Sky Hopinka

Tribe: Ho-Chunk / Pechanga Band of Luiseño Indians
Based In: Portland, OR / Cambridge, MA
Email: skyhopinka@gmail.com
Social Media: @_brother_sky
Website: skyhopinka.com

About the Art
”The individual is not an autonomous, solitary object but a thing of uncertain extent, with ambiguous boundaries. So too is matter, which loses much of its allure the moment it is reduced to an object, shorn of its viscosity, pressure, and density. Both subject and matter resist their reduction into objects. Everything is interconnected and intertwined.”

—Kengo Kuma

The title of this video, taken from the texts of the architect Kengo Kuma, suggests a way of looking at everything as ‘interconnected and intertwined,’ as are the historical and the present, the tool and the artifact. Images and representations of two structures in the Portland metropolitan area that have direct and complicated connections to the Chinookan people who inhabit(ed) the land are woven with audio tapes of one of the last speakers of the Chinookan creole, Chinuk Wawa. These localities of matter resist their reduction into objects, and call anew for space and time given to wandering as a deliberate act, and the empowerment of shared utility.

Recordings of conversations between Wilson Bobb and Henry Zenk, 1982—1984 in White Swan, WA, courtesy Dr. Henry Zenk. Audio is layered onto images and footage. Chinuk Wawa is captioned onscreen in English by the artist.