Contemporary Calgary, CUFF, M:ST explore alternatives to the Wild West
It’s not your grandpa’s Stampede.
There’s Paul Newman in the title role of Robert Altman’s Albertashot 1976 revisionist western, Buffalo Bill and The Indians, or Sitting Bull’s History Lesson. There’s an exploration of the early 20th-century portraiture of Chinese-born photographer C.D. Hoy. German artist Julian Rosefeldt presents a five-channel film installation that reflects on the western film genre while criticizing American foreign policy. There’s Siksika Nation performance artist Adrian Stinson, who, on Friday, was to “mirror” the Calgary Stampede parade with a “queering of the cowboy persona” called Buffalo Boy’s Stampede Tickle and Slap.
It’s all part of WILD: Fabricating a Frontier, a 10-day multi-discipline, multi-venue “counter-stampede” festival that offers an alternative look at who or what makes up a frontier, matching romantic notions of the early settler with contemporary voices. The joint venture between Contemporary Calgary, the Calgary Underground Film Festival and the performative art festival Mountain Standard Time includes installation, photography, film and panel discussions.
“When we think of the performances of the Wild West, we think of something that is nostalgic and in the past,” says Lisa Baldissera, senior curator for Contemporary Calgary. “In fact, right now issues of migration and the frontier are in the news every day. It’s all about the borders: who’s allowed in, who
isn’t. So it feels really important and powerful to bring this back to the present. We think very comfortably about those early frontier relations, but they were working it out as well. So they were deciding all these things and struggling. There were things that we know historically that were issues at the time, especially in a settler colonial setting. What does it mean now? We’re talking about borders. We’re talking about walls in the news every night. How can we think in a contemporary way? What are the things to bring forward in our consciousness about who makes up a frontier. It’s always complex and it’s never about just one voice.”
The festival will cast a wide net, offering work from international and Indigenous artists. Until July 15, most of the events will be held at the Globe Cinema. Exhibitions will also be held until Aug. 26 at the former Victoria School, the Illingworth Kerr Gallery (starting July 13) and the Globe.
Cheryl Foggo will discuss The Reclaiming and Reimagining of John Ware, her upcoming NFB documentary about the AfricanAmerica cowboy who brought cattle into southern Alberta in the 1880s. New Mexico-based Indigenous arts collective Postcommodity, known for installations and performances that look at revisionist history and social justice, will perform at the Globe on Saturday night. Danish artist Joachim Koester, who works in photography and video, will show a “silent contemporary dance piece that looks like a cowboy film.”
The festival will feature a program of films, presented by the Calgary Underground Film Festival, that includes a screening this Sunday of Altman’s Alberta-shot Buffalo Bill, a July 12 screening of Nicolas Ray’s 1954 cult-classic Johnny Guitar and Gil Cardinal’s 2003 NFB documentary Totem: The Return of the G’posgolox Pole, which chronicled the efforts of the Haisla people to reclaim a totem pole taken from them in 1929.
While describing something as a “counter- Stampede” festival may suggest a somewhat critical or adversarial relationship with the Greatest Outdoor Show on Earth, Baldissera says that is not the intent of WILD.
“Not at all,” she says. “It’s a response and looking at it in terms of contemporary media. We’re all talking about the border and the frontier right now. What are those wonderful, nuanced ways that we can respond to them?”