Book chapter
New mediations of Native cultural heritage: The Case of the TimeTraveller™ Machinima Project
Annual review of cultural heritage informatics, 2015, pp. 228-244
Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
2016
Abstract
Since the early 1990s, indigenous artists have adapted new media technologies to create innovative forms of art and to promote the cultural heritage of their tribes and Nations within the broader society. This process of art creation has involved both a critical and an affirmative dimension: not only have Native artists addressed stereotypical representations of Native heritage circulating in the mainstream media and Academia, but they have also proposed imaginative stories of Native lives and cultures. My study explores these two dimensions in the case of TimeTraveller™, a recent machinima series conceived and produced by Mohawk artist Skawennati. This project plays on the time-travel theme to imagine what Native life and heritage may look like in the future. Based on a discourse-analytic approach of the series and of the artist’s scholarly and interview statements, the study claims that TimeTraveller™ challenges what I call the “Discontinuity narrative”—a major stereotypical scenario that downplays Native peoples and their cultural heritage as inexistent, thereby contributing to the erasure of Indigenous presence in North America. The study shows how TimeTraveller™ proposes powerful counter-narratives to this stereotypical narrative and how the availability and use of new media technology for artistic purposes contributes to a redefinition of the very meaning of Native cultural heritage.
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- New mediations of Native cultural heritage: The Case of the TimeTraveller™ Machinima Project
- Creators
- Iulian Vamanu - University of Iowa, School of Library and Information Science
- Contributors
- Jennifer Weil Arns (Editor)
- Resource Type
- Book chapter
- Publication Details
- Annual review of cultural heritage informatics, 2015, pp. 228-244
- Publisher
- Rowman & Littlefield Publishers; Lanham
- Number of pages
- 251
- Language
- English
- Date published
- 2016
- Academic Unit
- School of Library and Information Science; Center for Social Science Innovation
- Record Identifier
- 9984002069402771
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