Working (it) Out Ep 9 Postcommodity: Wide Eyes

Postcommodity is Raven Chacon, Cristóbal Martínez, and Kade L. Twist. On today’s episode, we discuss at length their work Repellent Fence. A project almost ten years in the making, Repellent Fence will appear floating over the towns of Agua Prieta, Mexico and Douglas, AZ, USA this October – bisecting the US/Mexico border. The work consists of oversized “scare-eye” balloons – an ineffective bird repellent product which functions for the artists as an indigenous readymade and semiotic vehicle. We discuss this work, land art, borders, and keeping one’s eyes open to the politics of place. Time Codes: 11:40 Land Art’s positioning 13:12 Designing work to implicate audiences 16:35 Asking questions of one’s audience 17:05 Layers of noise as fertile ground 19:00 Pointing an indigenous lens and offering a view through it 24:00 Seeing and Looking back 25:00 Open eye iconography and indigenous readymades 26:20 Scare-eye balloons: Powerful semiotic vehicles of Indigeneity 28:00 Having eyes open to what is going on 36:00 Borders as microcosms 38:00 The potential politics of aesthetic choices Music: Four Tet – Parallel Jalebi