Postcommodity (Raven Chacon, Cristóbal Martínez & Kade L. Twis)
Repellent Fence
Visit the project
The Repellent Fence is a project by Postcommodity, an interdisciplinary arts collective. The initiative is a social collaborative project among individuals, communities, institutional organizations, publics, and sovereigns that culminate with the establishment of a large-scale temporary monument located near Douglas, Arizona and Agua Prieta, Sonora. This land-art work is comprised of 28 tethered balloons, that are each 10 feet in diameter, and float 50 feet above the desert landscape. The balloons that comprise Repellent Fence are enlarged replicas of an ineffective bird repellent product. Coincidently, these balloons use indigenous medicine colors and iconography — the same graphic used by indigenous peoples from South America to Canada for thousands of years. The purpose of this monument is to bi-directionally reach across the U.S./Mexico border as a suture that stitches the peoples of the Americas together—symbolically demonstrating the interconnectedness of the Western Hemisphere by recognizing the land, indigenous peoples, history, relationships, movement and communication.
Postcommodity is an interdisciplinary arts collective comprised of Raven Chacon, Cristóbal Martínez, and Kade L. Twist. Postcommodity’s art functions as a shared Indigenous lens and voice to engage the assaultive manifestations of the global market and its supporting institutions, public perceptions, beliefs, and individual actions that comprise the ever-expanding, multinational, multiracial and multiethnic colonizing force that is defining the 21st Century through ever increasing velocities and complex forms of violence. Postcommodity works to forge new metaphors capable of rationalizing our shared experiences within this increasingly challenging contemporary environment; promote a constructive discourse that challenges the social, political and economic processes that are destabilizing communities and geographies; and connect Indigenous narratives of cultural self-determination with the broader public sphere. Postcommodity are the recipients of grants from the Telluride Institute (2007), American Composers Forum (2008), Arizona Commission on the Arts (2009), Elly Kay Fund (2010), Joan Mitchell Foundation (2010), Creative Capital (2012), Art Matters (2013), and the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation (2014). In 2011 the collective’s work was featured in “Close Encounters,” an international Indigenous exhibition exhibited in multiple venues throughout the city of Winnipeg, CA; Contour the 5th Biennial of the Moving Image in Mechelen, Belgium; Nuit Blanche, Toronto, CA; “Half Life: Patterns of Change,” Santa Fe Art Institute, Santa Fe, NM; “The Night is Filled With the Harmonics of Suburban Dreams,” Lawrence Art Center, Lawrence, KS; “Here,” Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts Museum; 18th Biennale of Sydney in Sydney, Australia; Adelaide International in Adelaide, Australia; and Time Lapse, Site Santa Fe, in Santa Fe, NM. In 2013, Postcommodity will exhibit their work at the Headlands Center for the Arts, as well as open their art space, Spirit Abuse in Albuquerque, NM. Throughout 2015, Postcommodity will prepare to stage a site-specific 2 mile long land installation at the US./Mexican border near Douglas, AZ.
Postcommodity acknowledges the important contributions of its previous collaborators: Steven Yazzie (2007-2010), Nathan Young (2007-2015), Andrew McCord (If History Moves at the Speed of Its Weapons, Then the Shape of the Arrow is Changing, and Promoting a More Just, Verdant and Harmonious Resolution), Annabel Wong (Dead River) and Existence AD (Dead River).