign that says, oh, the quarry where this rock was coming from is i And this, myself and Aubrey Penny from Monument Lab drove down and followed your queue, and I would say like, we saw visions of, like, it wasn't a jigsaw puzzle with the pi It was different, It was a different relationship to the landscape.

There were places where ther of the quarrying, oops, sorry, of the quarrying, but there was also this places of ghostly absence where you just see clearly stone that has been removed in industrial mechanical ways.

I wanna ask you about this, you've been talking a little bit about the sandstone, but thinking of stone as kin, thinking stone as not separable from the Like what's your relationship with that stone?

What have you been able to think about and rethink about when it comes to stone in these monumental architectural spaces?

- Yeah, I think about, there's like one part of me that, you know, has been in, I was born in 1979, so I'm like an eighties kid, right?

And so I was inspired and bombarded with so much an d a lot of it fell into the realm of science fiction because of my tastes, you know?

And I'm like, oh, I like, I like some And it was always like this post-apocalyptic narrative, right?

Over and over and over, it was like, we're barely gonna yo u know, we're reduced to this.

And there were these images of a once, you know, great metropolis reduced to rubble or something along those lines.

But once again, it just goes back to the material that sandstone was a mountain somewhere else, you know?

And that geological shifting of time moved all of that material into the location that it was, that it was eventually solidified and quarried from.

So the inevitability of anything that we've built going back into those places and beginning to become stone or being the earth once again, I always kept in mind.

But there's also, you know, when we talk about kin in our relationship to more than human s something that I think is an important t that we really allow to move through the material sciences that we're working with, it's like, how do you relate to place beyond the human scope?

How do you relate to place as rela You suddenly begin to see how, you know, we're grateful for these land acknowledgements, but rarely do they acknowledge the land, you know, the anchor point from which all is possible, like where you belong, not what belongs to you, but from the relationships that actually developed and shaped the vast and complex cultures that exist in the world presently.

They all come from the earth, you know, at some point in all of our histories, collectively, we worshiped the earth, we worship the place, the land.

I'm like, let's allow that to come back, let's use the material sciences we've developed to reinforce to reinforce that.

And I, a we have stories with rock where stone is gendered, and when stone is in the earth, it is a grandmother.

And when stone is removed from the earth or on the surface of the earth, it is a grandfath And that there are all of these conversations around fluidity, you know, and transition being an important part of the narratives that exist.

And that those narratives that exist are what actually help us empathize with land and environment.

We recog but that it has agency and how the world affects it changes its being.

So what is the gender of a stone removed from the earth, planted back into the earth and then built upon, you know, I don't know.

We haven't allowed ourselves to really consider what our relative of stone is in relationship to that and we haven't allotted it, the complexity.

And without that complexity, it becomes very hard for us coll to understand it as something other than a thing, you know?

And so that quarry all of this stuff, it makes me excited because I don't wanna actively demolish the world we have presently.

I don't wanna demolish it, I don't wanna waste my time repairing damage that I'm lived through.

I wanna imagine something that makes all of this obsolet and we don't talk abou that we don't even bring it up because it was a ridiculous pivot in the hum that gave us notions of grandeur, you know.

I want to imagine how we adapt to the world we have presently radically changed, because we have sacrificed our fangs and our claws to be incredibly adaptable creatures.

And yet, as we move through the earth within the last couple hundred years like deep time, really, like it's an experiment.

I know we've lived in our entire lives, and we see the shortfalls of it presently, but it is an experiment in the trajectory of life that is like falling apart.

So the inevitability of it 's on the horizon, you know, we will see that.

I don't wanna waste my time demolishing it.

I'm interested in how we reestablish our kinships and our bonds with place.

And actually, rather than forcing an environment to adapt to us, which we have been doing in ou what happens when we adapt to an environment again?

What happens when we take the, the slow way of understanding what it means to belong to place, and pay attention to the protocols, pay attention to the systems that are navigating around us, rather than trying to develop a whole, you know, industrialization of new systems and new complex problems that don't actually solve the core issue that we're facing presently.

And I think that core issue, if we reduce it all down, comes all the way back to, you know, something I brought up earlier, which is displacement, di Like at what point in our experience collectively did we separate ourselves from the earth?

It was taught to me, it was taught to like two generations ago of me that we were separate from the earth.

That's not very long, and it didn't really sti how long ago was it for everybody else?

Like at what point did you recognize or accept the bold lie that you are separate from nature, you are separate from the land.

And as long as we keep trying to find our way back to that belonging, we are going to rather than belong, fill that hole with belongings with things.

If I can own it or control it, maybe th it may not belonging to it, but it belongs to me, like let's do that.

- Yeah, what you said to all of that profoundly, and, you know, speaking of that distinction, which you brought up in the project and really, you know, brought us to a different level of understanding was the difference between belonging and belongings and how much of a profound shift that marks.

And so just in that connection to thinking about like, this is not the first time that you have covered something in clay.

You've made things in clay and you've been doing it as an artist and who's experimented, I'm thinking about your stereotypes project where you made clay objects to break them.

- Yeah.

- How has your relationship to clay changed over time?

- Yeah, that's a good question because clay and ceramic and any of my ceramicists or chemists in here understand are two different things.

Clay is potential and ceramic is subject t you know, anything that you see built in, you know, any ceramic object, it's only that and broken versions o far into the future, you know, clay can be reconstituted, it can find its place back into the earth.

It's a question that keeps coming up and it didn't sit in my head when I did this stereotype ex but I started to realize that clay has infinite potential and if I fire it, it goes through court's inversion and it becomes ceramic.

And that's a big responsibility, it makes me question every time I load a kiln, like, is this worth it?

You know to become this thing?

And in the instance for the stereo I was thinking about entropy.

I was thinking about how a stereotype is a cognit It's a mental anchor.

And at its core, a stereotype is an introduction, an opportunity to at a quick glance, tried to get to know somebody else.

Where the stereotype gets perverted is when you do not go any deeper.

When you can stop at that first gaze and be like, now I know everything about everything.

That's what you are.

Stereotypes are not subject to entrop the same way ceramic is.

And so my thought was, let me anchor an idea onto something physical and then it can be subject to entropy on a level that's different than, than ideas.

And then I got scared, I did not intend on breaking them, it was actually the market of art that scared me.

At the time I'm living in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where I still live outside of there.

I just graduated f This was my first kind of solo exhibition of work.

And the gallery that was representing me at the time, I had built all of this stuff and I put it into this an d they came up and they were like we have so many collectors who are ready to get this work, you know?

And they You know, it's awesome.

And there was no fortune to be made really, but they were really excited about what they were seeing and the in from the market to collect it and I got cold feet.

I was like, if this stereotype sits on the coffee table of the wealthy Texan, this is in New Mexico, so it's usually a wealthy Texan, collecting this work and sitting in their home removed from the context of the exhibition.

Does it reinforce the stereotype like forever, you know, because once an object like this becomes a part of a collection, then the models of preservation ar And the western world can preserve the hell out of a thing for a very long time, you know, sequester it in glass.

What, what was it?

The environm - Climate control.

- Climate control, yeah, yeah, exactly.

And so it scared me and I was like, I don't think that these should exist as objects because they're just gonna rein the various stereotypes that I'm ho So I put together quickly an extension of this work where I was like, I'm gonna come in and I am br eak all of these pieces.

And you know, I'm going to school at the Institute of American Indian Arts and a lot of other native An d several of my peers were like, oh, let me co like, I am gonna bring, I wanna bring an a You know, another one's like, let's take it out to a rang and destroy this stereotype with like, fervor.

And I was like, you know what, I actually really like about this All I gotta do is let it go, all I gotta do is let go of the stereotype.

And it's falling shatters, and I was worried about the museum, no, the museum was worried about the museum, and they were like, they were like, will that damage the floor?

And I'm like, yeah, but Like, I'm gonna drop a big old piece of clay, of course.

And they're like, okay, do we have any other options?

And so I grabbed a stone from the courtyard and used that as the anil of the dropping.

And I was like, I'll drop it right onto the stone.

And the profound thing that happened to me, once again, going back to rocks and that sort of kinship, this was a profound educator in that moment.

I was like, that stone is not worried about identity, it's not worried about all of these human construct, that stone is so certainly a stone that when I drop this stereotype on top of it, it will shatter and fall apart.

And I was like, be like the stone.

Be so confident in your knowing and what you are and who you are, that all of these external descriptions of what you are will just fall as they land on top of you.

You know, and that's a, that's an extension of that, you know, technology, that kinship of being open to the awareness and the possibility of being like, oh, this lifeless thing could never inform me.

- I have just a couple more questions before we, we go to audience Q&A.

So they're big questions, but I'll try to ask them quickly.

You know, as a part of "You're Welcome," you have an installation called Meet for the Beast that incorporates elements from the University of Mich and UMA collection that focus on extraction and conquest.

So why was it important for you to have that be part of this show?

- The piece, there's two pieces that are exhibited in the "Meat for the Beast" presentation.

And one is a, a large serpent, it's called, this is Not a Snake, it's actually an that had been applied several times around a black snake crossing the land and that being a harbinger of the world as we know changing or dying or falling apart.

That prophecy was applied multiple times, it was applied with wagon trains, it was applied with railroad lines.

It was, you know, most recently, 2016, it was referenced quite a bit during the Dakota Access And I thought it was important, it was called the Black Snake Prophecy and I was like, let's remind everybody that it is not a snake.

That it is a serpent at best, but that it is monstrous, you know?

And that allows it to become something that is not We don't have to hate snakes, you know, we have to be aware of what becomes monstrous.

And so this iteration of it, I basically created a 60 foot long serpent made entire, like, almost entirely out of material byproducts of extractive industry.

It has, you know, military cans, tires, oil drums, all of these different things.

And they're mine, like th The, the drums were equivalent to the amount of time that it took that I was using in fuel to produce this thing, get it to where it was going and exhibit it.

There's a recognition of my participation in feedin the monstrosity that we see.

And it's a recognition and a being acco In this iteration I got to bring it to the museum and I thought, oh, this it would be really exciting to actually look through the collection at the museum as through that lens.

Like, what is being preserved here that is a part of that extractive industry?

And how through its preservation are we reinforcing, enabling and encouraging its perpetuation.

You know, if a museum is a source for education and an opportunity for people to learn, what are we teaching them?

And so I thought the, you know, exhibiting these pieces in the serpent was the angle and direction But I also think like we could have just ran that snake all the way through the entire university, you know, like we could have put the head on one end of America and dropped it on the other, you know, and be like, this is meat for the beast, So, but we get, we were selective, we had limited space.

And even the space itself, we chose that space because the space is a vitrine, it is a part of the model of preservation.

It is a glass bell, you know, to sequester the work.

And it also challenged what's inside and what's outside of the museum, you know.

We definitely designed it so that you could see it from outside, that you would not have to enter i to see the work.

And the two figures that are stan between you and the serpent are based on legends, Mandan Legends.

These are two twins, they're, you know, our, our archetypical monster slayer twins.

And there are stories that embed them with serpents and serpents that are out of control, but they are within the context of this kind of like future world.

They presented as sculptures here, but I designed them as wearables.

So I would wear and perform this work and the helmet piece is, you can't, like, this whole sensory array is hindered by the regalia itself.

So where we would perform with this work was on the land.

Like our, my primary audience is usually the land, and I document that exchange for the demand for content, you know, and the original design of it was like, let's apologize to the land from the human shaped things.

If it's not a specific human, it's all humans, you know?

And so we would wear these at extraction sites, mines, we've worn them at like brown zones and also Superfund sites where the land has been transformed by our demand from And before we do repair, I think it's really important th and that we say we're sorry.

And because you can't see or hear or anything with them, you have to feel your way across the landscape with your feet and some other sense that's in yo And the land then becomes the choreographer of its movement.

- Channupa, I want to thank you for the process, for the learning, for the mutual exchange.

And that's not done yet, - Yeah, we're done.

- And we're still evolving.

And also here at the university and beyond who are part of t I could keep asking you questions for a long time, but I wanna make sure people here have tim So what I'll say is, in a moment we're gonna switch to audience If you have questions, you'll come on down.

If you must leave, please do so quietly, quickly, and respectfully, so we'll pause for a few moments as people for questions for Channupa Hanska Luger, but let's give gratitude to Channupa.

(audience applauds) You're welcome, you're welcome.

(audience applauds) - And we will pause for a moment as people exit and we shift to Q&A.

(indistinct chatter) - No.

- Okay, folks, we're gonna start with the Q&A.

So if you happen to be exiting, could you please do so quietly?

'Cause we're gonna get started with the Q&A with Channupa.

Thank you so much, we'll start over here.

- Hi, so your work is at a very like, colossal sort of scale.

I was just wondering what sort o and like why you continue to work at such a large and like very dramatic and seen sort of - Perspective?

- It doesn't seem that way to me.

Like I could think I could go bigger.

Scale and volume and all of those sorts of things.

I think feed back to this idea of how space is taken up and the speed at we are processing information presently, I'm like, I'm a sculptor.

98% of my work is seen on a phone screen, two dimensionally, you know, so I'm like, if you get to see it in real life, see it in real life, you know, and scale is a way to amplify importance And it's also in direct response to the tiny world that we inhabit which is like eight inches away - Are you gonna try to make the giant serpent all the way across the country then?

- No, the country has - Oh, fair enoug - Yeah, I want it gone.

- Thank you.

- Yeah, thank you.

- We'll go over here.

- Hi, usually so if I stumble on this, I'm sorry.

But you spoke a a lot of this presentation was about lake ish, is like colonialist past, and it still has like a colo like in a lot of ways, just li the stocks that it holds and like, you know, arms and what's the other one?

Fossil fuels.

- Yeah.

- So I was jus this project in that like decolonization that this university is at least like claiming to attempt?

- I think attempted decolonization is the right term, you know, it's often presented as a metaphor, but what does that look like practically?

And how does practical application of decol just like a radical transformation of everything that we are inhabiting I'm, I think it's important there are a lot of people doing that sort of work and that sort of labor, but I'm kind o in imagining something different.

I don't, that's not my work, decolonization is not my work.

Like that's the colony's work, you know, and it will only make sense and be meaningful if the colony does it and separates itself from that So my gift is, can you imagine something different?

And the future ancestral technology projects are doing something that we had done from the moment of contact which is a generous gift of an alternative to the system that we have.

And so pay attention, it's temporary, the colony, and at some point, recognition and understanding that belonging to a place is actually di than colonizing a place.

There's a profound gift in that, and indigenous people from all over have been sharing that gift.

So it's a matter of listening pa ying attention different, and it's work, and it's not my work.

- Thank you so much.

- Yeah.

- I noticed that in the whitewas you didn't really whitewash at all, not the whole building.

And I wondered if yo or if it, I'm sure it's not just a coincidence that you did it that way.

- No, there were parts, I don't know if ever but there are parts that were not whitewashed on the surface of the What are all of these things?

No, it was logistics, logistics really mad And that's working with the grounds and the facilities as partners in the project.

There were areas that we weren't allowed to go.

And we could have fought for it more, but I was wondering like, is it necessary, is it necessary to go that extra level and cover the whole piece or is it enough to cover one plane, one perspective.

- But you didn't even finish all four pillars.

- I did, the what the image that you're seeing here is the clay drying.

- Oh.

- And so that the bottom of that pillar is still wet c and so when it dries it gets profoun - Okay, thank you.

- Yeah, definitely.

- Hi, I love everything that you said about the richness of the culture and who really is rich and who really is not about how much to people.

My question to you is to m working community and working mostly with minorities, is the challenge that I find in my work is reaching out to people in the Native American community here in Michigan.

I come from a place of love installations that I make and creating these connections to their stories, their wants and their needs.

But it has been incredibly difficult to make this connection with the community, Native American community.

Is there a specific way or something that that you will recommend me I do in order to be able to create these connections.

- There's like many, many different And there's many different Native American communities, You know, I think a lot of it is like research and finding the other is, there is a, you know, the Native American Student Alliance here on campus who I'm seeing in the audience.

(group laughs) Go tell her, go tell her where they're actually anc but it's also like Are we talking about the 12 tribes?

Are we talking about the, the Native American Student Association?

What groups do we want?

But I think the projects that you're do I think it is really important to talk about plur you know, when we talk about minority, we're actually talking about the vast majority, you know, and the making those connections and communicating, sharing each other's stories with one another It builds those where we are not compartmentalized as minor but actually find solidarity in our experiences.

It only makes a, a stronger connection.

Recommendations, I came in under a project from Andrea Carlson in the University of of Michigan, who already started to es So I came on with like points to engage, so I'm not the the source point to find them, but there are folks in the audience who may or may not want to talk to you, and that's also a possibility.

Yeah, yeah, smile, be generous and don't do them wrong.

- Of course, of course not.

- Yeah, yeah, we we're hard to find because we've been burned a lot and we're like, eh, I don't wa - Yeah, there is t in your Native American community don't feel like they want to get burned again or- - Yeah.

- It's be trade or in some way, or - To - Extracted, - Totally.

- Something from there fo - And it happens every time.

And we do it ourselves.

You know what I'm saying, it's like a learned process of extraction, of taking rather than givi So when you see what it's like to put more in than you take - Oh, definitely.

- Yeah.

- Perfect, t - So I really love the work that you did on top of the, sorry, in front of the AMH bu t I have a lot of, well, I don't have a I just have (all laughs) - So like, my ma I just graduated from, and so I'm really in, and I work at the UMA right now and I want to go more into museum education and like community engagement and public learning and stuff like that.

And so my question is like, because like as like a POC like I've dealt a lot with, you know, the people here.

And so it's like very like, hard for me to like, explain to like, I want people to enjoy the museum as a place of learning, 'cause it is like a cultural point.

But like you said, I have a lot of problems with the way that the museum looks.

Like I complain about it all the time, I hate it.

I think it's a terrible layout, it's inaccessible - Everybody.

- It's ter - I know.

- It's terrible.

Anyway, sorry, sorry, sorry.

So I was just wondering and you it's not your work to like decolonize it and like the colony should want to like, you know, the colony should want to separate i but like, so my question is like, how would you, like, I want to do more community organization, but I also want like to take bac like you talked about hoarding the museum hoards and like, obviously we all know that, but like how do you, like I wanna get in there, you - Yeah.

- I wanna get in the museum - You you're in.

- Yeah.

And we will not li - Yeah.

- We will die trying.

- Yes, yes, and that's something I've been talking about a lot, especially in thes about ho we're going to die trying because it's not going to be something that like, like I, sorry, there's a lot of things that r - It's not for us.

- Yeah.

- We're in we'd be accountable to that.

And your effort ma and it may feel like you are, you know, having this (indistinct) you know, boulder push up the mountain or so But you didn't do what Si You will move the mountain.

And it's that slow and gradu And you are, the fact th enough to turn away from it gives me h for my future generations, you know, the efforts you're doing today is gonna make something more be for a generation of people that I will never meet and you will never meet.

- Yeah.

- And so we' - Okay.

- And but one, one step to that, that if you want like answer, you know, I have zero but one thing that I see that's really and how do we shift our values so that we don't reinforce the museum satiating our demand.

And I think the structure of a museum, it exists.

It's a building, it inhabits space.

A lot of that space can be done, can be transformed to do a whole lot of good, a whole lot of good.

But we have it full of thin So how do we recontextualize the purpose of a museum - Yes.

- Or a building or a university?

How do we recontextualize it to satiate wha And we have to figure out what that is.

And we're slowly figuring out wh but we're all contributing a little bit, a little bit, a little bit.

So please do not let it wear yo You are, it is changing, the building is falling apart.

- Yes.

- Yeah, yeah.

- Okay, thank you - Okay.

- Thank you.

- I just know we have less than five minut - Okay.

- That's what to hear from everybody who' Maybe we just hear briefly and then Channupa, you close us out with a reflecti - Yeah, I'll try.

I'm really good at taking m and turning it into one answer.

- So we're gonna try that.

We're gonna try that with a dear- - I'm gonna stand up, I'm gonna stand up - Dear seven people, so if you can help us before the Rocky Horror Picture Show is playing nex So - Let's go, - Let's start and we'll go b and forth to hear everything with the final wor from Channupa.

- Okay, I'll I'm also and I hear a lot o and like firing clay specifically.

And I've really also thought about th And it's all very resonant and moving, and it does feel like a lot of responsib And then I also hear you talking about generosity, which is something I've been thinking about a So I guess my question is, how do you reconcile, like being who has to participate in capitalism in order to live while also trying to practice this generosity through your art practice?

- You can do both.

(audience laughs) - I recently graduated from Yale Master's course, Humble Bragg but more, the important part of this is I took a tour with someone who really knew the architecture around there, and I learned that some of the architecture that has scorch marks, they were deliberately controlled set by the architect, just so it would look like it survived a fir - Oh yeah.

- What do you think is the source of our collective c with pretending we're more ancient than we actually are?

- Because we miss belonging to place.

And so we reinforce these ideas of deep time to justify everything that we did to each other, to feel like you belong.

And that's a part of it, yeah.

- I just had a question, where do your ideas Like, do you just have like a thought one day or do you see something happening in current events and I could make like an art piece - There is no scarcity, the world is Keep your eyes open, it comes but reinforce abundance there is not an idea problem.

There is a resource problem, there is a fabrication problem.

There are other things, but it's not ideas.

- Okay.

- Yeah.

- Thank you.

- You don't have t I mean, it would be really cool to like hear the real reflection about like, - Not gonna happen - Yeah I know.

But just to connect in this I'm very curious to know about like the vul and emotion, like I could feel it when you were speaking, but I really wanted to like, it was kind of my question wi but as an artist from, you know, like when you began to call yourself an artist and like what that meant a like with the, everything you talked about, identity, fluidity, everything that you learned, how does vulnerability and emotion play into that and being an artist?

- Yeah, vulnerability just happens.

You know, it's hard to, to become callous and not be vulnerable.

And we reinforce that in all of our system As a six foot three male vulnerability is like fucking a tool.

You know, like when you see vulnerability in somebody of my gender and my size, it's actually where it may be for you.

So it's a fucking privilege an d be honest in that way that I can't understand or comprehend an alternative or a forced alternative to it.

- Thank you.

- Yeah.

- Hello, hi, so when you were talk that you let smash onto the museum floor, it got me thinking about like art and how we like, try t And the only way we do that is throu or putting in these fake Greek buildings.

And it kind of, it's difficult for me 'cause I do like museums sometimes, but it always through theft whenever - Yeah.

- So I'm guessin what are new ways and give art value, like outside of these structures?

- I think the appreciation is a huge anchor for it, regardless of the structures that we have to na or the nefarious way in which they were re the exchange that happens between you and the work.

That's the valuable thing.

The object is not the it's the That's the highest value that any of it can have, you know.

If we'd stop preserving it the way we do, then the value will go up dramatically because we're, the supply is exhausted right now, you know, so it would be interesting to see what takes the place of that and what hap - Thank you.

- I have a memory for you that I won't take time, but about the addition, because I've worked in that building right next door and everybody's been going pretty fast.

So I'll just say there were trees there where the addition is now that I - And so I- - There were trees there.

- Yeah, but I so- - Full stop - Stock, I went to the community meetings that they had about the addition.

And I can tell y did have a lot of great about having you rather than through an elevated set of steps and about students circulating through the buil - Oh yeah.

- I don't know that they've been fulfilled, but there is a history - Yeah, I will tell you no, working on this project, like every day 15 people walked up this thing s at the door and were like, oh, this is not an entrance.

- So that is an is, but to me, they completely got me, I come was like, yes, the students will But then the pena piece that's there, the question that I have for you is I was, I'm so interested in the incorporation of the Roger th e Kara Walker vase, and also t to the Lenzo sculpture that's there.

And I just wondered if you about your vision of those pieces and how you're in dialogue with them.

- It was collective, it was collec I mean, we had a bunch of object you know, gone through, but the select idea, presentation, what it means, impac all of those are what kind of distilled it down to the objects that were, were in So it was like, there was of course a thematic arc - Right.

- You know, going through recognizes the complex to all of this and participation in all of it.

And then to reduce it al They're mostly black and white, which is also mostly what so there are all of these different forms and those yeah.

- Thank you.

- Yeah, yeah - And, and finally - Yeah.

- Can you say more?

- Oh yes, that was done on the fly, the It was done on the fly as I was painting it and it felt like it was something out of context, right.

So the ellipses always holds that spot.

Plus when I first started paint or working and painting, I was doing graffiti, and the application of ellipses was just like such a hot shape and form And then I was like, oh, also I can roll that on with this little tiny roller.

And it reinforces out of conte what happened before, what happened after what will happen.

- Yeah.

- Can we thank Channupa (a udience applauds) and we hope to see you over the next few days, including for the memory and monuments open house At UMA from 12 to four on Saturday.

Thank you everyone, have a good night.

- Yes, thank you.

(indistinct chatter)