The Traveling Alter Native Medicine Show
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The Traveling Alter Native Medicine Show is a ride through history. It implodes the markers of history left behind by those who have claimed this land as their own. It implodes history itself, making tactile the many layers of history that are preent along the way. As Walter Benjamin said, History is the subject of a structure whose site is not homogenous empty time, but time filled by the presence of the now. (Theses of the Philosophy of History)
Thus, this exhibit is no mere travelogue. When Toulouse-Shingwaak and Beam take charcoal and rayon and trace onto paper the rough granite or smooth iron of official historic markers and memorials, over letters, shapes, symbols and signs, they are filling history with the presence of now. They are filling history with the presence of the lives lived by Aboriginal people, so that as one of the traings says: THAT WE MIGHT BE THE LIVING VOICE. The touch of their hands on the property of federal, provincial, state and municipal governments defies the authority that places these markers there in the first place, By asserting their eye on these markers of colonial history-a history intent on our genocide-to make art, Toulouse-Shingwaak and Beam neutralize the markers authenticity and therefore its accuracy.

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