WILD: Fabricating a Frontier

A frontier, unlike a border, represents a zone of relations where it is possible for all those involved to be affected and changed by the encounters.

JULIAN ROSEFELDT, AMERICAN NIGHT

PRESENTED AS PART OF WILD FESTIVAL
CURATED BY LISA BALDISSERA AND NATE MCLEOD (CONTEMPORARY CALGARY)
PRESENTED IN PARTNERSHIP WITH IKG

A frontier, unlike a border, represents a zone of relations where it is possible for all those involved to be affected and changed by the encounters.  This project examines and complicates frontier narratives by producing and performing alternative vocalizations of what it means to live in contested zones in settler colonial contexts—geographic, political, post-colonial, psychic, interspecies—and retain their narrative complexity. Exploring the affectations of settler colonial romanticism and its persistence in performances of the “Wild West”, this project troubles settler hegemonies and offers alternative practices of wildness.

The project further explores the frontier of “cultural zones” within urban plans by siting itself throughout the city of Calgary during the week of the Calgary Stampede and continuing into the summer months. Exploring interspecies relations, the intersectionality of the frontier, and feminist and Indigenous discourses, WILD: Fabricating a Frontier offers an incisive, humourous and rambunctious counter-telling around the campfire through a multi-venue exhibition project, film screening series, live performances, lectures, and workshops.