(2020-Ongoing)
Performance / Video
These three videos document collaborative performances with fellow Indigenous musicians from 2020 to 2022. In each video, the performances take place on the West Mesa outside of Albuquerque, in view of the three dormant volcanoes that border the city. In the first video, Chacon is joined by Candice Hopkins, a Carcross/Tagish First Nation curator and writer, both of whom don handmade costumes. The performance was inspired by a Sámi drum inscribed with a landscape that depicts the setting of the ritual and notates the music to be played.
The second video captures a pandemic-era collaboration with Rob Thorne, a Ngāti Tumutumu/Tainui composer and anthropologist, who played as the sun rose near his home in Oruaiti, Aotearoa (New Zealand), while Chacon did the same as the sun set in New Mexico, each capturing his perspective on video.
The third video documents a collaboration between Chacon and Cannupa Hanska Luger, an artist of the Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara, and Lakota tribes; Chacon manipulates dysfunctional electronics from his collection and Hanska Luger plays his own instrument-esque ceramic sculptures, with the musicality of the performance reflected in the performers’ gestures and sense of attunement, as much as in the liminal sounds produced.
Raven Chacon and Candice Hopkins
Rift Transcription (2020)
Digital video with sound, 10 min. 7 sec.
Raven Chacon – violin
Candice Hopkins – drum
D.E. Hyde – Camera
Originally commissioned by Joar Nango
Raven Chacon and Rob Thorne
Earth Mother / Father Sky (2021)
Digital video with sound, 30 min. 18 sec.
Raven Chacon – whistles, electronics, camera
Rob Thorne (Ngāti Tumutumu / Tainui) – pūtōrino, kōauau toroa, pahū kōhatu, camera
Originally commissioned by ISSUE Project Room
Raven Chacon and Cannupa Hanska Luger
Watȟéča :: Ch’iyáán Yiskáago (2022)
Digital video with sound, 21 min. 51 sec.
Raven Chacon – voice, bells, electronics, editing
Cannupa Hanska Luger – ceramic calls, bowls
D.E. Hyde – Camera
Ginger Dunnill – Camera
Laura Ortman – on-site audio recording
Originally commissioned by 6 Moons Indigenous Concert Series
