Maria Hupfield hosts a lively conversation with acclaimed scholar, writer, and musician Leanne Betasamosake Simpson about the art of refusal and the necessity of breaking protocols. While both speak from an Anishinaabe perspective (albeit from distinct communities), they approach the prompt for protocols differently: Hupfield discusses navigating protocols in relation to Indigenous and non-Indigenous collaboration, performance art, and digital spaces while Simpson advocates for the term practices in lieu of protocols through her work with language, and Elders on the land. In the second part of the exchange, they look beyond protocols to consider the value of introducing new narratives as radical storywork to shift power narratives through Anishinaabe methodology and worldview.

This event is part of the Vera List Center Forum 2020, highlighting the center’s fellowship program and featuring presentations by the five 2020-2022 Vera List Center Fellows: Carolina Caycedo (Colombia/U.S.), Etcétera (Argentina), Maria Hupfield (Canada), Adelita Husni Bey (Italy/U.S.), and Rasheedah Phillips (Philadelphia).

Maria Hupfield is a transdisciplinary artist working in performance and media arts. She was awarded the Hnatyshyn Foundation Award for Outstanding Achievement by a Canadian mid-career artist (2018) and a Lucas Artists Fellowship in Visual Arts, Architecture & Design, Montalvo Arts Center (2019-2020). Hupfield is a Guest Curator for the Artists of Color Council, Movement Research at Judson Church, Winter 2020, and an inaugural resident of the Surf Point Foundation Residency 2020. Her solo Nine Years Towards The Sun at the Heard Museum, Phoenix, (2019) focuses on exhibiting performance as living culture and follows her first major institutional solo exhibition in Canada, The One Who Keeps on Giving, a production of The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery, Toronto. Her work has shown at the Museum of Arts and Design, BRIC, Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, represented Canada at SITE Santa Fe (2016), and traveled nationally with Beat Nation: Art, Hip Hop and Aboriginal Culture (2012-14); with recent performances at the National Gallery of Canada. Hupfield is an off-rez citizen of Wasauksing First Nation, Ontario, Anishinaabe Nation, and the recently appointed Canadian Research Chair in Transdisciplinary Indigenous Arts at the University of Toronto.

Leanne Betasamosake Simpson is a Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg scholar, writer, musician, and member of Alderville First Nation. She is the author of five previous books, including This Accident of Being Lost, which won the MacEwan University Book of the Year; and was a finalist for the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize and the Trillium Book Award; was longlisted for CBC Canada Reads; and was named a best book of the year by the Globe and Mail, the National Post and Quill & Quire. She has released three albums including f(l)ight and Noopiming Sessions, with her fourth, Theory of Ice, coming later this year. Her latest work, a novel, Noopiming: The Cure for White Ladies, was released this fall by House of Anansi Press.

The Vera List Center Forum 2020 launches the center’s 2020-2022 focus theme, As for Protocols. Curated by Carin Kuoni and Eriola Pira, it is organized and convened with the support of Adrienne Umeh, Heran Abate, Joshua van Biema, and Maryna Arabei.

The Vera List Center Forum 2020 is made possible by major support from Jane Lombard and the Kettering Fund, as well as the Boris Lurie Art Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Sigrid Rausing Trust, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and The New School as well as members of the Vera List Center’s board and other individuals.

The Center for Imagination in the Borderlands at Arizona State University and the Vera List Center for Art and Politics at The New School recently launched the Borderlands Fellowships to support art research projects that create communities across different geographical, cultural, and political landscapes. Carolina Caycedo and Maria Hupfield are the inaugural Borderlands Fellows.