Long Con with Sterlin Harjo and Cannupa Hanska Luger

Long Con: Live at SITE SANTA FE with Sterlin Harjo & Cannupa Hanska Luger, Ep 10 - October 2025

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Long Con is a series of conversations between Director Sterlin Harjo and Artist Cannupa Hanska Luger about life, art, film, history and everything in between - informally shared from the lens of two contemporary Native American artists and friends actively participating in the record of the 21st century.

SITE SANTA FE celebrated the book launch of SURVIVA: A Future Ancestral Field Guide by hosting a special conversation between the author Cannupa Hanska Luger and filmmaker Sterlin Harjo, moderated by curator Brandee Caoba. They delve into the themes explored in the book and expand into broader reflections on 21st-century Indigeneity. 

Sterlin Harjo is an award winning Seminole/Muscogee Creek filmmaker who has directed three feature films and a feature documentary all of which address the contemporary Native American lived experience. Harjo is a founding member of the five-member Native American comedy group, The 1491s. Sterlin’s latest project Reservation Dogs, is a television show created in collaboration with Taika Waititi, now available to watch on FX. 

Cannupa Hanska Luger is a multidisciplinary artist who creates monumental and situational installations and durational performance and often initiates community participation and social collaboration. Raised on the Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota, he is an enrolled member of the Three Affiliated Tribes of Fort Berthold and is of Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara and Lakota descent. 

SPEAKER_03

Hi. Welcome. My name is Brandi Kayoba and I am the curator here at Site Santa Fe. Before we begin our program today, I would uh like to invite you to join me in acknowledging our presence on the unceded land of the Tewa people. Site Santa Fe recognizes that a land acknowledgement is just one small part of supporting Indigenous people. Acknowledgement requires holding space for both the beauty and the pain of our shared histories and supporting ongoing dialogues like this one that reflect our vibrant and diverse community. We acknowledge with respect and gratitude the many contributions that Indigenous people bring to our community. And we honor those that have come before us, the plants, the animals, the people, whose resilience and survival have made it possible for us to gather here today in shared purpose and celebration. And as we look to the future, I invite you all to recognize our collective role as future ancestors and our responsibility to steward and care for this land, air, and water for future generations. So um I'm really, really um excited about today's program. Uh we're in for a treat because this isn't just any old book launch. Uh it is framed as a conversation between Chinupa Hanska Luger and filmmaker, writer, and longtime friend uh Sterling Harjo. Some of you may be familiar with their ongoing dialogue, The Long Con, a special series within the Broken Boxes podcast. And if you've listened, uh you know that their conversations are wide-ranging, honest, critical, grounded in their lived experiences and creative practices. And I'm honored to um hopefully bring that energy into the room uh today. So Survivor is a field guide for navigating this complex world. It doesn't uh follow a linear path. Instead, it's sort of like uh kind of like on the road, right? Like a Karack book where you are invited to wander through the book. You can open it at any page and be met with something meaningful. A piece of wisdom, a provocation, a poetic fragment. Each encounter both feels intentional and serendipitous. It's a book you can return to again and again, and not just for a singular narrative, but for the for the many layered nonlinear truths that it holds. So if you haven't got one, you're gonna have to pick one up. They're they're quite amazing. We'll have a book signing here after the talk. So uh Chinupa Hanska-Lugar is based in New Mexico. He is a multidisciplinary artist, cultural innovator whose work merges indigenous knowledge with contemporary art to shift narratives and foster systemic change. He is an enrolled member in the three affiliated tribes of Fort Berthold, Mandan, Hidatza, Ariquara, and Lakota. Chinupa was born on the Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota and is based here in Glorieta, New Mexico. Um I met Chinupa back when we were students together at IAIA. I think we probably first met and maybe in Karita Coffee's class or Steve Fadden's class, I'm not sure. Uh, but we I've had this like very unique privilege of witnessing Chinupa's practice transform and expand from its early stages to its current form. And as it continues to challenge and dominate uh challenge dominant narratives and reimagine contemporary indigenous art and futurisms. In 2020, Chinupa was a participating artist uh in an exhibition that I co-curated here with Irene Hoffman titled Displaced. Contemporary artists confront the global refugee crisis. Um that show opened during the, you know, like March 2020. So maybe some of you didn't see it, but it did happen. Um it was an amazing, it was an amazing exhibition that brought together 11 artists from around the globe. Um his installation, Future Ancestral Technologies, We Survive You, was a powerful early articulation of the ideas that now live inside this book that we're here to talk about, and I'm looking forward to learning more about it. So uh Sterling Harjo, we just met in the lobby for the very first time, I think. So nice to meet you. Uh Sterlin is Seminole uh Muscogee. He's an award-winning filmmaker from Tulsa, Oklahoma, a writer, a director of four feature-length films. Uh Barking Water from 2009, This May Be the Last Time, 2014, Meko 2015, and Love and Fury 2020. Um, I just recently watched Love and Fury, it's incredible. I hope you guys get to see it. Um, Sterling brings a really powerful lens to our conversation today. Many of you know him as the creator of the groundbreaking series Reservation Dogs. It's a show that revolutionized native representation on television. His storytelling journey um began at home with his family, from what I gather. I've watched many interviews. He comes from a long line of brilliant storytellers, which serves as a wellspring of inspiration for his work. He is the founding member of the native sketch comedy group, the 1491s. He is a recent MacArthur fellow and is currently shooting a brilliant episodic series, The Lowdown, uh, with Ethan Hawk that's streaming on Hulu. Um I don't know if you guys watched this. This is like amazing. I just like, yeah, I just started, so I'm kind of binge watching it. So we invited Sterling today, uh, because you know, uh Chanupa had invited him to write a little bit about Survivor the book. And um I think we're just really fortunate to have him to share his thoughts, um, not just as a filmmaker, but as a writer and a thinker and someone who knows the layered complexity of indigenous storytelling. So um our conversation today will be recorded and rebroadcast on the long con so that this moment will uh last forever and echo into the future, and you can revisit it again and again. And then lastly, a little housekeeping. Um Chanupa and Sterling and I will discuss the book. Uh then we'll open it up to the floor. I think we would love to hear some questions from you. So think of good ones. And um then we'll move to a book signing. There's a table just set up over here, and Chanupa will be here for about an hour to sign books. Um, so don't miss that opportunity uh to connect with him. And with that, I would like to invite Chinupa and Sterling to the stage. Uh he has to be in the middle.

SPEAKER_07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

I I could only hear left, so you all have to be on my left side.

SPEAKER_05

Hello. Didn't know that about you, Brandy.

SPEAKER_03

I know. It's a new development. It's uh it's all new. So um, yeah, your book. I read it.

SPEAKER_05

Why didn't I ask you for a quote?

SPEAKER_03

Exactly. I I don't even know why I I read it. Like after chapter one, like chapter one is kind of like the drop the mic on the book. It says, your wits. This is a major lesson in survival. Remember that.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah, that's pay that's page one. That was in the book, too. So that was like a a grab from it. And I had the same feeling. Once we found that lift from the book, I was like, oh. And everything else is gravy on top. Like that's it.

SPEAKER_03

We don't really need to do much more after that.

SPEAKER_05

Introduction, purpose and scope. Yeah. Your wits. This is an impressive.

SPEAKER_06

That is my quote, actually.

SPEAKER_03

It's in the sleeve way in the back. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05

Zah. He's still mad.

SPEAKER_03

I looked it up this morning.

SPEAKER_05

He's still mad.

SPEAKER_03

It's back over here.

SPEAKER_05

We were just laughing. That whole plastic part, once you guys get it, you can just throw it away.

SPEAKER_03

It's really what is your what's your quote? What did you say? Yeah.

SPEAKER_06

Yeah. My edited quote is as such. Um Survivor feels everlasting, and also like it will self-destruct after you read it. That is those are my words. But it was much longer. It was much longer and more poetic.

SPEAKER_05

No, this is poetical. It was it was beautiful. No, his his thing was epic and beautiful, and we edited it, and he was he's still mad about it.

SPEAKER_06

Philip Deloria got a real long quote. They didn't edit that one.

SPEAKER_03

Did you mean Builder status? Come on. Did you mean self-destruct, like in the sense of like Inspector Gadget, or like in the sense of like entropy?

SPEAKER_06

I think because it's kind of like a survival guide, but also one that shouldn't exist. You know, it's just sort of like um it's like full of con it's not not not con it's like a contradiction in itself, almost like um this should never exist. And with your without Chnupa, it would not exist, you know. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah, I think it was inevitable. Uh in in that same sense. But I think the self-destruction component is self-destruct. Point proven. Never mind. I take it all back.

SPEAKER_03

Okay, so I want to talk about the genesis of the book and I want to talk about redaction, right? Because redaction is often seen as a way to hide, erase, or disappear things, right? So like our current administration is working really hard to redact tons of websites of words that have reference to DEI or climate change or you name it. But in the s in the case of your book, I you've used it like an excavation, sort of like a way of revealing and peeling something back. So um talk to us about the book. Like where did you get it and how did you decide to to use this process?

SPEAKER_05

So this is the original book, and it is a fueled man a field manual, um, that's government issue. Uh Ginger actually got it back in 2017 as like a go uh like a joke gift for me. Um I'm like hard to find gifts for, you know. And because my wife Ginger is amazing, she finds them. And what she found at an army surplus store was two books. One that said survival, and the other one said booby traps. And uh they were a part of the same booby traps will be out next year. Next year, booby traps. It's literally just how to detangle like uh uh hair and uh earbuds. Uh how to uh how to uh get it get a seat on the bus. If if you make strong eye contact with everybody who gets on, nobody sits next to you. So it's like southwest flying southwest. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah, reversed reverse booby traps.

SPEAKER_03

So booby traps is your next book. Yeah. Let's just stick with survival.

SPEAKER_05

Okay, with Survivor. So this book, um I opened it up and like page five into the book, it has an acrostic, right? So it says survival down the down the pages. And um the A in survival was act like the natives. And at that point, I was like, wait, what's in this book? You know? Um I'm like, I'm still trying to figure that out. What what does that mean? Uh so I start flipping through and I come across a teepee. I come across some like um some traps that like my aunties and uncles showed me, or like how to how to how to um pluck a bird or do you know field dress a deer. There was all of this stuff, and I was like, and then plant medicine and and and uh food. Uh I was like, I feel like this whole thing is like native knowledge just recontextualized, hyper militarized, regurgitated, and presented as a way to survive. And then I started thinking about the military being in control of survival. And at that point I was like, oh, I really want to mess with this book, you know. I'm like, I'm open for a lawsuit. Like, I I want to have a precedent in which uh it says that survival is theirs, you know. Um, and I thought it was really it was really strange. So I started I I started wanting to mess with this book since like 2017.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, and I in the book you you use the the process of redaction, but you're also like kind of upcycling the weird ass images in the book. Like you've put braids on everybody. You've got to the braids were there, actually.

SPEAKER_05

I redacted everything else, and then I just had to scratch at the surface, and the braids were already there.

SPEAKER_03

They were and and Yeah.

SPEAKER_05

It was all it was all already there. The US military actually redacted the braids ahead of time. You just and then you and it was just it was like a little film, you know, little scratcher. And then the the braids came back, and I was like, oh, obviously.

SPEAKER_03

Well, this has like been a long project, you know, it's a long process. What have you learned from this process?

SPEAKER_05

Like I mean, this is my favorite. Look at the minimal amount of work that I did on this page, and this is one of my favorite page.

SPEAKER_03

Expectation and reality.

SPEAKER_05

Right. But the original page was already that, you know? And I was like, oh, I just gotta write these two words, put his braids back on, obviously, tangled up in that branch. Uh, and then uh be like, oh yeah, I'm gonna build this shelter, but you know, I'll also just sleep over under a broken tree, you know. Uh that's that that seemed accurate. Um you know who the artist was that drew this guy originally? It was never amazing. There's dozens. There's dozens. Yeah, yeah. So the illustrations and some of the text, um, this book has been revised and revised. So it's I think its first printing was in the 1950s. And then this one was the 1970s um updated version of it. But this book in particular, this Survivor catalog, I figured my dad had. He was a Vietnam vet. And I was like, oh, he got this, you know. It's amazing.

SPEAKER_06

This guy's like drawing these and just thinking, man, in the in in like decades from now, there's gonna be a native guy that just comes through and changes everything that I just did. I think this is why they left the scratchy part.

SPEAKER_05

So even the redaction component, like you can see the page, this page is the original, and this is the redaction. So that's what you're seeing on the on the thing overhead. And um all of there was like this one is don't. Oh yeah. This was the um this was the section that was under uh act like the natives. And uh it had all of these things, don't ball out or offend in front of other people. Uh yeah, yeah. There was there's just like all of these different different don'ts. And I was like, I think don't is enough. I think that's sufficient. So I just left the don'ts, and then it could happen. The important question is how. Um in this in this section, there's all of these uh I don't know. There were references to like, don't get offended to your host. Like, there is uh there's an underlying humor in Indian communities, native communities, where they're testing you, you know, and if you get offended, then they will dig in deeper, you know, and it's like don't get offended, don't da-da-da-da-da. And I was like, just don't, just enjoy it. They might help. Um, but the the redap, okay, so I had this idea, wanted to do the thing, and um I sat on it for years, and I actually eventually talked to my brother, who he's the one who showed me this technique of of um pulling pieces from the book, and he calls it lifted. And uh he his name's Eden Perlstein. I've known him since my favorite guy in the water. Yeah.

SPEAKER_06

The knowledge of the future in the box.

SPEAKER_05

That he's clutching it so hard, and you don't know if it's keeping him up or he's keeping that up. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_06

How do you maintain culture and who knows what's happening to his legs right now?

SPEAKER_05

I know. There's a chain of these, and one of them is just about art, and it is the fun one of the more humorous pages to me, too. That that's the first braid. That was the first braid, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03

How did it feel to to uh uncover those braids?

SPEAKER_05

You know what? They felt um it felt like they were always there. Like they're through the process of putting them on, I was like, oh, suddenly these guys have context, you know? I'm like, what it what are you doing over there? And I'm like, oh, uncle, fuck, didn't see you there. Didn't see you. Uh and he's like, I've been looking at you twice through the mirror. Um but it felt really good to do that component to it, but just the trajectory of the process. I sent the book to my brother, and we both went through the whole book with highlighters and found lifts. And lifts for him were within the he's a ghost writer, so he has to read people's like tomes of information and go through and help them find a book in all of it. And uh he was like, Yeah, it's totally exhausting. And so sometimes I make up this game where um he just makes up like word games as he's reading, and one of the word games is in every reproduction of writing or thought, the mechanical process, so from margin to margin, leaves uh a line that is either like incredibly poetic or sums up the entire paragraph, and you just take that one thing, and he calls that the lift. So we we made this arbitrary rule that we were gonna just redact this book using lifts. And uh uh we both went through it with highlighters, we came together, we found which ones matched, uh, and then we argued over you know one or the other, and then um, and then eventually I was like, okay, we have a thing. We took out like a hundred pages, I started doing all of the illustrations, and then all of the writing came from. And that's your handwriting. Oh, yeah. That's crazy. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03

So did they make the fonts like based on the computer made it?

SPEAKER_05

Uh the it is now.

SPEAKER_06

It should be a font. I want that font, the chernoopa font.

SPEAKER_03

The Chinupa Hanska Luger font.

SPEAKER_05

It's actually called Hanska.

SPEAKER_07

I love it.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah, yeah. And it is a font. I paid I I paid for it to be made, and it picks between I had to write the alphabet, actually, it was these weird phrases that use the entire alphabet, uh, three times. So the font actually randomizes between those three different letters so it always feels real. And then my book, the guy who was the book guy on the project's name's Jem Eskenazi, he is wild. Dude's dudes nuts. But he uh did my font, and through the process, I think he did that psych psychological like handwriting thing where you can like learn about a person. Oh, yeah, he knows all about me, he knows all about me now. So, like once we started putting the book together and turning it from you know a series of cool posters into a book that flows, uh, he was in my head.

SPEAKER_06

If I did that, like with my handwriting, it would be unreadable. Like it would be crazy. I can't believe that it looks so good.

SPEAKER_03

The hardjo font would be pretty much the hardjo font, yeah.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah, that's true. Indecipable. Yeah. Um, so that's it.

SPEAKER_03

It was like a collaborative process in a sense, and then it was like kind of combing in all these beautiful illustrations that you made. Um, as I read your book, and I don't know how you felt about it, Sterling, when you read it, I was just kind of like thinking to myself, like, how does Chinupo want me to use this book? Like, is it uh is it a tool? Is it an artwork? Is it an oracle? Is it we had a conversation earlier this week and you were like you could just flip through and and and and pull pull something out of it? Yeah. Yeah. I mean you were making I mean I've used it.

SPEAKER_05

If you're freezing cold and all you got is the book burn the book, yeah, yeah. Like it is a survival tool. Like do not be confused.

SPEAKER_06

Yeah, no kidding. But I think that's what I was saying with my eloquent post. We cut the back. I know you cut it, but like I I mean, really, like what the reason I said self destruct or like kind of guides you in the future is it can be anything you want, like it can be an Art book that you pick up and you like open to whatever page and you'll get something out of it. Or you can go from top to bottom and read the whole thing and get something out of that, I think.

SPEAKER_03

That's true. You go backwards.

SPEAKER_05

But I want to I don't have an intention for how it's how it's read. How it's read.

SPEAKER_03

But but you did have an intention in its making, right? Because you um I've heard you speak a lot about failure in conversations, but I've rarely heard you speak about success. And I just wonder, you know, how you navigate the tension between artistic success and accessibility to your work and what that, you know, how that informed this project.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah, I mean, this is a direct response to the failure of success, you know. Um the better, the more successful you get as an artist, the smaller your market is. Um, and I was watching the like, my audience is getting bigger, but like the gap between my audience and my community seems bigger and bigger, you know. Um, I'm getting invited to go to all of these places that I never got to go to before, but that means I can't go to the places where my community is, where I used to go all the time. Um, my work, I have to hold work back. I can't even afford my own work, um, let alone my like peers, loved ones, or community, you know. It's a it's a it's a strange thing. And yet this work is supposed to support in some sort of way. So this book really is a it's like the how-to future ancestral technologies exists and existed. Um and I tried to use all of the images from pieces that are no longer a part of like you can't buy them anymore, you know. Um, so I thought this was a way to create something that is like an artifact from Future Ancestral Technologies, but it's accessible, you know, and I'm like, we'll get into mechanical reproduction. And also, I'm gonna do exactly what I did with Future Ancestral Technologies, which is make something beautiful out of the waste of our present, you know, the things that are discarded. So this book, the original survival manual, is it's at Army Surplus stores, you know. You can you can you can get that. Um, and I did what I did with the regalia and with the performances and any other future ancestral technology project. I did the exact same stuff. And now, so these are just like really accessible future ancestral technology pieces that like community can get. And then in it also is how to generate your own ideas for what the future is. Like it's open-ended, and I don't really mind how you read it because it's incomplete. Like your reading, your participation in some way or another actually completes it.

SPEAKER_03

That's what that is, and that's the same as like seeing something in a museum or seeing an artwork, right? It's like you you can bring to the book or you could bring to the story like your experiences or whatever, and it it changes with time too. So it's kind of a beautiful time traveling machine.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Redact the the new copy, put put your own stuff in it, you know. Use some of the it, you know. I did a lot of um uh silhouetted pieces of some of my work, so it's kind of like open on the inside. I'm like, draw your own characters. I drew in mine. Did you? Good, good. Yeah, yeah. I and I and I think that's like, you know, uh also a part of it being generative.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

Are the are all the illustrations in the book taken from other artworks that already existed, or are some of them new characters?

SPEAKER_05

No, they're all they're all from existing work. It's it's funny too because I tried to make them seem like sketches of those works, and I never do sketches before I make anything. Um so that it's like uh I'm I'm like really fucking with the timeline, you know. I'm like, oh yeah, no, this is that those people they had this book, they needed space to maintain cultures, so they redacted all of this other space to to make new illustrations to generate future ancestral technologies culture people. And uh, and so it's all like retroactively sketched for application in in the world. Yeah. This one this was probably number two with the braids, and uh that one did feel like, oh yeah. Of course. Get down from there, Uncle. I can see it fine from here.

SPEAKER_03

I had a good time uh thumbing through the book, and I for the talk I just like kind of pulled out different ideas that that really struck me. And and and one of the ideas in the book is um inspiration comes through observation. Uh on page 76. And uh you know, I've always considered, I mean for me, I've always considered artists to be like the indicator species of our cultural ecosystem. Uh we're kind of like the cultural antenna tuned into the subtleties of of the world, right? The contradictions, the tensions, the beauties, the transformations. Um and I think that that that sensitivity, I think it comes through paying attention, right? Paying attention to uh social or political climates, paying attention to the natural world, paying attention to what's happening around us. So um just kind of like to both of you, like how does observation play a role in your creative process and how did it play a role in this in this particular project? Or did it? You didn't pay attention at all.

SPEAKER_05

I didn't pay attention at all in this one. Um this one was easy. This was a real easy one. Uh no, I I think paying attention is important, but I I would even like, you know, I would ext I would say the most important place to pay attention is like where you're at right now, you know? Um, how you move through space, like how you do your dishes, you know. All of those like little there's there's moments for incredible clarity in the immediate, like what's happening around us, and paying attention to the people in the room with you. Like, what are they talking about? All of this sort of stuff. I mean, this guy. I'm like, Stern.

SPEAKER_03

I mean, this is like a great conversation for you because I mean this is a conception.

SPEAKER_06

Let's turn it into it. I'm figuring it out my place. Uh do you want to sit middle? I think we can do it. Maybe we can trade at different times, you know. Um, no, I mean observation is so like I mean, I'm a crazy person because that's all I do, you know.

SPEAKER_03

Like you just creep.

SPEAKER_06

Yeah, and it makes me like have to like rethink trying to just be a regular human. Like, like if I go to like um if I like I was talking to a therapist not long ago, and I was like, whenever I go to like a thing, like say it's like a um if it's if there's a lot of people, you know, like let's say it's a carnival or whatever, um, I I can't function like a normal human being. It's like it's like the the receptors are just like in overdrive and I'm like paying attention and to all human, you know, emotion and embodiment and and and characteristics, you know, because I think as a writer, that's where it just it's just like filters through me, and I'm just constantly like grabbing things from the air of the people that I observe or things or interactions or whatever, and it just like kind of like a sponge and it goes into the characters that I write. So um I wish I could shut it off a little more.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, I think there's drugs for that.

SPEAKER_06

Yeah, I try not to take drugs, but it's just teasing.

SPEAKER_05

I actively act extra weird about around Sterling. Yeah, trying to get trying to get into his movies or TV shows or something. I know, like how he has been in my movies, but it is inauthentic how I act. Yeah, yeah. He's looking for subtle.

SPEAKER_06

I followed him to Europe once in a movie. You should watch Love and Fury. It's it's really cool.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah. It is cool. Um, so okay, intelligence as an extension of nature. And I kind of went like a little bit nerdy with this one and pulled in some Robin Wall Kimmerer, because she's rad, and she wrote this book called The Service Berry. And in the and in her book, she says the practice of observing the living world and taking inspirations for human ways of living from its model is an essential element of indigenous science. It embraces the reality that there are intelligences other than our own from whom we might learn. And so, you know, kind of moving forward with the first question like, how does your practice reflect the idea of learning from the intelligence of the natural world?

SPEAKER_05

Well, I was gonna put that ex those almost those exact same words in my book, but she got me to it, so I just was like real succinctly.

SPEAKER_03

So you're like intelligence is an extension of nature.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah, I was like, all right, distill, distill, distill.

SPEAKER_03

But I mean, you know, are there are there particular are there particular like processes or materials? I mean, also you, Sterling, like you you're collaborating as a choreographer, like you collaborate with nature quite regularly, I think, in your film. You know, you're using the landscape or or whatnot. I mean, how does it Hi Hi, you're here It's your turn. Looking at me. Um collaborating with nature, could you just like Yeah, just kind of talking about like you know, uh collaboration uh with a more than human knowledge. Like, how does do you do you do that in your work? And Shanupa, obviously you create through destruction, right? Like I think that like future ancestral technologies in a sense is like a a body of work that was that was born from the idea that well I think also, I mean, that idea, you I it's succinct, it's whatever. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05

It's like you're all we're all doing it, we're all doing it all the time.

SPEAKER_03

Like how?

SPEAKER_05

Uh remember when we uh were alive in the planet Earth? In that process, we have been celebrating natural intelligence, you know. Um our our follies, our successes, these are all a really long game of continued like intelligence, you know. So I I don't know.

SPEAKER_03

I I I I I only asked that question because I think that the book itself, through the process of redaction, is just uncovering all these intelligences that already exist, but is kind of like in the darkness, which kind of leads to like another question that that I'd love to ask is um on on the on page 207. Oh yes. Uh you uncover a simple phrase, right? It's just super simple. It's through the center of the center of the book, and it says, complete darkness is your best medicine. Wear your sunglasses. And so I'm just wondering, like, as artists and as thinkers, it was in the book. It's in the book, I mean it was there. He just like redacted was like, I don't know how you pulled that out. It was amazing. But as artists and thinkers, how do you relate to that idea? Um, that darkness or uncertainty or even rupture can be medicinal.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

And then more, and then also kind of riffing off of that, like, what kind of tools or sunglasses are you wearing, you know, to navigate the intensity of the clarity that comes when you find it.

SPEAKER_06

Okay, we can Yeah. You start. It's big. It's big. I wear real sunglasses. He wears real sunglasses.

SPEAKER_05

I'm like, I have deep setups.

SPEAKER_06

There's also there's metaphorical sunglasses, there's you know both.

SPEAKER_05

Put both on. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Um for me, that line popping out and through the process of redaction, and something we talked about earlier is like this point in history that we're at, we're just like onslaught of information, right? Like, this is so much, and everybody's putting their best foot forward, and it's they're they like don't do anything with that foot. Uh, you know, that foot they keep in glass, you know, and make sure that it's the remains the best foot to present. Um and then you're onslaught by everybody's best foot. And I'm like, dude, show me that show me the foot that you're hopping around on.

SPEAKER_06

Gnarled foot. The gnarled foot.

SPEAKER_05

Bring that busted foot that's keeping your good foot clean, you know, forward. Um but nobody will, and nobody does.

SPEAKER_06

So with the So that foot works well, another foot is being injured, is what he's saying. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_05

Exactly. Exactly. Your best foot is screwing up your.

SPEAKER_06

I mean, Chinook and I like constantly sort of ask and talk these heavy questions. That's why we had to start doing a podcast because we're wasting it. Yeah, just with the knowledge that we had, you know, it's just like we would put our sunglasses on, everybody. But we would talk a lot, and like I mean, like he would pick me up from like the airport or something, and you know, we would be exhausted of each other by the time we got back because we're going through stuff as artists and seeing what other artists are doing and putting out. And the I think that the obstacles that you face as artists, and then the more obstacles you face as native artists, and then surviving those obstacles, and it's just kind of this whole thing. Um, and that chair really threw me off. I was like early going. But that's an obstacle that I'm gonna survive. I'm just kidding, I'm just joking. And uh no, and um so we started this podcast to kind of talk about this stuff, and um, you know, I think it's an ongoing conversation of navigation and survival that uh you know that we na we keep we keep engaging in, you know.

SPEAKER_03

But I also think like complete darkness could be many like it's metaphorical. So it could be also like just like unplugging, yeah. Unplugging from like this nightmare that we all exist in.

SPEAKER_05

Well, and also accepting like we are on a sphere. It is hurtling through space. There is daytime, there is nighttime.

SPEAKER_06

Hey, dude, it's not all not we don't all believe that.

SPEAKER_02

Some of us believe touche.

SPEAKER_06

Touche Some of us believe we're on a boat.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_06

With spirits and what you know.

SPEAKER_05

That's true. Okay, it's a boat as well hurdling through debris. In in I in in any way that you present it, night and day happens, right? Right? Like night and day happens. And we are exhausting our planet, so we have day all the time, and we're you know, showering ourselves with the uh illuminations, everybody's illuminations. So there is power in the darkness, and that darkness can be rather than something to be feared, or it can be it could be sanctuary, it could be a hideout, it could be the only place you got to survive the day is the night, you know?

SPEAKER_06

Yeah, I mean, whenever you say darkness or what I take from it is um something that I've kind of like it's always been my like as a young filmmaker, it was always my philosophy. I I was just like kind of constantly seeing these films that showed um native life as super positive, you know, and super happy. And like, you know, and like you would see these films.

SPEAKER_02

What movies did you watch, dude?

SPEAKER_06

I mean, I'll I'll send you a lit I'll send you a list. Um anytime that there was something that like, and maybe it wasn't movies that were watched, but it was what what people were trying to make. Yeah, you know, uh, but there are some films out there that you're like, you know, there's no way that this is a native house that you're filming, you know, whatever. All that to say, I mean, with reservation dogs, um my whole thing was like, no, we have to show the darkness because it makes the light so much more impactful, you know, when you do that. Like those two things don't exist with each other. And if I'm not talking about, you know, like one of the big things that we talked about in reservation dogs was suicide in our communities, and it's something that kind of is something that can be taboo or not talked about. And the whole point was like, no, we have to talk about how it affects people in our communities because we are faced with it, and sometimes in high numbers, and you have to let people know that they're not alone, they are not in darkness, but you have to kind of get to the darkness to tell that stuff. And with the lowdown, I'm doing the same thing, I'm just doing it for a smaller community in Tulsa. You know, it's like you have to show this darkness to sort of get to the light. So for me, when you say darkness, like that's what I, you know, that's that's how I've worked my whole life is like trying to not be afraid to flinch and show not not being afraid to show the darkness, I guess.

SPEAKER_05

And I'm pretty sure that's what the original um writers of the field manual meant when they put that line in there. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_03

Absolutely meant that.

SPEAKER_05

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_03

And you know, I was actually as we're talking, I was thinking about uh uh Raven and Jeffrey Gibson did a piece a few years ago called A Warm Darkness. And it was kind of like about this, really. It's about the darkness being a source of uh a generative place rather than just like this underbelly or this the scariness. It's like a a warm place. But maybe this is getting too goth.

SPEAKER_05

Well, no, I would say never too goth. It's never too goth. Um let's talk more about darkness. I'm gonna go grab my black jacket. Hold on a second.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, you need to change your outfit.

SPEAKER_05

Um the the uh the process of redaction as well creates a darkness, right? Like this is it in there is a way in which not seeing actually allows your imagination to bloom, right? And so this book coming out at this point in history, like you had mentioned before, with the redaction within you know, DEI, critical race theory, all of these kind of like different things happening where for the first time we as a nation began to address the pain that this nation had caused, and it's the only way to heal from that pain. And and it was made visible. It was omitted until and then it was made visible, and then the making it visible threatened certain people, and that threat they decided to redact because they can't omit anymore. So now it's just all you can get is a is a redaction, and to me, I'm like, oh, redact you fool. I'm like, you have no idea what is true behind a redaction. I'm like, I have seen redacted, I'm like, where the UFOs, you know, whatever. Like I've seen redacted uh uh uh papers, and in those redactions, I it's everything. I'm like, oh dude, right there. That's that's the point in which a unicorn flew through the air, you know, uh lance somebody, you know, like it can be anything. And so this idea of complete darkness being your best medicine, what I'm really trying to generate, not just with survivor viva, but with future ancestral technologies, is that we can imagine something better than our present. And and the redaction allots anybody to fill in that that space. Take your medicine, wear your sunglasses. This guy gets it.

SPEAKER_06

He doesn't wear them outside, interestingly.

SPEAKER_05

No, he doesn't. Looks right at the sun.

SPEAKER_03

Consider all the things we've developed synthetically, and yet their materials are all birthed from the same stars. We don't make leaps unless we need to. To conceive something is to put it into motion. What uh what are you conceiving of right now? Both of you. Right now? Right now, like not like in your creative practices now. Like maybe in this moment, but like I'm not sure we want to know.

SPEAKER_05

Well, this is a part of it. It will find it. Conceived with tacos.

SPEAKER_03

It's just like hungry.

SPEAKER_05

Share. Share. Uh yeah, what do you work what are you what are you working on? Maybe it's not the point of yeah, maybe it's conceiving.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, it's conceiving puts it in emotion. It's like I'm not like manifest it. So I mean the documentary, of course.

SPEAKER_06

Um, you know what I have a I have a thing where I do TV. Like I never thought I would be a TV person. Like I never I watched a lot of TV. Uh I thought I never thought I would be making TV. Um, but TV was a place where a native filmmaker could go and they didn't care about you having to have Tom Cruise in the lead. And so I could make reservation dogs. So I just found my way pressing into television world. Um, that also means you have to tell a longer story, um, which I'm pretty good at. And but I didn't want to I don't I'm not one of these like there's TV people that's all all they want to do, and they just want to tell one story for 10 years. I can't do that. I mean, I ended Reservation Dogs after three seasons. Um, I feel like that was a good spot to end it. Uh, I'm not gonna take the loadout into 20 years, what have you. Um, just not. I have other things that I want to work on, so I kind of have to navigate television and expectations and also um, but I have gained this like respect for that world, and I there's a uh I want to shoot something in New Mexico actually, and um there's uh I want to do a funny Western because there hasn't been like a Western, like a little big man or something, like especially from like native perspectives and stuff. And um, so that's what I'm literally writing this week. Um, and that's what I hope to do. I'm also uh you know, kicking around a season two of The Lowdown. I'm also um I want to do more documentaries. Love and Fury, the documentary. I was my friend Dave, I showed him the trailer for it last night, and I was like, man, I really want to like do an update of this. It's been five years. I it'd be cool to like go back to all of these artists and like film them currently what they're doing, because everything's changed. I mean, like, everything's changed. That was like pre pandemic, like everyone's practice. Has changed. You know, there's new artists out there.

SPEAKER_05

It's been five years since it's been shown.

SPEAKER_06

Yeah, not five years since we shot it. Right. Yeah. I know. That timeline's crazy. Yeah. And so yeah, I mean, there's all of those things. I want to make other documentaries. I like making documentaries. I have a feature film that I am collaborating with Tommy Orange on and that I hope to make this year. Or next. It's just the TV thing navigating that. Yeah, there's just a lot of things I like doing. I also like not doing, you know? The darkness. I like I'd like to not do some things for a while. That's the darkness. Yeah, that sounds amazing.

SPEAKER_03

It's your best medicine.

SPEAKER_05

Exactly. Not doing. Well, it's it, I mean, it is also weird, right? Because there's like the timeline in which people see the work that you're working on, and then there is my wife in the back of the room going like this to me. What is that?

SPEAKER_06

What does it mean? Oh, put the mic up to keep the mic right.

SPEAKER_05

Oh, yeah. She works in audio engineering. She works in audio engineering. For the benefit of everybody. You are right, Ginger. This is not about me. You are absolutely right.

SPEAKER_03

Projects, I want to talk about buffaloes.

SPEAKER_05

Oh, that's right.

SPEAKER_06

Sherlin's why I'm here on the stage.

SPEAKER_05

We invited him to limping. You two are like both holding me up through the whole thing. Okay.

SPEAKER_03

I want to hear about your Buffalo Monument.

SPEAKER_05

Oh, yeah. We're we're we're about yeah. I'm so there's a thing that I'm that I'm in the works um conceiving of, but also I was aware that I it can't be my idea. Um I wanted to this is your idea, but it can't be your idea, is what you're saying. Exactly.

SPEAKER_03

Like do you need more community? That's a community project. Yeah. Okay.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah. Okay, you guys get it. You all but what is it?

SPEAKER_06

Email the idea to me. I'll steal the idea.

SPEAKER_05

I know. He's gonna make a documentary. We'll talk about it later.

unknown

God.

SPEAKER_05

He's a thief.

SPEAKER_06

That's what I'm here for. Comic relief, everyone. That's why I'm on this stage.

SPEAKER_05

I'm I'm I'm so I pitched making a war memorial to bison. Um, and it's like survivor's guilt, right? Like I I I sit in this position, I have privilege, I'm alive, and I know that their annihilation had a lot a lot to do with my survival, you know? Um and all of ours. Um today, let alone the last two hundred years. Um so I wanted to do a war memorial for them because Buffalo were the only like non-human combatant that the US um literally sent uh a military effort towards. What and this was in Paladuro Canyon in uh right outside of Amarillo in Texas. And um also their annihilation was literally a war of attrition against my peeps in the middle of the country. And so I wanted to get the general population to understand the scale of that loss to a scale, like it's incomprehensible. So it is oh, I have a few visuals to help you try to understand it. We're talking between like uh 30 and 60 million buffalo uh circa eighteen twelve, uh and by eighteen ninety-five there was fifteen hundred. Right? So pretty fast, pretty brutal, sis systematic annihilation. Um I did some calculations. A buffalo skull, let's make a um a leap and say that the volume of a of a buffalo skull is one square foot. And it's uh slightly larger than that that, but let's say it's one square foot. The Empire State Building is or one cubic foot, excuse me. The Empire State building is thirty-three million uh square feet. So possibly double just the skulls. You know? So I'm trying to figure out how to make a memorial that allows us to comprehend that loss because it's too big, and the only ruler we can use because the numbers are too great, is our bodies. And so I'm trying to figure out how to do that, but that's too big. So I'm like, what do you do? Do you do you lay two Empire State buildings down on the ground as a huge mound and allow people to walk amongst it and recognize that this was all just the heads of the buffalo? What land? Where do you do that? Do you have to extract more material to do this sort of thing? What else is displaced in the process? So this is why I'm saying I had an idea, but I don't think it should be my idea. And so we s we we we pitched this and we got some support to actually go and meet people in uh who are working with buffalo matriation, um, people who are working with buffalo as as food, people who are working with buffalo as a as a ag business, people who are doing strictly ecology programs, bringing bison back um in that sense. And we're trying to build a network and a web of all of these kind of like disparate uh different groups, um both native and non-native, to actually consider what it should look like, where it should be. And you know, there's a part of me that's like what is what would what would a buffalo want as a as a monument, you know? Um and so that makes me think of like an easement, you know. I'm like, can we generate an easement that runs from the Yukon all the way down to Mexico? Like if if buffalo are a technology, their movement, they are literally a biodiversity engine.

SPEAKER_03

But they're amazing. Right. Like the just the fact that they could like sow seeds through their migrations and and these, you know, the grasses would grow and if you and you know that the how it connects into the the whole thing.

SPEAKER_05

And if you could become one of the largest biomasses on terrestrial earth and not destroy the place, I'm like we should learn something. Yeah, take note, you know. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, exactly. Biodiversity engine. Consider nature's intelligence. That's right. Yeah, yeah. That's why you wrote it, right? That's why I wrote it, actually. About buffalo. Yeah, good segue. Thank you.

SPEAKER_07

And what do you think about buffaloes? I love buffalo. You're thinking about buffalo. They are rad.

SPEAKER_06

Really? I have nothing to add to that. I don't know about the project. It sounds fascinating. If I have any ideas, I'll shoot them at you. Yeah, yeah. Uh it won't just be your idea, you know. Uh I like the easement. I like the easement, you know. Uh I like the Empire State Building idea.

SPEAKER_05

Um yeah, just calculations. Um, it's funny.

SPEAKER_06

I also like a giant skull would be amazing, you know? They're gonna make a skull, like a building. Don't make it like a, you know, it can't look like a square.

SPEAKER_05

Well, you know what got me on this on this track was seeing those sapia photographs of bison skulls. And so I saw those growing up. I'm sure every native person in here had seen them, and they always felt like a show of force. You know, I was like, damn, what the fuck? And then as I got older, I was like, This country doesn't do anything without a dollar behind it, and that's work stacking skulls. And so I was like, Who stacked those skulls? I started following the money of that, and it opened up so many different channels that were not a part of the general narrative of what happened to Buffalo, you know? It's like, yeah, uh, overhunting, and I'm like, Yeah.

SPEAKER_06

Why? The outdoor world right now really likes to place blame back on natives for overhunting buffalo. Absolutely a war waged, you know. Um, and you can go down any sort of I I hunt, so like I listen to hunting podcasts sometimes, and everyone really likes to change that narrative. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05

Actually, one of the books that I read for my research was Steve Renella, yeah. Steve Renella, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03

What's that book?

SPEAKER_06

It's called American Bison.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And in there he had a couple of um he had a couple of letters that he scrounced up on his research thing that was like, uh uh, I think it was from this. I did so much research, I can't remember, but I remember coming across these letters, and it may have been in that book, but it was the amount of buffalo bones along the train tracks was so great that it was actually inhibiting western expansion. And there were these series of letters where people were like, We have left St. Louis and on our way to Denver, and we look out the window, and as far as the eye can see, it seems as though it is a winter's frost, and yet it is June. Buffalo bones litter the grasslands for as far as the eye can see.

SPEAKER_07

Wow.

SPEAKER_05

We shall be returning, you know. And there was like another one that was like, We have traveled into the valley of death.

SPEAKER_06

And there's another great book out that Chinoopa actually turned me on to, which is called Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones. Wow. It's a vampire. It's great.

SPEAKER_03

Anything vampire's good. Uh, we've been given the five-minute sign. So I wonder um how you're feeling. Do you feel like we could do a few questions? So I hope you all have been this audience has behaved and thought of some really good questions for us. I can jump down. Or does anybody back there want to help with questions? I said yeah. No? I said no. Nope. All right, I'll do it. Sterling said no. No, Sterlins are gonna do it, but I'll wait for questions. Let's go.

SPEAKER_06

Yes, we're gonna have one.

SPEAKER_03

I think we can do a few, and maybe we pass the mic around. And yeah, Romario's gonna help us out. Cool. Thank you.

SPEAKER_05

Oh, thank you.

SPEAKER_04

Hi there. Uh my name's Brian Johnson. I'm a member of the Monacan Indian Nation. Um, we exist in Central Virginia. I want to thank you all for hosting, Sterwin, for your work, for the podcast, for being on television and dignizing a very colonial space. Chinupa, I have a question or two questions for you. So, as an individual that exists in the publishing world, there are very, very few natives. One, um, thank you for collaboratively talking about Jem. He also helped our studio Polymode also make a typeface with XYZ type. Oh, dude, he's amazing. Within that space, there are very few indigenous people that make typography. If you could sell that so that other designers could use it, so they could use a typeface made and designed by an indigenous person, that would be great. It's not really a question, just kind of kind of setting a fact. Yeah, just buy it. I'll sell it. Please let's just make it affordable so that indigenous like designers can get out there and use it because it makes you feel better knowing that this was made by one of us. Yeah. It's just a great feeling within a very small design community. About the book.

SPEAKER_05

How is the handwriting? Everybody says I have nice handwriting. It is cool. It's really legible. I mean, I'm not sure. It's delightful about everything. It's really nice.

SPEAKER_04

It's easy, legible. It's not Comic Sans, like it's human, it's approachable.

SPEAKER_06

It's like in between the Simpsons and like something that's great.

SPEAKER_05

That's me. I grew up in between the Simpsons and something great.

SPEAKER_04

So about publishing in the book itself. In the publishing world, you know, based in big cities, there's power behind publishing. There's truth in publishing and having money behind that. What power were you given in choosing how the book was printed, how it was made? Did you have any joys or challenges? Because you also made a joke about, yeah, just take the cover off. We have to tell a lot of you know, museums and cultural institutions don't print a cover. People just throw it away. Were you given how, like, was it FSC certified? Oh, yeah. Allowed to make it recyclable. Like, was that like what was the impact on the environment for that work? I would just love to know what kind of allowance you were given because some individuals and especially indigenous people aren't given those parameters. We are told this is the size of the book, this is the price it's gonna be. Yeah, what did you sort of do? That's 18 questions you just asked. I was counting. I was counting. I'm a I'm a lot, sorry.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah, moving on to the thing. Yes is the answer. Yes is the answer. Next question. Yeah. I had a lot of agency in creating this book, but I also brought funds. I I received a grant in order to it, and that's who I pitched it to. So once I even found the publisher, I already had fuel behind its production. Um, I already had the idea, and it was already it had to be like the book. Like, here, I'm gonna I'm gonna get a new one. I'm gonna grab the OG.

SPEAKER_03

Oh, yeah. There you go.

SPEAKER_05

So, same scale. I was like, I need it to be like a pocket piece. I need it to be like um all of the plastic component on the outside came really late. Uh, most of the design on it is gems work, like being in my mind and being like, okay, we gotta do a thing. But all of the um barcodes, all of the um the uh blurbs, the production stuff, all of that could go on that jacket. And I was like, what I actually wanted was this. I wanted this plain Jane, like commodity foods, government issue, minimal presentation, you know. So this was like the compromise, and I and I thought it was really beautiful, but it was um literally it does sleeve it in a preciousness. It sleeves it in a preciousness, but my my ultimate goal was like stick it in your pocket, leave it in the sun, yellow it, you know, like uh take care of it by using it, you know. Um but I had a lot I had a lot of agency in that. Alm almost maybe too much agency, which is why working with Eden and Jem was really helpful because they could uh direct my agency towards how to actually do a book, you know. Cool.

SPEAKER_02

Anyone else have a question?

SPEAKER_05

But handska. One in the back, ginger, let's make it available.

SPEAKER_02

I want the font. I want the font.

SPEAKER_05

Let's figure out some sort what's that?

unknown

Reefer native.

SPEAKER_05

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. I was gonna just say that. Like, how could we get uh a big reefer native movie?

SPEAKER_06

Yeah, reefer.

SPEAKER_05

Reefer madness is what she said in the back. She doesn't even smoke weed. I don't understand. Um no, but a way to make it free for native communities would be dope. Uh free for native.

SPEAKER_07

Reefer native. I really thought it said reefer native.

SPEAKER_05

Free. Sorry, question.

SPEAKER_01

That was that was the best intermission one could possibly hope for. Um so I was wondering what other birthday gifts you've received that you've arded over.

SPEAKER_05

There is nothing in my house that is not material. Um so I don't even know. Actually, you I have I have a few gifts that that stick. Um Is there anything else that you got me that I just turned around and sold to somebody else? Oh. I made you some gifts. I also made you buy some work, too. Yeah, both. Um yeah, I don't know. There's all sorts of when I think of birthday gifts like the ones that stick and last, I have one that my mom made that's still in my studio to this day, and it is a piece of two by four, uh, cut about, I don't know, eight inches, eight, nine inches. Uh, and it says my name. It just says Chinupa, and it's got like this cool kind of like fire paint on it. And it was from 1981. I was born in 79, and I remember we had some lean years, and I remember that was uh I remember that Christmas being a lean year Christmas, and I'm like, that's I'm like the I don't know where my ninja turtles are. I I you know I don't know where any of these other things that I really truly wanted, but the the thing that I had no idea actually is the gift that that still is in my studio to this day. Piece piece two by four.

SPEAKER_06

My dad's pretty good at gifting. Uh he always like like if he doesn't have anything, he'll write you a letter, uh, which is great. But he's given me the same knife multiple years in a row. Uh I don't know how he got it back.

SPEAKER_03

Maybe he got like a 12-pack.

SPEAKER_05

Wait, like the same knife.

SPEAKER_06

The same exact knife I've gotten from him twice at least. And he's like gifted to me in the whatever. Like, I don't I didn't say anything, but like I'm like, I got this last year or two years back, I think.

SPEAKER_05

But then you go look for it and it's gone, and it's literally the same.

SPEAKER_06

I don't know if he steals it and like repackages it or not.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah. Appreciate that knife.

SPEAKER_03

Okay. Um Ginger has a question. Ginger has one back there.

SPEAKER_06

She's not allowed to.

SPEAKER_00

I just have a quick question. Um, if you guys would talk briefly about um LongCon, the podcast, and like where it's coming into, like it was hosted and produced under Broken Boxes, but that's kind of dissolving as an entity. Um, and now LongCon is taking on its own form. What are you guys dreaming for that? And how how is that going to shape between Sterling and Chanupa?

SPEAKER_05

I mean, do you want me to say honestly, I'm really relying on you to do that for me?

SPEAKER_06

Should we say just come up here and answer your own question?

SPEAKER_05

You you she buried the lead on it. That's Ginger, the host of broken boxes.

SPEAKER_06

That's what she does to us when we're doing the long comedy. Totally. She like kind of like listens in and like tells us what we're not doing. Yes.

SPEAKER_05

Thanks for those are some broken boxes t-shirts, gratis from from broken boxes.

SPEAKER_06

Um broken boxes, long con.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah. So we started doing this, and it was like an extension of broken boxes as the pot the podcast. It's pandemic days. Yeah. And I think it was, you know, it's built into this like, okay, you have successes. Who do you get to talk to? As your as your community depletes, right?

SPEAKER_06

You know, it's like who your circle disappears.

SPEAKER_05

And you know how ridiculous it is to like bitch about your success to worst.

SPEAKER_06

So we started vi so we started recording it and giving it to everyone.

SPEAKER_05

Exactly.

SPEAKER_06

Yeah. No, but when we get together, it's kind of like, you know, uh both of us travel, both of us have kids. Um, both of us navigate home and our practice, our community, having to navigate and figure out like how you feel about putting art out through corporate entities that didn't, you know, you know, really you're just making it for home, but it's gotta take this long trip so more people can see it. And you know, and then the pressures and expectations and all of that. It's a it was a platform for us to do that, and we sort of naturally do it together anyway. So we just started recording it, and I think Ginger recognized that.

SPEAKER_03

You do it like now that it's uh broken boxes is dissolving and and the long con is emerging as more you know regular. Is it going to be regular? Are you or is it just still kind of have this organic, like when you two intersect?

SPEAKER_06

Sure, it's organic stuff. Yeah, yeah. What do you can't like as soon as as soon as you make it regular, he and I will be uninterested and like stop doing it.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It'll and I think with that also, um, like when we come together to talk, it's not because we're putting out a podcast, it's because I actually need his help, you know, or vice versa. And and I and I'm hoping that that somehow comes through on the on the podcast. Or we're like in a room with somebody else who are like, oh yeah, this person also has got some contributions to the whole conversation, you know. Um, but yeah, so uh broken boxes um was you know, did its thing and it's Ready to just inhale and take that uh well-earned um moment in the darkness. Uh and uh so ginger's putting her sunglasses on, and we're gonna hold a little bit of space within that same platform because it started there, so that there is access to you know all of those people who know of the archive that is broken boxes, but then that there will be newer content, and it's just kind of like a way to unburden that and actually present something else that's actually beneficial and helpful to both of us, and then hopefully through that to other people facing similar circumstances.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, so uh for those of you that have never heard the Broken Boxes podcast, it's one of my most favorite podcasts, it's incredible. Um, it is available online, so you can find it there. And through the broken podcast platform, I assume that you can find the Long Con uh links and uh link to this show today. So if you want to revisit it, um you can. And I think that unless um unless you guys have anything else you want to add, Sterling does go do it. No, no, I'm good.

SPEAKER_02

No, no, really. I don't yeah, just cool.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, I think I think we'll I think we wrap it up.

SPEAKER_05

Okay. Uh I want to add one thing.

SPEAKER_03

Okay.

SPEAKER_05

Putting together a book is like um a curatorial process in some way, shape, or form. Prove it. Um I took a bunch of other people's stuff, mashed it all together, and made a new story that people say, what is this about? Didn't pay them for it. So bring you back into the conversation at the end.

SPEAKER_03

Please do.

SPEAKER_05

Since you're rocking the survivor red and black, I tried to mimic it.

SPEAKER_03

I mean, come on, you guys.

SPEAKER_06

I should have grown more red.

SPEAKER_03

It's intuitive. And the darkness is where that ends.

SPEAKER_05

Would you could you make a a general statement at the end that uh supports or makes contrary my last statement?

SPEAKER_03

About the curatorial process?

SPEAKER_05

Yeah, and it being book like or you know, the creative component to cure curation.

SPEAKER_03

Sure. Um Yeah, I think that there's truth in your statement. But I but I also think no, I think there's absolute truth in your statement because what you're saying is um your methodology as a curator for this particular book was taking a lot of different ideas and putting them together to create a different experience or a different story. And I and and and essentially I would take it even further, like to hold a space for for knowledge, right, for dialogue, for exchange, right? Whether it's internal or external with other people. Um so I think that, you know, when I'm exhibition making, I'm definitely thinking about those things, thinking about like um I I see exhibitions as porous structures that are living entities that um continue to shift and change depending on who's reading the book or who's visiting the exhibition and how much time uh is in between because time does its own thing to everything. Um so you have no control over that. Um and so I think that you know it's it is interesting to parallel those things, and I think that it's totally spot on that you you could say that. But I think most of the work that is included in this book is actually your your work, and most curators don't put their own work in their shows.

SPEAKER_05

Yeah, but uh it's mostly it's mostly words.

SPEAKER_03

I'm just rapping you. But but yes, um yeah, I'm just doing yeah.

SPEAKER_05

Well I'm not a curator, I am a daisy-handed artist, self-promoting, best foot for word. Yeah, I like the gnarly foot. The good foot. The good foot.

SPEAKER_03

But no, I think it's I think it's a good analogy.

SPEAKER_05

Well, and and and uh just to close everything out, like we're all hyper-relevant on on social media.

SPEAKER_06

The rest of us.

SPEAKER_05

The rest of us, you know, like uh just to mess with the illusion of individual individualism, you know, like we need each other so bad. Um and and we put our big beautiful foot forward, trying not to scare anybody away, you know. So I'm like not hating on it. I totally understand it. Um, but I think it's important that we recognize our each e each of us up here. Like we we work in community. We all have a jacked foot. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03

Anyway, no, that's I'm that's actually a beautiful thing to say. Thank you. Love you too.

SPEAKER_05

Thank you.

SPEAKER_06

Thank you. Thank you both. Thank you.