Working Title: Digital Art Curriculum – Fallon Simard

Where does digital art start for you?

Within the context of a digital art curriculum, the question itself propels many starting points and recalls many important images of digital art work. 

I would like to approach this question by presenting a few case studies regarding the history of photography and the moving image, the culture and value given to the printed image versus the digital image, and principles in digital art that must be widely considered by all as a starting point. In each of these considerations, I will pay attention to Anti-Indigenous racism and colonialism and offer analysis to each case study. 

Histories

In this section I will present three timelines. This includes the timeline of photography, film, and colonialism evidenced through the Canadian residential school system. 

Below is the timeline of photography by Lumas: 

Below is the timeline of film by TimeToast User Seahorse1403:

Below is a history of colonialism through a lens of Residential Schools and the law, policy, and programs that supported the schools. I chose to highlight a few dates from the timeline, including the year 1620 when the First Boarding school for Indigenous children was established and the year 1863 when the first Residential School in British Columbia was established. Both years underscore the duration of colonialism and the persistent efforts to unalive Indigenous communities through the education away from home system. From 1620 to 2022 was four centuries of colonial efforts, education and technological advancements towards digital art. The last image shows when the last Residential School closed in 1996 in Saskatchewan.

I believe the important dates in the timelines of photography and film coincide with important dates from the Residential School timelines. From the 1850s and onwards photography and video have captured colonial actions. You can see in the 1850s, photography was becoming widely used with the introduction of the collodion process and film picking up thirty years later with the first moving picture. Library and Archives Canada has a photographic collection of Residential Schools from 1885-1996. This collection is an essential visual archive illustrating colonial actions against children. Although this collection is only accessible via special requests, there are other publicly available images that document colonial actions. This includes George E Tragers‘ photography of the Wounded Knee Massacre from 1890. Although the Wounded Knee Massacre was a colonial action outside of state sanctioned systemic legal actions, the photography of Tragers illustrates how the advancement of photography became a tool to keep the colonial actions  documented, and recorded. Tragers’ photography of the Wounded Knee Massacre keeps the memory and perspective alive.

Photography was also used as a means of conveying to the Crown that assimilation and colonization tactics were working. Many governmental documents reference the below photos as proof of the schools assimilation tactics. The photograph on the left from 1874 taken by Thomas Moore from the Regina Indian Industrial School illustrates assimilation. Similarly, the photograph of Quewich and His Children taken by Brock Silversides Fonds in the 1900 illustrates the assimilation of children when they are removed from their families and communities and placed into schools. As you can see in the early 1900s and late 1800s, photography became a primary method of communicating proof and evidence to colonization throughout the North American Continent.

In 1878 the first film was made, this is 15 years after the first Residential School opened. While film was producing a whole new industry with entertainment films, colonization was continuing across the Americas. Filmic evidence of colonization is harder to come by, however, there is some that exists. In 1955, a Residential School Propaganda video emerged. Three years later, in 1958 the National Film Board of Canada commissioned an eight minute film that illustrates the treatment of Indigenous children in the Residential School System from three different areas; the film is called Off To School.

Resources:

In Defense of the Poor Image – Hito Steyerl

Residential Schools in Canada – Education Guide (pdf)

Feature image: @_cyber.ia, Working Title: Digital Art Curriculum, 2022.

Image description: A black textbook reminiscent of a ‘composition’ notebook covered in white dots. The dots become blurry as if exploding outward from the notebook. Centred within a purple background, black text reads “Working Title.” Below, text on a black background reads: “Digital Art Curriculum” in white font.

Fallon Simard’s memes and videos capture the conflicts created by colonialism, land, politics, and capitalism. The artist creates moving and still images as an embodied and visceral response to Indigenous identity that dispels current tropes of Indigeneity. Simard’s work instead investigates intensity and burden as products of injustice(s), human rights violations, and colonial violence. In his videos and memes, Simard illustrates bad feelings and harms from different Indigenous contexts to reveal new modes and effects of colonial-capital-racial policy. Simard’s work mobilizes grief, intensity, and trauma as mitigation tools to colonial-capital policy. ​He additionally creates policy recommendations into legislation, services, programs, and organizations. [www.fallonsimard.com]