Julie Nagam:
Decolonial Tools – Digital Media

Our long thread of existence has always been dependent on the innovation of media – from the way we take animals and create tools that provide warmth, survival and adornment, to the creation of dwellings that are entirely embedded into the land and what it has to provide. Media is not new for Indigenous people as it has been a tool for our growth and transformation from the beginning. Our present day is a continuum of this long thread that connects us all to this history across the vast oceans and landscapes that bound us together instead of dividing our communities. In this lecture, I will situate that they operate under the conceptual framework that waterways are highways of information that connect us through the movement of our ability to transcend space and time to connect and communicate through the digital realm. Though the global shift that grants total access to media has begun to break down some of these differences, much local knowledge remains embodied and practiced in ways of doing that are specific to place. Each location has its local histories and cultural practices that marks and maps out their distinct knowledges, but at the same time our shared connection across space is integral to our existence and thrivance.

Julie Nagam is a Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Arts, Collaboration and is an Associate Professor in the department of Art History at the University of Winnipeg. She is the inaugural Artistic Director for 2020 and 2022 for Nuit Blanche Toronto, the largest public exhibition in North America. Nagam’s SSHRC research includes digital makerspaces + incubators, mentorship, digital media + design, international collaborations and place-based knowledge. Nagam is currently the Principal Director of the multimillion-dollar Partnership and Development Grant “The Space Between Us: Co(lab)orations within Indigenous, Circumpolar and Pacific Places Through Digital Media and Design” (2021–2028). She is a collective member of GLAM, which works on curatorial activism, Indigenous methodologies, public art, digital technologies, and engagement with place. As a scholar and artist, she is interested in revealing the ontology of land, which contains memory, knowledge and living histories. Her artistic work has been exhibited internationally – in Brazil, France, New Zealand and England – which includes solo and group exhibitions. Nagam’s scholarship, curatorial and artistic practice has been featured nationally and internationally. She was the Concordia University and Massey University (NZ) Scholar in Residence for 2018/19, and will be the Terra Foundation Visiting Scholar at the University of Sydney (AUS) for 2021–22. Julie Nagam is the Director of Aabijijiwan New Media Lab and Co-Director of Kishaadigeh Collaborative Research Centre in Winnipeg, Canada.
Please find here Julie Nagam's personal website, The Space Between Us,  Aabijijiwan New Media Lab, and the GLAM collective.

The KHI Amerindian Lecture Series 2021 is conceived as a forum to reflect on Indigenous arts/visual cultures and aesthetic practices created on the American continent, past and present. It is organized by Sanja Savkić Šebek (KHI in Florenz – Max-Planck-Institut & Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin) & Bat-ami Artzi (Dumbarton Oaks) within the framework of the Department Gerhard Wolf & the 4A Laboratory: Art Histories, Archaeologies, Anthropologies, Aesthetics.