Amalia Córdova is supervisory museum curator at the Smithsonian Institution's Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage (CFCH). She is the former Latinx digital curator at CFCH, and Latin American specialist for the Film + Video Center of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian in New York City. She joined New York University’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study as part-time faculty in 2011 and later served as assistant director of NYU’s Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies. Supervisors: Robert Stam, advisor and Faye Ginsburg, advisor
Abya Yala is a name that refers to the Americas that originates from the Kuna people of Panama an... more Abya Yala is a name that refers to the Americas that originates from the Kuna people of Panama and Colombia to mean “land in full flourishing” or “land in its full maturity” (del Valle Escalante 2014). The name, which began to be used by the late 1970s, gained political currency after 1992 through its use by range of Indigenous community organizations across Latin America. In the early 1980s, Indigenous social movements in Latin America began appropriating video technology as part of their ongoing struggles around cultural difference and the right to self-representation and self-determination, and more broadly, for a plurality of ways of belonging and being. This push towards audiovisual self-representation was sparked by the 500th anniversary of Columbus’s arrival to the Americas in 1992, an event that marked a renewed wave of Indigenous uprisings and resistance movements across Abya Yala, including the Zapatista uprising in Chiapas in 1994. The effects of what happened in Mexico on that morning of January 1, when the Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (EZLN) said “Basta!” (Stop!) to neoliberal capitalism’s annihilation of the ancestral foundation of the Indigenous economies, cannot be underestimated. It was a far-reaching, strategically crafted, media-savvy declaration that “another world is possible” and “another economy is possible,” a clarion call that went on to influence a diverse array of social movements around the world. For Chilean anthropologist José Bengoa (2000), this struggle for rights was a sort of “reverse conquest” where Indigenous peoples, in their demand for new modes of cultural and political recognition, became actively resisted being cast as silent witnesses (“convidados de piedra”) of “the wedding of free markets and representative democracy” (Bengoa 2000, 59. See also Bengoa 2009)
While the strength and vitality of contemporary Latin American cinemas are recognized worldwide, ... more While the strength and vitality of contemporary Latin American cinemas are recognized worldwide, less is known of the accomplished narrative, documentary, and post-colonial video practices that have been generated by and within its indigenous communities in recent decades. Their production and circulation processes have been of more interest to visual anthropologists under the rubric “indigenous media,” which I will refer to as specific forms of media expression conceptualized, produced, and/or created by indigenous peoples around the globe, following Wilson and Stewart (2008). This is a field that emerged in the convergence of several disciplinary advances: as an extension of experimental and activist video practices, alongside shifts toward reflexivity in the ethnographic documentary, and through the use of realism and cinema verite techniques in subaltern filmmaking, among others. Thus, non-indigenous researchers and filmmakers engaged in training indigenous communities began to see media-making as a powerful way to promote advocacy, and ultimately, to foster self-determination. Indigenous video productions are being used to rethink history, critically and creatively countering foundational narratives on indigeneity that emerged from the ethnographic documents since first contact, captured in footage, photos, and written accounts produced with Western technologies and usually from a European or Eurocentric point of view, replicated in myriad fictional renderings emanating from Hollywood and beyond.
Indigenous media may be defined as forms of media expression conceptualized, produced, and circul... more Indigenous media may be defined as forms of media expression conceptualized, produced, and circulated by indigenous peoples around the globe as vehicles for communication, including cultural preservation, cultural and artistic expression, political self-determination, and cultural sovereignty. Indigenous media overlap with, and are on a spectrum with, other types of minority-produced media, and quite often they share a kinship regarding many philosophical and political motivations. Indigenous media studies allow us access to the micro-processes of what Roland Robertson has famously called “glocalization”—in this case, the interpenetration of global media technologies with hyperlocal needs, creatively adapted to work within and sustain the local culture rather than to replace it or homogenize it, as some globalization theorists have long feared. The scope of indigenous media studies, a growing field of interdisciplinary scholarship, is quite broad and extensive. We first present some...
Community media making in Latin America has become a force to be reckoned with. Since the late 19... more Community media making in Latin America has become a force to be reckoned with. Since the late 1980s, activists have been guiding a movement to share the power and confidence that comes from controlling your own image and telling your own stories.
In May 1998 the Eighth International Congress on Mental Health, Alcohol, and Drugs, held in Santi... more In May 1998 the Eighth International Congress on Mental Health, Alcohol, and Drugs, held in Santiago, Chile, promoted its agenda with artwork featuring the image of a Mapuche woman superimposed on that of a brain. The woman's image had been grossly recontextualized, cut and pasted from a classic ethnographic photograph taken in the early 1920s. The Coordinara Nacional Indianista de Chile delivered a strong public response to the organizers of the conference: “We were stripped out of our land. We were deprived of our gods and language. We were brought alcohol and venereal diseases. And after all the plunder, now they want to appropriate our images and treat us like drunks, criminals, and drug addicts. Our faces and ways of seeing has been taken away. Besides negating our images and usurping our archives of dreams, they have colonized our imagination through the mass media.” While cases like this are commonplace in the region, the colonization of an Indigenous imaginary only recently became an issue of debate among scholars and media activists in Latin America
Chilean-born artist Juan Downey (1940-1993) is best known as a pioneer videomaker who persistentl... more Chilean-born artist Juan Downey (1940-1993) is best known as a pioneer videomaker who persistently pushed the boundaries between ethnography, autobiography, and media arts, immersing himself in a quest to explore issues of identity in the Americas and in Western culture, and bridging indigenous worldviews with cutting-edge, experimental communication technologies. He received innumerable awards and grants for his work, which comprises over 40 media pieces, before dying of cancer in 1993. The long-overdue first U.S. retrospective of his work is currently on view at the Bronx Museum, offering a concise yet representative sampling of his major works. Drawings, artist notebooks, paintings, engravings, photographs, video-installations, and full-length video works are respectfully laid out in roughly chronological order, and a bilingual (English/Spanish) catalog lovingly assembled by curator Valerie Smith rounds out the succinct wall text that introduces Downey's obsession with invisible forces, giving context to each section of works. A trained architect from an affluent family in Santiago, Downey moved to Paris in 1963 to study engraving and see European art first-hand. Drawings and writings from this period-and an actual engraving, a real rarity-open the three galleries of The Invisible Architect, introducing the spatial and conceptual elements that mark his work. While he worked throughout his life in drawing, painting, and graphics, he began exploring new technologies in the '60s, creating electronic sculptures in which photoelectric cells activated sound and light with the movements of spectators.
In the Balance: Indigeneity, Performance, Globalization, 2017
This essay traces the evolution of Indigenous Film Festivals across Abya Yala (the Kuna name for ... more This essay traces the evolution of Indigenous Film Festivals across Abya Yala (the Kuna name for North and South America). From early festivals emerging in the seventies in the United States, to a growing number across the Americas, festivals such as the Festival Internacional de Cine de los Pueblos Indígenas create spaces where an otherwise dispersed transnational community can gather and share ideas among themselves and with diverse audiences, building a larger network of support for Indigenous filmmaking and advocacy.
Abya Yala is a name that refers to the Americas that originates from the Kuna people of Panama an... more Abya Yala is a name that refers to the Americas that originates from the Kuna people of Panama and Colombia to mean “land in full flourishing” or “land in its full maturity” (del Valle Escalante 2014). The name, which began to be used by the late 1970s, gained political currency after 1992 through its use by range of Indigenous community organizations across Latin America. In the early 1980s, Indigenous social movements in Latin America began appropriating video technology as part of their ongoing struggles around cultural difference and the right to self-representation and self-determination, and more broadly, for a plurality of ways of belonging and being. This push towards audiovisual self-representation was sparked by the 500th anniversary of Columbus’s arrival to the Americas in 1992, an event that marked a renewed wave of Indigenous uprisings and resistance movements across Abya Yala, including the Zapatista uprising in Chiapas in 1994. The effects of what happened in Mexico on that morning of January 1, when the Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (EZLN) said “Basta!” (Stop!) to neoliberal capitalism’s annihilation of the ancestral foundation of the Indigenous economies, cannot be underestimated. It was a far-reaching, strategically crafted, media-savvy declaration that “another world is possible” and “another economy is possible,” a clarion call that went on to influence a diverse array of social movements around the world. For Chilean anthropologist José Bengoa (2000), this struggle for rights was a sort of “reverse conquest” where Indigenous peoples, in their demand for new modes of cultural and political recognition, became actively resisted being cast as silent witnesses (“convidados de piedra”) of “the wedding of free markets and representative democracy” (Bengoa 2000, 59. See also Bengoa 2009)
While the strength and vitality of contemporary Latin American cinemas are recognized worldwide, ... more While the strength and vitality of contemporary Latin American cinemas are recognized worldwide, less is known of the accomplished narrative, documentary, and post-colonial video practices that have been generated by and within its indigenous communities in recent decades. Their production and circulation processes have been of more interest to visual anthropologists under the rubric “indigenous media,” which I will refer to as specific forms of media expression conceptualized, produced, and/or created by indigenous peoples around the globe, following Wilson and Stewart (2008). This is a field that emerged in the convergence of several disciplinary advances: as an extension of experimental and activist video practices, alongside shifts toward reflexivity in the ethnographic documentary, and through the use of realism and cinema verite techniques in subaltern filmmaking, among others. Thus, non-indigenous researchers and filmmakers engaged in training indigenous communities began to see media-making as a powerful way to promote advocacy, and ultimately, to foster self-determination. Indigenous video productions are being used to rethink history, critically and creatively countering foundational narratives on indigeneity that emerged from the ethnographic documents since first contact, captured in footage, photos, and written accounts produced with Western technologies and usually from a European or Eurocentric point of view, replicated in myriad fictional renderings emanating from Hollywood and beyond.
Indigenous media may be defined as forms of media expression conceptualized, produced, and circul... more Indigenous media may be defined as forms of media expression conceptualized, produced, and circulated by indigenous peoples around the globe as vehicles for communication, including cultural preservation, cultural and artistic expression, political self-determination, and cultural sovereignty. Indigenous media overlap with, and are on a spectrum with, other types of minority-produced media, and quite often they share a kinship regarding many philosophical and political motivations. Indigenous media studies allow us access to the micro-processes of what Roland Robertson has famously called “glocalization”—in this case, the interpenetration of global media technologies with hyperlocal needs, creatively adapted to work within and sustain the local culture rather than to replace it or homogenize it, as some globalization theorists have long feared. The scope of indigenous media studies, a growing field of interdisciplinary scholarship, is quite broad and extensive. We first present some...
Community media making in Latin America has become a force to be reckoned with. Since the late 19... more Community media making in Latin America has become a force to be reckoned with. Since the late 1980s, activists have been guiding a movement to share the power and confidence that comes from controlling your own image and telling your own stories.
In May 1998 the Eighth International Congress on Mental Health, Alcohol, and Drugs, held in Santi... more In May 1998 the Eighth International Congress on Mental Health, Alcohol, and Drugs, held in Santiago, Chile, promoted its agenda with artwork featuring the image of a Mapuche woman superimposed on that of a brain. The woman's image had been grossly recontextualized, cut and pasted from a classic ethnographic photograph taken in the early 1920s. The Coordinara Nacional Indianista de Chile delivered a strong public response to the organizers of the conference: “We were stripped out of our land. We were deprived of our gods and language. We were brought alcohol and venereal diseases. And after all the plunder, now they want to appropriate our images and treat us like drunks, criminals, and drug addicts. Our faces and ways of seeing has been taken away. Besides negating our images and usurping our archives of dreams, they have colonized our imagination through the mass media.” While cases like this are commonplace in the region, the colonization of an Indigenous imaginary only recently became an issue of debate among scholars and media activists in Latin America
Chilean-born artist Juan Downey (1940-1993) is best known as a pioneer videomaker who persistentl... more Chilean-born artist Juan Downey (1940-1993) is best known as a pioneer videomaker who persistently pushed the boundaries between ethnography, autobiography, and media arts, immersing himself in a quest to explore issues of identity in the Americas and in Western culture, and bridging indigenous worldviews with cutting-edge, experimental communication technologies. He received innumerable awards and grants for his work, which comprises over 40 media pieces, before dying of cancer in 1993. The long-overdue first U.S. retrospective of his work is currently on view at the Bronx Museum, offering a concise yet representative sampling of his major works. Drawings, artist notebooks, paintings, engravings, photographs, video-installations, and full-length video works are respectfully laid out in roughly chronological order, and a bilingual (English/Spanish) catalog lovingly assembled by curator Valerie Smith rounds out the succinct wall text that introduces Downey's obsession with invisible forces, giving context to each section of works. A trained architect from an affluent family in Santiago, Downey moved to Paris in 1963 to study engraving and see European art first-hand. Drawings and writings from this period-and an actual engraving, a real rarity-open the three galleries of The Invisible Architect, introducing the spatial and conceptual elements that mark his work. While he worked throughout his life in drawing, painting, and graphics, he began exploring new technologies in the '60s, creating electronic sculptures in which photoelectric cells activated sound and light with the movements of spectators.
In the Balance: Indigeneity, Performance, Globalization, 2017
This essay traces the evolution of Indigenous Film Festivals across Abya Yala (the Kuna name for ... more This essay traces the evolution of Indigenous Film Festivals across Abya Yala (the Kuna name for North and South America). From early festivals emerging in the seventies in the United States, to a growing number across the Americas, festivals such as the Festival Internacional de Cine de los Pueblos Indígenas create spaces where an otherwise dispersed transnational community can gather and share ideas among themselves and with diverse audiences, building a larger network of support for Indigenous filmmaking and advocacy.
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