Future Ancestral Technologies: We Survive You
Cannupa Hanska Luger, 2020
Site Specific Installation for Displaced, SITE Santa Fe, Santa Fe, NM
In 2018 Luger presented Future Ancestral Technologies (FAT), the first iteration of an evolving multimedia project articulating varying future narratives in which human migration is essential for survival. Through this science fiction motivated installation, Luger challenges our collective thinking, imagining a post-capitalism, post-colonial future where humans restore their bonds with the earth and each other.
Future Ancestral Technologies: We Survive You, 2020 looks to customs in order to move forward. Expanding on the theme of human migration through a future lens, "We survive you” addresses the concept of refugee as something of the past; the coloniser has left the planet and who remains are nomadic people dedicated to the earth. The people of Luger’s imagined future have realigned with Indigenous migration practices and relearned how to follow water and to live in balance with the land by merging future technologies with ancestral wisdom.
FAT’s narrative stems from a multitude of themes, including science fiction, genetic memory, and reclaiming Indigeneity. The installation offers the viewer multiple points of entry into an undetermined future moment where a small family is in the process of setting up camp. A Repurposed Archaic Technology vehicle or RAT Rod takes center stage, this vehicle hints that it’s power source is based on photosynthesis and serves as a vessel to transport Luger’s various imagined technological devices along with regalia for ritual and ceremony with the land. From within the RAT Rod we hear a human voice, invoking the four directions with a land acknowledgement, the sound gradually intensifying as it addresses each direction. An Empathy Interface expressed through VR accompanies the people within the camp, and interprets their bond to non-human species such as with what we now call AI. Against one wall we see the materials for constructing a Transportable Intergenerational Protection Infrastructure or TIPI. Surrounding the camp is a three-channel immersive projection documenting the current environment of this migratory experience within the future landscape. This installation operates with the assumption that each component, each artwork, and each object will become customary tools in the future. From the transportable telescoping TIPI poles, to photosynthesis and solar based power sources for transport vehicles, to newly designed wearable regalia for connection back to land through ceremony, Luger utilizes science fiction theory, creative storytelling, renewable energy, and modern invention to engage the viewer in an innovative life-based art installation that dreams of survival and solutions while promoting a thriving Indigeneity.