The Skullcracker Suite: A Long-term Interdisciplinary Artistic Research Project Investigating Processes of Cultural Decolonisation in British Columbia (Portfolio)

The Skullcracker Suite is a long-term artistic research project investigating processes of cultural decolonization in British Columbia from ethnographic, science-fictional and First Nations perspectives. Drawing on the mythology, dances and art of the Kwakwaka’wakw peoples of British Columbia, The Skullcacker Suite takes its name from Hox’hok, one of three giant cannibal birds of Kwakiutl legend. Hox’hok’s skull-cracking and brain-eating powers are imagined as a dramatic allegory for the interwoven process of colonial violence, indigenous resistance and the metaphysics of predation that bind human and non-human beings in a system of mutual, ecological and entangled co-dependency.
The first phase of the project – ‘BC Time-Slip (The Empire Never Ended)’ – began with a one-month residency at Dynamo Arts Association in Vancouver in August 2016 where the gallery was made into a research installation investigating the story of the science fiction writer Philip K. Dick’s stay at a First Nations rehab clinic called X-Kalay.
The residency included public talks, seminars, group discussions, lecture presentations, a film program and the creation of a series of photospheres (360° videos) depicting Dick’s time in the city, myself playing the author.