I seek to find ways to generate thinking and consideration of one’s place in relation to the Land and our non-human relations using images, video and sound. I see this as a process of recording aspects of a physical experience of place to digital media and then converting this media into images, sound, light that work together as an installation to transpose experience of place into a gallery setting.Since 2013, I have been recording my human-powered activities on the land in the vicinity of my home next to the forests of Gatineau Park in Chelsea, Quebec. Over this period I have logged over 3000 activities that, when viewed over a 3D map of the area, creates a geo-contoured latticework representing my movements through the forests in all seasons. On these excursions,I often make digital images, as well as video and sound recordings that record moments in time, that can be a semblance of the environment and mood of being in that place at that particular moment. In particular, I have been interested in making digital images at night during excursions to places in the forest that I want to experience in the dark. Moving through the forest in low light or darkness requires heightened awareness and reliance on senses beyond sight. The images that I am most enthusiastic about from these experiences of being in the forest in the dark are those that are less about representation than they are about the feeling of a particular place or moment. These are the images that have captured data that is beyond human perception, stars that are not visible to the human eye for example. Or, images that I purposely manipulate by moving the camera during exposure to cause different kinds of blurring. I then select images that I feel I can push further during production by printing on different materials and surfaces.I see using digital image data as well other forms of data and materials as a way to communicate different experiences of the Land. As an Indigenous artist, finding ways to mediate the reality of our digital world to transmit an Indigenous relational experience of the Land is a away of creating deeper understanding, and perhaps a broader relational experience of the Land that we are all a part of. This softening of the hard digital binary of 1s and 0s aims toward a decolonizing of the technology and a way of creating greater awareness of the presence of the Land in all of our lives.
Biographie
Greg A. Hill
Greg A. Hill is a Kanyen’keháka member of the Six Nations of the Grand River. Currently based in Chelsea, QC, he is a multidisciplinary artist and curator and has presented his work in exhibitions and performances across North America and abroad. His curatorial work spans nearly three decades, including his post at the National Gallery of Canada as the Senior Curator of Indigenous Art where he significantly increased the visibility of Indigenous Art in their exhibitions and collections.


